Ken Douglas - Death Glitch

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.

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.