chapter 2: Ghost
Lucy awakened to the sound of her cell phone ringing, and picked it up. An overseas number, she thought, must be her daughter. How odd; Mother’s Day had passed. She picked it up. “Hello, Megan.”
“Mom! I heard there was a terror attack in Portland!”
“Oh, I think I saw something about that,” Lucy said, groping for the remote. “Not a big thing.”
“It was a military attack! They’re in league with the Venezuelans! They blew up a jet and a city bus. Mom, I worry about you. Maybe you should move back to a real home.”
“Oh, I don’t know — I think I’m enjoying the RV life. It’s quite safe in the KOA camps, you know. I’m thinking of entering a Scrabble tournament.” She put a paint tray on the table and began to pour carpenter’s glue into it from a plastic squeeze bottle.
“What if the terrorists set off a dirty bomb or something?”
“Why would they do that?” Lucy asked, reaching for a large Bible and a wide brush.
“Why? Why not? They’re terrorists, Mom,” Megan said, using a tone of voice that gave Lucy a familiar sense of irritation.
“Well, I don’t know, I mean, how would that fit with their sense of mission?”
“What mission?” Megan piped, “They’re anti-American, so they’ll do anything.”
“Hmm, I suppose, dear,” Lucy said, catching herself. She began to paint the Bible pages one by one with glue. In the beginning there was God…
“You sound like you’re sympathizing, Mom,” Megan accused. “Randy puts on a uniform every day, and stands up for our country, and —
“He’s an accountant — ”
“He does his duty for God and country,” Megan said belligerently.
“His doodie.”
Lucy changed the subject to grandchildren, and was halfway through Leviticus by the time they hung up. The Bible project took most of the day, and Lucy carefully warmed it in the microwave when each page had been glued, pressing it occasionally to keep it flat, trimming off the excess glue. She set it on wax paper to dry, and opened the packages containing her mail-order laser and miniature crossbow. This was going to take a while.
The Bible took forever to dry, but was hard as a rock afterward. Lucy carved a cavity into it, drilling holes at precise angles so that the laser and the crossbow’s target intersected at four feet. She visited a witch friend for herbs and crushed them for extract, froze them into dart shapes with dry ice, and spent some time practicing with a cork board.
She waited, a week later, in the RV a few blocks away from her target, knowing his vehicle would soon arrive after his afternoon commute. The gigantic pickup had an image of a man being dropped from a helicopter, on the back window, with the phrase “Pinochet did nothing wrong.” This was emblazoned next to a fading sticker of Calvin pissing on a Chevrolet logo, and more significantly, a round NRA sticker. Lucy emerged from her van with a small cheap bicycle, and put the Bible gingerly in the basket next to a flower-themed purse.
She adjusted the curly highlighted blonde wig and added a bobby pin, to be sure. Her dress was tight in the waist, short in the skirt, and low-cut in the chest. She had carefully applied concealer and powder to face and breasts, and was wearing a push-up bra she had bought at the grocery, along with (ugh) a pungent perfume. She rode the bike up to the truck and leaned it against the porch wall, gingerly extracting the bible.
She reached in the Bible, releasing a small amount of vapor, and shut it quickly, ringing the doorbell. Michael Winslow, having checked the camera, opened the door with a disdainful look. Lucy held the Bible so that the laser shone exactly on the right quarter of his neck, and pressed the embossed leather on the “V” of “KJV.”
“Have you heard the good news of Jesus Christ?”
A frozen dart of hensbane and aconite extract struck Michael on the neck, piercing through to the levator scapulae. Michael assumed he had been bitten by a bug — ”some damn wasp,” he thought. He slapped at his neck, and dropped like a stone.
Lucy had been expecting this and caught him on the way down, but she had not been expecting just how heavy the man was. Staggering under his body, she shoved him onto the carpet by the entry, and shut the door with her foot. Who bought shag these days?
She clipped a battery-powered monitor on his finger as he lay on the floor, then took it off after she was sure he was merely out, and not dying. She locked the door and went rummaging for a suitcase, which she found in his bedroom closet. Then she went to the gun cabinet, where there was a problem. It had a key pad, so she tried his address. No dice. She found his wallet and entered his birthday, also to no avail.
Lucy looked around for a post-it note or a scribbled number, and then noticed the Confederate flag and the White supremacist’s pledge next to it. She entered ‘1488’ on the keypad, and it unlocked.
She selected a .50 caliber sniper rifle, a 9mm pistol, and an AR-15 with a “punisher” logo on the stock. There was plenty of ammunition, so she put several boxes in the suitcase, tossed in the Bible, and zipped it except for the muzzle of the .50, which wouldn’t fit. It was getting dark, so she left it poking out. As an afterthought, she put a bottle of tequila and a glass next to Michael, splashing some in a tumbler, and some over his shirt.
She felt ridiculous riding the bike back with the suitcase rattling along on the side. A neighbor came out to drop something in the garbage, but never looked up. She thought she saw Bob when she got in the van, just for a moment. He looked perplexed.