Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

Russell Houvnanian’s five-by-ten cell was dark and dim at night, but he was still able to conjure Charlie Erlich’s face.

Chase.

Though he hadn’t seen him in thirty-five years, he’d memorized every line: the slant of his chin, his ground- down teeth, the bad-boy glimmer in his eye. He also saw the image of his younger brother-at their father’s fancy home in the Hollywood Hills. It was no surprise to see him again the other day after all these years. In fact, it was damn well the highlight of his month! He’d seen him dozens of times over the years in his dreams.

With a smile, he also brought to mind the face of their father.

“Mags,” Houvnanian whispered in the night, “my beautiful Maggie Mae. I could touch you as if I was with you now. You can feel me, can’t you? I told you, didn’t I, that what was done from love could never ever be bad or evil? Only twisted that way. I told you to trust me over time and I would give myself to you in a way I have not to any others.

“And now it’s time.

“You will do this, and I will come to you, my Mags, like I’ve always come to you. Like I have always traveled from these walls and been with you in the night.

“You were always my little sweetness, you know. My muse.”

On his cot, Houvnanian raised up his knee, a smile etched onto his face.

Even behind these walls I can fly. I can walk your streets. I can be among your children. I can fuck your daughters.

He’d waited thirty-seven years; what was another day or two?

Enjoy what’s left, Charlie boy.

I always told you the master would one day be home.

And now I’ve come a-knockin’!

Chapter Sixty-Two

The next afternoon, Sherwood sat in his office, staring at a file.

A gradual transformation had taken place. He no longer believed that Evan Erlich had climbed up that ledge and jumped off on his own.

The shoe proved that.

He still didn’t know what happened up there. In truth, he still had nothing-nothing even a twelve-year-old might consider evidence: no proof, no witnesses, nothing directly linking Susan Pollack or anyone else with any criminal actions. Other than these horrible pictures Charlie had given to him.

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?”