Death Glitch (6 page)

“
As you know, we had a busy day here yesterday,” Shaffer said after they were seated.

“
Yeah, the accident,” Peeps said. “I can imagine.” There’d been a random, gang related shooting, which caused a multi-car accident at the Spaghetti Bowl, where Interstate 80 and Highway 395 crossed. Several injured; fortunately no fatalities.

“
Yes, so you can imagine the confusion here.” He looked first toward Peeps, then toward Mouledoux. Both cops met his eyes straight on.

“
Yeah, we get the idea,” Peeps said.

“
I had Dr. Romero ask for you for a reason, Detective Friday.”

“
He told me it’s sensitive and I’m known for keeping my yap shut. We get it.”

“
And Detective Mouledoux?”

“
I can keep my yap shut, too. We’re cops, we don’t go broadcasting our investigations.”

“
Yet I read about so many of them in the press.”

“
You called me because you trust me,” Peeps said. “You can trust Detective Mouledoux as well.”

“
Okay, but if any of this gets out the press will go crazy. The public too. There will be a feeding frenzy like none before.” He sighed, the way only a troubled man can. “At the present only the four of us know what I’m about to tell you. Well, the four of us and Isadora Eisenhower, of course.”

“
Wait a minute,” Peeps said. “She’s dead.”

“
Is she?” Shaffer said.

“
Well, isn’t she?” Peeps said.

“
We don’t know for sure and that’s the problem.”

“
Where’s the body?” Peeps said.

“
It’s gone.”

“
Someone stole it?” Peeps said.

“
Not exactly,” Shaffer said.

“
Well, it didn’t get up and walk away.”

“
As I said, that’s the problem. We think it did.”

“
We’re outta here!” Peeps said.

“
Wait a minute, Joe,” Mouledoux said. “He’s serious.”

“
You’re kidding?” Then to Shaffer. “So what’s the deal, you pronounced her and she wasn’t dead? You thought she’d been shot through the heart, but you made a mistake? It was only a flesh wound, so the patient got up and went home?”

“
Not exactly,” Shaffer said. “I’d like to show you part of a video we took of one of our surgeries this morning.” He put a disk into his computer, then rotated the screen so the detectives could see it.

On the screen, a woman was on the table and a team of surgeons and nurses were around her. A young female doctor was about to cut into the woman’s chest. She paused, turned away from the patient, lowered her mask, took in a deep breath, then wiped sweat from her brow with her scrub sleeve and, for an instant, the camera caught a frontal view of her face. Shaffer stopped the tape.

“
I know that woman.” Mouledoux hadn’t known Amy was a doctor. He’d thought she was a full time student. She must be taking classes as a hobby of some sort. Must be nice to have that kind of spare time. “She used to live in my complex.”

“
I know her, too,” Peeps said. “She just broke up with someone I know. Her name’s Amy Eisenhower.” He paused for a second. “Wait a minute, she related to the missing body?”

“
This might be easier than I’d hoped.” Shaffer tapped his keyboard and the screen went dark. “Detective Mouledoux, what color are Amy Eisenhower’s eyes?”

“
Blue.”

“
You sure?”

“
I’m a detective with a great memory for faces. Besides, she’s a pretty girl. I’m sure.” Mouledoux paused for a second. “Hey, wait a minute—”

“
Hold up, Detective,” Shaffer said, cutting him off. He turned to Peeps. “Is he right, Detective Friday?”

“
Oh, yeah, they’re definitely blue, the bluest eyes you’d ever wanna see.”

“
And you wanted to say, Detective?” Shaffer turned to Mouledoux.

“
The doctor on the screen, her eyes are brown.”

“
Yes, they are.” Shaffer tapped his keyboard again and the young doctor’s face was back on the screen.

“
Contacts,” Peeps said.

“
No,” Mouledoux said. “I don’t think that’s what Dr. Shaffer wants us to take away from this meeting.”

“
It’s not?” Peeps said.

“
No, it’s not,” Shaffer said. “Isadora Eisenhower was the finest heart surgeon I’d ever laid eyes on. She had the greatest hands, steady and true. She never doubted she could save a patient and her record is unmatched. But like us all, sometimes she’d lose one, but unlike the rest of us, it would hit her hard. She treated every patient like family.

“
When I came here, she took me under her wing. She saw something in me no one else did. She used to tell me I’d go far, that I’d be a great surgeon one day. If not for her, I’d probably be an old country doctor. Not that that would’ve been such a bad life.”

“
And you’re telling us this, why?” Peeps said.

“
I must have assisted Dr. Eisenhower hundreds of times, I know her work better than I know the layout of this office. Yesterday, when I learned there was a doctor performing open heart surgery in my hospital, who wasn’t on staff, I couldn’t get to that OR fast enough. I went in there to bust heads and I found Isadora Eisenhower, the only woman I ever loved, instructing one of my interns, who had a heart in her hands and Izzy Eisenhower was younger than she was on the day I met her, forty-five years ago.”

“
Holy fuck!” Peeps said.

“
This is a Catholic hospital,” Shaffer said. “But we’ll make an exception.”

“
It’s gotta be some kind of trick,” Mouledoux said.

“
Last night,” Dr. Jordan said, “Isadora Eisenhower presented with a chest wound. It looked like the bullet had smashed right on through. Smack through her chest, smack through her heart. She should’ve died when she was shot, but somehow her heart was still working. She was alive when she came here, but she didn’t last long. I called it and they took her body away.”

“
And now,” Drake the attorney said, speaking for the first time, “it looks like she woke up in the morgue, minus about fifty or sixty years, donned a pair of scrubs, performed open heart surgery, then vanished.”

“
That’s spooky.”

“
Yes, Detective Mouledoux,” Shaffer said, “that’s spooky. So, you can see why we don’t want this getting out, can’t you?”

“
Yeah,” Mouledoux said, “you’d be jammed with people looking for the Fountain of Youth.” He looked around the room. “Every doctor and every hospital in the world would be. It’d be chaos.”

* * *

Leaving Aaron to close had been a stroke of genius. It had given Izzy time to get out of the hospital and with her new found youth, she was able to run like the wind. She’d made it home, sweating like a marathoner, in under fifteen minutes.

In her house, she stripped off the scrubs and stuffed them in a paper bag. She didn’t think Aaron would be able to keep what had happened to her quiet for long. He’d try to honor his promise, but there were cameras in the OR. And those cameras, combined with her missing body, painted one heck of a picture. Then there was the anesthesiologist, the intern and the nurses who’d assisted her during the surgery, too many people to keep quiet. She had to get out of town.

She’d jumped into a pair of Levi’s. Pulled on a Wolf Pack sweatshirt, put on her own Nikes, glad to be shed of the too tight shoes. Dressed now, she stuffed some clothes in an overnight bag, went to the kitchen and wolfed down some enchilada leftovers. She’d been famished.

Then she grabbed her iPhone and called Amy.

“
Nana,” Amy answered on the first ring. “I think I’m in trouble.”

“
Not as much as I am.”

“
No, I’m in worse,” Amy said.

“
Listen, Amy, this is important. Don’t talk, just listen. Can you do that?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Remember that special place I used to take you when you were little, your favorite place in all the world?”

“
Yeah.”

“
I need you to go there now. Don’t ask why, just trust me. I’ll pick you up in half an hour. That’ll be 5:00 dead on the money.” Izzy figured she couldn’t run back to the Silver Legacy, get her car, then get to the meeting place any sooner than that. “Can you be there in thirty minutes?”

“
Yeah, sure.”

“
And Amy, one more thing and this is very important. Destroy your phone right now. Don’t just leave it, destroy it, make sure the GPS chip inside is toast. Use a hammer if you can get one.”

“
Nana?”

“
Can you trust me on this?”

“
You’re scaring me.”

“
I’ll explain when I see you. Just trust me.”

“
Okay, smash the phone, meet you at our special place. Got it.”

“
Good girl.” Izzy ended the call, took her iPhone out to the garage, got a hammer from her tool kit and gave it five whacks. Back in the living room, she opened the front blinds and turned on the TV as she always did, to fool a would be thief. That done, she locked the door, then took off toward the Silver Legacy at a dead run.

* * *

“
So how come you didn’t hold her,” Peeps said. “You coulda called security and restrained her till we got here.” He looked at his watch, “Shit, It’s only been twenty minutes since Dr. Romero called me and said you had a homicide here. Woman shot through the heart, he’d said.”

“
Yeah,” Mouledoux said, “he’s right. The woman was already dead, we coulda had a cup of coffee, some donuts, taken our time, because you acted like there was no hurry. And we still made it here in less than half an hour. If you’d’ve said it was important, maybe we coulda got here in time to make a difference.”

“
I wasn’t able to call right away.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because she had me close and because,” his voice dropped, “she asked me to keep her secret. She didn’t have to say what secret; it was pretty obvious.”

“
And you told her you would?” Peeps said.

“
Of course, we’re friends. We’re close. I used to be in love with her.”

“
Yet you called us right after you finished the operation,” Mouledoux said.

“
I think she knew I would, because as soon as she was sure the patient was out of danger, she stepped away from her and told me to close. Then she left the OR.” He sighed that troubled man’s sigh again. “There was nothing I could do and she knew it. I sent one of the nurses for a resident, who could take over, but that took twenty minutes or so. Then I had Dr. Romero call you.”

“
So she’s got an hour on us,” Peeps said. “Give or take a few.”

“
She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” Shaffer said. “She knows what what will happen to her.”

“
Whatdaya mean?” Peeps said.

“
He means that her life’s over,” Mouledoux said. “They, we, are going to hunt her down. Then they’ll lock her up like a lab rat and they’ll do every test they can think of till they find out how she got young again. And even if they find out, they’ll never let her go, because once they have the secret, they’ll want to keep it secret.”

“
I don’t understand,” Peeps said.

“
Think about it, Joe,” Mouledoux said. “Just imagine for an instant that you could make a concoction from this woman’s blood. One shot of this stuff and you’re young again, maybe immortal. You think people are gonna want this?”

“
Well, yeah!”

“
Everybody’s gonna want it. They’d kill for it.”

“
I can see that,” Peeps said.

“
And nobody would ever die.”

“
So?”

“
I’m afraid,” Shaffer said, “that Detective Mouledoux is right. A secret like this has to be locked away.”

“
Because?” Peeps said.

“
Because,” Mouledoux said, “if nobody ever died, we’d run out of food pretty quick. The world wouldn’t be able to keep up. There wouldn’t be enough houses, cars, schools or anything else you can think of; the world would run out.”

“
So they’d lock her up?” Peeps said. “And nobody would get it?”

“
Oh people would get it,” Mouledoux said. “If your last name was Clinton or Kennedy or Bush or Obama, you’d get it. Or if you had a billion bucks, you’d get it. Or if you maybe knew or blew the right people, you’d get it. But us ordinary folks, we wouldn’t get it. Do I have that about right, Dr. Shaffer?”

“
That’s not for me to say.”

“
But you want it for yourself, right?”

“
That thought hadn’t entered my mind.”

“
Then why’d you call us?” Mouledoux said.

“
We had a gunshot wound,” Shaffer said. “It’s the law.”

“
No, you had Dr. Romero call my partner, because you thought we’d cooperate, that we’d hop to and pick up Dr. Eisenhower, who apparently has committed no crime, done nothing wrong.”

“
For her own protection,” Shaffer said.

“
And what did you want us to do after we picked her up? Take her to the cop house, book her? Or did you want us to swing by here and drop her off?”

“
I’m not sure I appreciate your tone,” Drake the lawyer said.