Epidemic

Love was in the air. I was at the zenith of Cloud Nine. I was amazingly potent, and no one could break me down. Nothing could stop me. I was about to find out how wrong I was.

I walked into the police station, over to Detective Tyler Johansen’s desk. He looked up at me with a plaintive look.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him, concerned.

He looked nothing like the detective that I knew- funny, clever, and laid back. No, he looked much more mature.

“You heard about the smallpox outbreak?” He looked so scared, I realized. Not the usual I-can-handle-anything guy.

I nodded. He explained that it was a lot more than anyone had let on. It was a malicious and evil plot. Nobody was sure why, but they knew that someone intend to get many people sick.

Some one had broken into the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Subsequently, I felt myself go limp. I was so surprised. No one could have… How would they have…? This was all a joke, right?

I fell backwards. Tyler jumped up so fast; it was like we had a telepathic connection. He caught me, before I fell on my behind.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling. He was still here.

“No problem,” he said. He always teased me about how wanton I was, but he seemed to be beyond fooling around right now. He sat me down, and I realized he had more to tell.

He leaned closer to me.

“As head detective, I am not supposed to tell anyone this, understand?”

I nodded candidly.

“The United States of America is about to go under lock down. The country will be shut off from the rest of the world, and I don’t know what to do.” There was a pensive look in his eyes, as if I knew the answer, and he was trying to see right through me.

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that you’ve helped me on many other cases before, and the entire nation is searching for answers, and, Kiana, I am asking for your help!” He had said it.

“Of course I’ll help. Tyler, why didn’t you call me before?”

“I was just… It was nothing. I don’t know why.”

I knew him. He always knew what he was doing.

He handed me the lists of crimes that had happened around the Atlanta area. He gave me the reports. I took them.

Looking straight into his beautiful but bloodshot green eyes, I said, “Tyler, I’m solving this.”

He nodded, and sat back down. I sat beside him.

We looked over the reports for hours, until the mail came.

In it, came the newspaper. There was an article about the small pox epidemic, warning people to look for the symptoms- just in case.

Tyler was so tired. He had been here for more than a day. He always worked harder than anyone. I loved him for that.

“Tyler, you need some sleep. Go and lie on the couch.” There was an old sofa in the break room.

He finally gave in to my request, and I kept looking through the papers. I finally found something- animal robberies, kidnapping, bank robberies, and breaking and entering into one of the most guarded places on earth.

Here was what had happened:

First crimes that happened were bank robberies. This way, the criminal would have money for supplies to break into the Center for Disease Control, which is what happened next. To make sure the poison worked, he or she had to test it. So, they went to barnyard right outside of Atlanta, and stole some cattle. Talk about animal testing. To try something different, monkeys were stolen from the zoo. This idea was probably based on the evolution from apes to humans. Finally, the criminal decided to try it on our species. And, kidnapping some members of an orchestra became another one of his crimes.

I woke Tyler up, telling him my theory, and he told me that I needed evidence. I felt a little mad, but I knew that he was right.

Days went by, and not a single shred of evidence turned up. Everyone looked terrible, and had bags under their eyes, though everyone but Tyler and I went home at night.

One night, Tyler went out and bought donuts at about one in the morning. He got back, his hair ruffled and wind-blown. He looked at me as he entered the office, and raised his eyebrows. I had changed the music from Mozart to Queen. He did his half-smile that my insides weak, and then walked over, setting the food on the desk, as I looked back to the paper. But how could I concentrate, when he was standing there, smelling like cologne?

Anyways, he stood over me, and then bent down over me, reading over my shoulder. He stroked my hair.

“You’re tired, aren’t you?” I asked.

He smelled my hair. “Kia-“

“You need some rest,” I said. I stood up and looked at him. His blue button-up shirt was untucked on one side and unbuttoned at the top three buttons, his tie was loose, and his slacks were wrinkled. His usual professional look had faded, and now he looked like a troublesome uniformed University student. But, he hadn’t lost his perfection.

He held my hand in his. “Kiana Trinette Hoenburg-“

“Okay, bed time, Tyler.” I started to turn to the couch, but he stopped me and held me still.

“Kiana, don’t move, okay?” His eyes looked pleading. I knew that part of this was due to the lack of sleep, and the amount of coffee he’d consumed the past few days. But I nodded and stayed put.

He got closer to me, but didn’t put his arms around me. We just stood right up against each other. He leaned in, and whispered through my hair.

“Kia, if you solve this case, you’ll be famous. You’ll have people who will want to know, want to be with you, and-“

“Tyler-“

“No, just listen. Kiana, I might not always act like it, but I… I feel attracted to you in a way that I’ve never felt with anyone else. And I can’t ever think when you’re around, but I can’t think when you’re not even worse, because you’re always on my mind, and…” He let out a shaky breath. “And, Kiana, just promise me that you won’t go off and forget me when you solve this.”

“Tyler, I might not even-“

He cut me off again. “Yes, you will. Let’s make a promise.”

I nodded, and he went on. He leaned closer still. “If you solve this case, I will definitely show you how much I want to be with you. I promise, that if you solve this, I will.”

“And how will you do that?”

He half-smiled again. “Well, let’s just say that it will be wet and maybe a little French, and has to do with lips, and… You get the picture.”

When I agreed, he finally laid down. But he laid there, staring at me with those green eyes. When I would look up, he would grin at me slyly, and close his eyes. But then they were open again when I looked away. I could see them with my peripheral vision.

Eventually, he fell asleep. After a while, I got pretty tired, and I decided to lie on the floor and catch a couple hours of sleep before returning to squinting at tiny letters splayed across the paper.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt someone’s arms around me, and looked over to see Tyler asleep. Poor guy, he rolled off the couch. At least, that was his story. I wasn’t so sure, however.

I thought about the case as hard as could, sitting in Tyler’s office, listening to classical music and reading the news over and over. It was on the morning of September eighth that I finally tied everything together.

When I woke, my face was probably a ghastly shade of white. I was beyond the point of caring how I looked. I had black fingers from flipping through the inky articles.

Everyone in the building had rueful looks. These crimes had been a motley combination, seeming to have no apparent link to one another.

I was the one who noticed the similarity. It was not at all a lucid explanation. However, I figured it out.

I ran to Detective Johansen’s desk, and told him that we needed to talk.

“Kia, I really don’t think-“

I cut him off. “Tyler, I know what happened! I found the connection, and I know the details!”

It seemed as if the whole police station looked at me.

Then Detective Johansen said, “Come here.”

He pulled me away from all the eyes hoping for answers. I quickly told him everything, and he understood.

We looked it up- only one person could have done it. He had a criminal record, and he had been accused of more than one of the crimes.

“Thank you, Kia. I’ll get right on it.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” He had promised that when I found out the case, he would…

“Kia, I promise that after I-“

I put my hand on his chest. That made him fall into silence, and he laced an arm around my waist. It felt amazing to have him so close.

“Right, when you get back,” I said.

He walked out blushing, and yelling at people to send a fax of everything to the Atlanta Police Department.

’Oh, gosh,’ I thought to myself. ‘He is gorgeous when he’s embarrassed.’

Here is what happened-

The killer slipped up. He had left some footprints from his shoes all over every site. The size gave it away. The killer wore size fives! In men’s’ shoes, that is very unusual. So, we got lucky. I got lucky, because now, Tyler owed me a kiss…