Stephen Cannell - At First Sight

"Footballus-interruptus," I smiled. "We're all still pissed the Rams moved to St. Louis."

"Right. Good one. That explains it."

He smiled back at me-bad teeth, heavy tobacco stains. A real hode. I was just about to leave when he stopped me with his next question.

"What's your connection to the deceased?"

It seemed to me like a funny way to put it, calling Chandler "the deceased." It was almost as if he hadn't known him at all.

"Friend," I said. "What's yours?"

"I'm protecting his rights. Making sure he gets the best that the city of Charlotte can provide."

"I'm sorry, what? You're with the city?"

"Yes, sir, work for the city." Then he went on. "So you knew Chandler in L. A. before he moved here?"

"Hawaii. We met a few months ago, became friends."

"Musta been some quick friendship. Only known him for a few months. Flew all the way in from L. A. for his funeral."

"Yeah… yeah, we… I'm doing some Internet advertising for Paige, so naturally… "

I stopped. Something was wrong about this guy. He looked at me as if he could see beneath my skin, his eyes suddenly like lasers, peeling off surface paint.

"… So, naturally, you came." He finished my sentence for me. "Yeah," I said. "What exactly is it you do for the city?" I asked. "I investigate homicides?'

"Oh… " How could I have missed it? The bad haircut, the cheap clothes, the bowling-alley personality. Cop. I was standing here like a moron, shooting the shit with the very guy who was employed to catch me.

I'm not one to spend a lot of time worrying about bad karma, metaphysics, or spiritual payback, but even for me this was a little spooky. For a second, I stood looking away from him, trying to figure out how to take it from here. I'd already sorta stepped in it by telling this guy I'd only known Chandler for a few months-telling him I came all the way from L. A. If I'm such a recent acquaintance, why would I be at the funeral? Of course, you can see the problem-there was only one easy answer to that question. The old Mickey Spillane favorite: "The killer always returns to the scene of the crime." Of course, I was just at the funeral, but it's really the same thing, isn't it?

I glanced at my underdressed companion and found him still staring at me with those sharp gray lasers. Except for the eyes, he didn't look all that smart. Maybe the steel glint I was seeing was just mean, North Carolina stubbornness. After all, the brothers in this state had been marrying their first cousins since the Civil War. Inbred people are supposed to be stupid, stubborn, and mean. At least that's what I was hoping.

I kept trying to ease my way out of this, but for the moment I was stuck in the conversation, so I plunged on. "So you're investigating Chandler's death?" I said, trying to make it conversational.

"Not his death. Coroner investigates the death. I'm investigating his murder."

"Murder? I thought it was just a hit-and-run."

"Second-degree homicide."

"Oh."

Silence descended while I tried to decide what to say next. "Why are you at the funeral?" I finally asked.

"Always go to the funeral."

"Really?"

"Yep… yep, ever time."

He actually said "ever" instead of "every?' I was starting to feel slightly better. He obviously had never gone to college. If you're gonna commit a second-degree homicide, I guess it's better to be investigated by an undereducated, inbred, southern cop than some knuckle-cracking Harvard criminologist.

"You're here because you think the killer might show up?" I asked. I don't know what I was doing. Why was I leading him on like this? It was almost as if I was intentionally trying to get myself caught. Of course, acting dumb but interested could also serve to throw him off. After all, like I said,… Make that as I said,… he didn't look too bright.

"Yep… more times than I can tell you, the killer shows up. These perps think they gotta put flowers on the coffin. Sometimes, it's a complete stranger. Sometimes it's a good friend, sometimes just a recent acquaintance:' He paused, smiled, then added sleepily, "Like you."

I smiled back, but my heart, I swear, was pounding on the walls of my chest like a deranged mental patient trying to get out. Then he went on, still smiling, "There's something, some inner force that seems to make these people want to come to the funeral."

"Really?" I was scrambling for a casual attitude.

"Yep."

"What do you suppose it is?"

"Well, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm just an underpaid flatfoot, but I expect it's two things, maybe three."

"This is fascinating."

"Ya think?"

"Like, yes… " I said and then smiled at him. "So come on, what are they?"

"Like, okay," he smiled back. "One is hubris. Some killers just want to put it all out there. They're sayin"I'm smarter than all a you blue flannel assholes. I can watch the coffin go into the ground, stand right here out in the open and you'll never get me.' So, hubris is the first one."

"And the next?"

"Stupidity comes next. Some killers are just plain box-a-rocks stupid. They want to experience the funeral because they hated the victim, or they had some fiscal or personal reason to commit the murder, and they don't think any cops are gonna be here looking at who shows up. So stupid is the next, pure and simple."

I nodded. Of course, this was the category I so neatly fit into. But I was committed to this line of questioning, so I asked him what the third was.

"The third is 'cause it would be inappropriate not to come. Cause suspicion. Brother, husband, wife… that kinda thing. Course everybody in that category is gonna get a hard look from me anyway."

"Paige obviously didn't do it," I said, rushing to her defense.

"Pretty sure a that, are ya?"

"You kidding? She loved him. She worshipped him."

He took out a notepad and started writing.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm writing that down. Don't want to forget it," he said, and right then I had a shiver of fear. It went down my spine and chilled my balls.

Why did this smartass remark frighten me? I'll tell you why. It frightened me because this cop had obviously decided to start fucking with me. He was being sarcastic and offhand. Two things about that: One, it told me he had already formed a healthy dislike for me, and of course this is the last thing I needed. The second thing was even more distressing than the first. That little piece of sarcasm gave me a glimpse of the man looking out at me from behind those gray eyes. He was not some stupid, inbred country bluecoat. He was a shrewd, smart, cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch.

In that brief second, I saw this ending badly. In that moment, I suspected that this narrow-shouldered man in the fifty-dollar sport coat might one day actually arrest me for Chandler's murder.

BY THE END OF MAY, THE ANGER THAT HAD SPORADIcally been hitting Paige settled on her like a vengeful cloak. She needed to get it out, so despite her painful back, she enrolled in a full-contact martial arts class. Her instructor was a half-Asian, half-German roughneck named Hans Mochadome-Moch. She was athletic, and the four hours a week she spent in the dojo helped to take the rage away as she methodically tried to beat the shit out of her quick, agile classmates.

Paige also decided to take the next school year off. She was in no frame of mind to teach kindergarten. Whether she even wanted to stay in Charlotte was still up for grabs. It had been her hometown after her parents died, and when she and Chandler decided to get married, he had agreed to relocate there for her.

But now she felt maybe she needed a change. The loneliness since Chandler's death was overpowering and the anger debilitating. She knew she was terrible company and in a bad place emotionally.