Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

And the file on his desk that had come back a short while ago. Inching him closer to the realization that from his cell, possibly starting years ago, Russell Houvnanian was engaged in a process of deadly revenge.

That Greenway’s and Zorn’s deaths had been part of it. That Susan Pollack might have been aiding him.

That Evan was the way they got to Charlie.

And now, thanks to the doc, he also knew why.

Sherwood thought back to the remote house up in Jenner. The navy Kia the doc said matched one he had seen outside his brother’s house. The testimony of the street vendor at the rock. They all began to fit in, into some shifting puzzle that was starting to take shape. He knew how skeptical he had been, how simple it had all seemed only a week ago.

A flashing eye-no more than a Cracker Jack prize, found in a boy’s pocket at the bottom of the rock.

Sherwood now accepted that Susan Pollack might be involved, but she surely wasn’t alone.

Thomas Greenway was killed in Las Vegas back in 1988. Susan Pollack was still at the Frontera Women’s Correctional Institution then. Walter Zorn might have been getting on in years, but he still weighed more than two hundred pounds and had fought for his life while being strangled. The doc was sure that it had been a man on the phone threatening him.

Sherwood looked at the open file. This cinched it.

Now it was only a question of what he would do.

It had come in an hour ago, from the FBI’s ViCAP system, a data bank of details on most violent crimes.

He had run the details from the photos Charlie Erlich had given him.

Her name was Sherry Ann Frazier. She lived in Redmond, Michigan. A small resort town on the UP. She was fifty-two years old and had been found beaten and murdered in her home by her daughter eight days before.

There was a local police contact on the file. Some young detective named Arlen Douglas. Sherwood had rung him up. The kid seemed a bit green. What kind of things even happened up there on the Upper Peninsula anyway? A moose wandering into town? Geese sightings? Sherry Ann Frazier lived alone. She was recently separated. She ran a bakery in town. No one had any clue who’d killed her. There were no prints or fibers left behind. Nothing was taken from the house. They clearly didn’t have many homicides in Redmond. The case had gotten nowhere.

“I want you to take a look at the files,” Sherwood told the young detective, “and tell me if you can find something for me.”

“Sure,” the kid had replied, empty in the biggest case of his career. “What?”

“An eye,” Sherwood had told him.

“An eye?”

“That’s right, or anything else that resembles one. On the body. Or maybe left around the scene.”

Ten minutes later he called back. A little confused. They had found something actually. Not quite an eye, Douglas had said. But something… Something they hadn’t been able to figure out.

Something weird.

He said, “The coroner found a contact lens. In her right eye

…”

“Only the right eye?” Sherwood asked, his heart rate picking up.

“Just the one,” Arlen Douglas confirmed. “But that’s not even the point. According to the ex-husband and daughter, Sherry Ann Frazier didn’t even wear contacts. Or glasses. She didn’t need them. Her vision was fine. Pretty weird, huh?”

“Crazy fucking weird,” Sherwood said.

Through the door, Sherwood saw his boss, Phil Perokis, come back into the office. He said good-bye, got up, grabbed his files, along with the incident report on the car fire yesterday and all that Charlie had told him.

He was about to head after Perokis when his desk phone rang. He grabbed it, answering sharply, “Detective Sherwood here.”

“Detective, it’s Roland Martinez,” the caller said. “From up in Jenner.”

Earlier in the day, Sherwood had called up there as well. Martinez was the detective who had happened to pick up his call. He had asked Martinez to ride up to Susan Pollack’s spread on Lost Hill and check on her whereabouts.

“Thanks for getting back to me, detective.” Sherwood sat back down. “So what’d you find?”

“What’d I find? You ready?” He sounded almost annoyed. “There was a gate up across the driveway. Newspapers scattered on the road. Two days’ mail. I went in anyway. No car in the garage. No sign of anyone around. Even the front door was bolted shut.”

Sherwood didn’t like the sound of it. “Thanks.”

“Something else though…” the detective went on. “I smelled something coming from the back. And I’m talking wretched. Thought it might have been a body. So I went around the side.”

Sherwood waited. “What did you find?”

“A bunch of fucking chickens, detective. All with their throats cut. Blood everywhere. You know whose place it is, don’t you? I checked. The county has it registered to a Susan Pollack. You know who that is, don’t you? This doesn’t exactly sit well up here. Anything I should know?”

“If there is,” Sherwood said, “I promise I’ll let you know…”

He hung up. He knew what it all meant. She had said those chickens were her only friends these days… He felt the hairs raise on his arms.

She wasn’t going back there.

Sherwood saw the lieutenant’s door open. He took his jacket and stood up again; then something stopped him and he put back down his files.

Whatever it was you got that second chance for, he heard a voice say, this is it.

He sat back down. He felt a pain throb in his abdomen. He said a thank-you to Edward J. Knightly. For all the good work he had done.

He lit up a cigarette he’d been saving in his drawer, then wheeled his seat around and sat there staring out at the hills.

C harlie took an extra Xanax along with his usual pills that morning. He felt totally wound up, his heart racing at twice its normal speed.

First, he went and brought Gabby home from the hospital. She was still a little woozy and in shock; she’d been prescribed four milligrams a day of Klonopin, just like himself. Otherwise, thank God, she was fine. She walked into the house, looking a little perturbed at the mess Charlie had let accumulate-his papers and old music strewn all over the couch, dirty plates thrown in the sink-and she snapped at him for always being in his own world, especially with what had happened.

He sat her down at the table. “Gabby, we have to talk.”

He could no longer hide the past from her. Or pretend it had not caught up to them. He had put her in danger now.

She could see his anxiety, how he couldn’t sit still. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”

“It’s all coming apart, Gabby.”

“What is coming apart?”

As calmly as he could manage, he told her about the photos he had received days before. The ones he had hidden from her. And the horrible things that had been done. How Sherwood had taken them, but he still described them one by one, what his old friend’s killer had done to her.

“Who is this person? ” Gabby looked at him, befuddled, recoiling as he described Sherry’s terrible wounds. “Who would do this to somebody? Like some dog.” The more he told her, the less she could even believe it.

“Gabby, there are things I haven’t told you. Things about me, before we met.”

“This is what your brother has been saying, Charlie.” A deepening apprehension robbed the color from her face. “This is what he wanted you to admit. He-”

“Listen to me, Gabby.” He clasped her hands and slowly, his mind remarkably clear for once, told her of his time on the Riorden Ranch.

Who Sherry was. And Russell Houvnanian-a name Gabby had never heard him utter in all their years but, it now became clear to her, had influenced every day of their lives together, even how they had raised their own son, and how they had hidden like fugitives, shrunk from any chance to raise themselves up.