Eyes Wide Open

Chapter Thirty-Seven





It was already after eight when Sherwood dropped me off in front of the motel. I didn’t feel like dealing with Charlie that night. I was exhausted and drained from the long ride. I went upstairs and ran the shower. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my hollowed, haggard face.

I kept seeing Susan Pollack’s smile. Your brother was a musician.

She knew him! I knew she did. Which meant Charlie was keeping something from me about his time on the ranch.

It’s time for Charlie to come clean.

That’s when my cell phone rang. Kathy.

This was another conversation I wasn’t looking to have. How would I explain what was going on? Where I’d been today? Or why I needed more time here?

“Hey,” I answered, sucking in a breath.

“Hey. You sound tired.”

We tap-danced about the weather for a while, and then the kids. How Maxie had been messing around on Ryan Frantz’s guitar while at lacrosse camp and wanted to take lessons.

Then she said, “Jay, I think it’s time you brought me in on what the hell’s going on out there.”

She was right. It was time. I said, “Just promise me you won’t tell me I’m crazy until you hear the whole story, okay?”

“I’d like to be able to promise that, Jay . . .”

“All right, here goes . . .”

I started with Walter Zorn and the things that connected him to Evan. Looking for him at the basketball courts. And then the eyes. “We all thought he was delusional, Kathy, but this friend of his confirmed he had been speaking with the police.” I brought up Susan Pollack and the woman who had been spotted with Evan before he died.

Then I brought up Houvnanian. Charlie’s old connection to him. How I had once met him.

Still she didn’t say a word.

Finally I told her where I had been that day.

“Are you done?” Kathy finally asked.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“Jay, are you completely out of your mind?”

“I told you, you weren’t allowed to say that,” I said, hoping at least for a chuckle.

There was none.

She said, “You’re a doctor, Jay, not a policeman! What you’re saying sounds totally crazy. Evan. This murdered detective. These sets of eyes! Russell Houvnanian!”

“Look, I know there’s no way for you to understand, Kathy. I know that I’m onto something here. I have to see it through.”

“Onto what, Jay? That your nephew wasn’t sick? A few days ago you were claiming the hospital was responsible for his death. You even brought in the press. Now you’re saying what? That he was murdered?”

I let out a breath. “I know how it sounds, Kathy, but yeah.”

“Russell Houvnanian? Don’t you see—you’re scaring me now, Jay! Look, I know how tough it must be with Charlie and Gabby now. I know how Evan’s death has upset them . . .”

“It has upset them, Kath, but that’s not it.”

“Then what is it, Jay? Tell me. What is it you’re trying to find out there?”

“I’m just trying to find out the truth. About what happened to him. That’s all.”

“No. This is all going far beyond Evan. You’re stepping into things you shouldn’t be. Things the police ought to be handling if something’s going on. You’re going to get yourself hurt, Jay. Don’t you see I’m worried about you?”

I knew I had to say something to convince her I hadn’t lost my mind. “I just need you to trust me, Kathy, that’s all. Like how you trusted me when you went up in the plane with me that first time. Like how you trust me every day to take care of you and Maxie and Sophie. And I’ve never let you down, have I?”

“No, Jay, you’ve never let me down.”

I said, “I realized something the other day. I know this’ll sound a little crazy. But how lucky we are. All of us. I tried to say it, but I couldn’t. You wouldn’t have understood.”

“We are lucky, Jay. We are.”

“I don’t mean that way. What I mean is, Charlie and my father, they were the same. You know what I’m saying, right? That’s why Lenny was so volatile. He just was never diagnosed. He just played it out on a different stage.

“Being out here, and watching how Charlie and Gabby loved Evan, it’s made me think, maybe the only reason Charlie is where he is and I’m where I am is simply that I was lucky. That what they had didn’t get passed on down to me. Charlie got it, Kathy.”

“You’re wrong about that, Jay. You’ve earned whatever you have. I’ve watched you. You’ve earned it all. And you say you’re out there to find the truth . . . But the truth is never the truth, Jay, when it comes to your brother. You know that, don’t you?”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But I’m going to be there for them, Kathy. I’m in now. And all the way.”

It was the second time in two days we had hung up with distance between us. I promised her I’d be back soon. Maybe not tomorrow, but the day after. Or the day after that.

I sat up and looked in the mirror. And while the face that stared back at me was the same—the one who scrubbed in in the OR, who laughed at The Office or 30 Rock, who cheered on my son at his matches, and who drove my daughter down to college and hung her posters on the walls just right, and even cried in the car after I hugged her good-bye—I saw something different in the eyes that stared back at me.

Something had changed.

The phone sounded again.

I hurried to grab it, wanting to say, Kathy, I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t know what’s taking hold of me. I need you too . . .

Then I realized it wasn’t my cell at all that was ringing. It was the room phone. I thought maybe Sherwood was calling me back, or more likely, the front desk—I was way, way past my original checkout date.

I reached it on the third ring. “Hello?”

“You know the one about the patient, doc, who waits too long to find out what’s wrong with him, ’cause he never wants to hear bad news?”

The voice was male, a slight southern inflection to it.

“Sorry?”

“And then it’s too late. He’s got cancer. And the doctor goes, ‘How would you feel if I told you it was all a joke, and you just have high blood pressure now?’ ”

“Who is this?”

He didn’t say. Instead he said, “You’re a smart man, doc. Smart people like you ought to know when they put their noses where they don’t belong. When they should just back off. Before they get themselves burned. Or even worse, maybe someone else, someone close to them.”

“Who the hell is this?” I said, my blood instantly on fire.

“Don’t you worry your little medical degree about that, doc. You worry about what you’re gonna do. Comprende? I’m just trying to play the good citizen here and clue you in. Time to just pack up and head home, pal. Quit trying to make trouble here.”

“What do you mean,” I said, my temperature rising, “someone close to me?”

“Mine to know, doc, yours to worry about. The kid was sick, right? Why don’t we just leave it at that. And speaking of sick, let me ask. You smoke, doc?”

I was about to hang up but answered, seething, “No, I don’t smoke.”

“That’s funny then,” he said, “ ’cause I definitely smell something burning. Don’t you?”

The guy’s voice had this cozy, insinuating sort of tone to it, which actually scared me a little. “Don’t call me again, a*shole.”

“ ’Cause it would be easy—you don’t know how easy—,” he went on, “to just burn that little nose of yours right off, any time we want. Remember, doc, you’re out west, not back in New York. Once a fire starts here, you never know how fast it might spread. Or to where.”

I put down the phone, my heart pounding, anger pouring out of me.

I definitely smell something burning. Don’t you?

I jumped up, a sudden alarm shooting through me. I ran to the door and pulled it open, stepping out into the corridor outside. I scanned in both directions, toward the lobby and the parking lot.

No one.

What the hell did he mean?

Then I looked down, my blood rushing to a stop. I saw what was on the mat.

Smell something burning?

It was a lit, half-smoked cigarette.