Eyes Wide Open

“Okay, yeah, right…” Sherwood heard the sound of pages being turned. “Let’s see, night of November 6, 1988… Seems Greenway’s wife was at a dinner for some women’s golf committee at their club. Says here she came home and found her husband facedown in the pool. Called 911. That was nine thirty-eight P.M. The EMTs arrive, looks like, around twelve minutes later… Nine fifty,” the detective said. “Not bad. Unable to revive him. They estimate the TOD as a couple of hours before. No sign of any foul play. The doors were all locked and the neighbors didn’t see or hear anything going on. Didn’t leave a note-but officers found a half-drained bottle of Absolut on the kitchen counter along with a bunch of assorted pills… Says here the victim had been depressed lately. His wife admitted they’d been 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

“G ot 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.