Lucky Girl

Chapter Three

"Elizabeth...Did you bring a gun...?"

"Elizabeth...Over here...Charlie killed four women, stabbed them over forty times..."

"...And those are only the one's we know about..."

The security guards cleared a path, so she could reach her Porsche 911 Turbo, painted a shade of specially ordered neon-green, and parked on the tarmac, waiting for her.

"Elizabeth...Any new sex tapes coming out?"

She remembered Daddy's first rule, don't answer until they give you the question you want, make them work for your attention. The less you talk, the more it's like heavenly light pouring out from the back of your throat, when you deign to respond. And besides, she thought, there were only two sex tapes, and one of them was largely shot in night vision, and left a lot to the imagination.

"Elizabeth...Will you be dropping another album soon? You signed to Cash Money records last year..."

After possession charges, an ankle bracelet, and being crowned an "heirhead" by the tabloids, Elizabeth moved into the one industry in which those seeming black marks weren't necessarily a negative: music. She provided backing vocals to an EDM album, and a Lil' Wayne single about blowjobs, both of which sold huge in Japan, and led to her newest endeavor, an electro-minimalist ballad, that she sung in phonetic Japanese.

"Elizabeth...When does your new lingerie line hit?"

That one she wanted to answer. "The show for the new season is in eleven days."

"Elizabeth...What's it like to not be the superstar this time?"

There was some truth in the question.

Elizabeth knew fame, but Charlie Gillis was a superstar. A man with television specials hyping his menace, a man with websites and podcasts devoted to dissecting his run of terror in minute detail, a man whose image graced clothing lines, a man with twelve unauthorized autobiographies and counting, a man who generated a fresh-faced ensemble of cops and lawyers who could be called in when true crime shows needed commentators to explain ultimate evil. He had built a new industry off his brand, or in the parlance of Elizabeth's father, Charlie was a jobs creator.

He was the first serial killer to blaze through our perpetually connected, social media age, where celebrity was currency. There was no Facebook when Ted Bundy said goodbye to civilized society and went on a spree, no Instagram when Manson's "Family" decided to knock on that door on Cielo Drive, hell, now they could have posted a live video of the slaughter, no Twitter when the D.C. sniper turned the highways red, no Snapchat, when Richard Ramirez stalked the night like a vampire looking for victims.

She opened the driver's side of the Porsche, and slid on a pair on Chanel ballet flats, better for driving.

A journalist waved his arms wildly, like an electric current ran through him, settling at the base of his spine: "Elizabeth...I have a check from my network...Five million for the first nude photos of Charlie..."

And that was the other reason Charlie had been a media obsession since his initial arrest: His looks. And Elizabeth wasn't immune:

The first time I saw him on television, she thought, reliving the memory, he looked like a cowboy, but not the dusty kind who rustles cattle, the one on the covers of romance novels with titles like "Cowboys Have Always Been My Weakness", which in all honesty means, not an actual cowboy, but the way you envision it when you want to fuck one.

And that body. Formed from his teen years in and out of juvy labor camps. Those gaudy, stacked muscles and tattoos. That voice. A breathy Texas drawl, like the secretive mumble of a ten-year-old sent to the principal's office for smoking cigarettes behind the school. But they'd all be nothing without the eyes, a scared deer unsure how he ended up accused of serial murder. But also undressing you at the same time.

A journalist cluster photo'd her and popped another question:

"Elizabeth...Even with your fame for fake's sake philosophy, isn't the Charlie Gillis business a dirty one...?"

How dare she? Elizabeth thought. How dare anyone think I'm the dirty one? That I'm the one with fucked-up fantasies. You all wrote to him. He showed me the letters. You'd send him locks of hair, marriage proposals with matching rings, awful poetry, confess your most scandalous needs and lusts accompanied by nude photos. You all wanted to fuck him. You hypocrites. And his harem was damn inclusive. From nurses and librarians, from housewives to retirees, from strippers to Satanists, even judges, lawyers, and CEO's.

I did what you all didn't have the guts to do.

She slid into the Porsche's driver's seat, a leather cocoon, and turned to the security guards: "I want to drive myself. I need time to process this alone. It's a big day for me." She gave them her million-dollar smile:

"You can follow behind. Make sure I'm safe."

The media realized she was hitting the road, made a mad dash to their white and beige vans, ready to follow her to Death Row:

"She's on the move..."