Death Glitch

by Ken Douglas

  “ Katie?”

  “ Yeah, Katie. She was fast on the draw, hit what she shot at and when she killed a man, she didn’t look back, didn’t cry over it. Course, those she killed had it coming.”

  Lila gave the man a glance, put her eyes back on the road, shifted into the fast lane and passed a truck on the winding road down into Ashland.

  “ Don’t believe me?” His voice was low now, conspiratorial, almost a whisper. “No reason you should. Most folks who carry concealed never use their weapon. Most are braggarts or cowards, trying to impress with their gun or trying not to be afraid. Of course, most are men. Most women I’ve met are against guns.”

  She gave him a scowl, then put her eyes back on the road as she slid back into the slow lane, in front of the truck.

  “ Don’t look at me like that, just stating facts.”

  “ Whose facts?”

  “ Mine. My opinion, based on my experience.” He laughed again, a chuckle this time. “Women who carry are either in trouble or deal in trouble. Either way, someone crosses them better look out, because unlike a lotta men with a gun hidden in their clothes, a woman with a gun is a mighty dangerous animal.”

  “ I think I resent that statement, Mr. Black.”

  “ It’s just Black.”

  “ First or last name?”

  “ Both, I only got the one name.”

  “ Like Cher?”

  “ No, she’s got two names, Cher Bono, everybody knows that. I only got the one.”

  “ On your birth certificate, you only have one name?”

  “ Yep, just the one.”

  “ Cool.” She swung back into the fast lane, passed another truck. Moved back to the right as the road turned straight, Ashland ahead, then Medford. She’d be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. Then she’d have to figure out how to lose Black and deal with Izzy Eisenhower. “So, tell me about Katie.”

  “ Ah, Katie. She was, is, one for the record books. But I don’t think I want to talk about her. She’s been out of the limelight for a long time.” He sighed. “I’ve said too much.” Again a sigh, heavier this time. “You can drop me in Medford. I got a friend owns a little music store by Harry and David’s.”

  “ Out of the limelight?” She turned to look at him, met his eyes for longer than it was safe, considering she was driving. “You can’t be talking about Katie Sullivan.”

  The look in his eyes and his silence confirmed it for her.

  “ You are, aren’t you?” She put her eyes back on the road, slowed some as she was closing on a black SUV with government plates. “Tell me about her.”

  “ I can’t.”

  “ You don’t have to tell me where she is or even if she’s still alive. I just wanna know about her, what kind of person she was. How she survived what she did.” She took the first Ashland offramp.

  “ This ain’t Medford?”

  “ I’m starved.” She pulled into a McDonalds parking lot. “Fancy a Big Mac?”

  For the last quarter hour Izzy had been sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes glued to the flat screen TV. Other than the photo of her, the police didn’t seem to know any more than they did when she saw the story back in McCloud.

  She had to do something.

  But what? And what about Amy? Whoever was after her would eventually get Amy. That wouldn’t be good.

  One thing for sure, she couldn’t go flying off the handle. Just getting in the car and driving wouldn’t be smart. She needed a plan. She needed help, too. Maybe it hadn’t been such a bright idea, dropping the girls off in Susanville. Amy couldn’t be much help, because now they shared the same face, but her friend Alicia would’ve been.

  She thought about going back, recruiting the girls, but she’d dropped them there for a reason, because she’d wanted Amy safe. But now, with the stories on the news, she wouldn’t be. What if her daughter-in-law saw the news and called the police? She probably wouldn’t. She’d be afraid she’d lose the money. But it was possible.

  Izzy had to go back. But first she had to eat. She called reception. Asked for the number of the quickest pizza place in town and ordered a large Hawaiian, extra ham and no pineapples on one side. She’d split it with Hunter, then get on the road.

  Lila pulled into the drive thru behind a police car. Cops gotta eat, too, she thought. At the window, she ordered a Big Mac meal. Black did the same, but added an extra burger. Lila paid, then pulled into the parking lot. She thought about lowering the top, it was a gorgeous day, but seeing that cop made her decide against it.

  “ So, Black, you knew Katie Sullivan. I find that hard to believe, but a few hours ago I’d’ve never believed a trucker I met by chance would shoot down a helicopter and save my life. The odds of us sitting here together are a bazillion to one, because I have worshipped Katie Sullivan ever since she killed those cops and disappeared. I know in my heart they were after her somehow. That they were somehow connected with that serial killer Ronny Stark. And since it’s come out that the cop she killed in El Paso was about to rape his stepdaughter, that makes Katie a hero in my book, not a cop killer.”

  “ Mine too,” Black said.

  “ But they never caught her. And Ronny Stark, who’d raped her and left her for dead, stopped killing and they never caught him either.”

  “ What’s your point in all this.” Black bit into his burger, took almost half of it in one bite.

  “ I don’t want to know where she is or anything like that, but I’d like to know if she’s doing okay, if she ever got her revenge, if she got the bastard.”

  “ Her story is pretty unbelievable and better left untold,” Black said. “Safer for her.”

  “ I’m not the kind of girl who tells.” She took a bite of her burger, small compared to his, but big for her. She was hungry. After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I’ve got a pretty unbelievable story of my own to tell.” She smiled. “How about if I tell you mine, you at least tell me if Katie Sullivan is doing alright, if she killed Ronny Stark.”

  “ Your story have anything to do with a helicopter that recently crashed into my truck?”

  “ Yes it does.”

  “ Then you tell me your story and I’ll see after if I can trust you with Katie’s secret.”

  “ Fair enough.” And she told him everything. She told him about her rotten childhood, about her stepfather and how she’d just killed her mother and her latest husband. She told him about the Waynes, Tucker and Mansfield. She told him how Mansfield had rescued her, then turned her into his private killer. She told him about Izzy Eisenhower and how she was all of a sudden young again. She told him about the dead back in Reno. She told him how she was supposed to get five million dollars for delivering Izzy alive to Mansfield Wayne. She told him how she thought Wayne had double crossed her. How she thought he’d called in his government pals, that that’s who she thought was up in that helicopter, government spy types who were off the books, or on them, she didn’t know for sure. She told him too much, more than she’d ever told anybody about herself. Something was happening to her and she wasn’t exactly sure what it was.

  “ Real Coast to Coast AM kind of stuff,” Black said.

  “ Yeah, weirdness to the extreme.”

  “ Any of it true?”

  “ Every last word.”

  “ You want to know something funny?”

  “ Yeah?”

  “ I believe you.”

  “ Really? Why?”

  “ I had a radio in that truck. I know the official version about what’s going on in Reno. You story kinda jibs with that.”

  “ But that’s not why you believe me, is it?”

  “ No, it’s not. I believe you because I do. You don’t look like a liar to me. Besides, only an idiot would sit here and spin a yarn like that if it weren’t true and you don’t seem like an idiot. Then there’s that helicopter.”

  “ So are you going to tell me about Katie?”

  “ Do you know where Dr. Eisenhower is now?”

/>   “ She’s in Medford.”

  “ You know where?”

  “ I got a GPS on my car, which was, the last time I checked, parked at the Marriott Suites.”

  “ You remember the black SUV that was in front of us when you turned off the freeway.”

  “ Shit, it had government plates.”

  “ There were a couple more just like it in front of it. Three of ’em.”

  “ Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She tossed the rest of her burger, her coke and fries out the window, fired up the car as Black tossed his food away, too.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Izzy figured she had fifteen or twenty minutes before the pizza arrived. Time enough for a quick shower. She raised an arm, sniffed under it. “Holy crap!” She picked up the green pool towels, started for the bathroom, but stopped before entering.

  “ What the-” the words caught in her throat when she saw her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. Her hair, the lovely, long trestles she’d cut off, it was back in all his auburn glory. “How?” It made no sense. She’d hacked it off, made herself look like a meth queen and now, as if by magic, she looked like a prom queen. What was up with that? Was she going crazy? It wasn’t possible.

  But then again, a lot of not possible stuff had been happening to her.

  “ Shake it off, Izzy,” she told herself.

  In the bathroom, she pulled off her clothes, turned on the water, set it for as hot as she could stand it and stepped under the spray. She pulled the shower curtain and sighed, thinking of the line Mary Magdalene sings to Jesus in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar:

  Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to

  Problems that upset you oh don’t you know

  Everything’s alright yes everythin’s fine

  And we want you to sleep well tonight

  Let the world turn without you tonight

  If we try we’ll get by so forget all about us tonight

  She so wanted to forget about everything that had happened to her. Earlier she’d hoped she could drink a bottle of wine, rest for the evening, really forget about everything. But now she knew she wouldn’t be getting her peaceful night. However, she wanted a few minutes at least. She wasn’t Christ, but she thought even he would be struggling under the weight of her problems.

  She felt the hot water needles against her back. She closed her eyes, hummed the lyrics to Mary’s song. How she’d loved that record when it came out, oh so long ago. She’d been in med school, with her whole life ahead of her.

  And it looked as if she had her whole life ahead of her all over again. How crazy was that?

  “ Stop it!” she told herself, but she couldn’t help it, her mind wasn’t going to let her have even a few minutes of peace. Something crazy was going on and she was at the very heart of it.

  She leaned back into the spray, let the hot water cascade over her hair. She ran her fingers through it. Having hair again was wonderful. Being better was wonderful. Being young again was wonderful. But having her hair back, Lord that was great.

  “ Oh, my God!” She gasped. No wonder Emily had that look on her face. It had been meth queen Izzy who’d checked into the Marriott, but it had been the prom queen version of herself Emily had seen just now. She’d been transformed during her nap, back into the lady killer on all the news channels.

  Had Emily recognized her as the woman wanted for murder? And if she had, did she know that the meth and prom queen were the same person? Maybe not, but maybe so.

  She shut off the water, grabbed a towel, dried off as she left the bathroom.

  “ We gotta go, Hunter. We gotta go now!”

  Lila took the first Medford off-ramp, followed it around toward the City Center, but made a right into the Marriott Suites parking lot.

  “ There’s my car.” She pointed to her Crown Vic, was about to park next to it, when she saw three black Suburbans. Government SUVs. One man was standing guard by the government cars, but her Crown Vic, parked four spaces away from the Suburbans, was unguarded.

  “ Doesn’t look like they know about the car,” Black said.

  “ Yeah.” Lila wondered what she was still doing with this Black character. She should’ve dumped him the second she found out he was okay, but she didn’t. He’d proven his worth with that helicopter, maybe he would again. She hoped so, because it looked like she was going to need all the help she could get.

  “ You wanna save the woman or you wanna walk away?” Black said.

  “ What do you think?”

  “ Then get out of the car and start running.”

  “ What?”

  “ Head for the roller rink on the other side of that field there.” He pointed. “Once you pass the rink, cut right to the Fred Meyer store on the far side of the parking lot. In the store, lose the coat, then go to the deli and order something to eat. Don’t be in a hurry. Act like you don’t have a care in the world.”

  “ You’re going to set them after me, aren’t you?”

  “ Don’t get caught.”

  “ Shit.” She got of the car, took off at a dead run.

  “ It’s her!” Black shouted. “The killer woman. The Eisenhower woman!”

  “ What?” the man watching the black SUVs said as Lila streaked past. She looked over her shoulder. Black had his arm outstretched, his finger pointed at her as she ran. The government man was shouting into a radio no bigger than a cell phone. She had to give it to Black, that old man thought fast on his feet.

  She turned away from the scene behind, faced forward, pumped her arms locomotive quick, using them to force her legs to move faster, because any second there was going to be a passel of FBI agents in her wake. Fortunately, she was a runner. And double fortunately, they wanted Izzy Eisenhower alive, so they wouldn’t be shooting at her. At least she hoped not.

  A shot rang out, loud as a Navy jet breaking the sound barrier, as she rounded the skating rink. What the fuck? Now she was out of the sun and in the shade of the building, with it between her and the gaggle of FBI agents she was sure were on her trail.

  Ahead of her, she saw a group of stores, a garden store, a hardware store, more on the right. A Subway and a Mexican restaurant on the left. Further on a Taco Bell and a gas station. To the right, across an endless parking lot, the Fred Meyer store.

  She ran past the roller rink, was exposed as she dashed toward the parking lot. Any second she expected black SUVs to come flying into the lot, blocking her path. She tried to pour on more speed, but the long duster was holding her back. Not only that, the coat made her stand out like blood on a white carpet. She would never make it to the Fred Meyer store in time and if they came after her with guns, her goose was going to be cooked.

  She saw a red trash can in front of the hardware store, only seconds away. She headed for it, reached under her coat as she ran, pulled her shoulder holster’s quick release. She was going to have to lose the Glock as well, along with her custom designed holster. She pulled them off, coat and holster as one, as she ran. At the trash can, she pushed open the slot on the top, dropped them in, then slowed to a walk just as two black SUVs came careening into the parking lot, shooting past the Taco Bell like hungry wolves.

  Lila was unarmed and felt naked. She was out of breath, exposed and scared, a new feeling for her. She desperately didn’t want to get caught, because after the incident with the helicopter, she knew these guys would either shoot her or bury her so far in their prison system, she’d never get out.

  One of the SUVs went right, toward the gas station and the Fred Meyer store. The other one came straight for her. She took a deep breath, exhaled, forced herself into a leisurely pace as the SUV pulled alongside.

  She stopped.

  The guy riding shotgun lowered his window.

  “ You seen a woman in a long coat, maybe running?”

  “ Who wants to know?”

  “ Government business.”

  “ How do I know that?”

  “ Because I told you.”


  “ Sorry, not good enough for me.” She was trying for haughty, hoping they’d see her as a stuck up bitch, who thought she was better than them.

  “ FBI.” He flashed an open wallet, showed his creds, which looked pretty official from where she stood.

  “ Well then, I saw a woman in a brown coat, one of those kinds you see in old cowboy movies. She the one you’re looking for?”

  “ That’s her.”

  “ She got in a car that was parked in front of Radio Shack.” Lila pointed. “Over there. Took off like a bat out of you know where. Maybe a minute, no less than a minute ago, just now.”

  “ Kind of car?”

  “ An SUV, smaller than the one you got, dark blue, I think, or maybe green.” She knew enough not to be too exact, witnesses who were telling the truth, never were.

  “ What kind of SUV?”

  “ Say again.”

  “ Ford Explorer, Chevy Tahoe, American, Japanese, you know.”

  “ No, I don’t. And I’m not trying to be smart. I don’t know cars. My brother’s an expert, me I know photography and art.”

  “ You see which way she went?”

  Lila pointed South.

  The man picked up a mic. “She’s in an SUV, blue maybe green, going south, probably turned onto the freeway.” He turned toward Lila. “Thanks,” he said as the driver hit the gas.

  “ Don’t mention it,” Lila said, but the man didn’t hear as they were already halfway across the parking lot, headed toward the street and a mythical woman they were never going to catch.

  Izzy poked her head out the door. Saw two men in suits running down the hall, running toward reception. One of them collided into an aging black man, who had just rounded the corner into the hallway. The running suit pushed the black man aside, without even an apology.

  The man fell, hit his head against the wall on his way down. Stunned, Izzy watched as the suits disappeared and the falling man thudded onto the carpeted floor.

  Every fiber in her being said to get the gun, stuff it in her purse, call the dog, make for the back door and get the heck out of Dodge. But she was a doctor and there was a man down. She turned toward Hunter behind her.