Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

My brother shrugged, a cast of inevitability clouding his face. “I told you before, we can’t make waves, Jay. We have to accept who we are. Anyway, what does it matter for Gabby and me? It’s all over for us now. It would just be nice to get some answers.”

“I wish I could have done that for you, Charlie.”

“You did, Jay. You have any idea how much it means to us, you coming out here like you did? You did everything.”

He reached forward and put his hand on mine and squeezed. In that moment, he was no longer my crazy, wayward brother whose life had spun out of control, but someone who was every bit my equal yet was powerless and needed me. Whose life would never be the same.

I pulled him to me with a hug. “I truly wish it could have been different, Charlie. And I don’t just mean with Evan. I mean with all of it. Dad. You and me. Our lives.”

His grip tightened. “I wish that too, Jay.” I suddenly felt tears dampen my shoulder. “I love you, buddy. You’re all I have…”

“I love you too, Charlie.”

“You go back to that beautiful family of yours…”

“I will. Unless something changes, right?” I patted him warmly on the back and pulled away.

“Anyway what ever changes with us”-he smiled-“right?”

We went back inside. Pam and Miguel and his mom had stood up to leave. “I’m really sorry for your loss.” Miguel put out his hand to me.

“Thanks,” I said. I asked what he was doing with himself.

“Trying to get back into school. I’ve had some setbacks, you know. But I’m getting it back together. I start Cuesta in the spring.” Cuesta was the local junior college where Evan had gone for a semester.

“That’s good.” I walked him outside to the carport, where his mom and Gabby were saying good-bye. “Keep it together.”

He shook his head confoundedly. “You know, things could have been really different with Evan, man. The dude was smart. He used to show me how to do my math. Like it was nothing to him. He had a way out of this place. Not like the rest of us…”

He took a step toward his mom’s van, then turned back around. “You know, it was like with that cop. The one who was always looking for him…”

“What cop?”

“That old dude. He came around to the courts a few times, looking for Evan. First, maybe a month ago… Evan wasn’t around. Then he was back, a couple of weeks ago…”

I stared. “This cop was looking for Evan?”

“Yeah. I rang Evan up and he came down. Two weeks ago. That was the last time I ever saw him. We were all jiving him: ‘What do you got going on, dude? You thinkin’ ’bout becoming a snitch?’ My boy just laughed and said how the guy was only showing an interest in him. Said he was trying to get him to take the test.”

“What test? ” I asked, my heart suddenly jumping a beat.

“You know,” said Miguel, “the test to become a cop.”

It was like a switch was flicked, everything inside me brought to an immediate stop. I flashed back to what Gabby had told me that first day. Evan staring at the furnace, hearing voices coming from it. They want me to become a cop.

My son was sick, Gabby had said. He was always dreaming.

You’ll see, Evan had said with that all-knowing smirk of his.

“You know his name?” I asked Miguel, my pulse picking up again. “This cop? It’s important, Miguel.”

He shook his head. “Nah. Just some older dude. Maybe fifty, sixty. White hair. Not from around here, though. He showed us his badge. From somewhere down south. Santa Barbara, I think he said. I’m sorry, mister.”

“That’s okay.”

It might be nothing, I realized. Just another one of Evan’s ramblings. His stupid dreams, as Gabby said. One that happened to be connected to the thinnest thread of truth.

This cop, who wanted him to take the test.

Or maybe it did mean something.

I started after Miguel, who’d opened the van door. “You remember anything else about him? That cop. Other than he had white hair and said he wasn’t from around here.”

“I don’t know, man…” He scratched his shaved head. “He had kind of a limp. And, oh yeah, he did have something on his face. Like a birthmark, you know? This red blotch. On his cheek. Here.” He touched the left side of his face.

“Thanks, Miguel,” I said.

They backed out and I watched them drive away. I reminded myself I was leaving. Come morning, I was going to be in my car, on the way back to LAX. Then on a plane. Home.

I had things pulling me back.

But I couldn’t suppress the weirdest feeling, like the world had suddenly shifted.

Something just changed.

And a thought wormed into my brain, ever so slightly: What if Evan wasn’t quite as crazy as everyone thought?

I barely slept that night.

I tossed and turned for most of it, my blood racing. The echo of what Miguel had told me going back and forth in my mind.

They want me to take the test to become a cop…

I kept thinking, What if Evan’s ramblings might not have been total delusions after all, but were twisted with a thread of truth? Reality.

Why did an old detective need to find him? What could he have been caught up in? I kept hearing my brother’s voice: What if he had gone up to that ledge just to think? My son would never have killed himself.

I rose up. What if that stupid missing sneaker did actually mean something?

At two, I tossed off the covers and stepped out on the terrace, letting the breeze from the ocean cool my face. Listening to the whoosh of the dark sea against the rocks.

Did any of this make the hospital less responsible? No. They still bungled it. It didn’t change much. It wasn’t going to bring Evan back. Or alter my brother’s grief.

You’ve got to be on a plane in the morning, Jay.

My wake-up call shook me out of a deep sleep at just before seven. I had a one P.M. flight out of LAX and it was about a three-hour ride. Stacey Gold was being admitted that afternoon. I called in and told my secretary I’d be ready to scrub in at six A.M. tomorrow. I checked that everything was set for her operation.

Stacey was seventeen and was starting at Boston College that fall. The surgery had forced her to push back her start date. Though two years younger than Sophie, they had been in a dance class together a few years back, and in the summers, she worked the refreshment cart that drove around the course at our golf club.

A month ago, she started experiencing a throbbing in her right thigh near the groin and felt pressure on the pelvic nerves. An MRI discovered an aneurysm leading into the iliac artery. I had to feed a stent through the femoral artery. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was the only way to relieve the pressure; otherwise there was the risk of it bursting.

I turned on the Today show and hopped into the shower. Afterward, I stood in my towel shaving. On the tube, they were talking about a missing toddler in Tennessee and then they switched to the local news.

“A retired Santa Barbara detective is found murdered in his Santa Maria home…”

It took a moment, until the words “Santa Barbara detective” slammed me head-on and I ran to the screen.

They had the victim’s photo there. In his early sixties. A hard, square jaw, wrinkles around deep-set eyes.

What had Miguel told me? The cop was around sixty. White hair.

“Walter Zorn, ” the news report began, “ who for the past ten years had lived in the Five Cities area…”

Then they showed another photo of him-this time in uniform, receiving some kind of commendation.

Just like Miguel had said, there was the blotch of reddish pigment on his left cheek.

My eyes went wide.