The cold air blew over us as soon as we got out of Jacob's car. The police headquarters is still busy as usual, but the number of reporters was relatively fewer than the number of people loitering around a few weeks ago since the incident. We then came across our old nemesis, the detective who discovered us bribing one of his colleagues to give us information about a particular case eight months ago, Detective Theor.
He clicked his tongue and flicked off the ashes off his cigarette. A smoke fogged for a while before revealing his disgusted face to us. He walked toward us and blocked us from entering the police headquarters. "Where do you think you're going?"
"We're on our way to solving something you guys can't," Jacob dared to make a mess out of him again.
"Do you call stealing our hard work your solution?" A pungent scent of intense cinnamon whipped into the thin air around us. Detective Theor began to intimidate the fellow alpha in front of him, and like the competitive bitch he was, Jacob did not fail to show his dominance. Soon the air smelled like two contrasting spices of rosemary and cinnamon. It would have been nice if they were meat garnished and plated as the main dish, but they were big chunks of meat-headed alphas no one would like to eat.
"Don't you dare call it stealing! I paid for it!" Jacob blatantly reiterated. Soon, the two giant alphas' commotion got the attention of onlookers. As proud as they are, the audience did not bother them even slightly.
"And you're not ashamed at all, huh!"
"Why would I be ashamed that I'm rich?"
"Wow! It must be nice to be a young master like you! You think you can buy my people just because you have money!"
"Your people? What's your position again? You have not even handled a case by yourself yet! Aren't you just an apprentice at this point? Ah no, you're your senior detectives' little errand boy? Uh-oh! Nah, you're just a detective wannabe."
"Detective wannabe? You!!!" I started to vomit with their intense pheromones before they got physical with their petty fight between childhood rivals. I dropped to the cold ground and soiled the snow with bitter and sour water.
"Mr. Russien!" A sudden familiar voice called out to me. The musky scent of cedar embraced my whole being and comforted my weariness. As he patted my back and assured me that I'd be fine. Naturally, he then began to increase the release of his pheromones, taunting the two alphas.
"I'm sorry, Sir Musca," the proud Detective Theor reflected on his actions, and so did Jacob.
"How could you flaunt your pheromones here?" Mr. Caesar scolded him coldly. It was a commanding tone that displayed his position in the hierarchy.
"I'm deeply sorry, sir."
Mr. Caesar then slipped his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and threw the same scent blocker that Johannes used to brag. "Don't show your face until you can hide your pheromones."
Detective Theor walked a few steps at his instruction and sprayed it on himself. Mr. Caesar gave a brief glare at Jacob, which immediately caused the guy to do the same.
I was comforted by Mr. Caesar's pheromones, but their effects did not end there. My head was hot muddled, and my muscle felt so heavy and jelly at the same time. I clung to his neck and cried. I got aroused again by him.
"Detective, I will not be able to accompany you there for now."
Like a fish out of water, I stepped out of my comfort zone built on walls and grabbed Mr. Caesar for a tide of torrid kisses. I was immersed in how sweet it felt when my tongue tasted his that I overlooked how he carried me to his car. We continued comforting each other in the back seat even after he instructed his driver to go somewhere.
The bite mark on my neck was already healed weeks ago. But it was itching for something more. My longing, desires, and perhaps what depraved me wanted to catch up to what I missed. His pheromone is my necessity now-- it is a need that feels like a luxury I can't afford.
"Where have you been all these years?" I complained.
His hand gently caressed my back and drew me nearer to his chest. "Shh… I'm sorry. It's okay now." He murmured. His damp lips kissed my ears and told me his sweet apology. And just like that, I felt okay, like a snowflake melting into his palm's heat. The overwhelming fragrance in a tight close space between us fogged my vision as I succumbed to his warm embrace.
…
When I woke up, I found myself lying in the hospital, infused with dextrose in my hand. It was a room that resembled the VIP room that Mrs. Verde got me before. I guess I was hospitalized again. I did not have to find Mr. Caesar since his smell lingers inside the room. He was sitting on the sofa reading a book with a cup of coffee in his hand. Next to him was the problematic-looking and sleep-deprived detective Theor. Beside him, Jacob sat confidently with visible wrinkles on his forehead because he frowned.
"So, you're telling me that you could not identify the victims yet and establish a match between the skeletons and the glands because the DNAs in the two crime scene were disintegrated?" Jacob's voice was the first thing I heard.
"There were no soft tissues left in the bones, and because they died long ago, we cannot extract complete DNA from them. Secondly, formaldehyde damages the genes inside the gland's cells. It's impossible to match them. You cannot write that the two cases are connected as there's no conclusive evidence linking the two yet," Mr. Caesar calmly explained.
"But what about the red hyssop flowers? Russien found a bouquet in the city hall as a memorial for them. And now those glands were sitting on top of the same kinds of flowers, what about that?"
"The flowers in the city hall are not accepted as a piece of evidence. As of now, it's just circumstantial that no one would bother to accept as a trail for the investigation." Detective Theor argued. "And we can't even conclude if it was a homicide or not because there were no signs of injury in the bones collected. The glands displayed must be just some scientific specimens donated or something."
"Fourteen omegas donated their glands, and their glands somehow ended up displayed in the church? Are you hearing yourself?!" Jacob stood up and drank another coffee from the can.
"What can we do? There are no fingerprints, no shoeprints because there were already many people around when we arrived to secure the scene, and most of all, there were no pheromones in the collected body remains. As of now, all we know is that only beta can be involved in this case. And, how many betas are there again? 82% of our population are all beta. I am buried in paper works as it is. Can you not act like a hero and write more bullshit of conspiracy theories as if you knew more than the police?" Theor used his authoritative and competitive tone as he said those words to Jacob, but I took it against me since I was the one insisting on the flowers' connection to the two cases.
I got up and got saddened by the useless piece of information I heard. "Then let me write how incompetent you guys have been," I wanted to tell them, but I knew how busy Mr. Caesar was this past few weeks. After all, collecting and examining the shreds of evidence is part of his job description.
"Mr. Caesar, can I get the notebook and the card back?" As soon as he heard my voice, Mr. Caesar got up from his seat and walked toward me. He bent and gestured to kiss my forehead. Like a reflex, I evaded it. I remember how I shamelessly clung to him, but I knew it more explicitly now about where we stand. He works for the police. He's not easily bent on guts alone, and he strictly follows his analysis that the evidence presented to him. I must have sounded so lame while I kept babbling about my thoughts on the case. "Can I have it back?" I asked.
He nodded, reached for his briefcase on the top of the desk drawer, and handed me the notes. "From now on, let's not discuss work in front of each other, or should I say my conspiracy theories…." I calmly said before lying on the bed and ignoring them.
"Mr. Musca, he's just being moody. Feel free to talk about your findings to me," I could feel Jacob's burning eyes on me, probably thinking I was too dramatic. Then, I heard a whimpering of sorry and excuses from a detective errand boy. "I didn't mean to label your deduction as some conspiracy bullshits. I'm so sorry… Sir Musca, I swear, I, I really— I'm sorry, sir!!!"
Hearing the word bullshit after conspiracy and conspiracy after my deduction, I couldn't help but get up and defend my credibility as an investigative journalist. "Well, I was never bullshitting about my life's work!" I was furious that I felt a hard lump in my throat despite the hundreds of words continuously flowing out of my brain. My jaw stiffened, and I couldn't speak those words further to them.
It was not the first time my writings were called conspiracies, fiction, or layman's gossip. I could still remember the days when I was questioned by the police. I had no recollection of what happened, but they did not believe me. They concluded that my friends and I ran away from the orphanage and that I was feigning amnesia because I wanted to return as I had nowhere to go.
I remember how hard it was to relearn the color red, purple, and black as I had forgotten some basic knowledge. I had to binge a few numbers of books in the orphanage to learn how to write the given name I had in my native language. I used to look at the pictures of my supposed friends, trying to remember my forgotten good memories with them. Yet I was told that I was making it up because they had no alternative story to the ending I got.