Eyes Wide Open Part 8

A panhandler had wandered up to me in disheveled clothes and carrying a hand-scrawled cardboard sign. IRAQ WAR VET. NEED FOOD.

"Any chance you can help me out, chief? It's Veterans Day tomorrow. Can you spare me something for a meal?"

I looked up at him. "Veterans Day's in November, chief. Nice try."

"Dude, every day is Veterans Day." The guy grinned. "When you're looking for something to eat."

Our eyes met and the spark of humor in his eyes along with his gaunt, haggard appearance made my resistance soften. I thought of Charlie, who had been down and out for many years himself. I reached into my pocket and came out with a five, and handed it to him. "Here. You take it easy, man."

"Dude!" His steel-gray eyes were suddenly bright and he c.o.c.ked a hand at me and pointed, as if aiming a gun, making me wonder if he had ever served a day. But I wasn't caring. He backed down the path with a grin, his oversize pants brushing the pavement, and waved back at me. "You have a good day now, chief."

I gave him a wave in return, reflecting that the contrast in this town was startling. Beautiful homes, a stunning coastline. But also a kind of refuge for the down-and-out, whom life had pa.s.sed by.

I smiled as the guy walked away, waving at me one last time. "See ya around."

I went back to Evan's report. I wasn't sure what I was looking to find, but in the next two days there were pages and pages detailing how Evan had gradually become more responsive. Seroquel was added to his treatment, two hundred milligrams, a ma.s.sive dose. By the third day it seemed to have done its trick and blunted his rage. "Patient now denies any real anger toward his parents." "Now admits the gun was meant for him."

No kidding. He was a zombie, Anna Aquino said. Completely snowed.

On his last day, he had even begun to express remorse. "Patient indicates a desire not to return home as it is a volatile situation. It is suggested an intermediary living situation might be located."

That made me angry. Anyone professional had to know the demons that were still lurking inside.

In the final pages, the report went on to note how Evan understood that he had to stay on his meds and even expressed a desire to get better. "Patient feels that the current environment at home may not be compatible with that goal. Social services is looking for an appropriate outside environment."

Evan's scrawled, semilegible signature was on the release form, along with Mitch.e.l.l Derosa, Supervising MDs.

Maybe Sherwood was right. Suicide or accident, Evan was dead. I was leaving in the morning. What did it even matter if the system had let him down?

The kid was crazy, delusional. He was talking to the furnace, for Christ's sake.

The die was really cast the day he was born.

Chapter Seventeen.

That Wednesday night, I stopped off at Charlie's to drop off the report and say good-bye.

To my surprise, they had a couple of people over. Two of Evan's friends: One was Pam, a cashier from the store where Evan had bagged groceries for a while. She had a row of hoops in her ear and wore one of those gold-plated necklaces with her name in large script.

The other was a friend from Evan's high school days, Miguel, a heavyset Latino kid with a shaved head and baggy denim shorts down to his knees, accompanied by his mom.

Both of the friends seemed to be genuinely sorrowed by Evan's death. They traded stories of him at the store and at school. How he was always the smart one. "Always knew how to do things, you know, bro," Miguel said brightly. How he used to dazzle everyone on the court. "That boy had game."

"Yes, my son had a chance to really be something." Gabby nodded, her eyes glistening.

While they chatted, I excused myself and went out with Charlie to the tiny, fenced-in backyard. "Here . . ." I handed him back the medical report. "I made a copy at the front desk. I'll take it back with me if you don't mind."

His long, unruly hair was clipped back in a beret. "What does it say?"

"It says he was sick, Charlie. That he needed to stay on his meds and be in a place he could be observed. The rest . . ." I shrugged and held myself back. "I think they treated him with the intent to make him better. He just needed a lot more than three days in a county ward."

"I understand." He nodded. We sat down on his lawn chairs. "You're leaving tomorrow?"

"In the morning. Look, you have to let me know what you want me to do, Charlie. If you want me to find you a lawyer. If you want, I'll make some inquiries for you. But you ought to talk to someone. A social worker or a grief counselor. I'm not gonna be here for you."

My brother shrugged, a cast of inevitability clouding his face. "I told you before, we can't make waves, Jay. We have to accept who we are. Anyway, what does it matter for Gabby and me? It's all over for us now. It would just be nice to get some answers."

"I wish I could have done that for you, Charlie."

"You did, Jay. You have any idea how much it means to us, you coming out here like you did? You did everything."

He reached forward and put his hand on mine and squeezed. In that moment, he was no longer my crazy, wayward brother whose life had spun out of control, but someone who was every bit my equal yet was powerless and needed me. Whose life would never be the same.

I pulled him to me with a hug. "I truly wish it could have been different, Charlie. And I don't just mean with Evan. I mean with all of it. Dad. You and me. Our lives."

His grip tightened. "I wish that too, Jay." I suddenly felt tears dampen my shoulder. "I love you, buddy. You're all I have . . ."

"I love you too, Charlie."

"You go back to that beautiful family of yours . . ."

"I will. Unless something changes, right?" I patted him warmly on the back and pulled away.

"Anyway what ever changes with us"-he smiled-"right?"

We went back inside. Pam and Miguel and his mom had stood up to leave. "I'm really sorry for your loss." Miguel put out his hand to me.

"Thanks," I said. I asked what he was doing with himself.

"Trying to get back into school. I've had some setbacks, you know. But I'm getting it back together. I start Cuesta in the spring." Cuesta was the local junior college where Evan had gone for a semester.

"That's good." I walked him outside to the carport, where his mom and Gabby were saying good-bye. "Keep it together."

He shook his head confoundedly. "You know, things could have been really different with Evan, man. The dude was smart. He used to show me how to do my math. Like it was nothing to him. He had a way out of this place. Not like the rest of us . . ."

He took a step toward his mom's van, then turned back around. "You know, it was like with that cop. The one who was always looking for him . . ."

"What cop?"

"That old dude. He came around to the courts a few times, looking for Evan. First, maybe a month ago . . . Evan wasn't around. Then he was back, a couple of weeks ago . . ."

I stared. "This cop was looking for Evan?"

"Yeah. I rang Evan up and he came down. Two weeks ago. That was the last time I ever saw him. We were all jiving him: 'What do you got going on, dude? You thinkin' 'bout becoming a snitch?' My boy just laughed and said how the guy was only showing an interest in him. Said he was trying to get him to take the test."

"What test?" I asked, my heart suddenly jumping a beat.

"You know," said Miguel, "the test to become a cop."

It was like a switch was flicked, everything inside me brought to an immediate stop. I flashed back to what Gabby had told me that first day. Evan staring at the furnace, hearing voices coming from it. They want me to become a cop.

My son was sick, Gabby had said. He was always dreaming.

You'll see, Evan had said with that all-knowing smirk of his.

"You know his name?" I asked Miguel, my pulse picking up again. "This cop? It's important, Miguel."

He shook his head. "Nah. Just some older dude. Maybe fifty, sixty. White hair. Not from around here, though. He showed us his badge. From somewhere down south. Santa Barbara, I think he said. I'm sorry, mister."

"That's okay."

It might be nothing, I realized. Just another one of Evan's ramblings. His stupid dreams, as Gabby said. One that happened to be connected to the thinnest thread of truth.

This cop, who wanted him to take the test.

Or maybe it did mean something.

I started after Miguel, who'd opened the van door. "You remember anything else about him? That cop. Other than he had white hair and said he wasn't from around here."

"I don't know, man . . ." He scratched his shaved head. "He had kind of a limp. And, oh yeah, he did have something on his face. Like a birthmark, you know? This red blotch. On his cheek. Here." He touched the left side of his face.

"Thanks, Miguel," I said.

They backed out and I watched them drive away. I reminded myself I was leaving. Come morning, I was going to be in my car, on the way back to LAX. Then on a plane. Home.

I had things pulling me back.

But I couldn't suppress the weirdest feeling, like the world had suddenly shifted.

Something just changed.

And a thought wormed into my brain, ever so slightly: What if Evan wasn't quite as crazy as everyone thought?

Chapter Eighteen.

I barely slept that night.

I tossed and turned for most of it, my blood racing. The echo of what Miguel had told me going back and forth in my mind.

They want me to take the test to become a cop . . .

I kept thinking, What if Evan's ramblings might not have been total delusions after all, but were twisted with a thread of truth? Reality.

Why did an old detective need to find him? What could he have been caught up in? I kept hearing my brother's voice: What if he had gone up to that ledge just to think? My son would never have killed himself.

I rose up. What if that stupid missing sneaker did actually mean something?

At two, I tossed off the covers and stepped out on the terrace, letting the breeze from the ocean cool my face. Listening to the whoosh of the dark sea against the rocks.

Did any of this make the hospital less responsible? No. They still bungled it. It didn't change much. It wasn't going to bring Evan back. Or alter my brother's grief.

You've got to be on a plane in the morning, Jay.

My wake-up call shook me out of a deep sleep at just before seven. I had a one P.M. flight out of LAX and it was about a three-hour ride. Stacey Gold was being admitted that afternoon. I called in and told my secretary I'd be ready to scrub in at six A.M. tomorrow. I checked that everything was set for her operation.

Stacey was seventeen and was starting at Boston College that fall. The surgery had forced her to push back her start date. Though two years younger than Sophie, they had been in a dance cla.s.s together a few years back, and in the summers, she worked the refreshment cart that drove around the course at our golf club.

A month ago, she started experiencing a throbbing in her right thigh near the groin and felt pressure on the pelvic nerves. An MRI discovered an aneurysm leading into the iliac artery. I had to feed a stent through the femoral artery. It wasn't a big deal, but it was the only way to relieve the pressure; otherwise there was the risk of it bursting.

I turned on the Today show and hopped into the shower. Afterward, I stood in my towel shaving. On the tube, they were talking about a missing toddler in Tennessee and then they switched to the local news.

"A retired Santa Barbara detective is found murdered in his Santa Maria home . . ."

It took a moment, until the words "Santa Barbara detective" slammed me head-on and I ran to the screen.

They had the victim's photo there. In his early sixties. A hard, square jaw, wrinkles around deep-set eyes.

What had Miguel told me? The cop was around sixty. White hair.

"Walter Zorn," the news report began, "who for the past ten years had lived in the Five Cities area . . ."

Then they showed another photo of him-this time in uniform, receiving some kind of commendation.

Just like Miguel had said, there was the blotch of reddish pigment on his left cheek.

My eyes went wide.

Zorn. There couldn't be any doubt. He was the cop who'd been looking for Evan.

And now he was dead.

He had been stabbed in his home during the night. In Santa Maria, fifteen miles down the coast. A neighbor had called the cops after hearing a scuffle. There were no immediate suspects. He hadn't seen the perpetrator.

Something truly horrifying took shape in my mind: Zorn had just been murdered, and Evan had died suspiciously the week before. They'd been in contact with each other.

Could their deaths be connected?