Who was the shooter? He knew my route. He knew me. I was sure I had seen him and the black Ford before, if only incidentally. I promised myself that in the course of this investigation I’d get even with this shooter. It would be a delightfully hideous revenge.
Back in my apartment, I scrubbed myself clean and decided to continue my interrogation of the RCTs. I headed for the next address, which turned out to be a town house in Littleton, a suburb southwest of Denver. The dwellings were three-story units scrunched together between juniper hedges. I walked up the narrow porch of my destination and rang the doorbell. The lock on the front door clicked and the door opened.
The woman peeked at me from around the door’s edge. Neon-blue eyes were inset within her pretty, square-shaped face, matched in intensity by her crimson lipstick. A terry-cloth headband kept her wavy dark hair from spilling over her forehead. My libido piqued with the scent of her perspiration.
Showing my ID, I introduced myself and recited my credentials. “I’m from the Flats. You are a friend of Tamara Squires?”
“Tamara? Is this about the outbreak?”
“It is. And are you Sofia Martinez?”
“Yes I am.” She politely agreed to let me in. Tugging at her moistened T-shirt, worn braless over smallish breasts, she said, “I just got back from the gym. Hope you don’t mind me smelling like a mare.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Gomez. I saw your nose wrinkle.” Black spandex shorts clung to her substantial, inviting butt.
I followed her into the modest living room, where I sat on the sofa and she plopped in the stuffed armchair. A snowboard rested in the corner. Softball and soccer trophies on the mantle crowded around a figurine of the Madonna and Child.
Sofia slipped loose her cross-trainers, peeled off her socks, and folded her bare, muscular legs underneath her hips. Suddenly, she sprang from the chair and headed for the kitchen. “Oh gosh, where are my manners? Coffee?”
I needed to ask questions and not waste time. “None for me. But thanks.”
“Too late. Since I’m having some, so are you.” She yelled from the kitchen. “Are you here to talk about the nympho thing?”
I hadn’t mentioned anything about that. “How did you know?”
“Because you asked about Tamara and then you come to see me. That was a no-brainer. Her life really went into the poopster over this, didn’t it?”
“According to her, yeah.”
Sofia returned with a serving tray with two delicate china cups filled with coffee. “I take mine with cream and a dash of sugar. I put the same in yours.”
She set a cup and saucer in front of me on the coffee table. “Let me tell you a secret about myself”-Sofia took her cup and curled into the stuffed chair-“I was a goddamn nympho before all this crap happened at the Flats.”
“So it had no effect on you?”
Sofia scrunched her lips together and wobbled her head as if deciding what to say. “I wouldn’t say that. It did make me lower my standards on occasion.” She set the cup on an end table. Clasping her hands, she shoved them between her knees and rocked forward. “I shouldn’t have said that, it was stupid. Sorry. For me, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.” With a flourish of her left arm, she looked up at the ceiling. “Here I am, in my mid-thirties, divorced, my goddam biological clock ringing so loud that I’m surprised the neighbors can’t hear it, and I can’t find someone to give me a kid. And then, to make me a certified sexual basket case, I get nymphomania for real.”
“No Prozac?”
“Prozac? What the hell do I need that for? My only problem with sex is this.” She snatched an envelope from the corner of the coffee table. “Here’s another invitation from one of my sisters to yet another baby shower.” She shook the envelope at me. Her cheeks darkened to the shade of her lipstick. “When’s my baby shower? Huh, Felix? When’s mine?”
Sofia sat still, sulking. “Am I a bad person?”
Should’ve brought rubber boots; I didn’t think I’d have to wade this deep through emotional wreckage. “No,” I told her.
She aimed those blue eyes at me. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Yes, I do.” This was true.
“Then what’s the problem? Am I too forward? I thought guys didn’t like all that prissy bullshit.” The words spewed out of her mouth like she had a motor in her throat. “Every guy worth having sex with is either fixed or won’t give me a kid. I don’t want to marry anybody again or bust his ass over child support, I just want to be able to point out to my baby, ‘There’s your daddy.’ And then I get this goddamn nymphomania and I go through enough condoms to make a zeppelin because I don’t want to get pregnant from the wrong dipshit.”
“Have you gone to a clinic?” I asked. “For a baby, I mean.”
“I’m not doing the turkey-baster thing. I want quality sperm fresh out of the penis.”
“Maybe you have to compromise.”
“Compromise what? All I want is to get laid and get pregnant by somebody decent,” she shouted. “It happens millions of times every day to women on this planet-just not to me.”
How sad for her, but I had to steer the conversation back to the nymphomania. I took the last sip of my coffee and set the cup on its saucer. “So your biological clock started ringing before the outbreak?”
“Hello? Didn’t I say that? I’ve been after a baby since I was divorced six years ago.”
“Seems like plenty of time.”
“You’d think. Casual sex was not the problem. It’s that the guys either did the daddy-thing already with their exes or they don’t want kids, period. So here are these otherwise perfectly suitable mates and I have to throw them back because”-her voice angered-“they won’t give me a baby.”
“I’m racing the calendar.” She held up three fingers. “This is how many years I got. No woman in my family over forty ever got pregnant.”
Her eyes glistened. She wiped a tear. “Sorry to act this way.” Her voice trembled. “But I really want a baby. I even have a nursery upstairs. Wanna see?”
God no. This woman had enough problems to keep a platoon of shrinks busy. “That’s okay.”
Sofia gave a smile so tense I thought her face would break. She finished her coffee. Closing her eyes for a moment, she sighed deeply and her cheeks turned their natural color. “Let’s change the subject. What’s with you? That makeup?”
“A skin condition. Gulf War Syndrome.”
“Yew.” She squinted and turned her head to examine me. “Other than that, you’re not bad-looking. That syndrome didn’t leave you…shooting blanks?”
“You mean sterile?”
“That. Impotent.”
“There’s a difference,” I said defensively. Vampires certainly weren’t impotent. But we were sterile and propagated solely by fanging. “My plumbing works. But I am shooting blanks.”
“See what I mean?” Sofia splayed her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Another decent guy who doesn’t cut the mustard.”
First time I’d ever been called decent. “I thought we had changed the subject. What can you tell me about your contamination in Building 707?”
Sofia crossed her arms. “I can’t go into details about that. Why are you asking?”
Time for vampire hypnosis. I bent my head down and dropped the contacts into my hand. I lifted my head and stared at Sofia.
Her rosy face blanched. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted enough for a whisper to escape. “Oh wow.”
That I’d never heard from a victim before. Considering my experience with Tamara, I approached Sofia cautiously, lest she kept a pistol jammed between the seat cushions. Her aura surrounded her like an electric cloud.