INFECTION 2.0

~ FIFTEEN ~

Once she has regained a small amount of herself again he took her to an empty office. There he took her statement and started the report that he knew she’d have to provide. This is when he found out that Officer McGuire did in fact have the first name, and that name was Karen. She didn’t want to give a report but he convinced her that it was better to get it taken care of while the details were fresh.

Lockley was crossing ‘t’s and dotting ‘i’s as smoothly as he could keep things going because he knew as soon as they had the basics covered the department was going to send her home until they could make heads or tails of the event. Typically, they would have someone a little closer to her stay with her the first day or two, but Car intended that it would be him. Basically, if ‘holy s**t’ described the shift he was finishing, ‘enough of this s**t’ was describing his attitude.

In fact, he had everything in place so well by the time the chief got around to finding them the chief half-jokingly wondered if Car had his sights set on a promotion. Together Karen and Car left the station. They were sitting at the first traffic light and she had started giving him directions when the car behind him, for some unknown reason, blared its horn, pulled into the oncoming lane, and sped into the intersection. The people watched in awe as the vehicles started to plow into each other.

He looked over at Karen and the look on her face seemed to say it all. They were in his unmarked car, he wears a suit, she had a white tank top on...who even knew they were police officers?

“Are we bad people for not stopping?” he wondered as he turned the car to the right and eased away from the scene.

The shake in Karen’s head was almost non-existent.

They were less than two blocks away when a voice came over the car radio requesting EMT service. They had gone two more blocks before a traffic light stopped them again.

“The whole damn world is going crazy.” Car sighed and shook his head.

The woman looked out in the same direction. “Are they doing what I think they are doing?”

“I’m not sure what’s bothering you more. That two people are getting it on, on the hood of a car, or that no one has stopped to watch them.” The detective didn’t notice the look the other shot at him.

Farther on, while stopped at a stoplight, Car noticed a man getting sick and vomiting in a trashcan near the entry to a shop. The fates really don’t want me to end my shift, he thought. Finally, he was pulling up in front of a simple little two-bedroom, ranch-style house that looked like any number of other houses in the subdivision. He followed Karen to the door then, without being invited, followed her inside.

“You really don’t need to babysit me,” her voice was not mean or angry.

“Just for a little while,” Car smiled.

“Well, make yourself at home, I guess. I think what I need most right now is a shower. You want a beer?”

“No, I’m good,” he replied as he watched her disappear into one of the other rooms.

She may have taken a shower. He never knew. He sat down on the sofa and fell asleep before hearing her turn the water on.

Karen came out with a towel wrapped around her dark hair. She wore sweat pants and a light-colored, baggy tee shirt. Something about seeing Lockley sitting asleep on the sofa made her smile. He didn’t have to stay, but she was glad he did. She didn’t want to talk about the morning, and he wasn’t asking anymore. In fact, he hadn’t asked anything about it before or after he took her statement. Only what he needed for the statement. She sat down next to him, lifted his hand over her shoulder, and laid her head on his chest. The man needed a shower, she thought, but still carried a faint scent of deodorant and aftershave. Karen didn’t sleep but felt comforted by having the man there.