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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.

Chapter Eight
    T he 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 told her 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 midfifties, 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.
    “Some time 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?”
    “Some time 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. Some time during the night, at maybe two or three A.M. , it appears he fell from a large height onto the