Eyes Wide Open

I told him I’d alert the family to the change.

My next call was to Kathy.

My stomach clenched a bit at the thought of having to explain this to her. It was eight fifteen in California. Eleven fifteen back home. I dialed her on her cell and she picked up, from one of the examining rooms.

“Hey,” she answered brightly, “I’m in with a very unhappy Lab named Sadie who’s got a big blister on her paw. I got your message last night. You at the airport yet?”

“Don’t be mad,” I said, sucking in a breath. “I can’t make it back today.”

“You can’t…? ” Her voice sank with disappointment. Maybe an edge of exasperation too.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but something’s come up. I just need another day or two, that’s all, to see something through. You trust me, don’t you?”

“See something through? I thought you had a procedure Friday, Jay. On Marv and Susie Gold’s daughter.”

“I just got Avi to cover it.”

“Avi? And we had the Hochmans coming tomorrow night. All right

…” She sighed frostily, not even attempting to conceal her frustration. “Jay, I know better than anyone how much you want to do something for them, but-”

“Don’t even go there, Kath. It’s not even about Charlie and Gabby, or what you might think. I just have to see something through. Related to Evan. I’ll explain it all later. I promise.”

There was a pause, one of those moments when it’s pretty obvious no one wants to say what they’re really thinking.

“Look, I have to get back to my patient,” she said, exhaling. “She’s very impatient. She’s starting to growl at me. We can discuss this later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Then, almost as a good-bye: “And of course I trust you, Jay.”

Chapter Twenty

T he county coroner’s office was located twenty minutes away near the sheriff’s department in San Luis Obispo. It was on a remote road a few minutes out of town, tucked dramatically at the base of one of those high, protruding mesas, not exactly your standard police setting.

A sign on the outside walkway read DETECTIVES UNIT.

It was strange, but I felt there was only one person I could trust.

I went up to the front desk. A pleasant-looking woman seated behind a computer asked if she could help me. I said, “Detective Sherwood, please.”

He was out of the office. The woman glanced at the clock on the wall and said it might be a couple of hours. There was a bench in the room outside. I told her I’d wait.

It took close to two and a half hours, and maybe a dozen calls from me, for the detective to finally return.

“Hey, Carol,” he said, waving to the woman I had spoken to, coming in through a rear entrance off the parking lot. “Calls for me?”

The secretary pointed to me and he saw me stand, his demeanor shifting. He glanced at his watch, as if he was late for something, then stepped up to me, clearly the last person he was looking to see. “Thought you were on your way home, doc. What brings you all the way out here?”

“I’m not sure Evan killed himself,” I said.

The detective blinked, as if he’d taken one to the face, and released a long, philosophical sigh. “Killed himself. Fell off a ledge while climbing-like I said, what does it really matter, Dr. Erlich? I have a death certificate to make out and it has to say something. You come up with any better ideas about what he might have been doing up there?”

I looked at him. “What if someone else was responsible for his death?”

“You mean as in maybe the medical staff at County. Or even the police?” His gaze didn’t have anything friendly in it. “How did you phrase it… That we were ‘ washing our hands of it?’ ”

I remembered the news report on Evan and how that must have sounded. “No, not the medical staff at all. Someone else. Just hear me out.”

“Someone else now…? ” Sherwood nodded patronizingly. He glanced at his watch again, then forced a barely accommodating smile. “Well, you might as well come on back. You’ve driven all the way out here. Carol, hold any calls for a couple of minutes.”

I grabbed my blazer. “Thanks.”

He led me down a long hallway to his office, a small cubicle workstation separated by gray fabric dividers from the workstations of three other detectives, with a view of the rolling hills.

“Hey, Joe.” He nodded to one as he stepped in. He took off his sport coat and draped it over a divider. “Don’t get comfortable.” His desktop was cluttered and piled with bulging files. There was a credenza behind his chair, more files stacked on it.

Along with a couple of photos. An attractive, middle-aged woman, who I assumed had to be his wife. And a younger woman, in her twenties maybe. A daughter.

He sank into the chair and nodded for me to take a seat.