Eyes Wide Open

by Andrew Gross

  The truth came over me. As inescapable as the wall of flames I now watched in disbelief.

  This was my car.

  I was supposed to be inside. If I hadn’t wheeled the cart back . . .

  The blazing fireball, a bonfire of burning oil and smoke, melting metal and leather . . .

  It was meant for me.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  The police arrived. Two black and white sheriff’s cars and a white county vehicle, lights and sirens blaring. They pushed back the surging crowd, some of whom had helped us.

  “I’m a doctor,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  A minute later the EMTs came.

  No matter how I stared at the melted, smoking chassis, I still couldn’t believe what had taken place.

  I was okay. Just some slight burns on my fingers and a scrape on my arm from the tumble. Gabby had some first-degree burns on her face and legs. But she was completely in shock.

  I muttered to one of the EMTs that I was a doctor.

  They took her off to the ER in Arroyo Grande. I declined any treatment and stayed, taking the police officers through what had happened. I traced the black river of smoking fuel from beneath my own vehicle to a Dumpster around the back of the market where the fire, and whoever had set it, had originated.

  Two local detectives came on the scene and took my story. The lead one was a young Latino with a shaved head. He asked if I knew anyone who might want to hurt me.

  I didn’t even know where to begin.

  I told him I had to speak with Sherwood.

  “Detective Sherwood’s with the coroner’s office in San Luis Obispo,” the detective replied. “We’re here to help you. This isn’t his terrain.”

  “Find Detective Sherwood,” I said, not backing down.

  It took a few minutes to locate him.

  “I just heard what happened,” he said when I finally got him on the phone. “Are you all right?”

  “I know what it’s all about,” I said, my blood racing, ignoring his concern.

  He didn’t answer. Maybe he thought I was raving. Or a little wacky, from the shock.

  “Sherwood, I know what my brother did back then. Why they want to hurt him. You can meet me at Charlie’s later. I’ll get him to talk.” I exhaled a breath, grateful Gabby and I were both alive. “We’re going to bust this wide open now, Sherwood.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  I called Kathy on the way to check out Gabby at the hospital.

  I knew she would freak out over what had happened. I’d been keeping so much hidden from her: the phone warning I had received before. My visit with Russell Houvnanian.

  I started by saying it was all just some random accident. My car blew up, some kind of crazy oil leak. That Gabby that been in the car, but we were all right. Just a little shaken.

  That was all I could say.

  “Oh, my God, Jay!” Her first reaction was one of shock, horror. She’d clearly figured out it was bigger than what I’d made it sound. “How did it happen? I’m just so glad you’re alive!”

  I felt like I was cheating on her, concealing the truth.

  I didn’t know if she even believed me, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to hear her voice. “I’m okay,” I told her over and over. “I promise. I am.”

  But something must have made her think I wasn’t being entirely truthful. Maybe my shakiness.

  “You say Gabby was in the car?” she asked after a protracted pause.

  “She’s going to be okay too. Look, everything’s finally all out in the open now anyway. I’ll be back soon.”

  “What’s in the open, Jay?” Worry turned to frustration. “This wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Jay, I don’t even know if I know you anymore. What happened out there? What have you been keeping from me?”

  “I’ll tell you soon, Kathy. I promise. I know I’ve been acting crazy to you.” I didn’t know how to explain it now. I felt like a fool hanging up.

  I felt a lot of things slipping away right then and didn’t do much to stop it. One of them was Kathy’s trust.

  One of the sheriff’s cars drove me to the hospital. Inside the ER, Gabby was behind a partition receiving oxygen.

  I introduced myself to the attending physician, a red-haired guy named Paulson, and he briefed me on how she was. Smoke inhalation. First-degree burns along her arms and neck. Lucky it was nothing more. Shock.

  Charlie was already there. He was basically sobbing, resting his head on the gurney.

  I said, “They’re going to keep her overnight, just to be sure.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “They’ve given her something for the shock.”

  He nodded, wiping his tears on the sheet. Pretty much all I saw was the back of his long gray hair.

  I leaned down and brushed my hand against Gabby’s cheek. “How’re you doing?”

  She blinked at me, her eyes a little glazed. “I was really scared, Jay. Really scared. I said my prayers. I thought this was it.”

  “You ought to sleep,” I told her. “They’re going to admit you and get you in a room, just for observation.”

  “Thank you, Jay.” She reached out and took hold of my hand. Her dull eyes brightened. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  I winked, smiling at her. “No problema, señora.”

  Gabby smiled back, but weakly. She petted her husband’s head. “Charlie, you go home. You have to talk to your brother now. You have to tell him. Everything. Do you understand? Everything you have not told me. Our son, Charlie . . . our son’s soul will never rest. He has to sleep in peace.”

  Charlie nodded, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, and lifted his head.

  “You go home with Jay. You tell him. I don’t blame you for anything, my husband. Not one thing.”

  Charlie pushed himself up. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow,” he said.

  “Good,” she said, her voice a little hazy from the medication. “Now I’ll get some sleep.”

  I drove Charlie’s clunky Taurus. We didn’t say a word for most of the trip. He pretty much just sat there staring straight ahead. Something he had bottled up inside him for decades was slowly rising to the surface. We turned off Fourth down the less traveled road that led to the tracks. I knew I didn’t have to say anything—Gabriella already had.

  On Division, I slowed before turning into his carport.

  “Stop here, Jay,” Charlie told me.

  I pulled up on the side of the street.

  He was silent a moment, puffing out his cheeks. Worry etched into his eyes. “I can’t live knowing I hurt her.” He turned to me. “She’s all I have left. It’s hard enough to bear to think of Evan . . .”

  Tears streamed down into his beard. He mashed his palms up against his face.

  And then it came. Like a flood. Everything I’d been waiting for.

  “I had nothing to do with it, Jay—the murders. Nothing.” His eyes were swollen and contrite. “I swear. I was a lost soul back then. You know that. I was crazy. I felt at home there. All I ever wanted was to make music. It’s all I ever did well. I felt I had a chance there . . .”

  “Why did they want to make your record, Charlie?”

  “Because it was Russell’s way.” He avoided my eyes. “It was his crazy way of getting everything out. Russell had his own songs. He felt if he could get a record made, the world had to listen. It was his way of reaching people. His stupid fucking message. The guy was insane, Jay. We were all insane . . .”

  “When did you really leave there, Charlie?”

  He pressed his hands on the top of his forehead and pushed, like he was forcing the demons out. “After it all took place. Everything started to get crazy there, Jay. Russell was ratcheting up all this fear. Tightening the screws he had on people. Everyone was freaked out on the fear that the storm troopers were coming to raid the ranch. The drugs didn’t help. They only fed the paranoia. The music was going to die forever. The music was love, J
ay. I know you don’t see it that way, but it was. But I was never part of what took place. Not for a second. That was all his people. His inner circle. The ones closest to him.”

  “Why would Houvnanian want to hurt you, Charlie?”

  He just kept staring straight ahead and put his hands over his face.

  I reached across and touched his shoulder. “You’re Chase, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. He only turned. A kind of light flickered in his eyes, as if he was relieved to finally hear me. “How did you know about that?”

  “You turned them in,” I said. “Russell, Susan, all the rest. To Zorn and Cooley. You led the police to their bloody clothes in the marsh. And then the weapons . . . They think you betrayed them.”

  He didn’t have to say a thing. The answer was etched on his tearstained face. He smiled. As if a lifelong weight was finally lifted from him.

  “I’ve hid out for more than thirty years . . . More than half my life, Jay. Thirty-seven years of telling myself I didn’t matter anymore. Afraid that one day they would find me. Or Gabby or Evan. I was afraid to even let Evan play ball. To let him have a life. To ever leave this shit hole. I knew one day they would find me. Russell promised they would and they did. That’s what Zorn told Evan. That they knew we were here . . . That’s what my son came and told me.”

  He put his arm across his face and started to sob.

  I drew him to me. “It’s okay, Charlie.” I knew he felt responsible for Evan. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “No.” He turned and looked at me. “It’s not okay, Jay. There’s more . . .”

  His eyes grew sunken and shadowed, like a moon crossing the sun in an eclipse. “You wanted in, Jay, now there’s no turning back. Park the car. There’s something I need to show you inside, little brother. Come on in.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  I parked the Taurus underneath the carport and followed Charlie in.

  He went into the living room and knelt beside the chest that contained his old keepsakes. The old pictures of his family back in Miami. His medical diagnoses, kept like grade school report cards. The Billboard Top 40 sheet he had shown me.

  He pulled out a thick folder and leafed through dog-eared sheets of music and lyrics until he came upon a manila envelope. He took it out and handed it to me, barely looking me in the eye.

  “I got this about a week ago,” he said, shrugging. “A couple of days after Evan died . . . I can’t remember exactly when. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I hid it. I didn’t even tell Gabby. I was scared. I knew they had found me. I didn’t want to believe they had anything to do with my son.”

  The envelope was addressed to Charlie. No return address.

  “You have to believe me, Jay, if I knew this could have ever hurt anyone . . . Evan, Gabby . . .” Tears glistened in Charlie’s slate-gray eyes. “You. I would never have kept it to myself . . .”

  The envelope was torn open at the top. I slid out the contents and stared in shock at what I was now looking at, reacting as if I’d been punched and recoiling.

  There were photos of a dead woman.

  Not just dead, it became clear to me, mutilated. My mouth went dry. She was naked, her face and torso cut up. Red slits and bloody lacerations disfiguring her all over.

  The woman was blond, kind of pretty in a way, I could still detect. Her hair was strewn to the side in long braids. Maybe in her fifties. I leafed through the shots one by one, my stomach clenching. Only someone who wanted to cause terrible suffering to someone could have done something this cold-blooded.

  They’d tortured her.

  “Who is she?” I asked, but something made me think I knew.

  “Her name was Sherry.” Charlie let out a deep, pained exhale. “I hadn’t seen her in over thirty years. I knew her back then—on the ranch . . . She’s—”

  “I know who she was.” I looked up at him. “It’s Katya.”

  He just stood there staring at me, his eyes wide. Then he sank onto the couch and ran his hand through his ponytailed hair. “Katya . . .” He smiled fondly and gave me a slight nod of confirmation. “She didn’t deserve something like this, Jay.”

  “Both of you pointed the finger at Houvnanian. And the ones who went with him down to Santa Barbara. You helped the police in their investigation?”

  Again, he gave me the slightest nod. Then he looked up, befuddled. “How do you possibly know all about this?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is what we do about it now. You’re who they want, Charlie. Greenway. Zorn. Evan. Sherry . . . This has all been leading up to you. For what you did. They’re torturing you, just like they did to this woman. By killing off the things you love.”

  Charlie rubbed his brow in anguish. He leaned forward and picked up the photos, leafed through them again, pressing his lips in sadness and a held-in anger. “She was a beautiful person, Jay. She wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Look at her. The kind of people who could do this . . .”

  “You already know the kind of people, Charlie. We were with one the other day. But now you have to step back. Out of the prison you’ve been in. You have to help me bring them down.”

  Charlie nodded, exhaling a breath that might have been in him thirty years. “There’s something else . . .”

  He went over to the chest and dug around in the back of a drawer. He came back with something wrapped in a blue towel and handed it to me.

  “How long have you known?” I asked as I took away the towel and stared at what was inside.

  “That first week. After you came to dinner. It was in the trash.”

  “You could have told me,” I said, and Charlie simply nodded, sorry.

  I was staring at a black Nike sneaker.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Susan Pollack watched from the woods, smoking. Her car was hidden safely around the block from the apartment house.

  At around one P.M., she saw Charlie and his brother pull up.

  Chase.

  The two of them stayed in the car and talked for a while before going in. Though far away, something in Chase’s hanging head and tormented expression gave her a feeling of delight. It was too bad that his nosy brother and his whore of a wife had escaped the little present at the market earlier.

  It had made her giddy, watching the two of them fighting for their lives in the flaming car. As it was, just hearing the bitch’s screams, seeing the shell-shocked looks of panic and fear on their terrified faces, had almost been enough. She knew there would be other times for them. And soon.

  Soon, my darling. Mags smiled from the woods.

  Her blood stirred with an exhilaration she had not felt for many years. Susan, that shell of a dried-up woman, who had dutifully done what was asked of her, was dead now.

  But Mags was very much alive.

  You never left me, all these years. Not for a single second. Our thoughts have always been entwined. I know it was me all along who nurtured you. The one you truly wanted. The others were just the playthings who threw themselves at you. They were candy to make you smile. But it was me, your Maggie Mae, your Mags, who was your music. Who gave you the will to do what had to be done.

  Who was your true music!

  She saw movement coming from the car. Charlie and his brother got out and went inside.

  Well, wait till you see what the music has in store for you now, Charlie.

  Her thighs felt alive, moist for the first time in years. Isn’t that what you said, my love? That nothing could ever be evil, not if it comes from love.

  And what greater love could I have shown for you? This is my gift. I am yours whenever you want me. I always have been.

  I know you can hear me, Russell. There are walls, but what is between us cannot be kept out. It knows no walls.

  “No one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner.”

  I have never forsaken you for a second, my love. You gave me the gift of love back then. You protected me.
>
  You left me behind.

  Now I give it back to you. In full.

  Chapter Sixty

  A short while later, Sherwood knocked on the apartment door and I spotted him through the blinds.

  I was glad he had come alone. Charlie had barely moved in twenty minutes, sunk into the couch, his head in his hands, staring into space.

  I let him in.

  “You all right?” he asked, giving me a look that was different from any I had seen from him before.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I nodded grimly, blowing out my cheeks.

  “And Gabriella? I checked at the hospital.”

  “She’s doing okay too. Take a seat.”

  He glanced at Charlie, lowering himself on the threadbare ottoman. “You said you had something important for me to see?”

  “I think you’ll think so, Sherwood.” I handed him the photos Charlie had shown me of the woman named Sherry. He leafed through them, stoically and detached at first, then wincing once or twice as he grew increasingly somber. “Who is she?”

  I looked at Charlie to reply, but he just stared straight ahead.

  “Her name was Sherry,” I answered. “She was a friend of my brother’s from a long time ago. They were together back then. On the Riorden Ranch.”

  “Oh.” Sherwood nodded, putting together what these photos, sent to Charlie, meant. “How did you get these?”

  “In the mail,” Charlie said from behind his hands. “Just after Evan was killed.”

  “You know who sent them?” Sherwood inspected the envelope. The postmark was local. No identifiable markings. No return address.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “You must have some idea.” He glanced through them again, waiting for Charlie to answer. “When was the last time you were in touch with her?” he asked after a stretch of silence.

  Charlie shrugged. “Over thirty years ago. We stayed together for a couple of months after we moved on from the ranch. We hitchhiked across California. To Arizona. Sedona, if I remember.”