Stephen Cannell - At First Sight

"I loved you," Chick was saying, "but I can't go to jail. I can't pay for all this?'

He raised the rifle and pointed it at me.

Without thinking, I lunged and grabbed for the gun with numb fingers. We struggled on the edge of the cliff. I yanked on the barrel, pulling the rifle toward me. The muzzle ended up buried in my stomach. Call it luck or fate, but for some reason the gun didn't fire. I shoved it aside. Chick and I fought on silently, two or three feet from the lip of the ravine.

With no feeling in my arms and legs, I wasn't doing much damage. But I managed to hang onto the gun, trying without luck to pull it out of his hands. I could smell his hot, sour breath on my cheek as we fought for control. But I was weakening rapidly. I was losing.

He finally wrested the rifle from my grasp and pushed me down at his feet. It was finally over. I had nothing left.

Then I heard the gun cock… the sharp ringing sound of steel against steel. Time slowed. I waited for him to fire. Waited for the end.

But Chandler wasn't finished. He wouldn't leave me alone. "You can still win! Do it now, Paige. Do it!"

Somehow, with strength I didn't know I had, I lunged at Chick, rolling and twisting as I dove, trying desperately to take his legs out from under him. At first it was like crashing up against two solid tree trunks. He didn't move at all. But then I sensed him tipping. His knees buckled and he fell forward over my body, landing on my ribcage. Pain shot through me.

Suddenly, Chick let out a panicked shriek and I felt him roll over my back. He hit the ground on the far side of me and I heard the snow crunch as he began to tumble. I was too spent to get to my feet or even look, but I heard him scream-loudly at first-but slowly the sound fell away from me until it stopped abruptly with a distant thud.

I struggled to get my arms under me, but nothing would work. Total numbness. I couldn't feel any of my extremities.

I finally managed to get into a sitting position and pulled myself to the edge of the cliff. There, fifty feet below, lit by a sliver of intermittent moonlight, I saw him. His arms and legs were sprawled out at bizarre angles. Chick had landed on a small ledge that stopped his fall halfway to the bottom. I couldn't tell if he was alive or dead.

"Chick?" I called out.

He didn't answer.

I knew I had to get on that snowmobile and get the hell out of there before hypothermia shut me down completely. I dragged myself over to the red Yamaha and tried to climb on. At first, I couldn't even pull myself up onto the seat, but I finally managed to roll onto the saddle and fumbled for the key, which was thankfully still in the ignition. Just then, I thought I heard a faint voice calling to me from far away.

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was really him, or the wind, or just my imagination. Should I go back? As it was, I'd be lucky to get to the cabin before I froze to death. If he was alive, the only way I could help him was to call mountain rescue, get somebody out here who could rappel down with a stretcher and get him off that cliff.

Then I heard him again. His plaintive wail was clear in the still night. "Paige! Paige, please don't leave me! I still love you!"

Right. I struggled to turn the ignition key. The snowmobile coughed to life. I pressed the hand throttle slowly, afraid my numb fingers would not work properly and I'd shoot the Yamaha out over the edge and fall to my own death. But it finally started moving. I managed a U-turn and headed back the way I'd come, leaving Chick behind.

Half a mile down Highway 38 I saw a snowplow approaching, its headlights cutting holes in the curtain of snow. I pulled alongside and told the man behind the wheel my problem. He helped me into the cab where it was warm. Then he bundled a blanket around me and radioed for help. I knew it was going to be up to me to lead the rescue team back to the spot where Chick was stranded.

An hour later, Emergency Services hoisted that sorry son-of-abitch up off the ledge where he had landed. Two broken legs, a broken right arm, a crushed elbow, and two fractured ribs. As they rushed him to the hospital he was howling in pain.

Not long after that I was sitting at the Bear Mountain Lodge in front of a fire, with my hands and feet wrapped in bandages. The paramedics assured me I wouldn't lose any fingers or toes.

I was celebrating that fact with a blended scotch when Bob Butler walked in along with LAPD detective Apollo Demetrius. When he wasn't able to reach me, Bob had called Chandler's parents, who told him where I was. He had arrived only four hours late. Not bad. If I'd played my hand more carefully and not foolishly let Chick see his letter, Bob might have actually made it up there in time to save me.

My sad, dogged detective just looked at me with those friendly gray eyes and carefully held my bandaged hand. He was my real hero in all this. He never gave up. He had finally proven that Chick Best killed Chandler. It had taken him more than half a year working weekends and nights, but Bob Butler solved my husband's murder, just like he promised he would. Between the two of us, we now had enough evidence to prove it.

A few days later in L. A., Chick confessed to Evelyn's murder as well. His status-heavy Cavalli jeans had been trumped by an orange prison jumpsuit.

The story went wide. All the national news outlets picked it up. "Killer of Chandler Heir Arrested."

Two weeks later Chick finally got his feature story in People Magazine.

He made the cover.

What is it they always say about real estate? It's Location-Location-Location.

That fact has come crashing home as I sit in my new residence, an eighteen-by-eighteen-foot square box on Death Row at California's Pelican Bay Prison.

The house on Elm had status. It had views of my perfectly landscaped yard. This little box I'm currently residing in has almost no view. The corridor that runs by my cell is less than inspiring. Concrete walls and two colored lines on the floor. The red line leads to the exercise yard, where I rarely go. The green marks what is known around here as The Last Mile. It's not a mile, however; it's more like fifty feet, but you get the idea. It leads to the execution chamber.

While the vistas in this place are far from great, the status attached to being a condemned man is a fucking head trip. They treat you like a celebrity, which I guess I finally am. My time is short now. I have only a few days.

This morning I went for my last physical, because for some reason, the state of California doesn't want to kill me and then find out I have a toenail infection or bleeding hemorrhoids. All the way to my physical and back, the guards called out, "Dead man walking:' which is a hell of a lot more respect than I got at bestmarket. Com, where I actually was a dead man walking, but nobody had the decency to tell me until it was too late.

I'm sure after reading this, you fully realize that women have always been a huge problem for me, and the events of this journal plainly attest to that fact. I wouldn't be here in the first place if it weren't for a woman. Or two women, if you count Evelyn. Three, if you want to add in Melissa, who, by the way, is no longer a Best. She's a Sheridan now, taking her mother's maiden name.

I always wanted to impress women, and for most of my life, that need only produced a lot of disappointments, along with an occasional head slap.

But now that I can't do anything about it, I'm finally a big deal on the cock market. I get tons of mail from lonely, half-crazed females who want to talk to me. They want to hold my hand. They fantasize about having sex with me. Last week I got two proposals of marriage.

Who are these women? Are they hopeless losers, or is there perhaps a Twinkie cupcake or two in the mix? I've been writing them all back asking for pictures. Most, as you might expect, look like basketballs with ears, but some are what could be loosely described as normal-looking women. They write that they are lonely and want to add some excitement to their otherwise dull lives. The fantasy of screwing a serial killer seems to be just what they're after.