FAMILY-SIZE MEAL.

HALF AN HOUR after making the necessary phone call, I walk up to the counter at KFC. There is a foreign-looking girl serving. She looks up expectantly, a bright smile and happy, laughing eyes. I am convinced that she must be a model in her spare time, or at the very least an actress. after making the necessary phone call, I walk up to the counter at KFC. There is a foreign-looking girl serving. She looks up expectantly, a bright smile and happy, laughing eyes. I am convinced that she must be a model in her spare time, or at the very least an actress.

"A family meal, please."

The girl just looks at me, dumbly smiling away.

"I want a family meal." I have to stress this. Underline in s.p.a.ced-out words exactly what I want. "Fa-mi-ly me-al. Comprende? Comprende?"

The girl keeps smiling, her sparkling eyes boring into my brain until it hurts.

I speak once more, as slowly and as deliberately as I can. "One family-size meal-please."

A shadow falls over me, and I experience a slight chill. I turn around and see Agent Wade standing there looking at me. I hold his look, no longer scared of anything. "I figured we could share."

Agent Wade nods as I turn back to the foreign girl. "Family-size meal." I s.n.a.t.c.h up a flyer describing the said meal and she suddenly nods, smiles her bright smile, and takes the money for it. I turn back to Agent Wade and shrug. "Seems the best place to finish this, don't you think?"

Agent Wade still says nothing, and I'm glad because I don't want to hear his voice-not ever again.

We take a seat by the window. Agent Wade slides in first, and I sit opposite him. I open the family meal bucket and start dishing out equal measures. Agent Wade watches me intently until I'm finished. When I look down at my portion, I suddenly realize that I'm not hungry. Agent Wade looks much the same way, because he doesn't touch the food. I pat the family bucket knowingly.

"Guess this is all we really need."

"And these." Agent Wade pushes four sachets of lemon-scented hand wipes my way.

I nod, collect them, and pop them in my pocket. "I'm doing this for Betty-you know that, don't you?" I offer this as earnestly as I can.

"Figured you must have some sort of reason."

"I loved her."

"That's a big love, Dougie."

"We'd made plans. Were going to sail to Mexico and set up a fast-food chain."

Agent Wade shrugs. "Can never have enough fast food." His eyes are bloodshot, and he looks mighty weary, almost as if his soul-that's a.s.suming he ever had one-has checked out. He's aged at least ten years since I first met him.

"Now it's down to you and me."

"Mano a mano."

"You got it." I nod, not having a clue what Agent Wade just said or even what language he spoke it in.

I glance at the bargain bucket, look at the smiling face of that white-haired ex-army colonel depicted on the side-the face that says, "Come and dine with me, and I'll tell you all I know about war."

"Dougie?" Agent Wade's voice interrupts my reverie.

"Yeah?"

"I've got a gun pointed at your groin."

Agent Wade makes me drive across town, all the way back to my apartment. We park, and with the gun in his jacket pocket, aimed at the small of my back, he makes me walk inside. I'm still not scared, though, and know I can get out of this-just as soon as I come up with a decent plan. Which for the moment seems to be eluding me.

The front door shuts behind me.

"Take a seat."

I go toward the sofa but feel myself pushed toward one of the wooden chairs that sits at my dining table.

"Sofa's mine."

I allow myself to be shoved forward, watch Agent Wade drag the chair out with his foot, and I sit down. The bargain bucket is dumped unceremoniously on the table in front of me. Agent Wade crosses to the sofa and slumps down, the gun aimed at me the whole time.

He reaches for his briefcase, searches around, and then produces a tiny handheld tape recorder-one of those things businessmen recite into while they sit at their desks trying to look important enough to keep their jobs. Agent Wade sets the recorder on the coffee table, presses "record," and glances up at me. "I'll type it up later."

"Type what up?"

"Your confession."

I'm not altogether sure that I understand. Agent Wade sees this and spells it out, his words p.r.o.nounced slowly and definitely. They hit home, as if he were jabbing me in the chest with them.

"I want to hear it all. Every little thing. Don't leave a word out. Just tell me-in your own time-how and why you became the Kentucky Killer."

I have met many crazy people over the last four years, but Agent Wade beats them all hands down.

"What!?" I almost laugh, this is so ridiculous.

"In your own time, Dougie."

My mind starts to clear, and I suddenly see it all. "Oh . . . I get it now. You're running interference. Pinning it on me to give you some breathing s.p.a.ce. Well, I'm not saying a word."

The gun is raised, the trigger eased back. "Dougie . . ."

"Uh-uh." I shake my head, meaning what I say. "Uh-uh."

"I'll shoot your b.a.l.l.s off. One at a time."

I instantly stop shaking my head. "What do you want me to say?"

"Just start from the beginning."

"You'd better tell me when that is, then."

Agent Wade reaches across, angrily swipes the recorder from the coffee table, switches off the record b.u.t.ton, rewinds, and starts all over again. "For chrissakes, Dougie!"

"What?"

"Just tell the d.a.m.n story!"

"You want me to make it up, is that it?"

"I want you to tell me what happened. How it started, why it started, how come you've stayed free for so long. A guy like you can barely tie his shoelaces, so how the h.e.l.l you managed it I really don't know."

I think I'm missing something. There's a piece of the jigsaw that disintegrated before I could even get the box open. "You're making a big mistake here. I'm not the Kentucky Killer."

Agent Wade's eyes blaze with exasperation. "Dougie, you killed James Mason and stuck a carton over his head. You killed Myrna Loy and Chuck Norris and stuck cartons over their heads. You killed two Mexicans and stuck cartons on them as well. You posted ads in the paper, and you turned up at the Club the night KK said he would. Only no one knew it was you. I should have guessed when you got so wound up about not contacting KK. Should have known I was getting too close for comfort. You pretend to be this dumb-a.s.s jerk-off, but I know better. It took me some time to cut through that low-rent personality of yours, but I got there in the end. So come on, Dougie, just share it with me, huh?"

"You've got the wrong guy."

"Why'd you kill the members? Is it because you want to be the only one? Or is it that they mess it up for you, detract from your glorious crusade? Maybe they were just plain stupid and irritated you-a brilliant killer like you lumbered with trash like that."

I'm not a psychiatrist, but anyone could see what's wrong with Agent Wade. "It's a split personality thing, right?"

"Huh?" Agent Wade loses focus for a second.

"Schizophrenia. That's what it is. You're schizoid, yeah?"

Agent Wade looks at me with a deep frown. "We're talking about you here, not me."

"But are we, really?" I say in my best psychiatrist manner.

"Dougie, this gun is loaded." Agent Wade has heard enough, aims straight at my groin, but I'm on a roll now.

"Maybe it's the chicken, maybe they put something in the secret recipe that you're allergic to. You should have tests."

Agent Wade wearily s.n.a.t.c.hes the recorder, rewinds the tape, and starts again. He sets down the recorder with a loud bang and glares at me, teeth gritted. "Last chance, Dougie. You can do it with b.a.l.l.s or without. It's your call."

I try my best to put myself in the shoes of the Kentucky Killer for a moment. I scratch around inside my brain, trying to pinpoint the things I know about him so that I can reel it off and then be done with it all. The bargain bucket sits there, Colonel Sanders's grinning face mocking me. I stare hard at the face-so hard, in fact, that he turns into Santa Claus and I hear the thud of his body as he jumps down my chimney and lands hard in the grate.

"It was Mom. She made me do it."

The voice doesn't belong to me. I know this because I'm not a woman, and this particularly sardonic voice definitely belongs to someone of the opposite s.e.x.

"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy . . . ," the voice sneers in contempt.

I turn.

Betty stands in my bedroom doorway, looking more beautiful then ever. A vision.

I smile broadly, knowing I'm looking at an angel, understanding that there is life after death, and certainly after this amount of death, heaven has to be teeming with life.

"Betty . . ."

"Hi, Dougie."

She floats toward me, moving with grace and elegance, skipping past the prostrate body of Agent Wade as he lies on the floor, a pool of blood spreading like the Dark Angel's crimson wings around him. Betty removes a glinting silver rod of truth from his back and brings it up, wiping a liar's stain from it.

"One bargain bucket and two heads. Not a good equation."

Even in death she retains that strong canine aroma, and it wafts around me, seasoning my very existence.

"I tried to save you, Betty. I did, I swear it."

"And I saved you, Dougie. Till last."

I look up to find that Betty's eyes are now hazel, her hair is much shorter, and she wears very little makeup. She looks like she has been under a tanning bed too long, as she is now as brown as a cup of milky coffee. I figure heaven must be closer to the sun, which actually makes a lot of sense.

"You did me proud, Dougie. Wading through those pieces of garbage like a guilt-free lumberjack in a rain forest." Betty lights a cigarette, inhales deeply. "Like what I did to your bedroom, by the way?"

I'm fascinated, because Betty has cotton wool wedged into her mouth to make her cheeks look plumper. Maybe she's been eating lumps of cloud.

"I heard about the Club from Tony. He loved it so much, he was busting a gut to tell me how great it was. I had to join. But there was that weird thing about KK. No Kentucky Killer, thank you very much. I kept asking him how come KK couldn't join, but he said it just wouldn't work out. I figured he was scared KK would make him look small time, maybe even take over the chairmanship. So I invented this new killer-little prim and proper Betty."

Agent Wade groans, tries to raise his head. Betty glances at him, tuts to herself. "That was something I hadn't counted on. A federal agent, of all people. You never told me about him, Dougie."

"I was too embarra.s.sed. Imagine what the Club would've said."

"That f.u.c.king Club. How dare they not invite me! There you all are, having this great time together, and there I am, lonely as h.e.l.l, wishing there was someone I could talk to, someone who would understand me and appreciate my efforts. All I wanted was to be one of the gang."

Betty's cigarette smoke swirls around me, hypnotizing me, tendrils dancing like snakes.

"But then I thought, If the Club doesn't want me, then I don't want the Club. And boy, was I gonna make them pay. Course, soon as I realized what you were doing, I figured what the h.e.l.l, let midget britches do it for me." Betty's voice has a rancorous edge that I'd never detected before. "I tried my best to keep you out of the s.h.i.t. Jumping in every chance I got to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot. Though I thought long and hard about letting them get you after what you put me through in that motel with those Mexicans. I soon got my own back on them, though."

I look again at Betty, staring harder at her, seeing her pale flesh, watching her chest rise and fall with her breath. There's something almost human about her.

"Have to admit, killing Jimmy and the sign language lovebirds was unavoidable. Couldn't let you have all the fun."

Finally it sinks in.

Betty's not dead!

She's alive, and she's standing here, right in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch her.

"He didn't get you! Agent Wade didn't kill you."

My hand reaches for Betty, and my fingertips brush the soft skin of her face. She's warm.

"Tony's dead, Betty." I say this gently, brushing a strand of hair from Betty's eye. "He's not coming back."

"Saved me a job, I guess."

"Dougie . . ." Agent Wade starts to crawl toward me, pulling himself onto his elbows, doing his level best to get to me.

Betty fishes a sheet of paper and a small staple gun out of her jacket pocket. "Real handy you had a typewriter."

"Dougie . . ." Agent Wade miraculously raises himself higher, only to get a savage boot in the face from Betty that sends him onto his side, his neck jerking back so hard that for a minute I think she's broken it.

"I'm talking here!"