Send Me No Flowers

1

Send Me No Flowers It started out as any old usual day for police officer Carla Romero. She was returning to the same old job she’d loved for 5 years, but Tampa wasn’t quite like Boston. She thought that maybe that was a good thing: a smaller city meant less crime. And less crime meant less paperwork. At least, normally it did. It was 9:01am and she had just arrived at the station, cheap Starbucks coffee and bagel in hand. She hurried to her desk and sat down - only to be greeted by her boss throwing a pile of papers onto her lap. ‘Case files, kiddo. They’re due on Wednesday. And I expect them to be pristine,’ Carla sighed and muttered something under her breath before shifting the stack onto the table in front of her. She tossed her freshly made bagel into the trash can beside her chair, took a big gulp of coffee and started working. Almost halfway through her third case file, a delivery boy entered the office and began asking for ‘Carla Romeo’. A woman with long blonde hair corrected the young man and pointed him in the right direction. Clearing his throat, he asked, ‘Are you Carla Romero?’ Carla averted her eyes from her papers to look at the person who stood before her. He was probably only about 18 or 19 years old. He wore a red and yellow cap to match his scruffy uniform. And his face was covered in acne. After examining him, Carla confirmed her identity and he handed her a bouquet of flowers. At first, she smiled at the thought of having a secret admire, without taking any notice of the type of flowers she had been handed. She recognised them, but couldn’t put a name to the type. She decided to search the internet briefly to find out what the flowers were called and perhaps even what they meant. She found a website and looked until she found the flowers she received. ‘The orchid’, she began aloud, slumping her petite frame back in her chair, ‘This exotic and amazing flower is meant to leave a long lasting impression, make sure to send an exotic orchid flower bouquet to someone who has… captured your eye…’ Carla ran her fingers through her long brown hair, pushing it off of her fairly tanned face. She scanned the text briefly again, not entirely sure what to make of it. Taking a deep breath, she called over her husband of 3 years, detective Jose Romero, who also happened to be her work partner. He was tall, muscular and had dark skin. The two had met on Carla’s first day on the job and had been love birds ever since.

2

Send Me No Flowers ‘Nice flowers, babe. Are they for me?’ Jose joked, with a wide, cheesy grin. Carla smiled and explained that she didn’t know quite what to do about the bouquet, ‘A website said to give them to someone who has captured your eye…’ But before Jose had time to reply, a phone rang from the 911 line. He answered it immediately in case it was a serious emergency. ‘Hello, Tampa Police Department, how can I be of service to you? Oh, really? Oh my… Yes, yes we’ll be there right away,’ The whole department was intrigued in this mystery phone call but detective Romero insisted only he and his wife went to check this one out. When they got into the car, curiosity got the better of Carla and she couldn’t help but ask about it. She thought it was strange for her husband to take her when it was an emergency call. Normally another detective would’ve gone. A more experienced detective. ‘You’ll see when we get there,’ came the quiet reply. The rest of their journey was in complete silence; the only sound came from the gentle hum of their 1970’s Toyota Celica. It was a decaying silver but in the wise words of Jose’s grandfather: ‘If it stills runs and it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for a lousy cop’. Carla laughed to herself at the thought of her husband’s grandfather. But she was very worried about Jose. He was normally such a loud, chatty man. Not in a bad way, though. He was almost always the centre of attention – the man that everybody knew and loved. But he wasn’t at all himself. The couple had travelled halfway across the whole of Tampa before they finally arrived at the crime scene – a grubby abandoned shop that lead into an even less appealing alleyway. The air was filled with a damp chill that sent shivers down the police officers’ spines. The stench that filled their nostrils stung and made their eyes water heavily. Carla rolled up her window and covered her nose with one hand. Retching slightly, she opened the car door and stepped onto the side walk, wondering what on earth could possibly produce such a disgusting scent. Jose walked at a fast pace ahead of her down the dark alley, a look of distinguished anger took over his usual jolly grin. ‘What’s going on?’ Carla whispered through her clasped hands.

Corrina-Jayne Calvert

3

Send Me No Flowers But her husband did not reply. He quickened his step until he came to the door of the shop. He banged furiously at it but received no answer. He tried to open the door himself, but found it locked tight. Taking a few steps back, he charged the door with his shoulder, knocking it clean off his hinges. He dusted himself off and took a good look around the room. Carla followed with her gun outstretched before dropping to her knees and vomiting into an empty plant pot. Jose turned around and helped his wife to her feet and onto a nearby chair. His face was still stern. He turned and headed toward the cramped storage room that contained a dusty yellow bucket and an old broom. Sighing, he headed towards the staffroom. He seemed to be looking for something in particular. The room was small, much like the rest of the shop and had the wallpaper peeling from the walls. The floor was solid concrete and the only means of leisure was a broken coffee machine. Jose walked slowly over to the right hand corner of the room and looked through every cupboard, searching high and low. Until, finally, he found what he was looking for. He returned slowly to the front of the shop to show his partner what he had found. Both of them stared at what Jose had in his hand in utter disbelief. For what detective Romero had in his hand, was a flower. An orchid, to be precise. An orchid covered in blood. And attached to the stem with white string was a small piece of bloody card that read: ‘The madness will not end until you are mine once more.’ Carla’s eyes widened as she suddenly twigged who must’ve sent her the bouquet of orchids and what exactly was going on. But she wondered how he could’ve possibly found her. The last she knew, he was still in Boston. 1,350 odd miles away. A million questions ran through her head. But very few answers seemed to follow. ‘My ex husband,’ she began slowly, ‘He won a lot of money. And I left him. He became too obsessive and just wasn’t the man I knew before. I heard that he had lost it all in a casino one night. Lost all his stupid rich friends and the girls he had won over with his cash and cars.’ Jose stared into his lover’s eyes. And when she met his gaze, she instantly started sobbing into her hands. ‘I think there’s something you need to come and take a look at…’ he told her, his expression seemed far more scared than angry by now. 4

Send Me No Flowers The two went into the staffroom and Jose walked over to a small safe with the lock broken clean off of it. It looked somewhat new, but was very dirty. The lock was beside the safe and seemed to have been there for quite some time. Carla wondered what could possibly be behind that door. Money? Drugs? Her ex had never been into anything illegal. Well, not seriously illegal. No, it had to be something more. It had made a grown man petrified. It had to be something… bigger. Taking a deep breath, Jose swung the door of the safe open and revealed a naked human body. Broken and crippled beyond belief so it would fit into the cramped space. She had only been dead a few hours, more or less, Carla reckoned. She had long black hair and was only a young girl; had her whole life ahead of her. But it was tragically cut short as she was brutally raped and mistreated by a sick older man. Her makeup was smudged and left trails down each cheek. She was filthy. As if she’d been living rough for a long time. ‘I found the flower in her hand with the note…’ Jose interrupted Carla’s thoughts and turned his head away from the safe, ‘The phone call was made to the 911 line but he told me to make sure only you and I came. He wanted you to see that note.’ Carla hung her head. Wondering what on Earth had made her ex do such a thing. He had always been such an optimist. Even when he gained a great amount of money from the lottery. Why would he want her back? They hadn’t seen each other in years; he’d had plenty of other women since. What made her so special? ‘Hello Mr and Mrs Detective Romero,’ came a deep voice from the doorway of the staffroom. A full beard had grown since Carla had last seen her ex husband, Jeffery Hanson. Known to most as Jeff, unsurprisingly. His hair had started to thin and he had several bald patches across his scalp where thick black hair once grew. He had large bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. His clothes were torn and dirty and he looked as if he had been living rough on the streets for a long time. Carla turned around to see Jeff grinning back at her. His smirk was met with his her cold stare. ‘You haven’t changed a bit, have you? You were never happy to see me…’ Jeffery sighed. ‘Well, that was your own fault, wasn’t it? What do you want with me?’ replied Carla snappily. Getting quickly frustrated, ‘You’re a sick man for doing this.’ ‘Sick?’ he laughed, ‘Lovesick, sweetheart. I’ve missed you…’

5

Send Me No Flowers ‘That tears it, you’re under arrest!’ interrupted Jose, obviously infuriated that this man was trying to win his wife over while he was standing in the same room with them both. Carla saw a flash of metal in Jeff’s pocket and before Jose had the chance to arrest him, she threw herself between the two men and took the blow of the knife precisely through her abdomen before falling heavily to the floor. Both men stepped back at first, Jeff dropping the bloody knife and Jose letting the handcuffs fall to the floor. Jeffery sat on the floor and began stroking her hair gently, sobbing silently to himself while Jose shakily called for an ambulance and a police unit. He then dropped to his knees and cradled his unconscious wife. Praying that she would live to see another day. Jeff took Carla’s hand in his and whispered that he had always loved her and would see her soon. And with that, he took the knife from the floor and plunged it into his own stomach, falling onto his back, blood spewing from his mouth and gut. He doubled over in horrendous pain and suddenly stopped. He relaxed. And then he was gone. Jose moved himself and Carla away from the body so that if she regained consciousness a dead body wouldn’t be the first thing she would see. The ambulance and police officers soon arrived at the scene and carted both Romero’s off to the hospital. The police then dealt with the two dead bodies left in the shop, taking DNA samples, writing things into little notepads and bagging as much as they could for forensic evidence. Carla was in the intensive care unit for 3 weeks. Her husband visited her every day. Every day, that is, except for one. Carla happened to wake up that day and was very confused to find herself in a hospital. She had no recollection of what had happened 3 weeks prior to her arrival. Looking about herself, she began to sit up slightly. Then closed her eyes and wished she hadn’t. She frowned and refused to believe what she saw in front of her. It was not a man. It wasn’t a woman. Or an animal, or anything like that. It was a bouquet of flowers laid across the bottom of her bed. But not just any flowers. It was a bouquet of orchids.

Corrina-Jayne Calvert