Killing Hour

‘First he has to take it back . . .’ He squeezed tighter. ‘Right, Max?’

Max couldn’t take anything back. He was gagging.

Kathy screamed, unable to pry him away. ‘Jay!’

I got there a second later and ripped Evan off by the collar, hurling him across the lawn.

My nephew just sat there, eyes red, panting. ‘He called me a frigging freak!’

Max had had bronchial issues from the time he was three. He needed a respirator back then, twice a day. His face was blue and his neck was all red and twice its normal size. He was in a spasm, wheezing convulsively.

I knew immediately he had to get to the hospital. I threw him in the car and told Kathy to get in. I called ahead to the medical center. In eight minutes we were there. They immediately placed him on oxygen and epinephrine. His airway had closed. Acute respiratory distress. Five minutes more and he might have been dead.

When we got back home, Evan tried to say he was sorry.

But it didn’t matter. Kathy never quite forgave him. She wanted him out of the house.

The next day I drove him to the airport and he was gone.

‘I need to get the bottom of why he was let back on the street, Kathy,’ I answered.

She didn’t respond right away. ‘Look, I know I haven’t always been the most supportive when it comes to this . . . You’re right, they need you, Jay. Do what you can. Just promise me one thing.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Just promise me, this time, you won’t let yourself get drawn in. You know how you always get when it comes to your brother.’

Drawn in . . . Meaning it always ended up costing us something. I didn’t want to debate it, and the truth was, she was probably right.

‘Deal,’ I said in agreement.

Chapter 8

The next morning, I called the county coroner’s office and set up a meeting with Don Sherwood, the detective handling the case – the only person, Charlie and Gabby said, they could get any straight answers from.

He was the one who had knocked on their door two days earlier and asked if Evan was their son – he had ultimately been identified through fingerprints from his police record – and after asking them to sit, showed them the photos of Evan in the county morgue.

Sherwood said he’d be nearby in the early afternoon and we could meet at the station in Pismo Beach around one p.m. I told him we’d be there.

My next call was to the psych ward at the Central Coast Medical Center. I asked for Dr Derosa.

The nurse who answered asked who I was, and I gave her my name and that I was a doctor from back in New York and Evan Erlich’s uncle. She kept me on hold awhile and finally she came back on saying how very sorry they all were, but that the doctor would be out all day on an outside consult and would have to get back to me.

I left my number and said that I’d be around only a few days. I figured I’d hear back in a couple of hours.

A few minutes before one, I went with Charlie and Gabby to the one-story police station on Grand Street and met Detective Sherwood in a small interrogation room there.

He seemed to be in his mid-fifties, ruddy complexioned, with a husky build and thick salt-and-pepper hair. He stood up when we came in, gave Charlie a shake with his thick, firm hands and Gabriella a warm hug. Charlie had said Sherwood had worked for the local PD and coroner’s office for more than twenty years.

‘How’re you holding up?’ he asked them, motioning to us to sit down at a table in the cordoned-off room.

‘Not so good,’ Gabriella said, shrugging sadly.

Sherwood nodded empathetically. ‘I understand.’ ‘This is my brother, Jay, from New York,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s a doctor.’

The detective sized me up – my blazer; an open, striped dress shirt; jeans my wife had picked out for me – and showed a little surprise.

‘Thanks for seeing us,’ I said.

‘No problem at all.’ He nodded. ‘Very sorry for your loss.’

‘My brother and sister-in-law have a few questions they’d like to ask,’ I said. ‘Not only about Evan, about what happened . . . but also about his treatment at the hospital. How he could have been released after just a few days and put in a place where he was essentially allowed to roam free. I’m sure you understand how this isn’t sitting well with them.’

‘I know you have some issues.’ He looked at Charlie and Gabriella. ‘We’ve scheduled an autopsy and a toxicology lab later today. But I’m happy to fill you in on the details of what I know.’

‘Thank you.’ Gabriella nodded gratefully.

‘Sometime late Thursday afternoon,’ the detective said, opening a file, ‘Evan apparently left the halfway house in Morro Bay saying he was going to take a walk.’

Charlie narrowed his eyes. ‘A walk? My son was medicated.’

‘The woman who runs the facility suggested she took it as a positive sign. His first day there, he’d been pretty withdrawn.’

‘They told me they were putting him in a restrictive facility,’ Gabby said bitterly. ‘That woman killed my son.’

I squeezed my palm over her clenched fist to calm her. ‘What happened then?’

‘Sometime that afternoon it appears he wandered down to the rock in the bay and found a path up on the southwest face. He was probably up there a considerable time. Sometime during the night, at maybe two or three a.m., it appears he fell from a large height onto the rocks below. We can approximate the time from the body’s temperature’ – he turned to me – ‘as I’m sure you understand.’

I nodded. The lower the body temperature, the longer the body had been dead.

‘He was discovered early the next morning by two clammers at seven a.m. The coroner’s finding is that your son was killed on impact. The wounds on the top and back of his skull are consistent with his belief that essentially Evan did a back dive from a height of around a hundred and fifty feet and hit here . . .’

Sherwood placed his palm on the back of his head.

‘Oh, God!’ Gabby’s hand shot to her mouth. She crossed herself.

Charlie just sat there numbly and shut his eyes.

‘Are you okay hearing this?’ Sherwood asked. ‘It’ll all be in the coroner’s findings when we’re done, which you can read at a later time.’

‘No, we’re okay,’ Charlie said. ‘Go on. You’re sure it was a suicide? He could have just fallen, couldn’t he?’

‘I suppose there’s always the possibility, but there were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms that might’ve come from trying to brace an unexpected fall. The first part of him that contacted the ground was his head. He seemed to choose a location that had an unencumbered path to the rocks below. Not to mention what his motive would be in even being up there in the first place, at night. I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly sure what other ruling there would be.’

Charlie fidgeted in his chair. ‘Did anyone see him climbing?’

The detective shrugged. ‘Not to my knowledge.’ ‘The first time you saw us you said he was missing one of his sneakers?’