Plastic Tulips, Page 2

  Chapter 2 – Between Onions and Avocados...

  “You getting sick, Scott? Nobody's going to think any less of you if you need to step outside.”

  “I thought I'd be able to handle it this time, Mike.”

  Mike shrugged. “It's fine. The gore's never easy to look at.”

  Scott swallowed. “I thought it would be different this time.”

  Mike put a reassuring hand on his partner's shoulder. “Do you know they add dye to their fluids? They do that so their synthetics look more human. So that people will more easily accept them.”

  A grisly scene of red spilled and splotched across the grocery store's linoleum floor in front of detectives Mike Henson and Scott Plymouth. To the lesser-trained eye, the lifeless flesh at their feet looked like any other homicide victim. To the lesser-trained eye, the carnage that stained the voluptuous cardboard woman advertising a case of light beer appeared no different than the brain matter a bullet to the back of a human skull would spray out the forehead. To the lesser-trained eye, the body sprawled between the spilled onions and avocados seemed to have been snuffed out in the prime of life. The body felt like it deserved empathy and grief. It looked like a tragic loss of young beauty.

  But the better-trained eye would recognize that the corpse with the blood-matted strands of auburn hair, with the frayed, oozing remains of a face was something less than human.

  Scott took a breath. A little color returned to his face. The sickness did not rise up from his stomach and chase him out from the ripening and decaying taking place in the grocery store's produce aisle.

  Mike circled the crime scene. “I attended an afternoon seminar the force conducted last year that tried to teach us how to differentiate between a case of murder and a case of property damage now that so many of these synthetics are on the street. Pretty important stuff. Police resources are limited, and we can't afford to throw money down the drain opening murder investigations before finding out we're only dealing with property destruction.”

  “Did you learn to tell the difference in a one afternoon?”

  “Not really,” Mike answered. “But we're lucky today. Lots of witnesses in the grocery store, and this synthetic was no stranger. Had a crowd telling us she wasn't a real woman before we asked. People don't make that assertion unless they're certain.”

  “Could you imagine being mistaken for a synthetic if it was your corpse lying on the floor?”

  Mike nodded. “We live in strange times, Scott. Strange times.”

  The gunshot responsible for the carnage in Diekemper's Groceries and Goods in the town of Portis failed to empty the aisles of Saturday morning shoppers. The shoppers crowded behind the detectives. Though they could not step across the yellow tape surrounding the produce aisle' gore, they could take their time to choose between flavors of ice cream and cuts of fillets. Though Portis was a tranquil town which rarely heard a gun's roar, the shoppers did not that day feel danger. The victim had been a synthetic, and no child of the Lord. And the woman who pulled the trigger was a grandmother who cooked oatmeal cookies every Monday morning to donate to any community fundraiser scheduled during the week. Sophie Carter, who had unleashed that bullet from the handgun she had purchased at the sporting goods outlet thirty miles down the highway, would never shoot a human being. She had shot only a synthetic, and a synthetic, no matter what some fools whispered, was only property.

  “All right folks!” Mike clapped to herd the crowd. “Need you all to move along and give us space. The broccoli and apples will be waiting for you this afternoon.”

  Feet shifted, but the crowd didn't disperse. Mike shook his head. Without a cattle prod, he doubted he could move anyone into the frozen pizza aisle.

  “Over here, Mike.”

  Sheriff Mattis waved to Mike from the entrance of the store's first checkout aisle. Behind the sheriff's wide shoulders, confined between racks of glossy celebrity magazines, stood a matronly woman who could only have been Sophie Carter.

  “You boys confirm it's a synthetic?”

  Mike nodded. “As much as we can tell without the coroner. Everyone crowding the store says it's a synthetic.”

  “That fits with what Mrs. Carter's told me.”

  The automatic doors beyond the checkout counter whirled open, and the crowd mumbled as a gray-bearded, stooped gentleman hurried into the store. Anger burned in his eyes. The man hurried past the local police officers who moved to prevent him from reaching the produce aisle, slapping at the crowd obstructing him.

  “Damn all of you to hell!” The man's knees buckled as he punched at the crowd.

  “Give him room!” Scott caught the man before he collapsed into the aisle's carnage.

  “You are all butchers in this,” the old man groaned. “All of you pulled the trigger.”

  Scott gave the man a little time to catch his breath. “It's not as bad as it looks, sir. She's not real. She's only a synthetic.”

  The crowd gasped.

  Sheriff Mattis emerged from the silent crowd. “Come with me, Mr. Tosh. Mrs. Carter has told me everything. No need to stand in all that fluid. Looking at it will not bring it back.”

  “'Her',” Franklin Tosh corrected. “Will not bring 'her' back.”

  The Sheriff gently escorted Franklin through the crowd. Franklin's eyes glazed, and he had no energy left to slap at those who stared at him. Franklin stopped as they came into sight of the checkout aisles. Sheriff Mattis noticed that Franklin trembled, his hesitation a manifestation of fright instead of anger.

  “My God,” Franklin sighed. “Sophie killed her.”

  Sophie Carter looked at Franklin and buried her face into her hands, leaning onto the aisle's electric conveyor as she cried loud, choking sobs that stole her breath.

  “You went and murdered her!” Franklin shouted at Sophie.

  Sophie shook her head and replied between sobs. “She wasn't real.”

  Franklin shook his head. “I lover her, and she loved me. That made her real.”

  Weak from exhaustion and shock, Franklin felt the weight of an awful emptiness descend upon him. He crumbled in Sheriff Mattis's grasp, his knees sinking as Franklin again faced a future suffocated in loneliness.

  “I'll drive you home, Mr. Tosh.” Sheriff Mattis discovered he felt almost as sad standing in that grocery store as he would have if the victim had been a real woman.

  Sophie Carter tensed as Sheriff Mattis and Franklin Tosh neared the automatic doors. She lifted her head from her hands and shouted at Franklin before the automatic doors swept him away.

  “You stole me!” Sophie cried. “You had no right to steal me like you did! That thing laying in its fluids in the produce aisle belonged to me as much as it did to you!”

  “You're a murderer!” Franklin screamed.

  After Mr. Franklin and Mrs. Carter had been escorted home, after the police removed the destroyed thing, Chris Henkle, high school sophomore and the store's temporary help, filled his plastic bucket with disinfectant and pushed his mop through the synthetic blood that made the produce aisle slippery. Chris did not give his task much thought. It did not convulse his stomach. It did not sadden his heart. A sophomore who had a new driver's license in his back pocket was often required to do unpleasant things in order to afford the car insurance he needed to drive Carey Rees to that fall's homecoming dance.

  The crowd lingered to watch Chris Henckle demonstrate his mop skills. For one afternoon, Diekemper's Grocery and Goods served as a nexus of excitement for small town Portis. Mr. Diekemper hurried no customer out of his automatic doors. For on that day, his customers strolled very slowly through the aisles to share their opinions and assumptions formed following the carnage of the thing Sophie Carter killed in the produce aisle. Sharing their thoughts forced the shoppers to take their time; and many a cart brimmed with the cinnamon rolls, the potato chips, the six packs and the boxes of cake mix that Mr. Diekemper's clients more often denied to their appetites. And no one seemed to mind picking up hands o
f bananas that had been cleaned that morning of the splotches and traces of synthetic blood.

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