at First Sight (2008)

by Stephen Cannell

  “Police?” Chick asked, trying to look and sound confused, like, “What on earth would the police want with us?”

  “May we come in please, sir?” Apollo Demetrius asked.

  Chick nodded and stood aside. The two policemen entered his antique and crystal plush-pile foyer and stood in the entry for a minute, looking at the expensive layout. Chick could almost read their thoughts: This guy has money. He’s got lawyers on speed dial so be careful.

  “What’s this all about?” Chick asked, arranging what he hoped was a look of mild consternation on his face.

  “Is your wife Evelyn Best?” Demetrius asked.

  “Yes, she is. Why? What’s wrong?” Chick had cautioned himself not to go for the Academy Award here and overact, but he needed to show some concern and perhaps just a dash of impending fear. It’s not every day two cops show up at your front door asking about your wife. He thought he’d hit just the right note—confused, startled, but not yet overly alarmed.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Demetrius continued. “You might want to sit down.” Chick waved this off, so Demetrius went on. “Your wife was killed in what appears to be a carjacking around six-fifteen this evening. She was shot in the head behind a hair salon in Van Nuys.” These words passed over the detective’s sensuous lips like velvet bricks. Brutal information delivered as smoothly as a pickup line in a singles bar.

  “She was … she was … what?” Chick looked at them, his mouth agape. He put his hands to his face, then dropped his head into them. How little is too little? How much is too much? Don’t overdo it … Don’t underdo it. It was a hard balance to strike. Since he felt absolutely nothing, it all had to be performance. Instead of concentrating on real feelings, he was focused on behavior, which he knew might cause him to come off as emotionless and mechanical.

  He moved away from the matinee-idol detective, trying to get some distance from the man’s probing stare. He knew he was being carefully evaluated by both cops, and it made him tense. His body language seemed stiff and jerky, even to him. Then he had a sudden wave of flop-sweat. Was he already fucking this up?

  “Are you okay? Can we get you anything? Some water?” Demetrius asked.

  Chick sort of shook his head, breathing through his mouth, trying to look like he was in some kind of emotional free fall.

  “Why would anybody … ? It can’t be … Are you sure it was her?”

  “Yes. Her stylist, Edward Paul, heard the shots, identified the body, and pinned the time of death for us. He saw your wife’s murderer driving off in her car, but didn’t get a good look at the shooter. The car was just turning the corner. She was already dead in the parking lot behind his salon when he found her.”

  A strange incongruous thought flickered. Mr. Eddy’s last name was Paul … He’d never known that. So why not Mr. Paul? That was what went through his head, but he sobbed and said, “Oh … oh .. . my God … Oh … no, not Evelyn … ” Too much? Too little? He was flying blind. He was hyperaware of his every movement, like a bad actor in a high school play.

  “We have some questions,” Demetrius said. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but we need to establish where everyone was. Could you tell us where you were about six o’clock?”

  “Right here. I was right here in the house.” Trying for shock and dismay. Maybe pulling it off, maybe bungling it badly.

  “Can anybody confirm that? Was anybody here with you?”

  “Uh … no … Well, my daughter was … ” Chick paused. “I mean, she’s here.”

  “Can you get her, please?”

  So Chick got up, and with what he hoped was an anguished expression on his face, walked down the hall to his daughter’s room. The plain-looking detective followed so he could monitor what was being said. Chick found Melissa sprawled on her bed, still zonked. That girl had honed the art of sleeping to a razor’s edge. She could sleep through a cat fight, or more to the point, through a crystal meth raid.

  “Melissa, wake up,” he said, shaking her by the shoulder.

  “Lemme alone,” she growled, and rolled over, facing the other way. “Can’t I get a moment’s peace in this fucking house?”

  Great, Chick thought, let’s show this eavesdropping detective what a tight, happy little family we are.

  “Your mother has been murdered,” he said bluntly, going for maximum effect, trying to shock her into some sort of grieving response. He saw her breathing stop, saw her back freeze, then after ten seconds or so, she rolled over and looked at him.

  “Huh?” Her eyes were slits of unpleasantness, her hair a two-day nest of bad grooming. Her face glittered with metal as she studied him with sleepy, suspicious eyes.

  “Somebody carjacked her at Salono Bello. Shot her dead .. . took the Mercedes. The police are here.” He said it softly, sounding sad while at the same time trying to get the gravity of the situation across to her.

  “No shit?” she said, struggling to sit up.

  No shit was hardly the appropriate response. “Oh, my God,” or “Oh no, not Mom, please.” But Melissa’s first words were “No shit?”

  She was hopeless. But at least she was sitting up now, looking at Chick. “How the fuck?” was her next stab at communication.

  “I just told you. She was carjacked. Shot.” He plowed on. “The cops want to talk to us. Get out of bed.”

  She scowled at him. “The police? I didn’t do anything.” Then she got up, put on her robe, and stood in the darkened bedroom. “Did they also shoot that shithead, Mickey D, I hope?”

  Chick didn’t answer, but thought, Good going, Meliss. Exactly what we needed.

  The plain-looking cop retreated from his listening post in the hall as Chick led his scowling child back into the living room and made the introductions. “This is Melissa … Detective Demetrius, and Detective … what was it again … ?”

  “Watts,” said the ordinary-looking cop.

  “I already told her what happened,” Chick said, then realized that this was all becoming very matter-of-fact, so he added, “My God … my God … I still can’t believe … “just to let them know he was in major heartbreak here, in deep shock at hearing the horrible news.

  “We’re trying to establish where your father was at the time of the incident,” Demetrius said. “Can you attest to his whereabouts this evening, say, starting any time after 4 P. M.?”

  “How the fuck would I know?” Melissa said. She was scowling while looking at them, but Chick could read her like the morning paper. She was already trying to figure out what this murder would do to her life. Would it change anything? Would her credit card get frozen?

  “Your father said he was here,” Demetrius added. “Can you confirm that?”

  “I was asleep,” she scowled. “How the hell would I know?”

  It wasn’t going at all the way he’d planned. Chick thought her attitude was atrocious, and he could read shock at her behavior on both cops’ faces. But they had a job where they witnessed the worst of mankind, so they waited patiently without comment. Chick didn’t want to prod her, but Watts was writing everything down in a spiral crime book, and Chick desperately needed Melissa for his alibi, so he tried to jog her memory.

  “Wait a minute. Didn’t I come in earlier to wake you up for your date? What time was that? Do you remember?”

  “Huh?”

  At this rate, they wouldn’t even need a trial. They might as well just drag the electric chair over here and plug it in.

  Chick tried again. “Remember, I woke you up? I think it was about … “

  “Let her tell it, please,” Demetrius interrupted.

  “Okay, yeah … I guess I remember.” Melissa was snapping out of it. A look of feral shrewdness came into her eyes. “Six o’clock or six-oh-five … something like that. He came in and woke me up for my date.”

  “You’re certain?” Demetrius asked, a little disappointment creeping into those two words.

  “I said it, didn’t I? You think I’d lie?”
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  Shit, Chick thought.

  “I don’t know, Miss Best, I just met you. Your mother was murdered. You don’t seem very upset.”

  “I just woke up!”

  Chick thought it couldn’t possibly be going much worse, but that was Melissa. She hated both of them. Forgetting for the moment that he had pulled the trigger, Chick was irritated that Melissa wasn’t at all bothered that the woman who had given birth to her and raised her had just been brutally murdered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Demetrius and Watts exchange a private look.

  “Look, give me a lie detector test if you don’t believe me,” she suddenly blurted. “The cops never believe anything I say, anyway. They always think I’m lying.”

  Of course they absolutely believed her confession about the crystal meth when she was lying, but that’s another story. The idea of a polygraph test was the last thing Chick wanted to introduce into this conversation. Next thing, the cops would want him to take one too. He was hoping they’d find the Mercedes, find the gun, get Delroy’s prints off both, and solve this thing quickly, put it behind him before anybody started asking for a polygraph.

  “A lie detector test might be a very good idea,” Demetrius said. “Would you also agree to take one, Chick?” Now using his first name like they already owned him. “Just to get this part of the investigation behind us?”

  “I guess,” Chick said, thinking he’d like to strangle his daughter. But killing both members of his immediate family on the same night was probably a bit much, even for him.

  Demetrius’s cell phone rang and he answered it.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Have them call a unit from Valley impound, but don’t hook it up. Notify CSI, and get a forensics team to the site. I’ll be there in twenty.” He hung up. “We just found your wife’s car,” he said, watching Chick closely. “It was ditched up in the mountains above Glendale.”

  “Is that good?” Chick asked, trying to sound like a confused citizen who had just lost his wife and didn’t know his ass from a pound of Philadelphia cream cheese. Too much? He didn’t know—couldn’t read anything in their blank expressions.

  “The car is the crime scene,” Demetrius finally said. “It could be very important. I’ll set it up for you both to take those polygraph tests. How’s tomorrow sound?”

  “Uh … well, Thursday would be better … ,, “Why?” Demetrius asked, looking at him coldly.

  “I’m very upset right now, that’s why.”

  “We both want to catch this guy, don’t we, Chick?” Demetrius was smiling slightly, as if he’d just caught Chick in a criminal inconsistency. After a moment’s hesitation, Chick nodded.

  “Good. How ‘bout we just set it up for the first available time tomorrow, then,” the handsome detective said. Watts closed his spiral pad and both of them stood. As they walked toward the door, Demetrius spun around unexpectedly and faced Chick. “Everything between you and your wife okay, Mr. Best? No fights? No problems?”

  “No. Everything was fine.”

  “Who’s this Mickey D person your daughter just mentioned?” Watts asked.

  “That’s Mickey DePolina. He’s a family friend. Our personal trainer?’

  “Nothing going on between your wife and her trainer?” Watts persisted.

  “Of course not. Evelyn and I were very much in love.”

  Behind him, Melissa groaned theatrically. Maybe he’d throw caution to the wind and just go for the double H with these two cops as eyewitnesses.

  “I’ve already asked for a technician to come out here and give you a GSR test,” Demetrius said. “He should be along any time.”

  “A what?” Chick was confused.

  “It’s a Gunshot Residue Test. We use paraffin to check your hands for barium and antimony to establish if you’ve fired a gun recently. Don’t take it the wrong way. It’s standard procedure. We always start by eliminating family members first. We’ll hang around till he gets here:’

  “You gonna test me?” Melissa said, her eyebrow studs climbing her forehead like fishhooks in two furry caterpillars.

  Then Chick heard a car pull up out front.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Demetrius said coldly. “We’ll get back to you tomorrow.” When they opened the door, Chick saw a plain sedan parked at the curb. A lab tech got out and unloaded two boxes from his trunk.

  “We’re very sorry for your loss,” Demetrius said without much sorrow.

  “Thank you for your sympathy,” Chick said stiffly, and watched as they walked down the steps to their car, pausing to talk to the technician on the way. Chick turned and saw Melissa smiling at him.

  “Caught a real break with this carjack, didn’t ya?” his angry daughter said. “Looks like somebody went ahead and did it for you.”

  Chapter 25

  “PAIGE, I DESPERATELY NEED TO TALK TO YOU,” A MAN’S voice said, without an opening hello or even identifying himself.

  I was standing in my living room. “Who is this?” I asked, trying to pick the voice out of my memory bank of old friends.

  “It’s Chick,” he said, his voice so small, so sad, I could barely hear him.

  “Chick?” Why on earth would he be calling me at nine in the morning—six A. M. L. A. time?

  “You’re the only one I could think of to call,” he whispered. He seemed to be sobbing. Then he said, “Evelyn was murdered … carjacked. Friday night, somebody put a gun … they put a gun in her car window and then … and then they just shot her.” Another sob followed this horrible news.

  “Oh, my God, Chick … I’m so sorry.” My heart went out to him. I remembered the desolation of waking up the morning after Chandler died, knowing something was wrong. Then, as the memories returned, having to come to grips with his death all over again.

  “These first days are the toughest, the absolute worst,” I said. “Waking up to the loss each morning, it’s impossible. I know exactly what you’re going through, Chick.”

  “Nobody else understands. Nobody I know has been through this, except you.”

  He sounded devastated. Lost and broken. I took a breath and tried to come up with the best way to handle this.

  “Do you want to talk? Would it help if we spent some time right now and talked about your feelings?” I didn’t quite know what the best form of therapy might be. We shared an almost identical tragedy, but I didn’t know Chick and Evelyn that well so I wasn’t sure I should be spewing out a bunch of helpful hints with no intellectual perspective.

  “Evelyn really loved you, Paige:” he suddenly said unexpectedly.

  “That’s so sweet:’ I answered. But what I was thinking was, how could that be? We barely knew one another. I’d always felt there was something strange and sort of self-absorbed about Evelyn Best.

  “We had so much together:” Chick was saying. “Evelyn and I always knew what the other was feeling. She knew what I was thinking even before I would say it. I can’t believe she’s not here, not with me anymore?’ A sob followed this, then he went on, “And the way she was with Melissa … such a wonderful mother.”

  “I don’t mean to start giving a lot of unsolicited advice, Chick, but if I were you, I’d make sure that Melissa talks to someone. Children deal with these things in different ways from adults. You don’t want her to bury it. Her emotions over this need to come out.”

  “You mean, like a psychiatrist?”

  “A psychiatrist or even a good friend who she trusts and will open up to. Somebody to help her get in touch with her feelings?’

  “I just … I just … ” and he stopped.

  You just what?”

  “I just … I wanted … “

  “Whatever you want, I’m there, Chick:’

  “It’s not fair,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “It’s too much to ask.”

  “If you don’t tell me, we’ll never know. What is it, Chick?” “I want … what I want is to talk to you.”

  “You can call me anytime. We could even have a set tim
e, a phone schedule, and talk every day.”

  “I was hoping … What I wanted is … I wanted to see you.” “You mean you want me to come out there?” Thinking, My God, is he serious? Fly out to L. A.?

  “I shouldn’t ask you to do that, should I?” His voice seemed to recoil, as if I had just physically hurt him. Suddenly my response seemed horribly selfish. And then a strange thing happened. I got angry at myself. I had just spent seven months trying to muddle through Chandler’s death. I had relied heavily on my friends to get me through.

  Chick had even flown back here for Chan’s funeral. Why was I looking for a way to duck this?

  “If you want me there, I’ll come:” I finally offered.

  “That’s stupid, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s too much to ask.”

  “Nonsense.” This time I put a little more oomph into it.

  “I … the police are still investigating,” he said. “They found her car up in the mountains last night. They say the killer stripped it, took the radio—the air bags—stuff like that. I think they found the gun, too. At least, that’s what they said on the news. It’s strange … The police lab people did some tests here Friday night, but they haven’t talked to me since.”

  “Tests?”

  “They said it was a formality. A Gunshot Residue Test to see if I’d fired a gun recently.”

  “Oh my God, Chick, that’s horrible. You mean they’re treating you like a suspect?”

  “They told me it’s routine—that they always try and eliminate the immediate family first. But I passed and Melissa was with me during the time of the killing so I don’t think they really suspect me. It’s just hard to go through it, is all. I was hardly in a mood for any of that last night … Last night I just wanted to curl up and die.”

  “That’s absolutely unbelievable that they would treat you that way on the night she was killed:’ I said. But then I remembered the meeting at the station the day after Chandler died, when Bob Butler had asked me about any possible trouble in our marriage—if Chandler had any girlfriends or affairs. I remembered how furious I’d become, asking him for a lie detector test after telling him to go fuck himself. So the fact is, Bob Butler had checked me out just like the L. A. cops were checking out Chick. Bob had said he owed it to Chandler. Speaking for the dead, he’d called it.