Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

He always told them, nothing was evil if it came from love.

“Party time!” he said, and rang the bell.

Pig Number One came to the door-the man himself-in a floral shirt with a glass of wine, his grin evaporating as he saw who it was. “Russell?” He must’ve shit in his pants, knowing what they were there for and that his days were about to end. He looked so confused. “What are you doing here?”

“You told me, ‘ Drop in anytime, Russ.’ So, guess what, Paul, we’re here!”

They pushed past him into the house, Tel dragging Pauly-boy along. The sounds of merriment came to a stop.

Suddenly all eyes fixed on them. Riorden’s pretty wife stopped dancing. “Who are they, Paul?”

Tel took out the gunny-gun-gun.

Suddenly everyone realized, which, he recalled, sent his dick to the moon.

Maybe one of the gals screamed. Who could recall? There was a lot of screaming later on. A shot rang out from outside, from by the pool. A woman’s squeal, pitched in terror. “No, no, please, no, no…”

Then two more shots. Followed only by the most delicious silence.

Carla and Squirrel appeared at the back doors. Riorden’s wife began to whimper.

“C’mon, everyone”-he looked around the room-“why so glum?”

“What do you want from us, Russell?” Paul Riorden asked, reaching for some kind of last authority.

He grinned. “What do I want?”

He never gave him an answer. Even now, all these years later, he really wasn’t sure what he wanted that night. He put his hands behind his head and rested a leg over his knee, light from the guard’s station darting off his yellow jumpsuit.

Maybe just to pay someone back. At last.

Maybe to take a piece of what he always felt was his. The good life. He’d never know it.

Maybe it was just to let the evil out. It had been in him so long.

He nodded to Sarah Jane, who went over to the stereo and turned the volume way up high.

“It’s time, everyone.” Party time.

Time for the devil to sprout his horns.

“I think I found something last night,” I said to Sherwood, who was doing seventy on Highway 101 the next morning, heading up the coast.

“What?” He glanced over from behind the wheel.

“What all the eyes are about. The ones on Zorn and Evan.”

Sherwood flashed me that skeptical glower of his, taking a gulp of coffee from a paper cup. “It’s a long drive, doc. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

I told him what I had come upon last night in Houvnanian’s trial transcript. The killer’s psychotic rambling at his sentencing in front of the judge. I had written it down and read it out loud, pausing each time as the killer had uttered, “ Watch! ”

“That’s what the eyes mean. They’re warnings. They’re prophesying his return.”

Sherwood’s face scrunched, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. “You’re saying this is all about some kind of revenge? On Zorn and Evan. All these years later?”

“Zorn handled Houvnanian’s case. He helped put him away.”

“And your nephew? ”

Evan-I admit I couldn’t quite answer that yet. Other than this growing suspicion that my brother was holding something back from me.

“Look,” I said, “I dug a little deeper after I read this. Zorn was only part of the police team in Santa Barbara that investigated Houvnanian. His boss on the case was someone named Joe Cooley, his lieutenant. I Googled him. Turns out he’s dead too. He was killed in a car accident in Marin County back in 1991.”

“That’s nineteen years ago,” Sherwood said.

I went on. “And one of the FBI investigators, this guy named Greenway. He even wrote a book on Houvnanian. It was sort of a bestseller back in the late seventies. Twenty-two years ago, his wife found him facedown in his pool. It went down as a suicide-by drowning.”

Sherwood eyed me a couple of beats, allowing himself the slightest smile. “And all this proves what, doc? Blow me away…”

“I’m simply saying if we looked into these other cases, what are the chances we might find something in the form of an open eye on those victims too?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You’re watching too many detective shows, doc. You’re starting to make me wonder about you.”

“So then tell me,” I asked, meeting his stare, “why are we driving all this way up to see Susan Pollack?”

He shot me a look, then shifted his gaze back to the road and drove on for a while in silence.

The traffic was light that time of the morning, so the miles flew by as we sped up the coast. We passed through the wine country around Paso Robles, where I knew a lot of great zinfandels came from. The fog lifted and it became bright and sunny. I dozed, looking at the rolling vineyard-covered hills.

When I woke, an hour and a half in, I tried to change the subject to something personal. “Was that your wife and daughter I saw in your office?”

He looked back with a question in his gaze.

“The pictures,” I said, “on your credenza.”

He merely nodded at first, not offering a whole lot more. Then, after about a minute, he added: “Dorrie died a little over a year ago. Pancreatic cancer. Two months. Went like that! My daughter lives up in Washington State. She’s married to an air force flight instructor up there.”

“There’s just her?”

He nodded. Then after another pause he said, “We had a son, Kyle, who died when he was nine. Boating accident.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“Years ago.” He shrugged, sloughing it off. “He’d be thirty now.”

“I meant about your wife too.”

My thoughts went to what he’d said about his liver. He’d received a transfer. He’d been handed a brand-new lease on life. But I wondered, for what?

“We had all these plans,” Sherwood suddenly volunteered, his eyes ahead, “for when I retired. We were gonna spend six months and go camping down in South America. Patagonia. Bottom of the world. Supposed to be incredible down there. Some of the best fly-fishing going. Ever been there?”

“No,” I said, “I haven’t.” Kathy and I had always talked about going to Machu Picchu. For her next significant birthday.

“Then I got sick…” His voice trailed off.

“Your liver?”

He eyed me, probably figuring I knew precisely what eroded a liver. And what were the signs of possible rejection, after some years.

He said, “I used to hit the bottle a bit. After Kyle died. Probably cost me a rank or two in my career. The damage was pretty far along. I was lucky to find a match. Some pastor keeled over in the middle of his sermon. Edward J. Knightly. My lucky day!”

“Funny how it works,” I said.

“Yeah, funny… Soon as I got back from the hospital, Dorrie starts to feel discomfort in her side. Can’t keep her food down. Always tired. Lotta good the damn thing’s done me.” He changed lanes. “Sort of a waste, if you ask me. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Ask me again when I get on that plane.”

Sherwood glanced at me, and for the first time, I think I actually saw him smile.

I asked, “Are you taking your immunosuppressants?” I had noticed some bruising on his arms. And his eyes were a trace yellow, icteric. Signs that things might not be going along as well as they could.

“Of course I’m taking them,” he replied, turning back to the road at my question.

In Gilroy, garlic capital of the world, we stopped to use the john and fill up the car. I grabbed an In-N-Out burger. It was only another hour or so to San Jose and the Bay Area. Another hour into San Francisco and then across the Bay Bridge into Marin.

“So do we have a plan?” I asked as we got back on the road.