Stephen Cannell - At First Sight

I'VE PRETTY MUCH SPENT MY ENTIRE LIFE BEING WHAT other people wanted. First, it was my loser father. Then I was forced to endure that hen party with my mother and grandmother. I've tried to fit in. Tried to belong. I've joined clubs full of people who bored me, brown-nosed people who, if they weren't socially or corporately important, I probably wouldn't have wasted a bullet on. My life was ordered by the stringent guidelines and demands of others.

And what had come of all this endless ass-kissing? Disaster, that's what. I had a personal balance-sheet that resembled the crater on Mount St. Helens and a dead wife who mocked me from the grave, the memory of her coarse insults bubbling relentlessly in my subconscious. I had an angry daughter I'd come to hate, and a business career that was like nine miles of dirt road.

The only thing I'd asked for in my crummy life, the only perk, if you will, that I had applied for, was just a little happiness in the arms of this one woman. I had fantasized over her. I had even killed for her. And what did this contribution to my own madness produce? Nothing. It produced not one damn useful thing, except an ever-widening circle of rage.

So here she was, standing before me like a crazed kamikazi, armed with the broken stem of a fucking hundred-dollar Venetian crystal goblet, ready to unzip my ass with its jagged point. You see what I'm saying? When the hell is Chick Best gonna catch a fucking break? When's the Chickster gonna get a little TLC?

And then, next comes this bullshit letter from Bob Butler, accusing me of murder. My instincts on that toothpick-chewing Carolina hayseed had been right on target. He'd sniffed around until he'd finally found the auto body shop, and then written Paige that I was the one who'd run Chandler down.

I had lusted after this silly woman, my nose filled with her scent from the first moment I'd seen her. Then just when I was on the one-yard line, I lost everything.

She was my fantasy. But if I let her get out of here now, knowing what she knew, she would destroy me. I needed to finish this and make a run for Mexico before Bob Butler caught up to me.

My new absurd reality was I'd become a hostage to events. To this woman who was too fucking stupid to realize what she was throwing away.

I tried one last time. I stood there while she screamed at me. I tried to make her understand that she completed me. But to be perfectly truthful, I don't know if she really did or not. Maybe I just needed to possess her, like every other damn thing I'd ever lusted after, then collected, and eventually thrown away. She was the ultimate trophy, but now I had to destroy her before she could destroy me.

Then while I was evaluating this fucked-up dilemma, she kicked me right in the balls. That was it. That was the last straw. There's only so much shit I'm prepared to take.

She bolted out the door, and without thinking, I grabbed the deer rifle and took off after her.

"Get your ass back in here!" I screamed.

I blundered out onto the porch, saw her clambering up the hill through a foot of fresh snow. 1 put the deer rifle to my shoulder and fired a warning shot, intentionally aiming high and snapping off a tree limb. You see, despite my rage, I didn't want to kill her. At least, not yet.

Somewhere back in the reptilian part of my brain that services my need to reproduce, I still thought I might be able to talk sense into her and put this mess back together. Am I so repulsive that there was no set of conditions that would cause her to reconsider? I still had a shred of hope. It fluttered bravely, a torn fragment of my Hawaiian fantasy.

"Come back! We can work this out!" I shouted.

But she kept scrambling up the hill, her snow-wet shirt sticking to her back.

"You fucking bitch! Come back here, now!" I roared and fired again, this time trying to wound her. But the second shot was rushed. I heard the bullet snapping limbs before it thunked into a tree trunk. She was fifty yards away, disappearing in a blizzard of snowflakes. I had to stop her. Had to keep her from getting to a neighbor for help.

I could still make a run for it, but if she called 911 and the sheriff came after me, with only one road down the mountain, I'd never get away.

If she went north she might get to the Mitchells' place, so I fired again, aiming blindly, because I had now completely lost sight of her in the snowstorm.

"You come back here!" I screamed again.

But she was gone. Somewhere up on the hill by the side of the house. She was running for her life with my destruction her only goal.

THE SECOND BULLET CLIPPED A BRANCH RIGHT OVER my head.

I could barely see-my eyes watered with melting snow. A branch scratched me badly under my right eye, spinning me around. I ignored the pain and kept going. I was in great shape from hours of marathon training, but the air was thin up here and as I ran uphill in the heavy snow my lungs were beginning to heave.

Chick was out of shape and I didn't think he could keep up. However, I was wearing only a light shirt, cotton slacks, and flats. The snow was already coming in over the tops of my shoes, and I knew that once I stopped running and my body started cooling, I stood a good chance of getting hypothermia.

I paused and turned to look back. When I did, I saw I had another, much more immediate problem than just freezing to death…

I was leaving a trail of easy-to-follow footprints in the fresh snow. Chick didn't have to run very fast to catch me. He could simply follow my tracks and stalk me with that deer rifle until I fell or froze. Unless I could find help fast, I was going to lose.

I paused every so often, holding my breath to listen. I could hear him somewhere down the hill, kicking an occasional boulder with those steel-toed cowboy boots. How far back was he? I didn't know. How far does sound carry in a snow-filled night? You got me… All I knew was he was hunting me with a rifle, and if I didn't keep moving, I was dead.

I started off again, climbing higher up the slope. The wind whipped my wet shirt, my jaw clamped against the cold. My body was beginning to shiver.

Then I heard him. "Paige! I don't want to kill you, but I will if I have to. If you come back, we can work something out."

Right. All we have to get past is two fucking murders.

His voice sounded like he was further away than I'd first thought. Even so, I knew I couldn't rest, I had to keep going. I finally realized that my best chance wasn't to keep climbing, but to double back and head down to the road. Maybe I could try and flag down a passing car or find another house. If I got to the road I could move away from here faster on the flat grade than I could by climbing this thirty-degree slope.

I traversed several hundred yards to my left before beginning my descent. I was trying to maintain a parallel course to the one I'd used on the climb up. I went slower, trying to be very quiet, because I knew that somewhere along the way I would pass Chick coming up. However, each time I stopped to listen, I heard nothing but the rustling of falling snow in the treetops. I had no idea where he might be.

Finally the rate of descent lessened and I was back at Chick's driveway about a quarter of a mile from his house. I crouched low, my own breath and heartbeat thundering in my ears. My teeth were chattering so badly that I couldn't hear anything else. I couldn't just wait here. I would freeze to death. I stood, and hugging the tree line next to the drive, headed down toward Interstate 38.

The snow was in my hair, falling in giant flakes on my face, melting and running down my back, chilling me to the bone. My shoes and feet felt like blocks of ice. Every hundred paces, I started running again to get my circulation and body temperature up.