Stephen Cannell - At First Sight

Six weeks had passed since the funeral and she was still clobbered anew every morning by the stark realization that he was gone, that she was all alone.

Her religious beliefs precluded suicide, but her memories made going on seem pointless. She had two general conditions-sad and angry. When sadness hit, she more or less just sat. Sat in her house with all of Chandler's things. Sat in the park watching other people's children play. When she was angry, she went to the dojo and tried to kill anybody stupid enough to stand in front of her.

She slept on Chandler's side of the bed, not changing the sheets for the first two weeks because his smell was still there. She sat in the back of his closet with his clothes hanging over her, crying until she had no more tears.

Bob Butler made weekly visits and brought her up to date on the investigation. At first these visits seemed to calm her, to take her out of these two polarized moods. With Bob Butler, she was seeking retribution. With him, she could look toward the future. Admittedly, that future only encompassed catching the asshole who ran down Chandler. But it was still a step out of lethargy and anger.

"The paint is from a blue Taurus," he told her a week or so after the funeral. They were sitting in a little cafe across from the dojo where they often met. She was in her sweats; he was wearing the same outfit he always wore, the frayed blue blazer and tan pants.

They stirred their mochas as he continued. "The good thing about it being a Taurus is, Hertz, Budget, and Avis all rent 'em. Buy 'em in bulk. If our killer rented the car, that could be a break 'cause they keep records of every rental. I'm working that angle."

"That's great, Bob," she said, trying to find some enthusiasm. There had to be thousands of blue Tauruses.

"Well, it's a lotta damn cars, but I'm gonna take that time period around the killing-the tenth through the fifteenth of April-and send an e-mail to the district headquarters of all a them companies, and ask 'em if any cars came back smashed up around those dates. Then we sort through those and check the names back."

"Do you think that will tell us who did it?" A useless, dumb question, but she asked it anyway.

"Well… might… can't never tell. They're pretty careful checking cars back in, lookin' for damage, so if it was some rental and it was dented, there'd be a record. Course maybe it ain't a rental. It could just be some civilian car, but hey, it's a place to start."

She smiled and took his hand. "Thanks," she told him.

He embarrassed easily and now he looked away. His ears, which stuck out badly, turned bright red. "It's no trouble. Least I can do, Mrs. Ellis."

"Paige," she instructed softly.

He always wanted her to call him Bob, but insisted on calling her Mrs. Ellis, almost as if he needed the formality to define the relationship. He was humble and sweet and his motives were pure. He wanted only to catch her husband's killer. She knew he was doing it for his dead wife, Althea, as much as for her. There was something very Old World and sentimental about Bible Bob Butler.

Next, he went over a list of names he had collected at the funeral. There were half a dozen people he was curious about-most of them out-of-town friends of hers and Chandler's. Somewhere toward the end he looked up and said, "What about this guy, Charles Best?"

"Chick?" she said. "What about him?"

"He said he met you guys in Hawaii less than a year ago, then he comes all the way from L. A. for the funeral:'

"Yeah?"

"Recent acquaintance seems kinda funny, is all."

"He's just a very caring person. Actually, it was sweet of him to come.

"So there was nothing strange going on there?"

For the first time since the funeral, she thought about the way Chick had wanted to help her with the probate of the estate-how he seemed almost desperate about it, and how he had pleaded with her in the parking lot of the church. It definitely seemed unusual then, but now she decided it was nothing. Everybody had been acting strangely. "He's just a good friend," she said.

Bob Butler put the list away. "Okay, then. Guess far as I can see, the killer didn't show at the funeral. Don't tell Angela Lansbury."

They sat quietly for several minutes and sipped their coffees.

"Are we really going to find out who did it?" she asked, hopefully. "'Cause with all this karate I'm taking, if you catch him, I want the first two out of three falls."

Bible Bob smiled at her as he absently stirred his mocha. The spoon clicked dully in the thick pottery mug. "Then stay in shape, Mrs. Ellis," he said softly. "'Cause I'm gonna set that meeting up for you."

I DON'T MEAN TO SOUND LIKE A WHINER, BUT THE months following Chandler's funeral were more painful for me than you can imagine. We finally found Melissa. In typical Melissa "go fuck yourself" fashion, she was sleeping under a bridge off the 134 freeway. The way we found her was, one of her whacked-out, homeless girlfriends overdosed on a spoonful of Mexican Brown, curled up in a ball, and caught the big bus. Melissa was asleep near her when the cops and the paramedics arrived to bag and tag the body, then started pulling that sad bunch of runaways out of their cardboard boxes and rolled-up blankets. There was enough space paste hidden under that off-ramp to lift the whole bridge ten feet off the ground and set it down sideways.

So we got Melissa back. Blessing, or curse? You decide. Since her court date hadn't come up yet, she technically hadn't skipped bail, but her bondsman, a tattooed, gap-toothed, ex-prizefighter named Easy Money Mahoney, told me he knew that Melissa planned to split, and that in his opinion, she had no intention of meeting her court date. If he was going to continue to hold her paper, his insurance company wanted the whole twenty grand in escrow-a no-fault bond, he called it. See how this is going? Everything was hitting me at once. So now I had to convert the last of my company IRA account to keep her out of jail. And what did I get back from Melissa in return? A lotta fucking attitude, that's what.

"They're just my friends," she snarled when I asked why she was hanging with a bunch of addicts under the bridge.

"Your 'friends' have more tracks than the Southern Pacific," I said accusingly.

"My dad, the great seventies drug guru. You got all the fucking answers, don't you?"

It went on like that. It was endless.

Melissa was just being Melissa-pissed off, making us bleed. It seemed to amuse her that I'd had to cash in our last worthwhile asset to keep her from being put back in jail. Amused Melissa-pissed-off Evelyn. There was no way to win with those two.

Speaking of Evelyn, I was seeing less and less of my scowling wife.

Here's the story on the Mr. USA Contest. Mickey D had come in fourth, and for Evelyn, that was a big deal. She got to wear his cheesy runner-up medal around the house occasionally.

"Mickey shoulda won," she'd grumbled. "It was supposed to be an all-natural show, but they only did random drug tests, so this other guy-who anybody with eyes could see was on steroids-didn't have to take a piss test, and he stole it."

Like Mickey doesn't shoot enough gym-juice to bench-press a school bus. Our daily conversations had started to become short and angry.

"Where you going?" Me.

"Out:' Her.

"When you coming back?"

"None of your damn business?'

"Could you please go to the market? There's no food." "What's wrong, Chick? Your fuckin' legs broken?"

It was cold enough in our house to go ice-skating. Occasionally, the girls from Hustler and I would sneak into the bathroom, lock the door, and check on the Bishop.

Nothing. Limp as a spruce willow.

I borrowed some Viagra from a friend of mine. He gave me two 50-mg little blue pills. He said to cut 'em in half. Of course, I ignored this advice. In my world, more is invariably better, but 50 mgs proved to be too much. In fifteen minutes, my heart was racing-fluttering like a hummingbird. It scared the shit out of me, but I sorta came up to half-mast. I sat there on the toilet looking at the sorriest erection since Michael Jackson's wedding night. But at least I wasn't hanging limp at six-thirty. Progress… kinda.