"The Nymphos of Rocky Flats" - читать интересную книгу автора (Acevedo Mario)

CHAPTER 5

DURING MY FIRST OFFICIAL day as a nuclear health physicist, I spent my time organizing my desk and learning how to find my way around the maze of office trailers. Gilbert Odin met with me to pass along the names of the three women who first exhibited the nymphomania. All of them were radiological control technicians who had been on the same survey team for Building 707. And all three RCTs were still on medical leave. Gilbert cautioned me not to pry into their records at Rocky Flats or I’d alert Security about my investigation.

In the afternoon, I left Rocky Flats and returned to my apartment. First, I had to find the RCTs. Since a private detective deals in information, what better source for that commodity than the Internet? I sent five hundred bucks a month to a private mailbox in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in return an anonymous freelance hacker offered a keyhole into almost every database hooked into the Internet. I wrote an email asking where the RCTs lived, what kind of cars they drove, and their family status.

While I waited for a reply, I warmed up a half-pint of cow’s blood in the microwave. I poured the blood over a slab of focaccia and ate dinner.

A little after six in the evening I got my answers. I decided to begin by questioning the team leader, Tamara Squires.

She was married and had three sons. I received the vehicle plate numbers of a late-model Jeep Wrangler registered to her, plus home and cell phone numbers. And two addresses, one to a house in the suburb of Lakewood, and the other to an apartment, also in Lakewood. Tamara had lived in the house for ten years and for only one month in the apartment.

There could be two Tamara Squireses, but I had my doubts. I guessed that the nymphomania had strained her marriage and that she had moved out of the house and into the apartment. I’d look there first.

I waited until well after dusk before setting out. Vampires are nocturnal predators, so it is then that our powers are strongest.

The apartment was in a small complex, a two-story building overlooking the parking lot. A balcony ran along the front of the second floor. Each apartment had a picture window beside the entrance door. Lights above each door and in the stairwells illuminated the complex.

A white Jeep Wrangler sat in the parking lot. The Jeep’s plates matched the numbers I had been provided.

I munched on a breath mint, climbed the stairs to the balcony, and walked to apartment 2C. Before knocking, I scanned the area, listened carefully, and took a couple of deep sniffs. I didn’t detect anything unexpected.

I rapped on the door. From inside, footsteps approached. The window blinds parted a crack, not enough for me to see who peeked out.

Her voice muffled by the windowpane, a woman asked, “What do you want?”

“My name is Felix Gomez. I’m with DOE.” I slipped a badge from my coat pocket and showed it to her.

“And?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Are you from Security?”

“No.”

The window blinds closed. The deadbolt clicked, and the door opened. A brass chain stretched at shoulder level.

A woman, easily six feet tall, looked down through the gap between her door and the jamb. She had an oval-shaped, pretty face that tapered to a delicate chin. A mane of loose blond hair hung past her neck. She appeared to be in her early forties.

“Mrs. Tamara Squires?”

“That’s me,” she replied irritably. “Isn’t this kinda late? Is this so goddamn important that you couldn’t call me to the Flats instead? I don’t like work following me home. It’s wrecked my private life enough already.”

“That’s why I’m here. I want to talk about what’s happened to you.”

Her eyes narrowed and scrunched the tiny crow’s-feet at her temples. “What’s your job?”

“I’m a health physicist.”

“With Rad Safety? Industrial Hygiene? I’ve never seen you before.”

I thought I’d be asking the questions. I’m not even in the door and this woman was busting my chops.

“I specialize in post-exposure rehabilitation. I’m from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. California.”

“Yeah, I know where that is.”

I gave her my most sincere look. “I’d thought you’d be more comfortable talking here in your home than at Rocky Flats. My apologies, I should’ve called first.”

Tamara’s frown disappeared. “You’re the first from DOE to ask how I’m doing. And the only one to offer an apology for anything.” Closing the door, she unlatched the chain. “Come in.”

She was a big, well-proportioned woman. A baggy, light-gray sweatshirt covered her torso and clung to the swell of her large breasts. She wore tight, black leggings that came down to the middle of her well-muscled calves. Her toes peeked from under the straps of blue plastic slides.

Tamara lived in a studio apartment. A twin bed with a quilt and pillows stood against the far wall to the right, opposite a television stand with a TV and DVD player. In the middle of the wall hung a framed photograph of three smiling, adolescent boys. A tiny kitchen with a two-burner stove and a small refrigerator was to my left. Empty cartons of Chinese takeout sat by the sink. Separating the living area from the kitchen was a wooden card table surrounded by padded folding chairs. A brown leather purse, a packet of cigarettes, and an ashtray rested on the table.

“Mi casa, su casa, yada, yada.” Tamara walked into the kitchen. She moved in a loose gait, and the exaggerated movement of her hips and shoulders emphasized her meaty curves.

I sat in the chair closest to the door.

She reached into an overhead cabinet and pulled down a bottle of tequila. “Drink?”

“No thanks.”

Tamara rolled her eyes. “C’mon. With a name like Gomez you’re saying no to tequila? What a wuss.”

Lady, you’re talking to a vampire.

“I’m on duty.”

“Like that’s ever stopped anyone from drinking at DOE.” She picked a lime from inside the refrigerator and started slicing. She brought the tequila and a plastic tray to the table, carrying sections of lime, a saltshaker, and two shot glasses.

She sat in the other chair and uncapped the tequila. Despite my refusal, Tamara set a shot glass in front of each of us and filled them. She licked the top of her fist and sprinkled salt on the moistened flesh. Lifting her glass, she said, “Salud,” and poured the tequila down her throat. She licked the salt on her hand and bit into a piece of lime. After pursing her lips for a moment, she gasped, “Damn, that was good.”

I barely sipped my tequila. The salt-and-lime routine had never worked for me, even before I was a vampire.

Tamara lit one cigarette, took a puff, and exhaled. She twisted her mouth to one side in that curious way that smokers do to pretend that they’re not stinking up the air with their habit. “What’s with the makeup, Felix? Does it have anything to do with you not wanting to drink tequila?” Her smirk added, “you pussy.”

Not only was she insulting my status as a vampire, now she was going after my masculinity as well. I had thought I had done a good job with my makeup but apparently not. “It’s medication. I have a skin condition.”

Her mouth formed an “O,” and she feigned embarrassment to have noticed.

Since I was the investigator, it was time for me to earn my pay. “How are you managing on medical leave?”

Tamara poked at the surroundings with her cigarette. “Take a look. I’m doing like shit. I used to live in a four-bedroom split-level two miles from here. Now this shoe box is home.”

“I mean health-wise.”

“Mental health? At first I was so freaked out that I bought a gun.” Tamara stuck her hand in the purse on the table.

Was she after the gun? I got ready to grab her wrist.

She withdrew a plastic, amber-colored bottle. “You know they put us on Prozac.”

I relaxed and smiled inwardly at the false alarm.

She dropped the bottle back into her purse and combed a hand through her hair. “I had to quit taking it. Prozac looks so perfect at first. Everything seems under control. Then you realize that parts of you are missing, I mean parts of your personality. The more you use it, the more it feels like you are dissolving into the air.”

I had to fake concern while I steered the conversation to the incident in Building 707. “Are you better now that you don’t take it?”

“I feel more complete.” She mashed the cigarette into the ashtray. “On the other hand, it’s like I’m walking on ice. At any moment something will crack and down I go.”

“Go where?”

“Into nympho-land.” Tamara hung her head and clutched her fingers. “It sounds funny, doesn’t it? Like a joke. A bunch of horny women going out of control.” She lifted her head and gave a weak grin. “A man’s fantasy, no?”

“For some.”

Tamara reached into a pocket of her purse. She opened her hand to show me a gold wedding band. “It cost me my marriage and my family. I couldn’t control myself.”

This was regrettable for her, but what I needed to know was what had caused the nymphomania. I’d let her volunteer information before I resorted to vampire hypnosis.

Tamara prepared another shot of tequila. Good. The more lubricated she got, the easier my job. She gulped and slammed the empty glass on the table. “But you know what? The truth is, the real goddamn unvarnished truth is that I enjoyed it. I mean, what I can remember.”

She closed her eyes and clenched her hands before her face. “It’s like you’re on fire. You want it.”

“It…what?”

Tamara gave me an incredulous stare. “Sex. Everything about sex. Regular sex. Oral sex. Butt sex. Period sex. You go and you go,” she pumped her hand, flailing her head, shaking her blond tresses, “until you’re sizzling with lust, aware of nothing but your pleasure. Then you float back to reality, and it’s like you’re washed up on a beach after a storm.”

Tamara sighed and lit another cigarette. She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “And I don’t mean a nasty cold beach, either, I mean one of those beer-commercial beaches where the water is warm and the sun toasts your skin.”

She sucked on a lime and remained quiet for a moment. Looking over her shoulder to the picture on the wall, she said wistfully, “I do miss my boys.” She turned back toward me. “Can’t say I miss my husband, though. He turned into a real asshole about this and kicked me out of my house and then filed for divorce. Just because I nailed his brother, and the minister.”

Tamara pushed the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her forearms. She leaned on her elbows and gave an accusing glare. “You know what I learned from all this?”

“No.” But keep talking.

“How much you men fear women. I mean this whole sex thing. Women being the fair, weaker gender and all that bullshit. That you men grant us sexual permission. It’s a myth so you can control us.”

“Okay, guilty as charged,” I said. “Put all of man’s failures on my shoulders.” Now shut up about this and tell me what happened in Building 707.

“All of man’s failures?” she laughed. “Who are you now, Jesus Christ?”

“If I’m going to help, you’ll have to tell me about the beginning.”

“What if I don’t need help?”

“You like what happened?”

“Not what it cost me.”

“Then I need to know what caused it.”

“Read the report.”

“What report?”

“If you have to ask that question, I can’t tell you. It’s classified.” Tamara crossed her arms. “I could lose my job. Hell, I could even go to prison for revealing anything.”

Time for my vampire powers. This brassy Amazon had no defense. I bowed my head and popped the contacts from my eyes.

“Are you okay?” Tamara asked. “You really can’t handle tequila, can you?”

I sat upright and stared at her, shining the full effect of my tapetum lucidum into her eyes. My lupine gaze transfixed her. The red aura of a human shimmered around her.

“Holy shit.” Tamara jerked her head back in surprise, but only for a second as my hypnotic spell took effect. Her blue eyes dilated. Her face relaxed. Her lips parted slightly and released a curl of smoke. Her arms unfolded, and the cigarette dropped to the carpet. Such a strong-willed woman, and yet such easy prey.

I could turn my vampire gaze away for ten seconds, maybe even a minute, depending on the human, before I lost the hypnotic lock. I snatched the cigarette and snubbed it in the ashtray. Returning to stare into her eyes, I held Tamara’s hands in mine and kneaded the flesh between her thumbs and index fingers. Her breathing slowed, and her eyelids fluttered to remain open.

Gently, I raised our hands and, in a quiet voice, commanded her to stand up. I led her to the bed and levered her long body onto the mattress, resting her head on a pillow. The plastic slides fell from her feet. A wave of pheromones rose from her body. My control over her was complete.

The halo of her aura floated on the pillow. Her hair fell away from her neck and exposed the tender skin and tempting veins. The pleasure of erotic domination surged through me. My fangs started to grow, and I lapped my tongue against my dry lips. Blood tastes much better than tequila.

But I wouldn’t bite her. This investigation was tricky enough without me leaving holes in the necks of the witnesses. Plus, who knew what had contaminated her?

I climbed on the bed and straddled her, careful to put my weight onto my knees and not against her hips. Her pelvis arched aggressively and she pressed her groin against me. Odd. Hypnosis victims have always remained passive.

I laced our fingers together. Now to question her. The complication was that hypnosis opened up a victim’s subconscious and there was no telling what could come gushing out. Some blabbed like they were on a psychiatrist’s couch, and the trick was to get them to stick to my questions and shut up about everything else.

Staring into her eyes, I said, “Tamara, tell me what happened in Building 707.”

Her breathing deepened. The middle of her sweatshirt creased as her breasts rose and sank. She gulped. The focus in her eyes bore into mine, and she stared through me as if I wasn’t there.

In a relaxed voice, Tamara explained that as each floor of a building in the Protected Area was torn down, a survey team would go into the next area scheduled for demolition for a final “reconnaissance level characterization.”

“We were in the basement of 707, mapping discharge points beneath the foundry and casting modules. It was a real mess. Miles and miles of unmarked pipes. Sofia, Jenny, and I wore coveralls and respirators. We kept following one pipe after another, trying to match the master layout. Then we got lost. Apparently we had walked into a corridor that didn’t exist on the original print. We kept going since our TLDs didn’t register anything.”

“Transluminiscent dosimeters?”

“Yes. We had the new ones that chirp an alarm. About the time we figured we were under the north loading bay, we found a secure door.”

“Secure door?”

“It looked like the ones blocking the ‘infinity rooms’ in Buildings 371 and 776. The rooms that are so crapped up with radiation that the instrument counter goes off the scale to infinity. But this door wasn’t marked. It seems the demolition above had shattered the concrete around the door and sprung it open. As many times as we’ve gone through those buildings to update the placards and warnings, I wondered how anyone missed this one.”

“Did you go inside?”

“Not right away. We radioed the RLC coordinator for instructions. He didn’t know about the room, either, and told us to investigate. So we entered and looked with our flashlights. There were rows of fifty-five-gallon drums and boxes shaped like caskets.”

Caskets? Were there bodies? “What about markings?”

“There weren’t any. They looked like they were painted black.”

“Had you seen anything like them before?”

“Not the boxes. The drums, yes. They were standard, though usually they’re painted gray or white.”

Tamara lay quiet, swallowing nervously.

I stared at her, renewing my concentration to coax her to start talking again. “Continue.”

“Suddenly, something hissed, like a steam vent. A vapor started swirling from the drums and boxes, rising and surrounding us.”

Tamara’s hands trembled. I squeezed to reassure her. And strangely enough, she squeezed back.

“Tamara, you’re safe here. Go on, tell me what happened.”

She bit her lower lip. Her chin quivered.

“Tell me.”

“First my TLD started chirping. The three of us backed out of the room. Sofia’s TLD went off. Then Jenny’s. We shouted for help over the radio and ran like scared dogs. By the time we reached the entry point, our TLDs were showing seventeen rems.”

Tamara’s eyes watered with distress. “We were crapped up and had to go through rad decon. The other RCTs stripped us naked under the shower and scrubbed us with brushes. Security guards in bunny suits with Tasers and guns escorted us to bioassay.”

I knew about rad decontamination. What I needed was more details about the room. “Tell me what you saw.”

She closed her eyes and started to weep.

“Shh,” I whispered. I tightened my grip on her hands to comfort her.

Tamara turned her head from side to side to wipe her tears against the pillow.

“What about the report?”

“The Tiger Team report?” Tamara gripped my fingers hard. Her aura took a yellow cast.

This alarmed me. Never had a hypnosis subject initiated such physical action, nor had I ever seen an aura change color like this. And to yellow? Was this the nymphomania at work?

“Tell me about the Tiger Team report.”

Tamara opened her hands to loosen my grip. “Big Wong has it.”

I let go of her fingers. I’d never experienced this. Normally I was in absolute control of the hypnosis. “Dr. Wong?”

Leaning forward, I cradled her head in my hands and raked my fingers through her sweat-damp hair. Her aura clung to my fingers like Saint Elmo’s fire. “You mean Bigelow Wong, the head of Radiation Safety?”

“Yes,” she moaned. Her lips darkened. Her female scent gushed up at me. The aura lost its yellow hue and turned red.

Now I felt I was in control again. Releasing my hold on her head, I relaxed, admiring how easily I manipulated her, like I could any other human.

“Tamara, open your eyes and look at me.”

Moaning again, she slipped her right hand under the pillow.

I caressed her face. “Tamara, look at me.”

Her eyelids popped open, her pupils riveted on me. Her aura turned bright yellow again. Her right hand jerked from under the pillow and she pressed the muzzle of a Browning automatic against my forehead.