Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

having problems. Apparently, there’d been some financial setbacks as well…”

“Sounds pretty clear,” Sherwood said, acknowledging it with a twinge of disappointment.

“What the autopsy seemed to confirm… Victim died from deprivation of oxygen to the lungs. Four point one percent blood alcohol. Along with elevated levels of barbiturates and various muscle relaxers. Though, hmphff…” Meachem grunted.

“What?” Sherwood asked.

“It seems they still kept the case open for a while, nonetheless. As suspicious. Until they checked out a couple of other angles…”

“What kinds of angles?” Sherwood asked. He felt a tremor of hopefulness pick up.

Meachem flipped the page. “One was that Greenway’s wife apparently didn’t seem to think vodka was her husband’s drink of choice. She said he was always a scotch guy. ‘Johnnie Walker, all the way…’ ”

“And the other?” Sherwood pressed.

“The other, it says here”-Meachem turned the page-“was something the ME discovered. In the victim’s stomach. Must have been fairly recent to the time of death because it hadn’t degraded…”

“What did he eat?”

“Not eat,” the Vegas detective said, clarifying, “ swallowed . It was half of a dollar bill. There’s even a photo here…”

“A dollar bill? ” Sherwood dug into his wallet and pulled out one. “Which half…?”

But before the Vegas detective even replied, he knew.

“Which half?” Meachem replied curiously. “Let me see, the half with the pyramid on it; why? Anyway, it seems it never led anywhere. A couple of days later they called it death by suicide and let the matter drop.”

Sherwood couldn’t stop from grinning. He looked at his dollar. He almost felt light-headed. “ Sonovafuckingbitch! ”

The pyramid didn’t mean something, in itself. Except for what was directly above it. Something he’d seen a thousand times and never thought about twice. But now it meant everything.

An open eye .

Chapter Forty-Three

“Got a moment, Phil?” Sherwood knocked on the door of his lieutenant’s office.

Phil Perokis pushed back from his neatly ordered desk and waved Sherwood in. “Sure. Come on in.”

Sherwood shut the door behind him. He’d run it all around, from every possible angle. Slept on it. Nursed it over a Maker’s Mark. A couple of Maker’s Marks. He hadn’t had more than a goddamn beer since the operation, but last night he just said, What the hell! The damn thing was eating away at him now. There was a lot that still didn’t add up.

But he’d woken up this morning with the conclusion that enough of it did.

It damn well did .

“You remember that jumper I was working on? The Erlich kid. He did a back dive off the rock.”

“I know, the gift that keeps on giving…” The lieutenant chuckled. Sherwood had told Perokis how the victim’s uncle kept on pushing him to look at the case again, and everyone knew how a couple of days back, the KSLO reporter was buzzing around, trying to make some hay. “His uncle still in town?”

“He is.” Sherwood sat down in front of his boss, the file on his lap. “In fact, Phil, that’s kind of the thing…”

In a measured voice, he took his boss through the sequence of developments. Starting with Zorn-how the connection seemed to exist between him and Evan. The two, seemingly unrelated open eyes.

Then how the doc had brought his attention to this Susan Pollack character, how she might fit in. How he first felt someone watching him outside his brother’s apartment. Then how it came out Zorn had a past connection to her.

“Susan Pollack? ” Perokis furrowed his brow.

“She was just released from prison.” Sherwood nodded. “After serving thirty-five years as an accomplice in the Houvnanian murders-”

“Houvnanian?”

His boss’s once-agreeable eyes had now grown wider and a little less patient. Perokis liked things tidy, by the book. Work processed, passed on to the right agencies. “ Go on .”

Clearing his throat, Sherwood told him how that souvenir peddler in Morro Bay had seen Evan Erlich as he was headed to the rock. Along with someone else. “ A woman. ” Sherwood looked at his lieutenant.

“Susan Pollack? ” Perokis wasn’t smiling anymore. His look expressed his disappointment at where Sherwood seemed to be heading.

“Phil, I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking the same thing too. But two nights ago, someone called Erlich at his motel, threatening him to back off.”

“Back off what ?”

“What he’s been sticking his nose into. The caller mentioned something about him getting burned if he didn’t. When Erlich went to the door he found a lit cigarette sitting on the mat outside.”

“Could be anyone.” The lieutenant chuckled. “You admit he hasn’t made a whole lot of friends since coming to town.”

“The next day his sister-in-law found the family cat that had been missing- toasted. I’m not talking about harassment, Phil. Two people are dead. Then this …”

He opened the file that was on his lap-the one on Thomas Greenway that had come in that very morning. The FBI investigator who had written a book on the Houvnanian case, he explained, whose pool drowning in Las Vegas may not have been a suicide after all.

“The doc was pushing me to look into it. He was sure it was connected somehow. What’s interesting is what came up-in the autopsy.” He took out the photo. “The victim swallowed something. Or, more likely, something was stuffed down his mouth.”

“What?”

From his own pocket, Sherwood took out a dollar bill, folded it in half, and placed it in front of his boss. He pointed to the eye above the pyramid.

“This. ” Then he pushed forward the Vegas ME’s snapshot from the police file-a reluctant understanding slowly forming in his lieutenant’s widening eyes.

“You’re trying to say this is some kind of series of murders? Zorn. The kid from Grover Beach. This guy, Greenway. Going back what ?” He squinted. “ More than twenty years? ”

“Maybe longer,” Sherwood said. He massaged his jaw joint with his thumb. “Trust me, Phil, a couple of days back I was sitting there rolling my eyes the same as you.”

“And now?”

“Now I guess they’re no longer rolling.”