Through all of this, I slowly began to form a different opinion of my father. More and more, I’ve come to realize that Dad was just a loser with a great line of b.s. A guy who nobody listened to except sleazy women and a son who had nobody else. So, the hero of my youth slowly became an emotional stone around my neck. As an adult, I came to hate what he stood for and prayed I wouldn’t end up the same way. I actually threw away my two checkered sport coats the day this realization finally dawned.
I grew up with no real male role models—nobody to try to be like. So whom did I eventually choose? Pop culture assholes. The celebrities in People magazine. First, it was drugculture rock bands, then investment sleaze balls like Ivan Boesky and John Delorean. I lusted after all the things that the product machines on Madison Avenue told me were cool. I didn’t like who I was, so I bought everything these false prophets and culture hucksters told me would validate me. I blew money on exotic cars, dressed out of GQ, put almost a quarter of a million dollars into the sound system in an office so large you could use it to play half-court basketball. I married a woman other people wanted to fuck. She gave great blow jobs but had thoughts so thin they disappeared completely in a flurry of demands, complaints, and recriminations.
The age-old loser questions started waking me up at night.
How did I get here?
What do I really want?
Why am I so damn unhappy?
And then the big, scary ones: Am I turning into my father? Is that why nobody takes me seriously?
These were the things I was thinking as I pushed the little blue Taurus south out of the sleet of New York City, onto the cracked, dry roads of Virginia, heading nowhere special, not knowing where I was going until I got there.
I drove all afternoon, into the night, my mind elsewhere, yearning for something I was unable to even describe.
You’ll never guess where I ended up. Or, maybe you already have.
I ended up in front of Paige Ellis’s house on a residential street in Charlotte, North Carolina.
It was 10 P.M. on the night my whole life changed.
CHAPTER 9
THE HOUSE WAS SMALL, WITH A TINY FRONT LAWN. It was not the kind of place you’d expect to find the scion of the Chandler media fortune, certainly not a house I would choose if I had his money. I was parked a little way up the street. The address, written down so carefully in Hawaii, was open now on my lap. The letters, in her delicate hand, were wavering under my blurring vision.
2367 LIPTON ROAD, CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
I looked at the house and I remember saying out loud, “Chick, this is nuts.” Of course it was way beyond nuts. This was real, hardcore, front-of-the-line stalker nonsense.
I had driven more than six hundred miles to park outside another man’s house, so I could look into his lighted living room, hoping to catch a glimpse of his wife as she passed by the window. Unacceptable.
It was as if just letting the vision of her find its way into my brain might salve the pain of these past few days—of Melissa in jail, my sorry business going bankrupt, and the dwarf in the shiny pants with the hair growing out of his ears.
I watched. I waited. What was I doing? I swear, at that moment I didn’t have a clue. I wanted to start up the blue Taurus and leave, but I couldn’t move my hand to the ignition key. Every time I tried, I hit some sort of powerful force field. My fingers hovered inches away, unable to make contact and close the distance, which would have saved me.
I don’t know how long I sat there. My thoughts were becoming pretty jumbled … pretty abstract. I thought about my dad, my wife. The first time I saw Evelyn at Mike Donovan’s pool party. I thought she was beautiful then, never seeing the woman she would become. Not seeing the anger or the self-hatred that now drove her to pump iron obsessively for hours in our basement gym. I thought about Paige and Chandler Ellis and this little house so far away from L.A. I thought about the insanity of this trip down here, not knowing until I pulled the address out of my pocket what I was really doing, but then knowing in a flash that it had been my plan to come here all along.
That realization, that truth, hit me harder than any of the events of the past month. I knew this was insane, and still I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t put the little car in gear and save myself, because, you see, I knew that no matter what happened to me, whether I stayed or left, I would never again be the same Chick Best. Somehow, I knew right then that my coming here had changed who I was forever.
I didn’t need some Beverly Hills therapist to explain that, either. The trip here had convinced me I had lost control. My love for Paige Ellis had morphed into an uncontrollable obsession.
That’s when the door opened and Chandler Ellis walked out of his house. At first I thought he was going to the mailbox. But instead, he walked to the green Suburban parked in the driveway, got in, started the vehicle, and backed out.
I ducked down as his headlights swept over my car. Then I sat up, and without knowing what the hell I was doing, I started the Taurus.
I followed him.
Why did I follow him? I’ve asked myself that question at least a thousand times since all this happened. I wanted to see Paige. I came all this way to maybe find a way to talk to her. So why was I following Chandler? I didn’t know. I couldn’t answer that, except to say some psychic force had taken control and was driving me.
At any rate, my mind reeled with questions. What was Chandler doing, leaving his house at eleven in the evening? Where was he going? Did he have a girlfriend stashed across town? Was he cheating on Paige? Was he so stupid that he didn’t know he was married to the most desirable woman on earth? What would happen if I caught him with another woman in some cheap motel someplace? What if I found him screwing his brains out? How would I deal with it?
These were some of my fantasies as I followed him. Of course, the answer to that last one was I’d have to tell her. I couldn’t let somebody as sweet and trusting as Paige live unknowingly with a sleazy adulterer. Well, I couldn’t, could I?
I was thinking I should try to buy a camera and get some pictures—evidence. And then Chandler pulled the Suburban into a shopping center. It was now almost eleven-fifteen and most of the stores were closed, but the Safeway and a Walgreens were still open. Both were throwing neon light deep into the late-night deserted parking lot.
I pulled around to the side to stay out of sight. For some reason, Chandler didn’t park out front, but drove through the parking lot and finally pulled the Suburban around to the same side of the store where I was and parked. I was only ten or fifteen yards away, still in the driving lane. My mind whirled. What should I do? Should I wait? Should I leave?
Without looking at my car, Chandler walked into the drugstore. I stared dumbly at his Suburban. Then I put my rented Taurus in Park with the engine still running. I tried to come to grips with all this.
“Chick, get the fuck out of here,” I said out loud to myself. But I remind you, I was not in control, unable to change the course of these events. I was lost, as if some unknown power was setting up this maze and forcing me to run through it. So then who was in control here? Who was making up the rules of this game? Not me—at least that’s what I told myself.
And then, for a fleeting moment, sanity returned. I knew I had to get the hell outta there. I knew I had to get away before he saw me.
My willpower surged.
I grabbed the gearshift to put the car in Drive, but as this first sane thought in hours hit me, everything changed. It happened so fast I didn’t even see it coming.
I still don’t quite understand it. I mean, I know the physics. The chronology. It’s the psychology that baffles me.
At the very instant I gained control of myself and reached for the shift knob, Chandler came out the back door of the drugstore carrying a small bag from the pharmacy. He saw my headlights, saw that I had sort of blocked his exit. He started to come toward me, waving for me to back up. In a few seconds he would see me. How could I explain my appea
rance here to him?
What would I say if he recognized me? “Hey Chandler, whatta you doing here? Small world, right?” He would never go for that. Some coincidences defy explanation and I knew this was one of them. There was no way I could explain this. No way. Or at least that’s what I was convinced of at that moment.
He was still walking toward me, gesturing, so I slammed the rental into Reverse and hit the gas.
But I was in the wrong gear and the car lunged forward, not backward. It struck Chandler hard, knocking him down. The front headlight broke and the car shuddered from the impact. Before I could take my foot off the gas, I ran right over him. I heard him scream. I felt the wheels roll over his chest; bouncing the Taurus like a speed bump.
I slammed on the brakes, opened the door, jumped out, and ran around to see. He was lying under the car just in front of the rear tires. Only his head protruded from underneath. He was barely breathing. Blood had already started coming out of his mouth. The bag of medicine he’d been carrying was strewn on the pavement. I remember looking down. I read the label:
PAIGE ELLIS:
DARVOCET for pain.
One tablet every four hours.
Funny, how in a time of extreme crisis, something unimportant and stupid like that registers.
“Help me!” he croaked, his eyes bright but desperate.
Then he recognized me.
A strange look of clarity passed across his face. “Chick?” he whispered.
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. And then he started to choke on his own blood. It was oozing out of his mouth, oozing around my feet. I jumped back to keep it off my hand-sewn Spanish loafers.
“Chick … help … ” It was such a low whisper—a moan actually—that I couldn’t even be sure he’d said those exact words.
I ran back to the driver’s side, jumped into the car, and—God help me—I put it in Drive and inched forward to run over him again, parking the rear wheel on his chest for almost a full minute before pulling off.
Then I got out, ran around the car, and looked down at him again. His eyes were open, but they were no longer bright. They were lifeless—shiny, but vacant. Dark and cold as an empty house.
I’d never seen a dead man before, but it was obvious to me that’s what he was.
My survival instincts took over. I looked around the empty parking lot for a witness.
Nobody. At least I didn’t see anyone.
I climbed into the car and squealed out of the lot.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit, oh shit,” I moaned, my thoughts a blur as they kaleidoscoped across the event.
I drove for a mile, then pulled over, leaned out, and threw up into the street. I couldn’t even begin to get my mind around it.
I didn’t know how all this had happened or why. Didn’t have a clue.
Had I driven all the way down here just to kill Chandler Ellis, never admitting to myself that was what I was going to do until I did it? Is that why I followed Chandler instead of staying out in front of their house to watch Paige through the window? Did I plan to murder him all along? Did I hit Drive instead of Reverse by mistake, or did I do it on purpose?
You see now why I’m writing all this down. You see why I’m so confused.
I didn’t have a clue. I still don’t.
But read on. It only gets worse.
CHAPTER 10
WHEN I WAS SEVEN, MY GRANDMOTHER USED TO drag me to church every Sunday, and after the service she’d make me sit through Sunday school. Even then biblical stories seemed a bit like comic books in their simplicity. I was always bored out of my gourd. Complete waste of time. Almost none of it stuck, but I do remember a few odd religious facts. For instance, Proverbs 27:4 teaches that “Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous, but who can stand before envy?” Damn good question, especially in light of what just happened.
I had envied Chandler Ellis, envied him for his looks and his money and for the fact that he seemed to reject all of the meaningless things that in my conscious mind I knew were unimportant, but that seemed to dominate me viscerally. I had spent my life lusting after nonsense. Power symbols like a large house in the status-heavy six hundred block of Elm, or important friends, expensive cars, designer clothes, and gaudy accessories. I had a wife with a killer body, who, I admit, I had long ago tired of making love to, but who still turned heads. It was enough for me that other men lusted for her. She was a sexual benchmark attesting to my powers in the bedroom. Being married to a body like that gave me status on the West L.A. cock exchange—identified me as a world-class swordsman. But all these symbols of success, power, and sexual prowess still failed to satisfy me or give me a moment of inner peace.
I wanted to be envied for my status symbols, and sometimes, I was. But even when I saw envy in the eyes of others, it wasn’t enough. It felt empty because there were always guys like Chandler Ellis, who had more and seemed to care about it less. I envied him because he seemed to fit so tightly inside his skin, comfortable and full of grace, while I wore my hide like one of my dad’s garish sport coats.
But most of all, I envied his relationship with his wife. I envied the way Paige looked at him when she held his hand. Envied that look of love and adoring devotion that she focused on him every time he spoke. So what happened may not be entirely my fault, at least not if you believe the Bible. Maybe I really couldn’t help myself, because as Proverbs clearly states, “Who can stand before envy?”
I no longer envied Chandler Ellis. Instead, I’d killed him. Turned him into Charlotte, North Carolina’s latest hit-and-run statistic. And I’d accomplished this in a split second without even knowing I was doing it. Then I ran over him a second time, making sure the job was finished, destroying any chance I had of deluding myself later that I had done it by mistake.
But hold it. Let’s throw a flag at that for a minute. Maybe there is another side to all of this. Maybe there’s a sliver of emotional salvation hiding in this human tragedy.
Let’s accept, for the moment, the pure insanity of driving six hundred miles to get here just so I could look at another man’s wife through his living-room window. Maybe once I’d followed Chandler to that drugstore and he’d started toward me in the parking lot, I’d had no other course of action. Up till then, I had used bad judgment, but had committed no crime. Once he advanced on me, waving his arms in a threatening way, maybe then I had simply panicked, reacted … hit the wrong gear by mistake and run him down. After all, it was a rental car. I was unfamiliar with the gearbox. Maybe I had acted out of pure self-preservation. Maybe I had accidentally hit him, then realized that there was no explanation for my being in Charlotte. Knowing I would be an immediate suspect in a vehicular assault, maybe then and only then had certain brain synapses, bred into me by thousands of years of natural selection and Homo sapiens survival instincts, kicked in. I had done the only thing left to do under the circumstances. Back up, park on his chest, and finish the job, ending any chance for his survival. Kill or be killed. Law of the jungle, primal and pure.
On the surface, I liked this second scenario a hell of a lot better than the first, but I didn’t trust it. I knew it was bullshit—a cheap rationalization for murder. But in those first moments of fear and confusion after I left the parking lot, I clung to that rationale like a man clinging to the side of a life raft. I was in a swirl of white water, wallowing and swallowing, adrift in a confusing storm of emotions.
The first hour after I ran Chandler Ellis down was pretty much time lost. The best way to describe it is to say it was reminiscent of one of my old interplanetary drug hazes back when I was ghost-busting on acid. I was in a daze, my reality strobing and morphing into shapes, sounds, and colors I didn’t recognize at the time or remember well later. All the while, I was driving the damn Taurus. Miraculously, I didn’t hit anybody else. My mind was elsewhere, skipping over facts, landing on half-truths, bouncing and flying like a flat stone hurled against the tide.
And then I found myself sitting in the car park
ed next to a shimmering lake. I didn’t know its name, or the time, or even where the fuck I was … somewhere near the Township of Salisbury, still in North Carolina, I think. A full moon lit the water. My head was throbbing; my neck and shoulders ached from having clutched the wheel in a vice grip for almost two hours. My whirling mind began to slow and I grabbed for it, trying to regain control, but only managed to hold my turbulent thoughts for a second before they snapped loose, spinning off wildly again. Like sparks flying off a miller’s wheel, tiny particles of reason finally floated down and landed around me.
Had anybody seen me do it? Somebody in the market? A drunk lying in the shadows? But before I could focus on these questions, my thoughts were spinning again, catapulting over broken memories and the verses of old songs, which I chanted mindlessly as I sat there.
Then another grab for sanity. The car. Was Chandler’s blood on the car? As that lucid, worthwhile question lingered, I suddenly heard myself chanting, “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” as if the Supreme Deity would have anything to do with me now.
Once more I grabbed. This time I managed to hold my tortured thoughts.
I locked onto something important. Tire treads.
I remembered a documentary I saw on A&E dealing with the new forensic science being employed by police departments. Investigators could trace a car using tire tracks. They could make random pattern matches. Isolate something called “unique identifiers.” They could graph the imperfections in the tire tread and scan them into a computer. If they found the car, they could match the tire tread to the unique identifiers found at the crime scene.
There was also something called “paint fragment analysis.” Tiny paint particles, so small you couldn’t see them, could be left on skin or clothes. They could retrieve dustsized samples from Chandler’s body and tell what color and make of car the paint came from. I was starting to panic again.
At First Sight Page 6
