The Florist

Unfaithful

            Mel loosened his grip. While Vasu rubbed his stinging forehead, Mel stood back and continued his line of questioning. “Why did you go back to the apartment after you took Capri to her final?”

            “It’s like I said, I went to see Nia.”

            “Wrong!” Mel snarled before reintroducing Vasu’s head to the metal table. “You want to try again?”

            Vasu shouted in agony while using his free hand to massage his head. “Fine, man! Fine! I didn’t go back to see Nia; I went to see Auggie.”

            “But you were spotted in front of Nia and Capri’s apartment …”

            “Auggie lived across the hall. I took Capri to Nolan U, stopped by to see Auggie, picked Capri up from Nolan U, went back to see Auggie …”

            “Whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout,” Mel said waving his hand for Vasu to stop. “What did you keep seeing Auggie for?”

            “Well, we were … you know, me and Auggie, we …”

            “You were sleeping with her,” he registered with distress. “You stayed over the night Nia was killed. That’s why you were seen outside Auggie’s apartment the next morning. Did Nia know about it? Is that why you killed her?”

            “No! Man, I – I didn’t kill anybody!”

            “Then who did?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Oh, you want to kiss the table again.”

            “No, man, I’m serious! I don’t know!”

            “Then why did you tell Capri different? Why’d you say you were scared to end up dead? Why’d you tell her that you didn’t want to break a code?”

            “Uh, which question do you want me to answer first?”

            “Boy …”

            “It’s the G-code, man! If I told her that I went back to the building to have a run-in with Auggie, she’d never take me back!”

            Mel shook his head in disgust. “You young boys don’t make no sense. The G-code is not an excuse to game your girl. It’s not a game period! It’s a code of conduct on the streets, something you know nothing about! You don’t even know what you represent. You’re a part of a fraternity that’s supposed to be about brotherhood and tradition, and you don’t even bring honor to that code. You’re nothing but a spoiled brat living in a house full of other spoiled brats pretending to be playboys. What, one girl isn’t enough; you got to have all the girls? Why would you even try to get with Capri when you were already getting with Auggie?”

            “Is that a trick question, man? Look, Capri’s a good girl. She’s definitely someone to settle down with, but we’re young. I’m not looking to put a ring on anybody’s finger right now; I’m trying to have some fun while I can have it! That doesn’t mean I want to see her with anybody else though.”

            “So, as long as you want her, nobody else can have her … but you can have everybody. Is that it?”

            “I mean … yeah.”

            Mel stood up from the table, repulsed by Vasu’s ignorance. He was happy to know that his new girlfriend was smart enough to get away from him. Her maturity greatly surpassed his and any affiliation with such an ill-mannered pest would smear her respectable standing.

            “You’re going to tell her, aren’t you?” Vasu wondered sadly. “And you’re with her now … right?”

            “What’s it to you, kid?”

            “I guess if I got to lose her, it could be worse than a cop, you know? It says a lot about me.”

            “Like what?”

            “That I got good taste in women.”

            “Yeah, but not the good sense to do right by them.” As he walked toward the door to leave, he heard Vasu ask when he was going to be released. He turned back. “You know, life is more than a party, kid. Hopefully you realize that before you graduate. If you don’t, you’re in for a rude awakening.”

                                                                                                §

            Capri was stunned to see that Alton Van Boerne, Frances Rue Cowl, George Flynn Wesson, and Akira Ellen Wormer were once known as the Fatal Four. They were a medical research team famous for expensive operations that resulted in either death or other irreversible affects. One look at the entire record of the Florist’s murders showed that their names occupied numbers three through six, being killed one after the other from 2005 to 2007.

            Frantically, Capri looked around until she located her cell phone. After pressing dial, she anxiously waited for Mel to answer.

            “If it isn’t the beautiful Miss Winters.”

            Hearing his smile made her want to return the favor, but she was so staggered by the newly discovered information that her voice quivered. “Mel …”

            “What’s wrong?”

            “I just found out … they all knew each other. They all worked together, and they killed people. They took their money and they …”

            “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. What are you talking about? Who killed who, baby?”

            Capri tried to pull herself together so she could form sensible words, but it was no use. Mel was being called by his coworkers for what seemed to be an urgent discussion. He swore he would call her back after the meeting. Her shoulders fell dismally at the abrupt end of their conversation.

            “Come on, Pri,” she said trying to motivate herself. “Don’t get distracted. Put your emotions to the side and finish this! We are so close!”

                                                                                                §

            Mel jogged into the captain’s office to join the team. “What’s up, Cap?”

            “Now that everybody’s back from their assignments, I want to know what we have; that’s what’s up. What did you get from the kid in holding?”

            “He’s a wannabe playboy that didn’t want to get busted. That’s why he didn’t tell Capri anything.”

            “What? What the hell – what does that mean to me or this investigation?”

            “He used to date Capri until she dropped him for cheating on her. The morning of Nia Woodruff’s murder, he drove her to Nolan U and tried to get in her good graces, but he was still … doing his thing. Augustine Velar was one of the young ladies he was … doing his thing with,” Mel explained to mixed reactions. “She also lived across the hall from Nia and Capri.”

            “Ooh-hoo-hoo!” Ward exclaimed. “Now that’s a playboy after my own heart right there!”

            “Yeah, you can both join the i***t brigade,” Franco said with disgust. “Didn’t you and Capri say he was scared of dying? What of that? He wouldn’t be scared if he didn’t know anything.”

            “Yeah, uh …”

            “Did you let him distract you with that two-timing bit?”

            Mel tried to keep his emotions in check as the expressions on his coworkers’ faces questioned his ability to effectively do his job. “I’m going to question him further and he’s going to sit there in that cell until we get the information we need.”

            “Or until his frat brothers and their lawyer come get him out, right Captain?” Ward chuckled.

            “Wrong. As long as that little punk wants to withhold information, we’ve got him on obstruction of justice. If they want to bring a lawyer in, that’s fine, but even that lawyer is going to tell him to talk. I’m with Perrin on this one.”

            “Thanks, Cap.”

            “You just make sure you get as much out of him as you can before we cross that bridge,” he warned before moving on. “Ward, what did you get from the kids at Eta Beta Zeta?”

            His shrug didn’t look promising. “The kid’s frat brothers are threatening to call in every lawyer they can if we don’t release him. Other than that, they said they don’t know anything about the murders. They’re just as clueless as everyone else.”

            “Well, that was informative,” Franco snapped sarcastically. “Did you even try, Ward, or did you just kick back on the couch and have a brewsky to relive your glory days?”

            “Do you want to go question them?”

            “Yeah! I bet I’d come back with more than they said they don’t know.”

            “Man, why are you here? This isn’t even your case!”

            “Oh, who’s going to take me off of it … you?”

            “You want to try me?”

            “Give it your best shot, young buck.”

            “Hey, hey, hey!” Captain Grayson yelled overtop of the bickering. “We have three days, three days before they shut us down! I’m not trying to lose my job because you fools want to go back and forth like a couple of high school girls. Now cut that out and let’s get back to work!  Franco, what happened with your lead?”

            “Originally, Alton Van Boerne ran a medical practice with his wife, Anise. When he was killed, she maintained it on her own, but not without dispelling some … negative press, shall we say.”

            “Go on.”

            “It turns out Alton Van Boerne was a very crooked doctor. Had a long list of unhappy clients that sued him six ways from Sunday, if they lived long enough to do so, and a trail of gambling debts. According to his wife, if The Florist didn’t kill him, somebody would have.”

            “Did she still have the record on Flora Winters?”

            Franco nodded before putting a thick folder on display. “Since it was so long ago, all that remains is her paper file. They made the conversion to digital in the early 2000s, but they haven’t been able to add the older clients in yet.”

            “Okay, good.”

            “That’s not all, boss,” Franco baited. “Three of The Florist victims worked with him.”

            “Is that right?”

            “In the early years of the company, the wife took a backseat on medical work to get a handle on all of the bookkeeping and secretarial stuff. Alton developed a medical research team composed of Dr George Flynn Wesson, Dr Akira Ellen Wormer, and Dr Frances Rue Cowl who we all know better as victims three, five, and six. Anise didn’t get involved with those dealings, but when business started to pick up, she hired a young college student to assist her … named Sidney Jane Hornell.”

            “The seventh victim,” Mel remembered.

            “Bingo. Her job didn’t last long because within a short period of time, she too became part of the corruption by falsifying records.”

            “How was she able to jump in on the scam?” Ward asked. “What, was Van Boerne running around advertising his con?”

            “No, but he was screwing his employees. That’s how Sidney Jane got involved, that’s how Frances got involved …”

            “Damn, another playboy,” Mel said sourly.

            “His wife said he had a thing for power. She allowed him to have it … until he betrayed her.”

            “How’d she find out?”

            “Frances,” he told with an amused smirk. “She thought she was the only other woman. When the truth came out, she blew the whistle on everybody.”

            Captain Grayson shook his head. “I’m amazed at the amount of drama with these findings. All right, boys. Where do we go from here?”

            “I’m going to look through Flora Winters’s file and see what I can pull up,” Franco said.

            “I’ll keep moving on the list,” Mel jumped in.

            “Good. You and Ward can split it in half; one’s got the top half, the other takes the bottom. Then, when you …”

            “Whoa, whoa, hold on there, Captain Crunch!” Ward interrupted as Mel covered his face. He told himself to keep his hands close to his ears, so he could cover them in the event of any yelling. “I start my vacation tomorrow.”

            “Boy, you won’t have a job to take a vacation from if we don’t find these two killers,” Franco reminded. “Besides, didn’t you just start working here? How the hell are you going on vacation?”

            “Captain, I told you about the cruise my first day here, man. It’s bought and paid for!”

            “All right, all right, stop your whining. I’m sure Franco and Perrin can handle it, right?” he asked as they nodded in answer before leaving the office.

            As soon as Mel sat down at his desk, he returned Capri’s phone call. When she answered, her voice was still shaky, but he was able to understand what she was trying to convey before. After they compared notes on their individual discoveries, she uncovered another clue that matched one of her theories.

            “Do you remember what I said about the gaps between murders?”

            “Yeah?”

            “The first change was after Sidney Jane Hornell!” she said excitedly. “This all makes sense now!”

            “Uh, do you want to clue me in here?”

            “From my parents to Sidney Jane Hornell, The Florist’s cooling off period was between three to seven months, remember? Then with Neil Henry Barber it changed from nine to eleven months.”

            “Capri, I – I hear you but I’m not following.”

            “Okay. Since we’re supposed to try and map this out to fit whatever story the Florist is trying to tell, let’s see if we can break this down like … like a novel,” she tried. “A novel called … The Story Behind the Flowers, Poems and Murders.”

            “Like the name of the chart we made?”

            “Yes! Now, uh … the flowers and the victims, they’re all like, chapters. Each poem would be an introduction to those chapters and it’s our job to fill in the rest. That’s what we’re on the hunt for.”

            “The details of how they wronged others.”

            “Exactly, because that is The Florist’s MO: to avenge those who were mistreated by the victims he has claimed.”

            “So that would be like a dedication, right?”

            She smiled at the fact that he was slowly but surely getting the picture. “Good job, babe. Now, since we’re able to connect victims one through seven to each other with this medical thing and that same group of seven has the same cooling off period …”

            “Before it changed.”

            “Right, we can say we’ve discovered another pattern. Each victim in a grouping of similar cooling off periods is related to each other somehow. And since there are three significant gaps between the murders, we can also say that this book has three parts to it.”

            “Part one would be from your parents’ double homicide to Sidney Jane Hornell.”

            “Mm-hmm.”

            “What’s part two again?”

            “Neil Henry Barber to Prudence Liesl Mata and Samson Clyde Riley’s double homicide. Part three is Montgomery Sawyer to Paige and Rocco.”

            “Hmm,” he said allowing it to settle in his mind. “There’s a double homicide in each gap. Is there a reason for that?”

            “I don’t know,” she wrote off. “Let’s just focus on what we do know right now.”

            “That’s what I’m saying. What do we know about the double homicides?”

            “Umm, Paige was cheating on you. Rocco was cheating on me. Samson Clyde Riley was cheating on his wife, clearly. Have you had a chance to question her yet?”

            “Baby, I didn’t make it that far down the list to …”

            “Wait, wait, wait!” 

            He pulled the phone away from his ear to lessen the volume of her yelling. “What is wrong with you?”

            “Do you remember anything about the day Paige was killed?”

            “Anything like what?”

            “Anything like, I don’t know, the stance of your relationship. What was the stance of your relationship when she died?”

            “Strained?” he said puzzled by the question.

            “Rocco and I were on the verge of a breakup too. The only thing stopping me was the fact that Valentine’s Day was coming up and I wanted to wait until after.”

            “What are you getting at, Capri?”

            “Just … give me a second,” she said as she looked at the charts. “I knew it! See, look!”

            “Look at what?”

            “The last two couples were murdered around Valentine’s Day, February 16th, 2012 and February 11th, 2014! The same two couples who were accused of being neglectful, deceitful or selfish home wreckers.”

            “Is it me or does it feel like you’re reaching right now?”

            “No, Mel. You have to stop being so tactical and open your mind. It’s the only way you’re going to see how The Florist thinks. Franco said he has a low tolerance for those who don’t learn from their mistakes. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the two home wreckers were killed with two-timing males around the day they should have been spending time with their real companions?” she posed. “Think about it, Mel. Samson’s poem talked about him ignoring someone else’s desire to please. You don’t think that was a shot at him neglecting his wife to run around with Prudence? The same Prudence who was scolded for attacking another’s heart and soul.”

            Mel sighed while he pondered the thought. “We did say that those poems were so personal the killer had to know about their intimate lives.”

            “Yes.”

            “You know what? For the hell of it, was anyone else killed around Valentine’s Day?”

            She shrugged to herself before looking into it. “It looks like Neil Henry Barber and Oscar Ray Wallis were.”

            He took notes on his copies of the charts. “No visible pattern there. I wonder how your parents managed to miss that Valentine’s Day trend with the couples.”

            “Two things: it’s not a pattern if two victims who were not part of a double homicide fit the bill, and my mother was not called a home wrecker like the other two women were.”

            “But she was called blind … right?”

            Capri sat in an edgy silence before rumbling, “What’s your point?”

            “I don’t want to offend you, but we have to consider all possibilities in this …”

            “Spit it out, Mel.”

            “Do you know if … your parents were having any … marital problems?”

            She felt her face catch fire. “Are you kidding me?”

            “Capri, I’m just saying …”

            “Don’t say!” she roared. “My parents were deliriously in love. Do you hear me?”

            “Capri …”

            “Deliriously! We were all happy until this rat bastard Florist took my heart from me!”

            “Aww, baby, don’t …,” he began until something she said made him pause in the midst of his attempts to comfort her. “What did you just say?”

            “I said that we were all happy …”

            “No, no, no, no, no! After that. You said he took your heart from you?”

            “Yeah, my parents were my heart.”

            “He took your heart from you?”

            “Yeah, it’s a – it’s a phrase.”

            “But he took … your heart … from you.”

            “What the … what, are you a parrot in your spare time? Yeah, that’s what I said. You know, instead of saying my love or my everything, you say that’s my heart.”

            Her choice of words in describing her parents caused lightening to strike Mel’s brain. He thought back to his conversation with Captain Grayson, Franco and Ward. Franco modestly but noticeably questioned whether he allowed Vasu to divert his line of questioning when he mentioned two-timing Capri with Augustine. It reminded him of the Florist’s low tolerance for people who didn’t learn from their mistakes, who took advantage of second chances, and who disregarded the blessings in their life.

            Maybe that’s why the kid is scared to die, he thought. Maybe he thinks his two-timing ways makes him a target. But those details aren’t public knowledge which means … the kid does know more than he’s letting on.

            “Baby, I got to go,” he rushed.