Eyes Wide Open

“No.” Her tone was adamant, but there was a gentleness to it too. She placed her hand on top of his and gave him a soft smile. “What is left for us, Charlie? You know this as well as me. It’s over for us. Your brother has everything. Everything we have not. Yesterday, he could have died as well. For this? For whatever we have brought him? No. This is our business, Charlie, these people. Our fate. Let him be free of this.”

It took a moment for him to completely understand. And it scared him. “No, it’s my fate, Gabby. You have to get out of here too.”

“No.” Her hand was still on his and she squeezed. “We both know there’s nowhere for me to go.” She brushed his hair away and put her hand on his face. “I’m sorry, Charlie, what I just did. You are my husband and I stay with you, whatever fate has in store. You ask me what I want? Okay. What I want is to know the truth, Charlie. To hear it from them. The real truth about my son. What I want is the one chance to look the person who did this to him in the eye. Who made me feel like my boy was crazy. Who sent this to you-our son’s shoe-as a trophy, to torture us. I want to show them that we are not animals, Charlie. To make us suffer this way. This is all I want now. Nothing more. You see? What else is left for us?”

Charlie’s hair fell around his face like a shroud. He knew she was right. Their time was up. He wouldn’t put Jay at risk. It was their fate. He squeezed her hand. It was trembling, but at the same time, it was strong too-like the light in her eyes. You are wrong, Gabby, he was thinking, there is something else we have left, one thing no one can take from us.

“My whole life.” He gazed at her. “Has been a tale of wrong choices. All the drugs and my time on the road. How I threw away the one chance I had. All of them wrong. All but one…”

Tenderly, he wrapped his palm around her hand.

He kissed her. It had been years since they really kissed. Felt in their hearts the charge of what had brought them together.

“You couldn’t help it,” Gabby said, placing her head gently on his chest. “You were sick, Charlie. Evan was sick.”

“No, I could help it,” Charlie said. “I could.”

He pulled away and picked up the note. He read it again, and for the first time in a long time, years maybe, he felt perfectly clear. He said, “I can never make it right, not now. But I know what I can do to make it end.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

S herwood’s call caught me just as I was coming back from a late-afternoon jog along the shore.

His tone sounded peremptory. “I have a few things…”

I sat down on a bench near my hotel. “I’m listening.”

“I got some word back on your brother’s old girlfriend. Her full name was Sherry Ann Frazier. She did live in Michigan. In a town called Redmond. On the Upper Peninsula.”

“Michigan. ” Charlie was right!

“Apparently, she was killed eight days ago. Her body was found in her home by her daughter when she arrived for a visit. She ran a small bakery in town and was separated from her husband. She lived out in the boonies by herself so no one caught a glimpse of anything suspicious. Nor was there any knowledge of anyone who would want to do her harm.”

“So they don’t even know if it was committed by a man or a woman?” I asked, wondering if Susan Pollack had done it or someone else.

“No.” Sherwood exhaled. “They don’t. But something did come up you might find interesting.”

“Okay…”

“I asked a Detective Douglas up there if there were any distinguishing signatures that might fit into our own case profiles. Like with Zorn or Greenway or Evan, if you know what I mean.”

I said, “You’re talking eyes, I assume, right?”

He didn’t respond right away, but his silence suggested I was on the mark. “At first he had no clue what I might be talking about. Then, ten minutes later, he called back. It seems the coroner there had found something worth mentioning.”

My heart rate picked back up. “And what was that?”

“The victim was wearing a single contact lens. In her right eye.”

“Only her right eye?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what sounded so strange about that. The woman was beaten and repeatedly stabbed. She’d probably fought for her life. The other lens could’ve fallen out at any time.

“That’s right,” Sherwood said. “Just the right. But that’s not what was interesting… According to everyone there, Sherry Ann Frazier didn’t wear contact lenses. They even checked with a doctor in town. Her vision was fine. She didn’t even wear glasses…”

My heart came to a stop. One lens. An eye! Watch! “Jesus, Sherwood, you know what this means…?”

“Before you tell me what I already know, doc, I asked another detective up in Jenner to check in on Susan Pollack for me.” The gravity began to deepen in his voice. “Just to make sure she was still there.”

“And was she?”

“No. The gate was up blocking the driveway. A couple of days’ worth of mail and newspapers was in the mailbox.”