Death Glitch

by Ken Douglas

  “ Yeah, I guess you were,” Amy said.

  “ You’re really finished with Tucker?” Nana said.

  “ She really is,” Alicia said.

  “ I thought he was going to let me go,” Amy said. “We had it worked out.”

  “ That was before his hit woman Lila Booth saw a tape of you copying files from his computer.”

  “ There was a camera?”

  “ How could you be so stupid?”

  “ I wanted to leave him and I thought I needed insurance. It turned out I didn’t.” She was scared now. In the last few months she’d heard stories about what could happen to you if you crossed Tucker Wayne. “I’ll call him up. I’ll give it back.”

  “ He already has it. Lila broke into your apartment.”

  “ That bastard,” Amy said.

  “ He is a bastard,” Nana said, “but he’s the one who warned me that Lila was coming after you last night. If it wasn’t for him, you’d be dead now. Anyway, I’m glad you’re through with him. Now we have to go.”

  “ Where?” Amy said.

  “ Far away.”

  “ Because that Lila Booth person is trying to kill Amy?” Alicia said.

  “ I can probably fix that, eventually,” Nana said. “Mostly we’ve got to disappear because of what’s happened to me. Once it gets out, you can imagine what they’d do to me.”

  “ Well yeah, the government alone, they’d be pretty interested,” Alicia said.

  “ So we’ve got to get on the road,” Nana said. “The sooner we’re away from here, the better.”

  “ Excuse me,” Alicia said, “but wouldn’t you be better off hiding, you know, someplace close by, where whoever might come after you would never look. Someplace safe, rather than drive away to who knows where, with spooks and spies and Lila Booth hot on your trail. I’ve seen that movie and somebody always gets killed.”

  “ Who is this person?” Nana said. It was odd thinking of her as her grandmother, but despite the way she looked now, it was Nana, of that Amy was sure.

  “ She’s my friend Alicia,” Amy said.

  “ So, Alicia,” Nana said, “do you have anywhere specific in mind?”

  “ Yeah, my place. You can hang till this Lila Booth person and whoever else is looking for you are convinced you’ve disappeared, then you can leave. Like, when it’s safe.”

  “ It could be a long time.”

  “ No worries. I’ve got lots of room, plus I make tons of money, so you all won’t be a problem.”

  “ She does have a big house,” Amy said. “I think it’s a good idea.

  Izzy followed Alicia out of the parking lot with the dog riding shotgun. When they’d decided that she and Amy would follow Alicia and Hunter to Alicia’s, the dog seemed to object. He went to Izzy’s car, parked himself by the passenger door and wouldn’t budge. He was her dog now. She knew it. The dog knew it.

  So Amy got in the yellow VW with her friend, Hunter jumped into Izzy’s passenger seat when she opened the door, sat straight up, like it had been his place forever.

  “ There is something very strange going on here, big guy.”

  “ Woof,” the dog answered.

  “ And I suspect you might know more than you’re letting on.”

  Five minutes later, Izzy parked alongside the girls, who had pulled into a driveway of a two story yellow house three blocks from the university. She was about to shut the engine off when Alicia got out of the VW.

  “ You should park in the garage.” Alicia pointed to the garage doors, a double and a single. She had a three car garage and Izzy wondered how many cars she had in it. “I’ll just be a minute.” Alicia pulled a set of keys from her pocket, went to the front door, keyed the lock, entered the house.

  Seconds later the double door went up and Izzy’s unasked question was answered. One car, a flashy red BMW sports car. And a lot of stuff. Amy pulled her VW in, parked next to the Beemer as the single door went up. Izzy pulled in, parked next to a mound of cardboard boxes. She was barely able to squeeze her little Raider in.

  “ What’s in the boxes?” Izzy said.

  “ Everything, including the kitchen sink,” Alicia said. “I’m an eBay junkie.” She laughed. “Sadly, I’m a neat freak, too, so there’s no room for most of this crap in the house.”

  “ Then why do you buy it?”

  “ I don’t know,” Alicia said. “I can’t seem to help myself.” Alicia wasn’t poor, didn’t appear to be watching her money. She lowered the door and Izzy and the dog followed her into the house.

  “ Nice,” Izzy said once inside. The furniture was expensive, from the love seat and sofa in the living room to the designer lamps and the paintings on the wall, which all looked like original art.

  “ You’ll be safe here,” Alicia said as Amy came in the front door.

  “ I don’t know if I’ll ever be safe again,” Izzy said.

  Mansfield Wayne paced his living room, with a wooden ruler in his right hand and with every third or fourth step he smacked the open palm of his left. He needed to feel the pain, needed to feel alive. He was seventy-seven years old, the same age as Isadora Eisenhower and, like her, he had terminal cancer. Cigarettes were the cause of his, Eisenhower, it seemed, was the victim of bad luck. He probably deserved his fate. She probably didn’t deserve hers.

  Still, if one of them were to be spared, it should’ve been him. He ran an empire which employed thousands. Who was she? A woman concerned only for herself, that was plain to see, because if she had an ounce of concern for others in her condition, she’d’ve shared her secret. Nobody should be allowed to keep something like that all for themselves. It wasn’t right.

  “ Stop it, stop it, stop it!” He flung the ruler across the room. He was Mansfield Wayne. He didn’t have to justify his actions. Yet, here he was trying to justify what he was about to do. He didn’t do that. He was a man who took what he wanted and who fought like hell when somebody tried to take what was his. Eisenhower had something he wanted. No, something he needed, needed desperately. He was going to find her, learn her secret and take it.

  He thought back on what Peeps Friday had told him. It was a fantastic story, an unbelievable story. Mansfield didn’t believe in the supernatural. Didn’t believe in ghosts. Didn’t believe in God either. If he couldn’t see it and touch it, it didn’t exist for him. But this did.

  He could spot a liar at fifty paces. Peeps Friday was a lot of things, but he was no liar. Peeps may not believe in what he’d seen on that DVD, but he was telling the truth about how he got it. And from what he’d said, those doctors believed what they’d seen. Still, he wanted to make absolutely sure. He had to know if Lila had shot Isadora Eisenhower. He had to hear it from her own mouth.

  The doorbell rang.

  “ Finally.” He went to answer it.

  “ I came as fast as I could,” Lila Booth said.

  “ Not fast enough!”

  “ Mansfield, I work for you, but I don’t have to. You don’t get to use that tone of voice with me.”

  “ Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand in front of himself, started for the kitchen. His martini had been interrupted, it was time to rectify the situation.

  “ I’m serious. I am not one of your lackeys.”

  “ Sorry,” he said. “You want one?” He held up the shaker.

  “ You know I do.”

  He made one for himself, one for her.

  “ It’s good,” she said after taking a sip.

  “ Glad you like it.” He went to the dining room, took a seat at the table. She did, too.

  “ So what was so urgent that I had to drop everything and come right over?”

  “ Tucker says you went rogue, that you’re going to take out Amy Eisenhower, without clearing it with him. Or more importantly, with me.”

  “ I’m trying to keep my temper here.” She slid her hand into the backpack she always seemed to have with her. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, probably because he’d been too excited to pay atten
tion. She had a gun in there, probably more than one. She was the only person in the world who could get close to him armed. His security had been warned to leave her be when she approached him. She was never searched, never would be. She was a coiled snake without a conscience, but she was his snake.

  “ Hold your horses. I’m not upset.”

  “ Then why am I here?”

  “ I’ll get to that.” He took a sip of his martini, trying to slow the conversation down so he could get his bearings. “But first I want you to know how much Tucker and I appreciate all you’ve done for us.”

  “ I don’t go rogue.” She eased her hand out of the backpack. “Amy Eisenhower copied Tucker’s files to a CD. I got it back and I decided to take care of her before she got a chance to go to the authorities. And I decided to do it gratis, something I never, ever do. I was willing to do this for you, because Tucker was out of the country. Because I couldn’t get through to you. And because of our long association. But I made a couple mistakes.”

  “ Go on.”

  “ One, I left a message on Tucker’s voice mail. That was stupid, because he still had feelings for the girl. He told her grandmother, who threw a spanner into my plans.”

  “ And the other mistake?” This is what Mansfield had been waiting for, hoping for.

  “ I let my temper get the better of me and I took out granny. Shot her through the heart.” She shook her head. “It was a stupid thing to do. A waste of a good weapon. A waste of my talent. And I put myself at risk for no reason.”

  “ You shot her through the heart.”

  “ Yes.”

  “ So it’s true.” He sighed. For the first time in many months he felt hope. A great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  “ Yes, she’s dead.”

  “ I’d like to thank you for that.”

  “ You wanted Granny dead.”

  “ Yes. You’ll get your usual fee for that.” He gave her a smile, something he didn’t do often these days. “I would’ve wired the money as soon as I’d heard she’d been taken care of, but I had to hear it from you, that it was you who took care of it.”

  “ I didn’t expect this.”

  “ It’s okay, we appreciate everything you do for us and the last thing I’d want you to think is that we’d take advantage of you.”

  “ That’s nice to hear,” Lila said.

  “ Now about the granddaughter, Amy Eisenhower. I don’t want her dead.”

  “ Don’t tell me you’re going soft because Tucker has feelings for her.”

  “ Hardly.”

  “ Then what?”

  “ I want her alive.”

  “ So you want me to leave her be.”

  “ Not exactly. I’d like you find her and bring her to me. Alive. Double your usual fee.”

  “ Go on.”

  “ You get the extra money for two reasons. One, because you don’t get to kill her. I know how much you like to do that. And two, because this is between you and me, I don’t want Tucker to know.”

  “ Why not?”

  “ Because he has feelings for the girl, because she’s betrayed his trust and because now it’s personal. There was a time when I didn’t need you, because I took care of my own problems. I’m too old and too sick to go out and find her myself, so I need you for that, but I want to get my hands dirty with this one and I want to enjoy it. I want you to bring her here, drugged, with her hands cuffed behind her back.”

  “ Why, Mansfield, I’m impressed.”

  “ There’s more.”

  “ Amy has a twin.”

  “ No she doesn’t!”

  “ Not a sister. A cousin, at least I think she’s a cousin. She’s also named Isadora. They’re identical, except for the eyes. Amy’s are blue, the cousin’s are brown. I want her, too, same way, drugged up and hands cuffed behind her back. I believe they’ll be together, so if you find one, you’ll find the other.”

  “ Two of them,” Lila said. “That’s going be harder.”

  “ And that’s why I’m paying you double your usual fee for the cousin as well.”

  “ You’re being very generous, Mansfield.”

  “ These women took something from me.” He met Lila’s eyes straight on. Like him, she could spot a liar. “Now I’m going to take something from them.” He wasn’t lying, he was going to take something from them, something precious. “Can you do this for me?”

  “ Yes.”

  Lila Booth’s liar radar was on full alert. He wasn’t lying to her. However, he wasn’t telling her the whole truth either, but he was offering too much money for her to decline. He probably knew that.

  She preferred dealing in death. Dead people don’t testify. Still, she was confident she could find the girls and complete her mission in short order, thanks to the GPS tracker she’d put on Amy Eisenhower’s car. Its software was linked to Google Earth, so a couple minutes on her computer when she got home and she’d have Amy pinned down. And if the girls were together, as Mansfield said they would be, then all she had to do was round them up.

  “ And to make your job easier, I have a gift for you.” Mansfield got up from the table, went to an antique hutch, opened the cabinet, took out a wooden box. He brought it to the table. “The box is teak. I had it made to house a special weapon.” He gave her a grin, not like the smile he’d favored her with earlier. This was his getting even grin, she’d seen it before and she was afraid of it.

  He opened the box.

  “ This is an X-2 Gauged CO2 pistol.” He was holding the pistol and looking at it the way a mother might a newborn. “It’s made out of 6061 machined aluminum, so it’s tough and reliable and it’s the best dart pistol money can buy.”

  “ It looks like Han Solos’ blaster.”

  “ Maybe, but this blaster doesn’t kill. It shoots a tranquilizing dart.” He reached back into the teak box, brought out a couple darts. “These babies are loaded with five cc’s of Ketamine mixed with a powerful sedative. Shoot the girls with these and they’ll go down and they’ll be out. When they wake up, I want them here.”

  “ You’re asking a lot.”

  “ That’s why you get the big bucks.” He handed her the gun. “How’s it feel?”

  “ Heavy.”

  “ Three pounds.”

  “ I like the feel of a good weapon.”

  “ The beauty of this pistol is that it’s almost silent,” Mansfield said.

  “ That’s good,” Lila said, “because it’s a single shot weapon. I’ll have to reload before shooting again, so doing them in their sleep is best.”

  “ Yes, you wouldn’t want to wake them.”

  “ Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  “ There’s a half dozen darts there.”

  “ I’ll only need two.”

  “ Take them all, just in case. You never know what might come up.”

  Home, she booted up her computer and smiled. This was going to be the easiest money she’d ever earned. Amy Eisenhower was only a few blocks away. Her car was anyway. She checked her watch, 5:45. Too early, besides she liked to work late. In this case, 4:00 in the morning would be perfect, they’d be asleep. She could shoot them in their beds, bind them and drive them over to Mansfield’s at first light.

  Chapter Six

  Izzy lay awake in the king size bed. So much bed for only one person. Too much bed for her to fall asleep in. Besides, she wasn’t the least bit tired. She wondered why, because she hadn’t had any sleep since she’d walked out of the morgue twenty-four hours ago. She should be dead to the world.

  Maybe it was her new found youth. Maybe her young body didn’t need as much sleep as she’d been used to. Or maybe she was never going to sleep again. She hoped that wasn’t the case, because lying in the dark, listening to the quiet, was dull going.

  If she were home, she could get up and read or watch television, but she hadn’t thought to raid Alicia’s library and she didn’t want to turn on the television that was on the bureau opposite the
bed, for fear she’d wake the girls in the next room.

  Girls in the next room. That bothered Izzy. Alicia only had two beds in her large house. She’d converted one of her four bedrooms to a gym and another to a computer room. So Amy had to decide who to sleep with and, since the girl had spent the first four years of her life sleeping with Izzy, Izzy assumed they’d be sharing the big bed. But Amy said she’d be more comfortable sleeping with her friend.

  Izzy never would have suspected someone as beautiful as Alicia of being gay. She looked like every man’s fantasy. And she never would have known if the girls hadn’t told her how they’d tricked Tucker Wayne into letting Amy go without a fight.

  She smiled up at the dark ceiling. That was actually pretty smart. Tucker had probably been flattered. She could just see him with his chest puffed up, bragging to his friends about this gorgeous lesbian who had chosen him to straighten her out.

  She wondered if Tucker could call Lila off. And if he could, would he? He’d said on the phone that they were even now, so Izzy thought not. Amy had stolen from him.

  “ Damn,” she muttered. She’d left home so quickly, she’d forgotten to take her guns. She hated guns, was thought of as an anti-gun nutcase by all who knew her, even though she’d been born into a family of hunters. Her father and brothers had all carried. She’d been shooting as long as she’d been walking. But when she’d helped work on two girls who’d suffered multiple gunshot wounds, during her second week as an intern, she’d changed. Those girls died and along with them Izzy’s love of shooting had died, as well.

  But Lee, her husband and the love of her life, was best friend to her brothers, hunted with them, fought with them, loved them almost as much as he’d loved her. When he’d died, she gave her brothers all of his guns, save the Glock, which she kept in her safe. That safe also housed a wallet gun her nephew Jeff got at a gun show in Las Vegas.

  Two years ago her family had gathered at her house for Thanksgiving and later that evening, Jeff had had a little too much too drink. When she’d helped him up to the bed in one of her guest rooms, he’d grabbed the pillow, hugged it, rolled onto his side and passed out. She saw the bulge his wallet made in his back pocket, so she took it out, thinking to set it on the nightstand next to the bed, when she discovered it wasn’t a wallet at all. It was a small gun, a little Ruger, cleverly concealed in a leather holster resembling a wallet.