Eyes Wide Open Part 14

"I'm not sure either," Sherwood said. He put the photo back in his pocket.

What he did know was that his jaw had begun to throb.

Chapter Thirty.

I was in the motel's breakfast room the next morning. I was getting edgy, not having heard from Sherwood in a day. Charlie had gone back to acting like Charlie. Maxie was back from lacrosse camp.

Kathy was pushing hard for me to come home.

Our conversation the day before had been one of the toughest of my life. We had never kept things from each other, and for the first time in our marriage, I felt like I was. I knew I was! And I had other patients I ought to have been back for.

Since I'd arrived, it seemed like someone had been telling me to go back home. I was wearing down and starting to feel like that was what I ought to be doing.

"This seat free?"

I looked up, recognizing the voice before I saw the face. Sherwood.

The burly detective pulled out a chair without waiting for me to reply.

I looked at him, upbeat. "Tell me this is just a coincidence and that you just happened to wander in."

"Yeah, like all your weird coincidences, doc . . ." He spun the plastic chair around and sat, facing me. "I was just wondering what you had going on tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? I know what I should be doing! Staff meeting at nine. Possible interview with a new surgical candidate at eleven. My high school senior's pushing for a new computer, so I thought I'd take him to the Apple store . . ."

"Heading home?" He grinned amusedly. "So soon?"

"Yeah." I sniffed back a wistful smile. "So soon . . ."

"Too bad," Sherwood said. "I was hoping we might take a ride."

"Since I met you, you've been telling me to get the h.e.l.l away, Sherwood. Now you want to take me sightseeing. Where?"

"Sonoma coast. Beautiful up there. Town of Jenner."

"The Sonoma coast? It's a nice offer. You want to have a picnic too?" I cut the sarcasm and pushed a corn m.u.f.fin his way. "I've got a living to get back to. And a wife who thinks I've lost my mind . . ."

"I'm sorry about that, doc."

" 'Cause I'm out here, trying to connect these dots on my nephew's death where there might not even be any frigging dots. So if you have something, Sherwood, tell me, and please, make it a good one, 'cause I'm really hanging by a thread right now, trying to do the right thing. Jenner, what's there?"

"Susan Pollack." The detective looked at me.

His answer hit me like a bludgeon. I waited for him to grin, like he was only s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. But he didn't grin. He just kept staring at me with those heavy gray eyes.

Except now there was kind of a spark lit up in them. And it looked a lot like vindication.

"You found something, didn't you?"

"Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves . . . But instead of just 'washing my hands of it,' " he said with a smirk, "I went back out to the rock-not that I was buying much of what you were selling, understand-and started asking around." He picked up the m.u.f.fin and started tearing it apart on the paper plate. "Someone saw Evan there-the day it happened. Around five thirty . . . Heading to the rock."

My blood was revving, and I had the feeling he was holding something back. I waited while he made a shambles of the m.u.f.fin. "And . . . ?"

"And . . ." He looked back up at me. "It seems he wasn't alone."

Those words. .h.i.t me like a bus slamming into a wall at a hundred miles an hour.

First it was the possibility that maybe I wasn't so off the deep end after all-Zorn, Evan, Susan Pollack, the two sets of "eyes" leading back to Houvnanian.

Then I realized that that, in itself, couldn't be why Sherwood, the last person who had a reason to buy into this, was there.

"It was a woman, right?" I stared at him, my blood surging. And then I knew! "It was her. Susan Pollack. She was with him!"

"Look, we can't be sure," Sherwood said, finally jamming a crumbled piece of m.u.f.fin in his mouth. "I don't want us to be like 'buds' or anything, but a street vendor spotted them together, as Evan was heading toward the rock. I showed the guy a photo of her and he couldn't be entirely sure. She was a ways away and was wearing sungla.s.ses and a cap. Smoking."

My mind immediately darted back to the person in the car outside Charlie's apartment. She was in a drawn-down cap. Behind a car window.

Then she tossed out her b.u.t.t at me.

"But you think it's true." My blood was hard to hold back. "You must, or else you wouldn't be here."

"What I think, doc-and trust me, it's all I'm thinking-is that it's worth checking out. Just too bad you had to be heading home today, after investing all this time. Would've been nice to have the company."

My face edged into a grin, a surge of antic.i.p.ation filling me up expansively. Sherwood never once changed his expression. He only twisted his face up at the half-stale m.u.f.fin. "This is what you eat every day?"

"How did you find out where she is?" I asked.

"California Department of Corrections. I have made a few buddies washing my hands of things over the past twenty-five years. While technically she's not on parole, the state requires a convicted felon to file a place of residency. Jenner's just a dot on the map. A tiny fishing village. Maybe four, four and a half hours from here."

"What are you telling your boss?" I asked him. I thought of the stack of unresolved cases on his desk.

"Less the better." He smiled at me. "What are you telling yours?"

"That maybe she was right." I smiled at him as well. "Maybe the sun out here has made me a little dizzy."

"What sun?" Sherwood got up, dropped the rest of the m.u.f.fin back on my tray with a twist of his mouth. "How about seven A.M. then? In front of the hotel. And in case there's any doubt, I'll bring breakfast."

Chapter Thirty-One.

I took the easy way out and left a message for Kathy, saying I needed one more day.

I told Charlie and Gabby optimistically that some things were up with Evan's case. I canceled my appointments. My partners were probably starting to think I was crazy too.

I spent a lot of the rest of the day in my room, online.

I wanted to find out everything I possibly could about Russell Houvnanian. How he had gotten those people to commit the horrible acts they had. How Susan Pollack had fit in.

There was a ton of material online. Several books had been written on the case-one by an FBI investigator, Thomas Greenway, who had gone on to achieve some notoriety. Others by various journalists and criminologists, and even by a few of Houvnanian's followers. I found articles going back to the 1970s. I devoured them like the medical background to a baffling case, fascinated by how Houvnanian had been able to lure a mix of educated and sometimes affluent young women and homeless drifters onto a collision course with crime and stir them to commit such a b.l.o.o.d.y act.

He had preyed on rootless young people in the hippie culture of the sixties and early seventies-women mostly, ones estranged from their families who had found their way to his ranch near Big Sur. Most came, like Charlie, for the lure of music, fun, and free drugs. It became a refuge from the materialistic world, a haven for local musical artists. They even put together a makeshift studio there. Houvnanian deftly crafted this twisted concoction-a Garden of Eden protecting cast-off children against the encroaching evil of the outside world. Drugs were a constant, as was s.e.x, with interchangeable partners. Houvnanian himself was said to be the father of several children by women on the ranch.

They tried to get their recordings produced-always driving down to L.A., badgering known producers. I thought of Charlie at my father's house. That was the way Houvnanian hoped to spread his message-his bizarre concept of the End of Days-to the popular culture. Houvnanian had a way of interpreting the songs of the Byrds and the Doors to back up his own apocalyptic gospel. He came to believe that the Doors' "Riders on the Storm" was written specifically for him. He looked at Jim Morrison's tragic death as a sign pointing to him, like John the Baptist paving the way for Jesus, foretelling his impending martyrdom.

In the summer of 1973, the paranoia seemed to intensify, fueled by a mixture of drugs and religion and repeated attempts by Paul Riorden and the police to get Houvnanian and his followers off the property. Several of the followers either left or were expelled. The locals around the ranch grew alarmed. People were saying there were LSD-addled orgies and blood rituals and threats against society taking place. Riorden pushed to close down the commune.

According to Greenway, Susan Pollack had spent a year at Swarthmore. Her dad was a managing director of Bache and Co., then a major Wall Street brokerage house. Another follower, Sarah Stra.s.ser, had a father who was a successful car dealership mogul from Seattle. Others, like Tel Richards of Beaumont, Texas, were simply drifters who'd had criminal records since their early teens.

In July of 1973, Houvnanian and two cronies drove down to Santa Barbara to appeal to Riorden and get him to back off his threats to pressure his ex-wife to shut down the ranch. They also went to see George Forniciari, whom one of his followers knew, to seek his help in purchasing the property. Both of them refused. Paul Riorden even called his ex-wife Sandy, Houvnanian's sometime benefactor, a "misguided s.l.u.t."

Houvnanian drove back home that night in a rage, and a new sense of finality took over the ranch: The "final stage" had begun. There were three days of nonstop revelry on LSD, fueling everyone's fears that their world of "peace and harmony" was at an end. The words of the Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" were twisted into some kind of end-of-the-world prophecy: "A time to kill, a time to cast away stones." Houvnanian painted Riorden and his wealthy cla.s.s as devils. He got his most ardent followers to believe that only an act of "pious bloodletting" would protect them against what was to come. They began to look at their commune as a place of impending betrayal-aptly named Gethsemane, where Judas had betrayed Jesus-and Paul Riorden and his family as the "devils," like the Romans, who would one day come for them. If Judas had not handed over Jesus, Houvnanian preached, "Jesus would have ruled the earth for two thousand years."

There were various accounts of exactly how many people set out in the commune's 1967 VW van to head back down to Santa Barbara on September 7, 1973, but in the end, the horrific acts were not in dispute: nine people brutally murdered. Five were convicted on nine counts of first-degree murder. Three more, including Susan Pollack, were convicted of being accomplices and abetting these acts.

Houvnanian was still serving out multiple life sentences at the California state super-max penitentiary at Pelican Bay.

Head spinning, I shut the computer. I called the restaurant and ordered a meal. I set a wake-up call for six A.M. I didn't know where anyone-Zorn, Evan, Charlie, Susan Pollack-was fitting in.

My dinner came and I turned on the TV. I found a ball game on ESPN. I realized I'd now been out there for six days. I felt like my whole life had shifted on its axis and altered in just a few days.

I was a little tired, and part of me knew I should make it an early night. But my blood was pumping and I sat back down at the desk, where my computer was. This had become the only place I could feel at home.

I logged back on and did a search on "Houvnanian," feeling like I was close to something, scrolling to the third and fourth pages for additional links. I came upon a summary of the trial proceedings posted by a reporter with the Santa Barbara Clarion.

The trials were pretty much a slam dunk for the state. All the defendants were tried separately. The killers were amateurs and careless and had barely even made an attempt to hide their tracks. Fingerprints were left at the scenes. In blood. Articles of clothing. Most even helped convict themselves with their own rambling testimonies.

Susan Pollack pled guilty to helping to hide the murder weapons back on the ranch and washing down the inside of the van.

I'd had enough. I sat back and put my hands on the sides of my head and rubbed my temples. The lids of my eyes were so heavy. I didn't know what was in store for us tomorrow.

But someone had been with Evan just before his death.

And I was sure Susan Pollack was involved.

I was about to turn the computer off when I happened to scroll down farther ahead and noticed something. I pulled it closer to me, forcing my eyes open.

It was the transcript of a speech given by Houvnanian at the time of his sentencing. In a rambling jeremiad, he blamed the rich for their victims' deaths, their p.a.w.ns the police, the lawyers who argued against him, the nonbelievers out there who doubted who he was. He ranted that it served no purpose to put him away, "no matter for how long, even for life." The social turmoil and upheaval he foretold in End of Days would come to pa.s.s.

"You can put me in the strongest prison," he declared, "in the smallest cell, let me rot for a hundred years," but one day he'd be back, he said, just like Jesus had come back, "to finish what was begun."

A moment ago I had been exhausted, but now I felt wired and breathless again.

"On that day of judgment, or even the hour," Houvnanian said to the judge, "no one will know. Not those who think they hold the power; not their p.a.w.ns who enforce their will. Not even the sleeping child will know . . .

"It's like a man who goes away for a long time and puts his servants in charge of the house. He gives them tasks, duties, but they don't know when he will return. Only the master will know. Watch," the self-proclaimed messiah warned, "for no one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner. It might be in the morning, or at midnight, when everyone is asleep. Watch," he repeated-the lawyer's account said he was grinning-"lest he come back suddenly and find you sleeping."

Suddenly the eyes on Evan and Walter Zorn flashed into my mind.

I almost heard Houvnanian saying it himself-as I'd heard him nearly forty years ago at my father's house.

"Watch!"

Chapter Thirty-Two.

The night was so still, he recalled, even all these years later, the only sound he heard was the lapping of tiny waves against the sides of the pool.

They made their way through the ornate iron gate out front, snaking across the grounds in the dark to the sprawling house.

In back, there was the pool, kidney shaped, blue lit, a breeze blowing in from the sea. They heard laughter, the sounds of winegla.s.ses clinking. Music playing. "Bad, bad, Leroy Brown . . ."

Through the gla.s.s doors that opened to the back, the sight of a man and a woman dancing a bit drunkenly, two others at the long wooden table who seemed to be into themselves. Decades from now, he realized, when everything else about them was forgotten-who they were, what they did in their lives, the piles of money they had ama.s.sed-what would happen here tonight would be the one thing that would make everyone remember.

Pigs.

Grunting sounds came from nearby, from the fancy pool house off to the side. The group of them snaked around in the shadows and saw a man with long dark hair in a white cotton shirt, his jeans down at his ankles, f.u.c.king his blond cutie from behind, her palms supporting her against the pool table and her bare a.s.s thrusting. With relish, the thought crossed his mind that he'd like to join in. Just drop the old trou and go, Surprise, kids-company! But instead he motioned to Carla and Squirrel to do what they had to do to them first and then to wait for their word.

That wasn't who they'd come for.

He and Sarah Jane and Tel went around to the front, cutting through a row of yuccas and pines. The house was low, Spanish style, a sloping tiled roof and white stucco walls. He'd been there once before, trying to reason with the man, trying to make a proposition. Show them the way. But he wouldn't listen. Now they were only doing what they had to do. The only course that was left to them, right?

The front door was of heavy wood with black iron hardware. Like a mission door, rounded on top. Sarah Jane wore a gauzy tie-dye top with a red bandana around her hair. Tel, his hair tied into a long ponytail, wore a dark poncho. They held at the door a few moments, the sounds of merriment dancing around them. He took out a blade. Tel tucked the gun into his pants. There was no sign of wavering in anyone's eyes. He knew they loved him. They had ridden with him when it had just been fun and games, frolic and music.

And they were here with him now, when it was about to turn ugly and bad.

He always told them, nothing was evil if it came from love.

"Party time!" he said, and rang the bell.

Pig Number One came to the door-the man himself-in a floral shirt with a gla.s.s of wine, his grin evaporating as he saw who it was. "Russell?" He must've s.h.i.t in his pants, knowing what they were there for and that his days were about to end. He looked so confused. "What are you doing here?"

"You told me, 'Drop in anytime, Russ.' So, guess what, Paul, we're here!"