Tiptoe Through The Tulips

By Kenyon Geetings

Wow, this dude walks fast. Ever since I got married to my husband^[1], my motivation to visit the gym was close to none, and it was clearly catching up to me now. This was all I was able to concentrate on as I did my best at an indiscreet power walk through the alleyway. I made a mental note that I needed to make it to the gym next week, then returned focus to the more important predicament on hand. It was mission-critical that my suspect didn’t catch me following him, as that would have blown my undercover sting operation I had been working on for 3 years now. My suspect took a right as he reached the end of the alleyway, into the open area town square. My chase had been going pretty well so far, but he was quickly outpacing me. I finally made it to the end of the alleyway and glanced out into the open square, but to my surprise he was nowhere to be seen. My best guess was that he stopped in one of the stores around the square, but since I had to get back from my lunch break, I didn’t have the time to investigate further.

Now you might be wondering how I got myself into this situation in the first place. Well, as the head detective^[2] for the small town of Pella, Iowa, for the past three years, it has been my job to pretend that that isn’t my job. To clarify, I’ve gone undercover as a high school history teacher for the local high school. Why would I do something like that? For the last ten years our department has been aware that the Pella High School has a drug problem, and for the most part we had things under control. That all changed approximately three years ago when we noticed that Pella High had upgraded from the kiddie stuff like weed and Adderall and had moved to getting involved with heroin. As the head detective, it was my job to sniff out the culprit behind this illegal drug trafficking, and I quickly found out that this wasn’t being run by your typical street dealer. Anyway, now that you’re “in the know,” I expect you^[3] to stay quiet because this is important work, and I can’t have you messing it up^[4].

As I walked back in the side teacher’s door at Pella High, I prepared myself for another absolutely enjoyable afternoon with kids that couldn’t care less about history. It’s a thankless job being a teacher, and I’m still not sure why they do it. But my afternoon didn’t get too far as I soon got a call from the town’s secretary that my husband hadn’t shown up to the weekly community development committee meeting, and as the mayor of Pella, this was understandably an issue. I made a joke that I didn’t keep my husband on a tight leash, and that he was probably just out fishing and enjoying the nice May weather. I hung up the phone and got back to teaching about the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

Once again I knew it would be a late night grading the students’ papers as finals were quickly approaching us, and I figured they would appreciate having all their grades in prior to the exam. It was nearing 4:30pm when I finally got home, but the sun was still shining bright and the tulips in the garden were looking extra colorful today. I turned on the living room lights, even though they probably weren’t needed, and flipped the tv to the local weather channel.

Since I had skipped out on lunch to follow the suspect, I was starving, so I decided to make myself a turkey sandwich. As I walked to the kitchen island, the sun gleamed off the countertop, almost blinding me. The smell of cooked ramen told me that my husband must have been home over lunch, and I didn’t understand why he would have missed the committee meeting if he had been home. Then I saw him. The blood – that’s what I noticed first. The wooden floor was coated with splotches of red. His head was polka dotted with two large bullet holes, and his body slumped over the pull-out chair just a few feet away from me^[5]. The sandwich I’d been making slid from my shivering hands, landing in a heap next to his lifeless form. I screamed, but it felt like the sound was coming from somebody else. Somebody far away. I couldn’t make myself move. Couldn’t even muster up the energy to cry. Finally, after what felt like hours, but was probably only a few minutes, my legs gave out from under me and I collapsed next to him, curling up in a ball and letting the tears flow.

The police responded quickly, as this is – sorry, was – a very important man to many of them. He had done a magnificent job in toeing the line making sure the police were well funded but not overspending^[6]. One of my good friends was tasked with asking me question after question, but I could barely speak. The meteorologist was still joyfully going over the 7-day forecast in the background, sunny spring weather was upon us, and I guess no one dared to disturb the crime scene.

I wouldn’t find out until later that night that no evidence had been left behind and that finding the killer would be harder than we had originally hoped. I took off the next couple of days of teaching. I figured that the rest of the Bill of Rights could always be taught later since it’s not like half the class was already falling asleep anyway. I decided that I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing while the man who murdered my husband was out there somewhere.

As I was setting out to do some reconnaissance work, I first had to make the traditional stop at the bakery (I really did mean to get to the gym). As I was perusing the Dutch letters and puff pillows, in the reflection of glass window displays I saw my suspect from the other day walk into the bakery’s front door. What are the chances? I would have never guessed that dealers have a sweet tooth for Dutch baked goods.

I ordered two Dutch letters, walked out the door, and found a comfy park bench to temporarily enjoy my tasty morsels of joy before I had to follow my potential dealer^[7]. I didn’t have to wait long before I saw him walk out the door carrying his own blue bag of treats. I was cautious of losing him again, so I stayed a little closer than I probably should have, but thankfully he seemed to be too preoccupied with something on his phone to even bother looking up.

This little trip led us back to what I could only assume was his place of residence. The front door was barely hanging on by the top hinge, the paint on the siding was a fading milky eggshell color, peeling from the harsh summer sun. The glass windows, or what was left of them, were mostly covered in duct tape. The whole house appeared to be one windy Midwestern thunderstorm away from falling in on itself. Nevertheless, I decided to ring the doorbell. Surprisingly, I don’t think it was even plugged in, so I rasped my knuckles against the door, careful to not accidentally become the next big bad wolf from the three little pigs. My suspect opened the door, and for the first time I got to clearly examine his face. I was able to confirm my suspicions that he was clearly still a teen, most likely attending the very school I worked at. But what caught my attention was the droopiness of his eyelids, as if he was four sheep away from falling asleep. His eyes weren’t much better, the pupils were like the tip of a ballpoint pen, clearly not what I would have expected having just been outside in the bright sunlight.

“Yes, how may I help you?” he asked. I had been prepared for this, having overheard a previous conversation in the lunch line, I knew what I had to say.

“The doc sent me, told me he needed some china white,” I responded. The kid looked out behind me, must have seen the coast was clear, and then invited me in. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was, so maybe this wasn’t the high-end drug dealing we had once suspected. I was also happy to be technically working for the state education department, so by using a technical loophole I didn’t need a good reason or permit to search the house – like I had been teaching about in history class. But the kids at school didn’t need to know that. The inside of the house wasn’t in much better shape. The single working light bulb hanging from the bare wires was struggling to illuminate the grimy black walls. The duct taped windows certainly weren’t doing their part. There was a slight haze floating around the room, presumably from smoking pot, which was made more obvious with the skunk smell that I just knew would linger on my clothes for days to come.

“How much do you want? My stuff is premium and this ain’t no damn charity, so it’s twenty bucks a baggie,” he said.

“I’ve got $40 with your name on it,” I replied. “Speaking of which, where are you getting your supply from?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” he said. I wasn’t really about to begin verbal negotiations, so I made the perfectly rational decision to pull my gun and began brandishing it about.

“I’m not here to play games, kid. Tell me what you know and then some,” I demanded.

“Alright, alright. Calm down, I don’t want to get in any fights, ma’am,” he said. “I swear I didn’t want to kill him, but they offered me twenty grams of heroin if I did it. I was low on my stash anyway, and I had just given them the last of my money from dealing, so I was desperate.”

It was at this point I realized that he was admitting to killing my husband, which is definitely not what I had expected when I had asked him to explain himself. How do you remain calm when your husband’s killer is standing right in front of you? If it wasn’t for my six years of criminal investigation education, I’m not so sure that this kid would have already been lying dead on the floor right now. I knew the last thing I wanted to do was get myself thrown in jail. I tapped my police pager and silently sent out a SRT police call, requesting a special response team to my immediate location. I wasn’t taking any chances.

The team arrived within minutes, a proper search warrant already in place, and arrested the teen drug dealer and apparently also drug user that had been standing in front of me.

It was only a matter of time before we got more information out of him, including an official statement of the murder, as well as names for who was supplying the drugs. It turned out to be the mastermind work of Vladimir Putin^[8] who was behind it all. His attempts to install a puppet government in Pella, Iowa, were finally put to an end^[9].

I gave a fake chuckle when one of my fellow officers told me that we almost had to switch our slogan to “A touch of Russia,” but the death of my husband was still weighing on my mind. Our team had finally put an end to the drug problem at Pella High. But at what cost?^[10]

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