I walked past her to check the bathroom. “You get it.”
Shawna shrugged, took the bucket, and left.
No one waited behind the bathtub curtain. The bathroom window faced a cinderblock wall on the other side of a narrow alley. Steel bars covered the window.
The bed was a couple of twins pushed together. Duct tape held the legs tight. Underneath I found a roach clip, a knee-high stocking, a couple of.270 rifle cartridges, and a copy of the Alamosa Valley Courier. The paper was from two days ago. The headline of a front-page article read: “Local Business Owner Missing.”
Someone else had disappeared?
A quick glance told me that the business owner was the latest of area residents who had vanished. The article mentioned a loving wife and family and, only as an aside, introduced a gambling problem and debts.
Yet another zombie recruit?
I left the newspaper under the bed. I stuck my pistol in a pocket of my barn coat and laid the coat over the back of an unraveling wicker chair. I took off my boots and socks. I stood barefoot on the carpet, closed my eyes, and calmed my senses, making myself aware of all sensations, from the texture of the carpet against the bottom of my feet to the drum of air inside my ears. My mind was a smooth pool of water and every disturbance rippled across its surface.
There was the rumble of traffic on the boulevard. I heard television programs from the adjacent rooms. A radio tuned to a sports call-in show. The creak of a rusty hinge. Phone calls.
Steps approached the door. The quick steps belonging to a woman.
I pulled myself from the trance just as Shawna shoved the door open. The cascade of outside air chilled my feet.
She came in and put the bucket and ice on the dresser. She moved her shoulders and hips to a tune only she could hear. “Let’s start the party.”
I locked the front door behind her.
Shawna unsnapped her jacket and tossed it over the foot of the bed. “You never told me your name.”
Details. As if she didn’t know.
“Felix Gomez.” I dropped ice into cups.
“Nice name, Felix. Like the cat.”
“So I’ve heard.” I made vodka tonics with twists of lemon.
Shawna plopped her skinny ass on the mattress. “What’s in your bag of tricks?”
Plenty.
She yanked off her red cowboy boots and scooted them under the bed.
I had a lot of questions for Shawna and I’d get to them in a minute with hypnosis.
She started on her vodka tonic and punched buttons on the clock radio. “We need some goddamn music.” The clock kept flashing 12:00 and the speaker belched static. She turned the volume off.
Shawna guzzled half of her drink and handed the cup back to me. “Put some fire in this motherfucker.”
“What do you mean?”
“Too much tonic. Don’t be stingy with the vodka. If I wanted a sissy drink, I’d follow you to Denver.”
Denver? That made a big blip on my stink-o-meter. I never told her I was from Denver. Another question for hypnosis.
Shawna rested against a pile of pillows fluffed across the headboard. Her boobs sagged within the tube top.
I handed her a new drink with maybe one molecule of tonic floating between the ice cubes.
She sipped and gasped in approval.
I asked. “What do you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“For money?”
Shawna gave the most noncommittal of shrugs. Her breasts wobbled like a bowl of watery mashed potatoes. “This and that. Favors, mostly.”
“What kind of favors?” I knew that answer already.
She stroked her stockinged feet against the bedcovers. “Let me show you.”
I took the cup from her and went to the dresser. I took out my contacts and faced her. “No, let me show you.”
Shawna lay on the bed. The penumbra of her aura undulated like the surface on a puddle of red water. Her blue eyes gazed at nothing. A bottle of Windex showed more life.
I knelt beside her and scooped her neck in my hand. My fangs extended and I touched the sharp points with the tip of my tongue. Yes, I’d interrogate her, but first, it was time for dinner.
I removed one of her oversize horseshoe earrings and put my nose into the hollow of her neck behind the left ear. My cheek brushed against hair that was broom-bristle stiff with Aquanet. My fangs found their mark on her throat. Her blood spurted into my mouth. The taste of tramps was a flavor I knew too well.
I sucked deliberately, filling my mouth to capacity, and let the heavy mass of blood swirl over my tongue. Type A-negative I was sure. I swallowed and the luxurious warmth flushed through my body.
I gave Shawna only enough of my pleasure enzymes to keep her aura steady while giving a maximum dose of healing and amnesia enzymes. An hour after my fanging, she’d have no souvenir of my feeding except for a blank spot in her memory.
I climbed on the bed to straddle her hips and cradle her head in my hands.
“Shawna,” I whispered. “Talk to me.”
Recognition sparkled in her eyes. Her pupils shrank as the focus in them receded to a point deep within her consciousness. Sparkles of psychic energy collected along the aura around her head and made a halo. Probably the only one she’d ever wear.
“Why did you come on to me?” I asked.
Her pupils alternated between dilating and shrinking.
Let me rephrase the question. “Who sent you?”
“Sal.”
“Last name?”
“Cavagnolo.”
So this rendezvous was a setup.
I massaged the back of her scalp. “What for?”
“Didn’t say.”
I believed her; she had no choice but to tell the truth.
“Cavagnolo told you to approach me at My Final Bender and invite me here?”
“Yes.”
Simple enough plan, though so obvious that a blind drunk would’ve seen it coming. I had told Cavagnolo to stay out of my way and I’d get Gino’s killers. But the old man had his pride and the only way to restore face was to take me down. I expected visitors.
Another question for Shawna: “Do you know anything about the mutilations?”
The smooth sheath of her aura turned into an undulating fuzz. A rash of dark spots betraying anxiety broke out across her penumbra.
“Answer me.”
Her eyes fixed on a spot miles above. She struggled to obey me while her subconscious fought to keep her pain buried. “I…I…I’ve heard.”
“Heard what?”
“About Stanley. Barrett. Now Gino.”
“What about them?”
The dark spots sprouted tendrils that whipped from her aura. Sweat trickled from her forehead and wet her temples. Her eyes became wide concentric circles of white around the blue middles. “People are scared.”
“Why?”
“Because no one knows why folks are disappearing or who’s doing the killings.”
Shawna shut her eyes and milked tears. Wet mascara filled the wrinkles of her cheeks. She looked terrified and suddenly very old.
I’d hit a wall of emotional distress. It wasn’t worth digging through. She’d told me what I wanted to know. I laid her head on the pillow and got off the bed.
Other than confirming that Cavagnolo was still gunning for me, what had I learned? He was more frightened about the killings than he would admit.
But as to who or why? A big goose egg of ignorance hovered over me.
When Shawna came around, she’d want an explanation as to what happened. I dumped the remaining vodka down the bathroom sink. If I told Shawna that she’d passed out from the boozing, I doubt it would be news.
This chase after the zombies was getting murkier by the minute. I had no clue what to do next, so I decided to rest and wait and see if Cavagnolo’s men showed up.
I cleaned my pistol, the magazine, and the bullets. I turned the wicker chair toward the TV on the dresser. Like everything else in the room, the TV looked salvaged from a recycling bin. I sat and picked up the remote but the TV wouldn’t click. I got up to wiggle the wooden dowel sticking out where the power button should be. The TV buzzed and the screen showed the commercial for a public auction of tractors and manure spreaders.