by Andrew Gross
I jumped up, a sudden alarm shooting through me. I ran to the door and pulled it open, stepping out into the corridor outside. I scanned in both directions, toward the lobby and the parking lot.
No one.
What the hell did he mean?
Then I looked down, my blood rushing to a stop. I saw what was on the mat.
Smell something burning?
It was a lit, half-smoked cigarette.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thirty minutes later I handed the cigarette to Don Sherwood.
I had carefully picked it up—a Salem—put it out, and placed it in a bag from my Dopp kit. Then I called Sherwood, who alerted the Pismo Beach police, who arrived minutes later, lights flashing, along with a detective named Reyes.
“You wanted something real,” I said, handing it to Sherwood. “Here—this is real! Go to town!”
The threatening call had come from an untraceable number. I had checked with the front desk before I’d even called Sherwood. The motel had security cameras, mostly on the stairwells, but the one on my outside corridor was on the fritz. It hadn’t even been turned on. The night manager said they hadn’t needed to look at them in years.
“How’re you doing?” Sherwood asked, taking me aside.
I was angry. Who wouldn’t be? And upset. “I’m not used to receiving these kinds of threats.”
“You want to file a complaint, Dr. Erlich, Detective Reyes will be happy to take it for you.”
“I don’t want to file a complaint!” I said. “What I want is for you to look into my nephew’s death. I told you what the guy said. He was warning me to back off. He referred to someone close to me who would be put in danger. You need a scorecard to figure who he meant by that? You need to put a car outside Charlie’s house. How much more ‘real’ does it have to get? Or maybe you just want to wait until he ends up like Evan. Or maybe next it’ll be me.”
Sherwood just looked back and shrugged. “So maybe you oughta think on that advice,” he said. “There’s a lotta people around here you’ve already managed to piss off. Let’s start with the hospital. While we’re at it, why not toss in the local police? See what I mean? No telling who might’ve done this. I can’t just station a car. There wasn’t even a direct threat made against your brother. In the meantime”—he held up the bag—“Detective Reyes will take this back. Not that I’m particularly hopeful they’ll find anything.”
“How about Susan Pollack’s DNA?”
“I thought you said the caller was a man.”
“So someone else is involved.” I fixed on him. “You can’t keep ignoring this, Sherwood. Evan’s death wasn’t a suicide. You know it—I know it. Please, I’m begging you, station a car . . .”
He looked at me like his hands were tied.
“At least check Cooley and Greenway. You’ll find something. I know you will. Please, Sherwood, just do it. You’ll see.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The hotel switched my room to one closer to the lobby, with two police cars stationed below, and I slept with the door double-locked and the chain drawn—when I actually finally made it to sleep. I watched the clock strike two.
The next morning, I headed over to Charlie’s as soon as I showered.
Gabby opened the door. She was in a light green knitted tracksuit, stripes running down the sleeves. Her face seemed to have a new anxiety written all over it. “Come on in, Jay. Your brother’s not doing so well. Something happened last night. As if Evan is not enough . . .”
My alarm bells started sounding. “What?”
I went with her inside. Charlie was slouched over the kitchen table, his face in his hands, his hair straggly and unkempt. He barely even stirred when he saw me. “Hello, Jay . . .”
“Your brother is a wreck,” Gabby said, “and so am I. How could someone do something like this? How is it possible someone could want to hurt us in this way . . . ?”
“What happened, Gabby?” I knew already I wasn’t the only one who had been warned.
She opened the back door to their tiny fenced-in yard. There was a large plastic garbage bag set on the ground. Gabby’s face was pinched and somber. “Look, look what we found this morning . . .”
I hesitated for a second and peeked inside the bag.
“She’d been missing. We couldn’t find her for two days. I thought she had finally run off. That she had enough of us for good. I opened the front door to get the mail yesterday afternoon and this is what I found . . .”
The harsh, acrid smell told me immediately what was in there. I peered in, wincing at the charred, black shape.
“Who could do something so cruel, Jay? She didn’t harm anyone. The people here are filth. Drug dealers and meth heads. I am ashamed to have to live around them. People just want to hurt, that’s all! What have we done to deserve this?”
“The people here didn’t do this, Gabby.”
I closed the bag, my chest filling with both sadness and rage. My warning last night was suddenly clear. The butt on my front door.
I turned to my brother, his eyes dull and glazed. “There’s stuff you’re not telling me, Charlie.”
“What do you want, Jay? What do you want me to say?”
Gabby stepped in. “Your brother is a mess,” she said. “He cannot tell you anything today. He’s been irrational all morning. The grief has done this to him. I tried to give him his medications to calm him down, but he won’t take them. Isn’t that right, Charlie? Tell him.”
He had a glint in his eye. “The people here are animals, Jay.”
“He says he wants to leave.” Gabby went over and sat next to Charlie. “He says he wants to go to Canada or someplace.” She laughed derisively. “He is really crazy today. He thinks the devil is loose here. In Pismo Beach. Have you ever heard anything so stupid in your life? I keep telling him, we can’t leave. We can’t go anywhere in this godforsaken world. We’re stuck in this miserable, empty hole for the rest of our lives . . .”
“Gabby, please . . .” I went and sat down across from Charlie. His wild gray hair and beard were stained from the tears on his face. “The people here didn’t do this, Charlie. I think you know that, and that’s what’s made you scared.”
“Scared? Who wouldn’t be scared, Jay? We’re all going to hell. And you know who’s the first person we’ll see there? Our own son—Evan!”
“He thinks our son is damned and going to go to hell,” Gabby said, “for killing himself. He can’t accept that.”
“Charlie, I got a call last night . . .” I leaned forward and put my hand on his wrist, and he tried to pull it away. “A threatening one. The caller told me to go back home. To get my nose out of where it didn’t belong. You know what he was talking about, right?”
“I know my son’s in hell and I’m gonna go there too . . .”
“Before he hung up, he asked me if I smoked. I couldn’t figure out what he meant, but now I know. I ran to the door, and there was a lit cigarette butt burning on the mat. Now this . . .”
“You ought to go back home, Jay.” His eyes were runny and confused. “You should listen to what they’re saying to you, little brother. I don’t want you here.”
“Who is Susan Pollack, Charlie? Think back. You knew her, didn’t you? She was with you, wasn’t she, on the ranch?”
“Why does everything have to relate to the ranch? The ranch is dead, Jay. It’s been dead for more than thirty years. I told you to go home too, didn’t I? Before it takes you too.”
“I’m not going home, Charlie. Not until you tell me. You knew Susan Pollack—Maggie—back then, didn’t you? I need you to focus on this. I need you to tell me what she wants with you now. What she might have wanted with Evan. She was with Evan, I think. The day he died. As was Zorn. I think it wasn’t about Evan, Charlie. I think by killing Evan, they were trying to hurt you.”
He looked at me. One second his eyes sparked alive, as if with recall and clarity; the next they were as dim and dull as a lunar eclipse
. “What does it even matter now, Jay? What if Jesus went down to hell? What if he went there and looked around and said to the devil, ‘Hey, man, this ain’t so bad. I sort of like it here.’ What if this is hell, Jay? Look around. This hole. It sure looks like hell, doesn’t it?
“That big fucking rock—what if it’s all just a game, Jay, and everyone’s trying to make their way to heaven, thinking, This is the right way to salvation, but what if the devil is already there—he’s beaten them to it! And he’s laughing at everyone, going, ‘Come on in! This way, everyone . . .’ What hope is there then, Jay?”
I looked at my brother, the flickering patina in his eye. The way he was acting suddenly didn’t seem far from the crazed dropout ranting about Jesus and Lennon in my mother’s dining room forty years ago. It scared me.
“This is how he gets,” Gabby said, “when he doesn’t take his medications. Isn’t that right, Charlie? You know that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” my brother chortled dismissively. “See, Jay, this is how I get.”
“He’ll be better tomorrow,” Gabby said. “Right?”
“Charlie . . .” I pushed my chair close to him. “Zorn tried to contact Evan and warn him about something. Maybe it was to warn you. A woman was with Evan when he went up to that rock. I’m sure it was Susan Pollack. You might be right, Charlie—about what you first said. That maybe Evan didn’t jump off that rock. But I need to know what they think you know, Charlie. Or what you did back then.”
“What I did? What I did was send my only son straight to hell, Jay. So what does that make me?”
“This is for Evan, Charlie.” I squeezed his hand. “For him. What do these people want with you, Charlie? What did Walter Zorn know?”
“For Evan . . . ?” He turned to me. “Maybe Zorn was the devil, Jay. What do you think? That gimpy bastard, he surely walked like the devil. That’s what they say, you know, how you can tell it’s him—the limp.”
Gabby came over to me. “There’s nothing you can do when he gets like this.” She leaned over and draped her arm caringly around my brother’s neck. “He’s like his own son. You can talk to him all day—but he’s not here . . . He’s somewhere else.”
He took another sip of coffee and caught my eyes. “For Evan, Jay.”
I stood up and squeezed my brother softly on the shoulder as I went past him out to the narrow, fenced-in yard. I sank down in one of the cheap folding lawn chairs and looked up at the blue sky.
In my life, I’d never felt the fear of being in danger—or that I was putting others in danger. I knew the next time it might not be a warning. I thought about Evan, what he might have gotten involved in unwittingly, what might have happened up there, on the rock, and I knew I owed him something.
Two things drummed in my mind.
What if Jesus went to hell and said it ain’t so bad here and just stayed, my brother had said. What if heaven is hell?
I realized I’d read something like that before.
From Houvnanian’s ramblings. The other night, online. The End of Days.
But it was the second thing that really worried me. Not about Charlie but Zorn. The slight limp he carried.
Charlie had mentioned it. Miguel had mentioned it too.
What was worrying me was that in all the news reports and coverage, I was sure that had never come out before.
Chapter Forty
Sherwood sat at his desk, cradling the phone. He looked at the number he had scribbled on his pad, conflicted. It was the number of an out-of-state detective someone in the sheriff’s department had known. He leaned back and looked at the mountain outside his window, hesitating before he dialed.
He glanced at the photograph of his wife on the credenza.
Dorrie, you’d probably say I was crazy for doing this, wouldn’t you?
No. Sherwood chuckled to himself. She would not.
What she would say was, God’s given you a second chance, Don, so why not use it, right?
He had this job courtesy of a friend in the sheriff’s department. Mostly in recognition of what he’d put in for the past twenty-five years. And he was good at it. Usually, no one was down his back. He didn’t have to solve murders anymore, just figure out if they warranted solving. And pass it along. He didn’t have to beat the leather all around town—chase suspects, appear in court, buck up against the state authorities. Or put himself at risk . . .
The press didn’t get on his back, making life miserable.
It was a nice, stress-free existence, a way to end his career. And he was lucky it came his way. After he’d gotten sick, the position had opened up. Perokis, his lieutenant, always gave him a lot of space. He’d earned a certain respect. He did his work; cases got disposed of; the files went down. And like clockwork, others always came.
Then this one. He didn’t have to get deeper involved.
It was just that this nagging voice had been needling him over the past week—telling him that maybe he hadn’t done all he could. Maybe there was something there, these threads of doubt knitting together. Now the voice had turned into a jabbing presence in his mind.
Dorrie’s voice.
And what had happened to the doctor last night only intensified the voices even more.
He stared at the mountain.
What if Erlich was right? What if Zorn’s murder was connected? What if he had known something he was trying to share? Warn them. What if the “eyes” did mean something? What if Susan Pollack was the woman the street vendor had seen?
He rubbed his jaw—the joint felt like someone was sticking a needle in it. It was telling him to back off. He had already turned this case over. Let the solved cases be.
No, he knew, it wasn’t saying that at all.
He glanced at Dorrie. God gave me a second chance, huh?
It was saying, Use it.
He chuckled, cradling the phone against his shoulder, and punched in the number. So how come it feels like my last?
After a few seconds, someone picked up on the other end.
“Meachem,” the voice said. “Las Vegas Homicide.”
“Detective Meachem, my name is Don Sherwood. I’m a detective with the coroner’s office of San Luis Obispo County. In California.”
“San Luis Obispo? I’ve got a sister up there. She works at the college. What can I do for you, detective?”
“I need a favor, if you can. You had a floater a while back. Name of Greenway, Thomas. He was found facedown in his pool. Ruled a suicide. It does go back a ways.”
“Greenway?” Meachem seemed to be writing down the name. “How long?”
“Eighty-eight,” Sherwood said.
“I didn’t say how old. I meant how long ago.”
“Nineteen eighty-eight,” Sherwood said again, awaiting the response.
“You must be kidding,” the Las Vegas detective said after a long pause.
“No, I’m not kidding,” Sherwood said, turning away from his wife’s gaze. “I know it’s been a while, but I need to take a look at that file.”
Chapter Forty-One
Charlie’s ranting earlier didn’t help me with anything. I still had to find out whatever I could about how he and Zorn once fit together. When I got back to the motel, the front desk said there was a package waiting for me.
It was Greenway’s book on Houvnanian. I had ordered it two nights ago online. It was fittingly titled End of Days.
I took it out back to the bench along the promenade. It was a clear, bright day; the surf was high. Waves crashed onto the rocks below. Pelicans danced out of the spray, searching the surf for a meal.
I opened the book. The first chapter began with a retelling of that horrible night, September 7, 1973. “The first sign that absolute hell had arrived at Paul Riorden’s doorstep was the site of three rattily clad visitors at his door . . .”
I dove into the next few pages—Houvnanian and his cohorts barging in, taking out knives and guns, tying up the four people at the dinner party, along with a servant in t
he kitchen; the victims’ outrage and anger shifting to premonitions of doom and fear as, one by one, they watched, whimpering, begging, as their friends were barbarously murdered, fighting against their own impending end.
I got the chills.
I flipped to the index and, on a lark, searched for my brother’s name. It didn’t surprise me nothing was there. He hadn’t been there then. I flipped to Walter Zorn, and fittingly, his name appeared on several pages. One by one I turned back to them.
“Walter Zorn had been a decorated Santa Barbara patrolman who, at the age of thirty-one, earned his coveted detective’s shield.” He started out in Robbery. Violent crime in tony Santa Barbara was rare, homicide rarer still. It mentioned how Zorn had been hit by a car while chasing after a burglary suspect as a young cop, sustaining a broken femur that never properly healed, causing him to walk with a slight limp for the rest of his life.
I wondered if Charlie had ever read this.
There were dozens of photos. Long-haired hippie types, in the dress of the times, taken on the ranch. Gardening, climbing rocks, playing music, together. Head shots of the nine victims. The grounds where the crimes were committed. Lots of photos of Houvnanian and all the perpetrators. The grisly crime scenes. I found one of Walter Zorn and Joe Cooley, his lieutenant, outside the Santa Barbara courthouse. A younger version of Zorn, his facial mark clearly visible.
I also found a photo of a large group at the ranch in happier times. Singing. A couple of them were playing guitars. It was taken in April 1973. Five months before. On a whim, I studied the faces closely, looking for Charlie. It was sort of a relief when I didn’t see him there.
I began to flip around. Zorn had been recently promoted to detective and he happened to be on duty the morning following the murders when a gardener arrived at Riorden’s home and discovered the grisly scene. It took most of the next two days to even process what they had found—it was so chilling and bloody even for veteran investigators. Later, they were called to the Forniciari home in neighboring Montecito when their daughter went to visit and came upon the scene.
