At First Sight

by Stephen J. Cannell

  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.

  Oh yeah, that’s what they call me now. According to the press I’m a serial killer. I looked that term up on the FBI website from the prison library. Technically, in order to qualify for that designation you have to kill three people. I only killed two, with a failed attempt on Paige, but the press, never ones to stand on technicalities, has dubbed me with the label anyway. Status and respect being my Achilles’ heel, I’ve gone along with it because, as I said, being a serial killer makes me pretty damn special around here.

  I’m trying to get ready to walk that last mile. Trying to get my courage up. But I really don’t want to die. I still think there ought to be a way to cut a deal here. After all, looking at the two deaths I’m responsible for proportionally is almost nothing when compared with the ten people who died yesterday in California traffic accidents, or the hundreds last year in Iraq. Do I really need to shed blood over Chandler Ellis, who was a Boy Scout and a twit, or Evelyn, who was an adulterous whore?

  I’m still praying for a reprieve from the governor, but if you saw our governor greasing off carloads of assholes without a second thought in those Terminator movies, you know there probably isn’t much hope.

  After coming to the end of this journal you maybe wondering how I currently feel about Paige Ellis.

  The truth is, I no longer feel anything. As a matter of fact, since the trial, I can barely remember what she looks like. I called her my goddess. I said she was put on earth to complete me, but now I think she was just a phase I went through to stifle my endless bouts with self-loathing and boredom.

  So here I sit on my metal bunk with my asshole puckered, waiting for my final stroll. I’ve been told that my execution viewing chamber is sold out. Standing-room only. So, in death, I’m finally a hit. I’m going to try to go out like a starker, live up to my new bad-ass “serial killer” label. But something tells me when they roll up my sleeves and insert the needle, I’m going to snivel and whine, just like always.

  We’ll find out in two more days. I guess that’s it. That’s the whole enchilada. I’ve written my last page and it’s time for my afternoon meeting with the prison chaplain, because, strange as it sounds, I’ve at long last found Jesus. I know, I know, pretty transparent and pathetic. I’m sure St. Peter won’t be standing at the pearly gates with my white robe, wings, and a map of the celestial grounds.

  But you never know. As P. T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” A sentiment my bullshitting father certainly always endorsed.

  And who knows? Maybe I’ll get a few points for chutzpa.

  CHAPTER 46

  PAIGE

  THE DAY CHICK WAS SCHEDULED TO DIE IT WAS rainy and cold in Los Angeles. I’d moved here four years ago to run Chandler’s foundation. I had fifteen people working for me and was well into my new life. I was happy, or at least as happy as I allowed myself to be.

  I woke up that morning feeling angry. I was angry because Chick’s death was the final chapter of the worst event of my life, and I knew that no matter how hard I tried to deny it, this would be a day of vengeance for me. I wanted Chick to die for what he did. I hated myself for it, but I had lost so much, it was hard for me not to be vengeful.

  I tried not to watch television, but I was drawn to it. Finally, I was sitting in front of the tube, channel surfing, hunting for stories about Chick’s upcoming execution. On several of the newscasts, there was B-roll of him being led down a prison corridor. He had lost weight. He looked stoic. His eyes never came up toward the camera.

  All day, I listened for Chandler’s voice. Maybe he would reach out and find a way to talk to me today, the way he had at the hotel or on the cliff in Big Bear. Maybe he could ease all of this, take away my thirst for revenge, cut through all this self-destructive anger. I waited patiently, but his voice never came. He never whispered in my ear, never told me what to do.

  I heard from Robert Butler instead. It was a card. On the front there was a yellow bird sitting on a tree limb with an olive branch in its mouth. Inside, it said:GET WELL

  Under that, he had written in his neat, careful hand:

  Avenge not yourselves,

  but rather give place unto wrath:

  for it is written, Vengeance is mine;

  I will repay, saith the Lord.

  Romans 12:19

  From Stephen J. Cannell’s

  forthcoming novel, The Pallbearers,

  available Winter 2010

  THE PALLBEARERS

  A Shane Scully Novel

  By Stephen J. Cannell

  THEN

  CHAPTER 1

  IN 1976 AMERICA WAS JUST COMING OUT OF A depression called the Vietnam War, but back then I was still deep in the middle of mine. I was twelve years old, and boy, was I pissed.

  It was early in May on that particular spring morning and I was huddled with some other children on Sunset Beach around 25th Street. We were staring out through a pre-dawn mist at the gray Pacific Ocean while consulting Walter Dix’s old surf watch to time the AWP—the Average Wave Period of the incoming swells. Walt called swells “the Steeps.”

  The beach we were on was about fifteen miles from the Huntington House Group Home, which was in a rundown neighborhood in Harbor City a few minutes southeast of Carson. Excluding Walt, there were four of us, all gathered around him wearing beaver-tail wetsuits with the ’70s-style long flap that wrapped around under your crotch and left your legs uncovered. We were his lifers. The yo-yos. The kids who kept getting thrown back. We all knew we would probably never get another chance at a foster family or adoption because we were too ugly or too flawed, or we had lousy county packages, having already been chosen too many times and then returned with bad write-ups.

  But there were other reasons we didn’t make it. We were an angry group. I held the Huntington House catch and release record, having just been sent back for the fifth time. My last foster family had called me incorrigible, unmanageable, and a liar. Probably all pretty accurate classifications.

  The four of us had been specifically chosen for different reasons by Walter Dix for that morning’s sunrise surf patrol. Of course we had all desperately wanted to be picked, but it wasn’t lost on any of us that we’d earned the selection because of a variety of recent setbacks. Walt, who everyone called Pop, understood that even though we’d failed, it didn’t mean we were failures. He also understood our anger, even if nobody else did. Pop was the executive director of Huntington House and was the closest thing to a father I’d ever known.

  “Okay, Cowabungas. Good stuff. We’re gonna bus ’em out big time,” he said, glancing up from the watch to observe the incoming sets, speaking in that strange-sounding Hawaiian Pidgin that he sometimes used when we were surfing.

  “We pack large dis morning. Catch us one big homaliah wave, stay out of de tumbler and it be all tits and gravy, bruddah.”

  He grinned, kneeling in the sand wearing board shorts, displaying the surfer knots on the top of his feet and knees— little calcium deposits caused by a lifetime of paddling to catch up to what he called the Wall of Glass.

  Pop was a tall, stringy, blue-eyed guy with long blonde hair that was just beginning to streak with gray. He was about fifty then, but he seemed much younger.

  There was an Igloo cooler with juice and rolls in the sand before us, packed by Walt’s wife, Elizabeth, for after surfing. We’d take our clean-up set at around seven thirty, come in and shower by the lifeguard station, eat, and change clothes in the van. Then we would pack up and Pop would drop us at school by eight thirty.

  Walt had been born on the Nort
h Shore of Hawaii, which he said made him “Kamaaina to da max.” His parents had taught school there, and he’d ended up in L.A. after the army. That was pretty much all I knew about him. I was too caught up with my own problems to worry about much else.

  Because he’d been raised on the North Shore, Pop was a throwback surfer, what the Hawaiians called a logger. His stick was a nine-foot-long board with no fins and a square tail—very old school. On the nose, he had painted his own crescent symbol, an inch-high breaking curl with the words “Tap the Source” in script underneath. He said the source was that place in the center of the ocean where Kahuna, the god of the waves, made da big poundahs—double overhead haymakers with sphincter factor.

  Other than a couple of Hawaiians and one or two Aussies, Walt was one of the few surfers left who could ride a rhino board. It was heavy in the nose and a bitch to stay up on. The rest of us had new polyurethane shorties with multiple skegs for stability. The boards and wetsuits belonged to the Huntington House group home and were only used for special occasions like this.

  We were sad children whose dark records were cryptically defined in the terse, cold files kept by Child Protective Services. But our nicknames were much crueler than our histories because we bestowed them on each other.

  Nine-year-old Theresa Rodriguez knelt beside me, holding her short board. She had been set on fire by her mother shortly after birth, but had miraculously survived. Terry was damaged goods, with an ugly, scarred face that looked like melted wax. Everyone knew Theresa was a lifer from the time County Welfare had first put her in Huntington House at the age of five. She was chosen for this morning’s field trip because she had no friends and never got much of anything, except from Pop. We called her Scary Terry.

  Also kneeling in the sand that morning was Leroy Corlet. Black, age eleven. Leroy’s dad was in prison, his mother was dead—a heroin overdose. He had been sexually molested by the uncle he’d been sent to live with until a neighbor called child services and they took him away. We called him Boy Toy behind his back, but never to his face because Leroy wasn’t right in the head anymore. He was a violent nut case who held grudges, and if you pissed him off, he’d sneak into your room in the middle of the night while you slept and beat you in the face with his shoe. He couldn’t stand to be touched.

  Pop had picked him that morning because he had just failed a special evaluation test at elementary school and was being held back for the second time in four years. He’d been sulking in his room for the last two days. Nobody wanted him either.

  Next to Leroy was Khan Kashadarian, age fifteen, half-Armenian, half-Arab or Lebanese. He’d been abandoned at age ten and was living in an alley in West Hollywood when he was picked up and shoved into the welfare system. Khan was fat, and a bully. We had given him two nicknames: Sand Nigger and Five Finger Khan, because he stole anything you didn’t keep locked up. I didn’t know why Pop picked him to be with us. As far as I was concerned, we’d have all been better off if he was dead. Even though he was three years older and a hundred pounds heavier, I’d had six or seven violent fights with Khan and lost them all.

  I was small back then, but I didn’t take any shit. I was willing to step off with anybody at the slightest hint of insult. I didn’t get along with anybody and had convinced myself that my five ex-foster families were a bunch of welfare crooks who were milking the system.

  “No floatwalling,” Pop said, his blue eyes twinkling.

  Floatwalling was paddling out beyond the surf but never going for a wave, not to be confused with backwalling, which was acceptable behavior because you were treading water, waiting for the big one.

  The sun peeked above the horizon, signaling that it was time for us to go out.

  “Let’s go catch some bruddahs!” Pop said.

  We picked up our boards and started down toward the early morning break. I was fuming inside. I couldn’t believe nobody wanted me, despite the fact that I insisted I didn’t want or need anybody. Before we got to the water, Pop put out a hand and turned me toward him, as the others moved ahead. He lowered his voice and dropped the Hawaiian Pidgin.

  “Get your chin up, guy. There’s a place for you, Shane,” he said softly. “Sometimes we have to wait to find out where we belong. Be patient.”

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  “Until you get picked again, you’ve always got a place with me.”

  Then he flashed his big, warm smile and switched back to Pidgin, trying to get me to smile. “I always want you braddah. What’s a matta you? Your face go all jam up. You no laugh no more haole boy?”

  I glanced down at the sand and shuffled my feet. But I still didn’t smile. I was too miserable.

  “Come on then.” Pop put a hand on my shoulder and led me toward the water.

  I was Shane Scully, a name picked for me by strangers. No mom, no dad. No chance. I had nobody, but nobody messed with me either. My nickname around the group home was Duncan because I was the ultimate yo-yo.

  All any of us had was Pop Dix. He was the only one who cared, the only one who ever noticed what we were going through and tried to make it better.

  And yet we were all so self-involved and angry that, to the best of my knowledge, none of us had ever bothered to say thank you.

  NOW

  CHAPTER 2

  “THIS HOTEL IS GONNA COST US A FORTUNE,” I said, looking at the brochure of the beautiful Waikiki Hilton. The photo showed a huge structure right on the beach in Honolulu. “You sure you got us the full off-season discount?”

  I called this question inside to my wife, Alexa, while sitting out in our backyard in Venice, holding a beer and warming my spot on one of our painted metal porch chairs. Our adopted marmalade cat, Franco, was curled up nearby. He looked like he was asleep, but he was faking. I could tell because he was subtly working his ears with every sound. Cat radar.

  The colorful evening sky reflected an orange sunset in the flat, mirrored surface of the Venice Grand Canal. It was peaceful. I was feeling mellow.

  Alexa came out of the sliding glass door wearing a skimpy string bikini. She looked unbelievably hot—beautiful figure, long legs, coal-black hair, with a model’s high cheekbones under piercing aqua-blue eyes.

  “Ta-da,” she said, announcing herself with her own chord. She stood before me, modeling the bathing suit. “You like, mister? Want kissy-kissy?”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her down onto my lap.

  “You are not wearing that in public. But get thee to the bedroom, wench.” I grinned and nuzzled her behind the ear, as I picked her up to carry her inside.

  “Put me down,” she laughed. “We’ll get to that later. I’m trying to pack.”

  We were leaving tomorrow for Hawaii. It was our annual two week LAPD-mandated vacation. I could hardly wait to get away. As usual, we’d timed our vacation periods to coincide and for fourteen glorious days, I’d have no homicides to investigate, no gruesome crime scene photos or forensic reports to study, no grieving families to console. Only acres of white sand and surf with my gorgeous wife in paradise.

  Alexa had worked twelve-hour days for a week to get her office squared away so she could afford the time off. Alexa is a lieutenant and the acting commander of the Detective Division of the LAPD. She’s about to make captain, and the job will be made permanent. That makes her technically my boss. I’m a D-3 working out of the elite homicide squad known as Homicide Special where we handle all of L.A.’s media-worthy, high-profile murders. It’s a good gig, but I was feeling burned out and needed some time away.

  “Put me down. That’s a direct order,” she said, faking her LAPD command voice.

  “You can give the orders in that squirrel cage downtown, but at home it’s best two out of three falls, and in that outfit, you’re about to get pinned.”

  “You brute. Stop making promises and get to it, then.” She kissed me.

  I was trying to get the sliding glass door opened without dropping her. I barely made it, and lugged her across the ca
rpet into the bedroom, which was littered with Alexa’s resort outfits. It looked like a bomb had gone off in a clothing store. Bathing suits, shorts, and tops scattered everywhere.

  “What the fuck happened in here?” I grinned and dropped her on the bed, then dove on top of her.

  Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am to have won her. I’m a scarred, scabrous piece of work with a nose that’s been broken too many times and dark hair that never quite lays down. Alexa is so beautiful she takes my breath away. How I ended up with her is one of my life’s major mysteries.

  I reached for the string tie on her bikini, and she rolled right, laughing as I grabbed her arm to pull her back. Just then, the phone rang.

  “If that’s your office again, I’m gonna load up and clean out that entire floor of pussies you work with,” I said, only half in jest.

  The phone kept blasting us with electronic urgency. It was quickly ruining the moment. Alexa rolled off the bed and snatched it up.

  “Yes?” Then she paused. “Who is this?” She hesitated. “Just a minute.”

  She turned toward me, covering the receiver with her palm. “You know somebody named Diamond Peterson?”

  “No, but if she’s related to Diamond Cutter, tell her she’s killing her little brother.”

  “Stop bragging about your wood and take this,” Alexa grinned, handing me the phone.

  I sat on the side of the bed and put the receiver to my ear.

  “Yes? This is Detective Scully.”

  “You’re a police detective?” a female voice said with a slight ghetto accent. She sounded surprised.

  “Who is this again?”

  “Diamond Peterson. I’m calling from Huntington House Group Home.”

  The mention of the group home shot darkness through me. Memories of that part of my life were negative and confusing. I now only visit them occasionally in dreams.