Ken Douglas - Death Glitch

He pulled into the left lane, but there was a divider and it was impossible for him to make a U turn.

“ Damn.” He thumped a hand on the steering wheel. By the time he got turned around, they’d be long gone. Still, he had to try. He swung the unmarked left, jumped the divider, making as close a U turn as possible as the undercarriage scraped the divider.

A horn blared. A tow truck was bearing down on him. Peeps accelerated, almost lost control in the turn, barely avoided sideswiping a white minivan, which was going about fifteen miles an hour under the speed limit. He had to brake to avoid hitting it, instead of accelerating and swinging into the left lane. He could’ve made it. Braking was instinctive and stupid, because had not the honking tow truck’s driver been as fast on his own brakes, he’d’ve plowed into Peeps. As it was he got his truck stopped inches from Peeps’ turning vehicle.

And for reason’s unknown the slow going minivan screeched to a stop, smoking rubber, locking Peeps between the minivan in front and the tow truck behind. He hit the horn, wanting the mini van to get out of the way, but instead of moving, the door opened and a woman old enough and heavy enough to be his grandmother climbed out.

“ Are you crazy?” she shouted, marching toward him like a samurai warrior, cane in hand.

The tow truck driver was out of his truck, too.

“ Police officer,” Peeps shouted as he shut the engine off and got out of the car. “I’m in pursuit.”

“ Bullshit!” the tow truck driver said.

“ Really.” Peeps pulled his badge from his inside coat pocket.

“ Is that how they taught you to drive at the police academy? You should watch where you’re going,” Granny said.

“ Sorry,” Peeps said. “I saw a felon and didn’t think.”

“ You could have killed someone.”

“ He said he was sorry,” the tow truck driver said, voice and tone deferential, now that he’d seen the badge.

“ Can you just move your car out of the way?” Peeps said.

“ Sure.” Granny started back toward her van, completely unmindful of the fact that she’d not only stopped traffic, but that she’d aided a couple felons in their escape. And escape they had, because they were long gone, without ever knowing they’d been spotted.

He got back in his unmarked as Granny was climbing back into her minivan. Behind the wheel, he started his car, pulled around Granny as he reached for his iPhone to call it in. But then he stopped himself. If he called it in, he wouldn’t be getting on that plane anytime soon, wouldn’t be picking up Amy Eisenhower in Susanville, wouldn’t be collecting more money that he could count from old Manny Wayne.

Better to let it alone, he thought. Better to pretend he never saw them. Besides, maybe he’d imagined it. At the next light, he made an illegal U turn and headed back to the airport and that waiting plane.

As Lila piloted her Jag into a used car lot on Riverside, Izzy was struck with the thought that they made a rather odd couple. Izzy had spent her whole life working to save lives and Lila had spent hers taking them. In any other set of circumstances, she’d run from someone like Lila as fast as her feet could fly, but these were no ordinary circumstances and Lila was no ordinary woman. She was a killer, yes, but she was something more. Izzy couldn’t quite nail it down in her head, but there was something to Lila that just plain made Izzy like her.

“ There, I want that car there.” Lila pointed to a sleek looking black car as they were driving by a place called Tommy John’s Pre-Owned Vehicles.

“ It looks like something Darth Vader might drive.” Izzy said as Lila swung the Jag into a quick left.

“ It’s a Dodge Charger. It’s the other car the cops drive.”

“ Other car?”

“ Yeah, most of them either use Ford Crown Vics or Dodge Chargers.” She pulled into the car lot. “There’s sunglasses in the glove box. Not much of a disguise, but better than nothing.”

Izzy popped the glove box, pulled out the glasses, put them on as Lila got out of the car.

“ Hello, ladies.” The voice came from a big man, sporting a Yankee’s baseball hat and a Yellow Hawaiian shirt that was bright as summer on this bleak winter day. “Tommy John at your service.”

“ What’s a car like that doing on a lot like this?” Lila pointed at the Charger.

“ There you go, right off the bat, disrespecting my place of business.”

“ It’s a valid question,” Lila said. The car lot seemed to be one of those places that sold repos and the kind of cars dealers took in trade that weren’t up to the quality one would expect of a new car dealership.

“ What, I can’t have a new car on my lot?”

“ It’s not new,” Lila said.

“ Almost.” Tommy John smiled. “It belongs to my son. He bought it six months ago. Now his soon to be bride is pregnant with twins, so they want something more practical.”

“ Fifteen thousand cash, if you can have us on the road in less than ten minutes.”

“ There’s rules.”

“ Seventeen.”

“ Paperwork.”

“ Twenty and I drive the car out of here. You pay off your son’s loan and keep the difference. I get clear title, because you gave it to me. No record of the money.”

“ And I explain how I got the cash to pay off the loan, how?”

“ Twenty-five and I don’t care.”

“ Thirty.”

“ Done,” Lila said.

“ Then we better hurry,” Tommy John said, “because we’ve already wasted half a minute negotiating.”

“ You can drive a stick?” Lila said to Izzy.

“ Who do you think you’re talking to?” Izzy said. “I learned to drive in my dad’s ’54 Chevy. Do you think it had an automatic?”

“ Oh, yeah,” Lila said. “I wasn’t thinking.” She smiled. “I’ll drive the Charger, you can follow. We’ll be right back.” She turned back toward Tommy John. “I just used up another half minute, so now we really gotta hurry.”

“ Follow me to my office,” Tommy John said and in less than ten minutes they were back. Tommy John opened the driver’s door for Lila, who tossed some papers into the back as she got in the car.

“ It was a pleasure doing business with you Mr. John,” Lila said.

“ Come back any time,” Tommy John said as Lila started the car.

Izzy followed Lila to the hotel, where she parked four spaces away from Lila. She got out of Lila’s Jag with a smile on her face. It was a fun car to drive.

“ Hold it right there, Dr. Eisenhower.” The voice was male, authoritative. A policeman. “Turn around slowly and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Izzy turned, saw a handsome man in a grey sport coat that looked like it had been slept in. For slacks, he wore faded Levi’s. His shirt was white and his tie was loosened at the collar. All this Izzy took in in a heartbeat. She also took in the revolver in his right hand. He was the policeman they’d faced down back at the Fred Meyer store.

“ No, you hold it.” Lila, still wearing her duster, came up behind the rumbled looking plain clothes policeman and from the look in the man’s eyes, Izzy guessed she had a gun at his back.

“ I saw you in the Suburban with the feds,” Lila said as she went to the Jag and got her bag. “You’re not one of them, so who are you?”

“ I thought you didn’t know cars,” the man said.

“ I lied. Again, who are you? And please don’t try my patience and don’t lie, I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“ Detective Bob Mouledoux, Reno PD.”

“ Any you’re here, why?”

“ Specifically, I’m here to change and get a quick shower.” He holstered his weapon. “I’m in Medford because of the youthful Dr. Eisenhower. And, of course, because of the trail of dead bodies she’s been leaving behind.”