The Undead Kama Sutra fg-3

by Mario Acevedo

  Their auras flared like two hot coals in a Weber grill. Their eyes opened wide as half-dollars.

  I let their auras settle before asking, “Does either of you know Dan Goodman?”

  Big guy answered no. His partner couldn’t get a word out and I didn’t have time to prod his subconscious. I needed to look inside the hangar.

  Fanging the marshals was the preferred technique to keep them under, but I tried something else. I banged their heads together like coconuts and let them drop.

  I proceeded toward the hangar and examined the parked vehicles in case I overlooked someone. Around the corner to the south, there was a smaller door with a brightly lit window. I didn’t see any security cameras. I kept my distance from the window and looked inside. A female marshal sat at a desk ten feet from the door. She leafed through a copy of Flying magazine. A coffeemaker with a half-empty carafe rested on the desk.

  I waited a couple of moments to see if someone else appeared. No one did. I stood to one side of the window and placed my hand against the door. The metal vibrated with the hum of electric motors-something like ventilation fans or compressors. Satisfied that she was alone, I opened the door and walked in.

  The marshal brought her gaze from the magazine and up to me. She began to stand. “You need…”

  She froze midway up. Her pupils dilated and her aura brightened into a crimson sizzle.

  I shut and locked the door. I brushed my hand across the row of light switches. The hangar fell dark as a tomb. Perfect.

  I stepped around the desk and cupped the marshal’s neck. She had a firm, athletic build. I brought my fangs close to her throat. Her shampoo had a tea tree scent, while her deodorant smelled of something exotic and tropical. I was sure the marshal bought these products at a health food store, so I bet she paid attention to what she ate.

  My fangs broke her skin. The warm blood pumped into my mouth. I took a swallow and savored the taste. Nothing artificial in her blood. A strictly organic diet for sure.

  I worked my saliva to the wound. As the enzymes seeped into her flesh, the marshal gave a low moan and relaxed. I held her arm and eased her back into the chair. My fanging should keep her under for at least an hour.

  I flipped through the papers and binders on the desk. Most were procedures or lists of people. I sorted through a stack of loose faxes, invoices, and receipts. One form was a flight manifest for a Gulfstream corporate jet. Among the six passengers was a D. Goodman.

  The trail was hot again.

  The Gulfstream had left just as I arrived-so he was aboard.

  The destination of the Gulfstream? Kansas City, the origin of the doomed airliner.

  An investigation team would look into evidence at the point of departure. But why was Goodman involved in the first place?

  I asked the marshal if she knew Goodman and she answered no. I closed her eyes and left her content and unconscious.

  Airplane wreckage lay scattered across the hangar floor. A metal easel held a schematic of the Beech turboprop that mapped how the pieces belonged together.

  The noises of a fan and compressor came from a semi-trailer parked inside the hangar against the northern wall. The back of the trailer faced the hangar doors. A ramp led to the trailer doors, which were secured with a padlock.

  Boxes of latex gloves, booties, and paper masks rested on a bench beside the bottom of the ramp. Two gurneys had been pushed against the bench. A sign taped to the left trailer door said:

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  CRASH INVESTIGATION EVIDENCE.

  Another placard had the symbol for biological waste and was labeled BIOHAZARD.

  I picked through an open toolbox and found a heavy pry bar that I used to force open the trailer door. I slipped the broken padlock into my pocket to hide the obvious evidence of my entry.

  When I opened the door, a wave of refrigerated air carried the odor of decaying human flesh. On the inside of the door someone had taped color head shots labeled with names, a birth date, and some kind of reference number. There were nineteen smiling faces, which I presumed were the crash victims, now charred and torn to pieces and no longer smiling.

  Body bags sat on the shelves along the inside of the trailer. Some bags held lumpy forms scarcely the size of a child. Others were almost flat. Smashing into the ground at several hundred miles an hour didn’t leave much to recover.

  Humans have this perception of the inviolate forms of their physical bodies, until they encounter the laws of physics. Then their precious bags of flesh, tissue, and bone become messy, fragile projectiles that go splat.

  I counted seventeen body bags. Masking tape on two empty shelves had been marked with the names Vanessa Tico and Janice Wyndersook. Where were their remains? According to the most recent news, all the bodies were accounted for. Were these two released to their family for burial? Considering the crash happened this morning, I doubted it.

  I examined the pictures of the missing women. Vanessa Tico’s portrait looked like a glamour shot. She was an African-American with a middle-dark complexion, straight hair that seemed sprayed armor-stiff, and wide, bright eyes that begged you to share a laugh. Janice Wyndersook faced the camera in a fuzzy blowup of a snapshot. Her small eyes squinted at the viewer through narrow glasses. Tufts of blond hair jutted from her scalp in the current trendy style. Her rosy complexion made each round cheek look as inviting as a freshly picked apple. Vanessa was twenty-seven, Janice twenty-eight.

  They weren’t much younger than Marissa Albert, the murdered chalice in Key West. I touched the pictures on the door. A hunch-I was a private detective, what else did I have-told me that Vanessa and Janice were still alive.

  Then why the charade of their deaths in this crash?

  I bet Goodman would know.

  Chapter

  21

  I backed out of the trailer and closed the door. I turned the hangar lights back on, dropped the padlock into an outside drain, and hustled to my car. The marshals by the Crown Victoria remained unconscious.

  Each new thing that I learned so far-the murders, the aliens, my orders from the Araneum, the crashed airplanes-was like another big rock in my mental knapsack. More weight to carry to what destination?

  I got back to Midway Airport, bought a round-trip ticket for Kansas City, and sat with a cup of coffee in the passenger terminal where the morning sun could hit me. I watched the red orb rise over the ragged horizon beyond the airport perimeter.

  As a vampire, I’d seen the sunrise through the thick, dark lenses of welder’s goggles, while wearing heavy clothing to protect my skin. Now I was so used to my human skin that I didn’t feel the slightest tremor of fear when the sun advanced past the edge of the earth. The sun grew bright enough to sting my eyes through the contacts and I looked away, a reminder that I only looked human. I felt the gentle warmth against my cheek and the back of my hands.

  Because of all the stupid pain-in-the-ass security rules, I had to sneak blood with me. I hid three ounces of B-positive (a whole three ounces!) in a travel-size bottle of shampoo the TSA screeners had waved through.

  I emptied the bottle into my coffee. The small amount of blood was enough to quench my vampire thirst until my next big fix. The rest of my supply had to travel in checked baggage.

  Again, as before, the question was where to find Goodman. The man flitted before me, elusive as a mirage.

  Once in the Kansas City airport, I scouted the counter for Prairie Air. I followed a maintenance worker to the men’s room, zapped him, pushed him into a stall, and took his badge.

  I swiped the badge to unlock a door to the secure part of the terminal. The employee lounge for Prairie Air wasn’t anything fancy: two long tables in the middle, stackable plastic chairs scattered across the linoleum floor, a microwave, refrigerator, and coffeemakers. Copies of the Kansas City Star and the Chicago Tribune lay on the tables. Headlines on the newspapers announced yesterday’s crash. A wipe board on the far wall had been scrawled with red and blue mark
ers:

  NO MEDIA CONTACT, PERIOD!

  SEE YOUR MANAGER FOR NTSB GO TEAM

  INTERVIEW NOTE CHANGES IN WORK SCHEDULE!

  There was a list of names with one crossed out. Karen Beck. Who was she?

  Women and men in Prairie Air uniforms-shirts or blouses that were dusty brown at the shoulders and faded to a bleached straw color around the waists, plus meadow-green trousers or skirts-hustled through the doors leading to the check-in counters. Everyone looked busy and it would’ve been difficult to snag anyone without attracting attention. Maybe I could find someone outside on a smoke break or getting off work.

  I went out the employee exit and stepped into the bright sunlight. I slipped the badge into my pocket. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered in the air, menthols and unfiltered, but the smokers had since left. A concrete walkway led to an employee parking lot on the other side of a chain-link fence.

  The door opened behind me and slammed against the stop. A short blonde with a pixie cut, in her early thirties, slender, wearing the Prairie Air uniform, carried a cardboard box jammed with framed photos, stuffed animals, ceramic cups, her brown work shoes, and a wadded pair of panty hose. She was bare-legged. Cheap flip-flops slapped the bottoms of her feet. A paper visitor’s tag pinned to her collar had her name written with a felt-tip pen. Karen Beck.

  She plowed past me. The box raked my arm and she didn’t even glance back to apologize.

  I raised my sunglasses. Her aura looked like the surface of a red sea in turmoil. Tendrils of anger writhed from the periphery of the penumbra.

  I lowered my sunglasses. “Ms. Beck.”

  She kept walking.

  I followed and repeated her name.

  She stopped and turned around. Her green eyes burned like twin flares. “What do you want?”

  “A talk.”

  “I’m done with talking. If you need something to do, go fuck yourself.”

  Interesting Midwestern pleasantry. I smiled to deflect her anger. “Need help with the box?”

  She gave me the once-over. “I can manage.” Her voice softened. “Sorry. I had a really bad day. I just got fired.”

  Was that why her name was crossed out on the wipe board?

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Not as sorry as I am, believe me. It was a shitty job but I needed the money.” Karen shifted her grasp on the box.

  “Why’d you get fired?”

  “The real reason? I work for a bunch of assholes.”

  “Is there an official reason?”

  “I wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “With what?”

  Karen opened her mouth and stopped. She closed her mouth and her forehead creased in puzzlement. “Where’s your badge? Who are you?”

  “My name is Felix Gomez.”

  Had Karen gotten canned for refusing to cooperate with a crash investigation? What did she know or do that made it worth losing this job? The hunch returned and I decided to chance it.

  “I’m here because of Vanessa Tico and Janice Wyndersook.”

  The creases in Karen’s forehead deepened into a V. “Are you with the media?”

  I shook my head. “I’m an investigator. A friend of the family hired me.”

  Karen squinted suspiciously. “Which family?”

  “Vanessa’s,” I lied.

  “The crash happened just yesterday,” Karen said. “Seems pretty damn quick to hire an investigator.”

  Time to redirect the conversation to the questions I wanted answered. “Were Vanessa and Janice on Flight 2112 to Chicago Midway?”

  Karen looked past my shoulder to the entrance. “If I talk to you, are people going to get in trouble?”

  “Some will.”

  “Good.” She nodded toward the parking lot. “Let’s continue this discussion someplace else.”

  Chapter

  22

  Karen loaded her fork with cashew chicken, pea pods, and steamed rice. We were in the Ling Ding Chinese Palace and Karen was finishing her fourth plate from the lunch buffet. The torn remnant of the paper visitor’s tag dangled from a safety pin on her collar.

  “Good thing it’s a big buffet,” I said.

  Karen brought her hand to cover her mouth while she chewed. “Sorry, but I was starving.” Rice dribbled onto her blouse.

  Having lunch had been Karen’s idea. If someone with information you needed wanted to talk, then put them in a comfortable environment and let them blab.

  I moved food around on my plate and didn’t do much except pick at it. The buffet looked good enough, but without blood even the most sumptuous of gourmet meals tasted like wet sawdust.

  “What do you get from all this?” Karen asked.

  “It’s my job.”

  “How did Janice Wyndersook’s parents get you on the case so fast?”

  Had Karen forgotten that I said Vanessa’s folks had hired me or was she testing me?

  “I work for Vanessa’s family.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Karen nodded. She looked away for a moment.

  “You don’t act like you’re heartbroken about being fired,” I said.

  “You can’t believe what they expected me to live on,” she replied. “I’m trying to get back on my feet financially, so I scrimp on everything. I’ve been living on cream of wheat and canned ravioli from the food bank.”

  “Back on your feet from what?” I brought a helping of Szechuan pork to my lips and set it back on my plate.

  “What else? An asshole criminal of an ex.”

  “Criminal?”

  “Really. A fucking crook. He cleaned out our joint bank account, maxed out our credit cards buying gold coins, and split town in my car with his cousin the stripper. First cousin, I need to add, the incestuous tramp.” Karen shoved food into her mouth between sentences. “God, if love is blind then my eyes must have been plucked out of my head on this one.”

  “You needed the job at Prairie Air and yet you let yourself get fired.”

  “As much as I’ve been butt-fucked in life, you’d think I’d be the last person to stand on principle on anything. But this was wrong.”

  “In what way specifically?”

  “The manifest on Flight 2112.” Karen put her fork down and wiped her lips with a napkin. I didn’t think she was done eating so much as taking a breather.

  Karen set her elbows on either side of the plate and leaned toward me. “I got fired because I was asked to lie about the manifest. Vanessa Tico and Janice Wyndersook were booked for the flight but never boarded.”

  “You sure?”

  Karen grabbed a fried wonton and munched it. “Absolutely. When their names didn’t show up as having scanned their boarding passes I called the plane and spoke to the attendant. She gave me a head count. There were four empty seats out of twenty. Should have only been two. Wasn’t hard to miss.”

  “Why did you go to the trouble of checking to see if Vanessa and Janice had boarded?”

  “Because this was the first time I’ve ever had passengers miss a flight. Since they boarded on the ramp versus down a Jetway, there was the possibility they had gone out the door of another commuter airline. Not likely, considering security, but it has happened.”

  “What were you asked to lie about?” I asked.

  “That Vanessa and Janice had boarded and that the manifest reflected that.”

  “Why and who asked you to lie?”

  “The why I don’t know. The who were my boss and his boss.”

  “Both employees of Prairie Air?”

  Karen nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Do they routinely deal with the manifest?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Is changing a manifest something out of the ordinary?”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “Hell yes.”

  “Why would your bosses ask you to change it?”

  “That’s the why question, right? Like I told you, I don’t know. Maybe it was the feds?”

  The question made me pa
use. “Feds?”

  “One of those Go Teams arrived early this morning to investigate the crash. They did interviews and took records from the booking clerks and the maintenance crew.”

  “And they interviewed you?” I asked.

  “Not directly. They were in the office when my bosses were asking me to change the manifest.”

  “But the manifest is on the computer, right? There would be a record that it had been altered.”

  “That’s why they wanted me to go back and change it. To make it look like it had been my mistake by not putting those two passengers on the manifest. And they wanted me to sign an affidavit that I had made a mistake and not Prairie Air.”

  “And if you didn’t cooperate?”

  “I’d get fired for insubordination.”

  “And these feds? What were they doing during the interview?”

  “Just watching. Once they made me wait in the hall while they discussed something with my bosses.”

  “How did you know they were feds?”

  “Because my boss kept calling them ‘the feds.’ Two of them had NTSB badges and the other an ID with the initials RKW.”

  Rockville Kamza Worthington. The consultant firm Goodman worked for. He was within tackling distance. Why was Goodman interested in changing the manifest? The corpses of Vanessa and Janice weren’t in the morgue trailer and, according to Karen, they had never boarded the doomed flight. So why the charade of claiming they had been killed in the crash?

  My kundalini noir twitched with suspicion. What about the other crash, the Cessna Caravan? Were any of those victims missing?

  I asked, “What did the man…it was a man who wore the RKW badge?”

  “Yeah. About your height. More filled out. Short blond hair. Quiet. Late forties I’d guess. Looks like he works outside a lot. Wore one of those official blue windbreakers.”

  Goodman, for sure.

  “You get his name?”

  “No. As far as I was concerned, he was just another bureaucratic busybody.”

  “Your bosses threatened you with dismissal?”