Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

“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.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Charlie 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.

And finally, he told her who Zorn was. How their paths had crossed years and years before.

Gabby saw it all now. A fog opening up. And the cruelest part was Evan.

“Why, why wouldn’t you ever let him leave, Charlie? When your brother invited him? You said it was because we needed the state support for us all to continue to live. Otherwise we would die. But I see it now… That was a lie. You never wanted him to leave. You never wanted him to have a chance. Why, Charlie…? ”

“I was scared, Gabby. It was the only way I could protect him.”

She pulled back, a sudden judgment flashing in her eyes. “You did this to Evan? All these years. To your own son. You kept him from being someone. And why ? Because you feared they would find you? That they would do these things to you too? You said it was out of love, but it was this ? You took this out on our son, Charlie?”

“No. No.” He shook his head, but the answer was on his face. In his guilt he felt that it was true.

“You held him here. For what? For the money he received from the state. So we could continue to hide? All these years. Because without him, we had nothing? Your brother begged him to come to New York. When he had a chance, Charlie-to give his life a chance. Things we couldn’t give to him.” Tears shone in her eyes. “When he was not so ill…” She grabbed him by the collar. “You stole our son’s chance in life, Charlie…”

Then she put her face in her hands and started to cry.

“Gabby, you’re not seeing it. What happened yesterday to you was part of it too. They found us! They’re trying to hurt me for what I did back then. That’s all that Zorn was trying to tell us. We have to get out of here.”

“Get out of here? ” Her face grew taut with rage, and she laughed, a scornful, challenging retort, staring back in his eyes. “ To where? To where, Charlie? We have no money. Our car can barely make it around town. There is no place to go. The past is here? Then it has found us both, because you have sucked me in too. We are in the same prison as this man who wants to hurt you, Charlie. And we have been for years!”

“I’m not going to let them hurt you, Gabby.”

“You’ve already let them hurt me, Charlie! They cannot hurt me any more .”

She wept, seeing it all for the first time. Their twisted, pathetic fate. Charlie just sat there, his hands spread, unable to comfort her. He tried to think what to do.

“Where are these pictures?” Gabby asked, looking up and wiping her eyes.

“Sherwood has them.”

“Why?”

“To find out who Sherry is now. And to find out who killed her.”

“And Jay? Has your brother seen them too?”

He nodded. “Yesterday.”

Anger swept onto Gabby’s face. “So you knew this man? Walter Zorn. And you knew that our son was trying to tell us something. The truth. This is something I just cannot believe.”

Charlie shook his head and wiped away a tear. “No, that’s not the way it is.”

“Yes. Yes, it is the way it is. You struck a deal, years before. A deal with the devil! And now that devil has taken our son.”

“And it may take us too, Gabby.”

“For me, there is nothing left to take, Charlie. It’s all gone.”

“No, there is something else.” A knot tightened in Charlie’s stomach. He felt like his world had fallen apart. “There’s one more thing. Last week, I found something else too, Gabby.”