Eyes Wide Open (20 page)
Authors: Andrew Gross
N
ow I knew. I knew for sure.
And it left me feeling like I had to vomit. Dread creeping up inside me.
Charlie
was
a target.
Houvnanian had simply been toying with Sherwood and me all along. Greenway. Zorn. Evan. Whatever my brother had done, whatever role he played in what took place more than thirty years ago, they were massing around him. Torturing him slowly.
Piece by piece, slowly cutting him up.
The wind and the rain were at his door.
Charlie was next.
As soon as I got back to my hotel room, I called Sherwood. “My brother's in trouble,” I said, my heart pounding off my sides from what I'd just learned.
“Take it easy, doc,” the detective said, trying to calm me. The agitation in my voice was clear. “
How?
”
“Houvnanian. All that gibberish about âthe wind and the rain'? That he didn't even remember Charlie? Oh, he remembered him, Sherwood! Those were all lyrics. They were straight out of my brother's song.”
“What lyrics?”
“From a song he recorded back then. I heard him playing it tonight. What we heard in that prison, it was all basically just a threat! He was warning him. Through me!”
“A threat of what?” The detective snorted skeptically.
“Please, Sherwood,” I begged him, “don't play the skeptical cop shit with me. Not now.
You know!
I know you know. Maybe I can't prove it. Maybe it all sounds crazy when you try and put it together. But Houvnanian made a vow at his sentencing to get back at the people who had harmed him. Who put him and his followers away. And now he's doing it. One by one. He's been doing it! Greenway. Cooley. Zorn.
Evan
. And now they've got my brother in their sights.”
“You've still never told me how your brother is involved.
Why him?
”
“I don't know why him!
” My brain throbbed. “He won't come clean with me. I think he's too scared to admit he had a hand in his son's death. But that's what Evan's death was about. And their cat. And that cigarette butt left on my doorstep. They're warnings. Warnings that were meant for him! Don't you see, Sherwood? Charlie's next!”
“Listen, doc,” the detective said, clearing his throat, “I've done everything short of ruining what's left of my career trying to tie the strands together for you. But they're just not tying. Because that's just what they are,
strands
. There ain't no bow. Now you're talking about lyrics to your brother's song. From more than three decades ago? It's been a long day, doc. Just what is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to put someone on Susan Pollack. I want you to station a car outside my brother's apartment. Unless you're ready to wake up and find him dead too.”
“I told you, I can't just take personnel off the street. I'm a coroner's detective. There hasn't even been a direct threat made against anybody. There's not even a case open against anyone.”
“Then make one!” I realized if I'd lost Sherwood for good, I was completely alone out here and I couldn't just walk away. Not now. Too much had happened. With Zorn. Susan Pollack. Evan. Sherwood was all I had.
In my life, there had been only a handful of moments when I felt like everything was at stake. One of them was rushing my son, gasping, to the ER. Whatever the outcome, good or bad, I always felt I had this cushion to protect me. A beautiful wife who loved me. Kids who were healthy and made me proud. A position in life that gave me stature and money. Even when things got bad and we had to negotiate a new deal with the hospital or when my father died, I knew I'd make it through.
This was one of those moments.
“Don, please
. . . it's time to risk it,” I said to him. “To pay it back.”
“Risk what, doc?” he replied a little testily.
“Whatever it was they gave you that new liver for.”
He remained silent for a while. I knew this was my last chance, and without him, I might as well just go back home and leave my brother to his fate. He and Gabby meant nothing to anyone there. Other than to Sherwood and me. And it all meant nothing if he sent me packing.
“All right,” he finally said, exhaling, “I'll find you a car.”
“How?” I asked. I wanted to hear. Charlie's life was in the balance.
“It doesn't matter how.” His voice had a resigned quality to it. “So tell me,” he said with a laugh, “you ever gonna go back to practicing medicine again, doc, or are you just gonna move out here so you can become a permanent pain in my ass?”
“I sure hope so,” I said, and exhaled. “About going back.”
“Well, let me know, 'cause I want to be first in line to drive you to that plane.”
A
n hour later, darkness setting in, Sherwood drove his car down Grand Avenue, past the empty fast food storefronts and closed-up auto supply stores, toward Grover Beach.
The clock read eight forty-five. Only a few cars were on the road. The small beach town shut up like a cell block after dark. One or two of the Latino bars still had some life, field hands and out-of-work construction workers drunkenly staggering out.
In another lifetime, he might've stopped and checked them out as they headed for their cars.
He made a left on Fourth, and then Division, heading farther down the hill along the tracks. They used to find bodies dumped in the woods around there. He could still have told you every clearing in the brush where you could score weed or crack. The only time he'd ever fired his gun was on a bust down there back when his hair was still dark and he was still in a uniform.
You've got to risk it all,
the doc had said.
Funny,
he thought as he drove. He thought he had risked all he had twenty years before.
He thought of Kyle.
He drove his Torino up to the run-down apartment complex. He had been there twice before in the days after Evan had been killed. He stopped the car and put it in park in a dark spot out of the glare of the streetlamp, maybe thirty yards from the entrance. From there, he had a good view of the courtyard and the first-floor apartment. He saw a light glowing behind the drapes. He sank deeper into the car seat and made himself comfortable. He hadn't done this sort of thing in more than a decade. In a way it felt good.
Dorrie would laugh,
he thought. He turned off the ignition.
No, she wouldn't.
She would smile.
Erlich was wrong. He knew
everything
about risking it. About losing it all too.
It had been a family camping trip. On the Clackamas River, up in Oregon. He, Dorrie, and Merry, their twelve-year-old daughter.
And Kyle.
They went rafting. It was the week of the initial spring release. The rapids were mostly level threes and fours. They'd taken pictures. The whole family smiling. Having the time of their lives.
Later, they coasted downstream. The river grew wide and the current smooth. The group pulled over to the shore for a basket lunch, part of the outing. The guide broke out the single-person kayaks that the rafting company had towed there. Everyone took a shot at it. It was fun. The current was easy. Kyle was a little scared to get in, but some other kid not much older tried it and had a blast.
Maybe if he hadn't pushed him, Sherwood always thought when the dark moments came.
Maybe if he hadn't pushed Dorrie: “C'mon, he's a big kid. He can handle it.”
He was nine.
Kyle was paddling a few yards behind the main raft when the current, more like a series of small eddies, intensified.
Still not enough to make anyone alarmed, only enough to keep an eye out. Kyle suddenly seemed to be having a little trouble steering. No one paid much attention. There was no danger. Sherwood had been telling his war stories to one of the other couples, a stockbroker and his wife from Seattle. The guide even broke out the cold drinks.
Then Kyle called out.
“Donny,
” Dorrie shouted, noticing the gulf between them had widened.
For the first time Sherwood saw that his son was afraid.
“Mom,” he called out, struggling. “Dad!”
“Right side, right side,
” one of the guides yelled out to him, doing his best to slow the main raft.
“Keep it steady, son!” Sherwood called.
If the boy had just been twelve, even a little larger, it would have been nothing. The current was barely more than a trickle.
But a hundred yards downstream, the river divided. There was a sliver of an island in the middle separating the two sides. No more than a couple of hundred yards long. Everyone watched with elevating concern as Kyle got himself caught in a midstream current and was drawn, against his increasing attempts to right himself, to the other side.
Dorrie became alarmed. “
Don!
”
That was when Sherwood took off his sneaks and went to jump in. But the guide held him back. They were too far along.
“He'll be okay,” the guide said, trying to reassure him. “There's nothing dangerous over there.” He signaled to the other raft. “We'll meet up with him on the other side.”
Sherwood yelled out. “You'll be okay! Just paddle, son!”
But his heart told him something entirely different.
Back outside Charlie's apartment, Sherwood gazed out at the darkened courtyard. He turned on the radio. Something easy and soothing. Country. Annoyed at himself.
Why did he have to go through this now?
It was called a strainerâa thatch of branches just below the surface.
And the sound of that word still brought him anguish and pain, though it had been almost twenty years.
They steered the main raft to the far end of the island and waited for Kyle to make his way out.
Everyone was shouting, “
Kyle! Kyle!
” Even the other rafters.
He never did.
Sherwood finally jumped in. Panicked. Running ahead of the guide. Thrashing against the current upstream. The river was no more than thigh high and seemingly smooth, but after running hard a hundred yards Sherwood's thighs began to tire and feel like concrete, a steady stream of water pushing against them. “
Kyle! Kyle!
” His heart suddenly accelerating in a way he had never felt on the job.
“Kyle!”
The second hundred yards lasted a lifetime. All the power in his legs simply gave way. They turned to fire and then to rubber, and he had to stop, the guide running past him.
Where are you, Kyle?
Up ahead, he saw the guide kneel in the water, freeing his boy from the brambles that had caught on his life jacket, under the surface. He gazed back with a look Sherwood would never forget, crying out, “
Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man . . .”
It's time to risk it,
Sherwood . . .
Really?
He had already lost it all!
He snuggled in the car seat in a comfortable position and took out a burrito from a bag and settled in. He turned up the volume.
Thank you,
the doc had said. And it made Sherwood smile.
Don't thank me. Thank that damn pastor.
Knightly.
Behind the shades in the apartment, the light had gone off.
T
hat night, I fell asleep while paging through Greenway's book.
I woke up a couple of hours later. The digital clock read 2:17
A.M.
I climbed out of bed, poured myself a glass of water. I checked my e-mails, flicked on the TV.
Criminal Minds
was on.
My brain seemed to be repeating the same question over and over.
How is my brother involved?
I lay on the bed, suddenly hearing noises everywhere: a car passing by. Two late-night guests returning to their room. The low drone of the TV. I turned on the light again and picked up my book. Skimmed through a few pages at random, through the photos of the major participants, the ranch as it was back then, the police shots of the gruesome crime scene and evidence. I was hoping Greenway's painstaking detail of the investigation would lull me back to sleep.
It didn't take long after Riorden's sister, Marci, was informed of her brother's murder for attention to fall on his ex-wife, Sandy, and the “bunch of loonies” she was tied to.
Some of the threats Houvnanian had made against Riorden had found their way to the Santa Barbara police. A local gas station attendant remembered seeing “a van full of hippies” similar in appearance to Houvnanian and his group filling up at his station, only a couple of miles from the Riordens' house earlier that day.
Houvnanian was brought in for questioning by local police. He was held on minor trespassing charges while police searched the premises. A few of his followers were brought in on misdemeanor narcotics possession, as small amounts of marijuana and hash were discovered.
While their leader was in custody, several other inhabitants of the ranch seemed eager to talk, and a picture began to emerge of the hallucinogenic frenzy that had stoked up their leader's rage and paranoia.
My eyes began to feel heavy, but I pushed on.
Walter Zorn had handled a bunch of the early interviews with some of the ranch's residents. I flipped ahead, ready to put the book down, as the clock neared three.
One of the people Zorn interviewed was a blond twenty-year-old runaway known as Katya. It wasn't her real name.
Described as blond, pretty, with an affable, upbeat demeanor, it was Katya, Greenway claimed, who first gave up the names of the others who had abetted the perpetrators, among them Alex Fever and Susan Pollack, and she told the police that five others, Telford Richards, Sarah Strasser, Nolan Pierce, Carla Jean Blue, and Houvnanian “had gotten into the van early on the morning of the murders and didn't come back until noon the next day.” She said, “It was clear to all of us something bad had happened.”
Another one who talked was Katya's boyfriend, identified only as Chase, a nervous, long-haired musician who had dropped out of college back east.
Zorn suggested it was Chase who first led him and Joe Cooley to a marshy pond on the property where a bandana and a bloody poncho that were eventually tied to the killings were found.
And a day later, two knives with matching blood residue on them.
As the evidence tying Houvnanian, Richards, Blue, Pierce, and Strasser directly to the murder scene mounted, the identities of these early informants were withheld from the public records and their testimonies were never needed at trial.
A sudden tingling came over me.
Katya.
Chase.
I sat up and read the pages over a second time, my blood picking up with adrenaline. Susan Pollack said they all had different names back then. I got up and opened the sliding door. Stepped out on the balcony. A cool breeze hit me off the ocean.
Could it be?
The breeze took my thoughts, and I pictured a man who owned a large home, who had been away on a journey for a long time. No one knew the moment when the owner might one day return.
Only the father will know . . .
Watch,
Houvnanian had warned. I shivered.
For no one
knows when the master will choose to come back.
Or in what manner.
In my dream, the owner of the house was Russell Houvnanian. As I had remembered him from back then. Dark and intense and scary.
And the servant
Â
. . .
The servant who was waiting sent a chill down my spine.
He was my brother.
A sheen of sweat came over me. I saw it all, as if for the very first time.
Watch, Houvnanian had warned.
Chase
,
watch!
