Eyes Wide Open

Chapter Thirty-Five





The collie wagged its tail and went up to Sherwood. He gave the dog a friendly pat and followed it up to the house.

Sherwood looked back at me once, then knocked on the white frame door. “Susan Pollack?”

No one answered.

I noticed the rear of a car parked in the barnlike garage, the fresh wash draped on the clothesline. Not to mention the dog.

He knocked again, harder this time. “Anyone here . . . ?” I saw his hand go near his holster. “Ms. Pollack? I’m Detective Sherwood. From the San Luis Obispo police.”

I felt a premonition that the next sound I was going to hear was that of a shotgun blast and Sherwood would be blown backward off the porch.

My heart kicked up a beat.

He was getting ready to knock a third time when someone came around from the side.

It was a woman. In a straw sun hat. Wearing coveralls and heavy gardening gloves. She had short dark hair; pinched, mouselike features; and a definite resemblance to the woman I’d seen in the newspaper photo. She stared at Sherwood with a hesitant reserve. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the detective said. He introduced himself again and held out his badge. “I’m with the coroner’s office in San Luis Obispo. We drove all the way up here . . . We’d just like a moment of your time.”

“A moment of my time about what?” she asked, squinting.

“Related to an incident that took place down there. A suicide. We just have a few questions we’d like to ask you, if you can give us the time.”

“Ask me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sherwood nodded good-naturedly.

“Am I required?” She looked past him, and her gaze fell on me in the car.

“No,” Sherwood answered, “you’re not required at all. But it’s been a long drive, and it would save us coming all the way back here with something more official . . .”

Susan Pollack didn’t seem particularly nervous or relaxed. What she seemed was guarded, like someone who didn’t like strangers invading her world. Especially the police.

Finally she shrugged and wiped her arm across her brow. “San Luis Obispo’s a long way. All right, well, you might as well come on in then. I was just in the chicken coop. They’re pretty much my only friends these days. Them and Bo. Not much fun if you don’t like to get your hands dirty. What did you say your name was . . . Sherwood?”

Sherwood nodded.

She stepped up on the porch. “And you might as well tell your friend, or whoever he is in the car, to come on in too.”

Sherwood waved toward me, and I got out. I nodded hello and followed them in.

“This is Jay Erlich,” Sherwood said.

“You a detective too?” Susan Pollack asked. She had sort of a narrow, birdlike face and barely looked at me.

“No. He’s a doctor. A big-time surgeon, I hear. From New York.”

“I’m from New York,” Susan Pollack said. She wiped her hands. “I went to the Brayley School in the city and had a year at Swarthmore College.” She looked at me. “You haven’t driven up all this way to tell me that I’m sick or something, have you, Dr. Erlich?”

“No. I haven’t,” I said, but didn’t smile.

“Dr. Erlich’s nephew was killed last week in Morro Bay,” Sherwood explained. “He took a fall off the famous rock there in the bay. You ever been to Morro Bay, Ms. Pollack?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I haven’t. There’s lots of places I haven’t been to. You’ve found me here, so you obviously know who I am. I guess you could say I’ve had my travel privileges curtailed the past couple of years.”

She led us into the foyer. Sherwood asked, “Do you mind if we sit down?”

“Be my guest.” She motioned us to a wooden kitchen table. The kitchen had a pleasant, well-taken-care-of feel about it. A rack with lots of copper pots suspended from it hung over a wooden island. An old hand-painted olive basket hanging on the wall. She took off her hat, revealing her short-cropped hair. I tried to determine if this was the face I had seen staring at me that night from the car, but I couldn’t.

She nodded, and Sherwood and I pulled out chairs.

“I had a little money put aside from a trust my father had set up.” She shrugged. “When I got out, I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I couldn’t face going back home. And as you might imagine”—she smiled briefly—“privacy was a selling point of the place. I’d offer you some coffee, but this isn’t taking on the feel of a social visit, is it? Maybe you should just get right down to why you’re here.”

Sherwood nodded. “I asked Dr. Erlich to come along because, as I said, his nephew, Evan, was killed last week, and we’re looking into his death. At first blush it was ruled a suicide. I ruled it a suicide. The kid was in a troubled state mentally and had recently been remanded to Central Coast Medical Center, the psych ward there. A couple of days before his death, the hospital released him to a halfway facility in Morro Bay. A day later he took a walk from the house, and the next morning he was found at the bottom of the rock.”

“Sounds like a poor decision,” Susan Pollack said. “His or the hospital’s.” She turned to me. “How old was your nephew, Dr. Erlich?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one . . .” She inhaled deeply and rubbed her hand across her brow. “And you say he was troubled?”

I nodded. “Bipolar.”

She nodded, almost sympathetically. “I know something about being twenty-one and troubled. I suppose we both had to pay for it, in our own ways. I’m sorry for your loss.”

I studied her reactions—a tick in her jaw, averting her eyes—trying to measure her sincerity. “Thanks.”

“Nonetheless . . .” She turned back to Sherwood. “I’d still like to know just what this has to do with me.”

“You say you’ve never been to Morro Bay?” he asked again.

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t left here very much at all since my release. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“A number of curious matters have come up,” Sherwood started in, “that might in some way connect Dr. Erlich’s nephew’s death to a period of your own life, Ms. Pollack. Your own past.”

She smiled, more of a soft twinkling in her eyes, as if to say, I’m not surprised. She took out a cigarette, lit it, and tossed the match in a coffee mug on the table. “Let me hear them, please.”

“Do you know the name Walter Zorn?” Sherwood asked.

She answered almost reflexively: “No.” Then, blinking, her eyes lighting up with recognition, she nodded. “Yes . . . yes, I do.”

“He was a detective who was part of the police team back in Santa Barbara that handled the Houvnanian investigation,” Sherwood reminded her. “You should know the name.”

“I haven’t heard it in years. I was young and stoned mostly, and in a completely different world back then. And to my recollection, he didn’t handle any of my depositions. But I do recall the name.”

“You’ve not heard from him since?”

She shook her head. “Not in thirty-five years.”

“Or seen him?”

“Like I said, I’ve been a bit preoccupied, detective.” She flicked an ash in the coffee mug. “How is Detective Zorn?”

“Well, actually, he’s dead,” Sherwood told her.

“Hmmm.” She grunted with a slight smile. “Definitely seems to be in the water lately.”

“He was murdered. Three days ago. In his home. In Santa Maria. Thirty miles south of Morro Bay.” Sherwood stared at her. “Any chance that you’ve been there?”

Susan Pollack met his stare and took a long drag on her cigarette. Her amiable expression shifted. “I’m not sure I like where this is going, Detective Sherwood. But I’m still interested in finding out what any of this has to do with me.”

“Zorn handled the Houvnanian murders. A week or two ago, before he was killed, he was observed in conversation with Dr. Erlich’s nephew, Evan. It seems the boy’s father, Dr. Erlich’s brother, had a connection to Houvnanian himself back then.”

“Now this is getting interesting. What kind of connection?”

“Apparently he resided on the Riorden Ranch for a time. I don’t suppose you might’ve overlapped or even remember him. Charlie Erlich . . .”

Susan’s Pollack’s birdlike eyes narrowed, like she was focusing back in time. “I may. Or may not, as you say. People were always moving in and out of the ranch. We may not have even been there at the same time. Anyway, we all went by different names back then. Mine was Maggie. Maggie Mae. For Magdalena, actually, not for the song.

“Anyway”—she looked back at me—“your brother’s son is dead, and he had some kind of random connection to this detective, Zorn. Now he’s dead . . .” She turned to Sherwood, the lightbulb going off. “And I’ve been recently released. I think I get it now.”

Sherwood nodded. “We’re trying to find out if Detective Zorn’s connection to Evan was, indeed, as random as you say.”

She rubbed a finger along the side of her face, knocked the ash off her cigarette. She came back with the faintest smile. “Just so you know, detective, I haven’t had any direct communication with Russell Houvnanian in more than thirty years. I’ve taken responsibility for what I’ve done. What I helped to do. I’ve expressed remorse. I’ve paid my debt. I was a deluded twenty-year-old who was in love. I didn’t kill anybody, Detective Sherwood. I didn’t get in that van.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am—”

“I’m fifty-seven now,” Susan Pollack said, cutting him off. “I’ve forfeited most of my life. I’d like to find some way I can make up for the pain I’ve caused. Counseling, animal rescue, I don’t know what form. The last thing I have on my mind is the ‘old days,’ detective. I think you can understand that. That’s the best answer I can give.”

She turned to me. “I’m sorry about your nephew, doctor. I’m sorry if it’s opened a bunch of wounds and old things that were better off kept closed. But I haven’t been to Morro Bay. Or Santa Maria. Or seen Detective Zorn. Or knew of your nephew. Now, I know you’ve had a long drive up here. Is that all?”

Sherwood looked at me with an air of disappointment. As if he was saying, Sorry, her cooperation is 100 percent voluntary at this point. He seemed ready to get up. “We won’t trouble you any longer . . .”

I fixed on her. “Both Evan and this detective Zorn had something strange on them at the times of their deaths. The image of an eye. An open eye, staring. Does that mean anything to you?”

Susan Pollack shrugged. I noticed the slightest tremor in her jaw. “No. Should it?”

Sherwood looked at me, eyes burning, but I continued on. “Do you mind if I read you something, Ms. Pollack?” I knew we were about to walk out the door with nothing and that would be the end of it. We had no proof, nothing to pin her to any of the scenes, no evidence to compel her to cooperate, and nothing on Houvnanian, who was in jail.

All we had were these unrelated pieces of the jigsaw I was trying to fit together. I needed to know for sure.

“Russell Houvnanian made a statement at the time of his sentencing. It was about him possibly coming back one day. To take revenge. Do you have any idea what this means?”

I pulled out the paper from my jacket and tried to judge her reactions as I read. “ ‘On that day of judgment, or even the hour, no one will know . . . Not even the sleeping child will know. Only the father. It’s like a man who goes away for a long time . . .’ ” I glanced up, watching her watching me, the slightest veiled smile in her eyes. “ ‘No one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner . . . Watch,’ ” I read, “ ‘lest he come back suddenly and find you sleeping. Watch . . .’ ”

“I think it’s time for you both to go now.” Susan Pollack rubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “I’m sorry you had to come up all the way here.”

Sherwood stood up with her. “We appreciate your time . . .”

“Did you know my brother?” I asked, my blood heating.

She didn’t answer. She just motioned us to the door. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Erlich. For your brother’s loss.”

“Did you know him? His name was Charlie, Ms. Pollack. He had a beard and long black hair.”

She waited for us to step off the porch. I followed Sherwood down, sure I had struck a nerve, but one I’d never be able to follow up on.

Then she called back—not so much in answer to my question, but with what seemed a kind of taunt. “He was a musician, wasn’t he?”

Blood rocketed in my veins.

Then she smiled, putting back on her work gloves. “I hope you have a good trip back.”

Outside, we headed back to the car. I exchanged only the slightest glance with Sherwood. I was frustrated. I knew we had come away with nothing. Nothing to follow up on. Nothing to tie her to Evan’s death in any way.

He went to the driver’s side and eyed me, silently telling me to get in.

“Wait one second,” I said, suddenly remembering something.

I went over to the garage, Susan Pollack watching me. It was more like a dilapidated barn with a rolling wooden door on tracks. The door was open. I swung it to the side just a little and peered in.

I thought back to the night outside Charlie’s apartment. I brought to mind the person in the car. Flicking her cigarette. Staring at me.

A Kia wagon. Navy.

A car just like this.

I headed back over to Sherwood and got back in the car. I looked up at the house and saw Susan Pollack in the doorway, smiling at me, petting her dog.