Luke back peddled into the house, his eyes on the sky the entire time. He entered the house and backed into his mom. “Oh sorry mom.”
“Did ya forget somethin’ honey?”
Luke stood in the open doorway. “No. But ya’ll gotta see this.” He walked out letting the door slam behind him.
Outside, Luke’s parent’s found him standing in the middle of the lawn, staring at the horizon. They exchanged a worried glance, and turned their attention to the sky.
“Oh my Lord. What is that?” Pam clutched her hands over her heart.
“Well darlin I’d say it looks like three damn suns. Or one big sun and two half suns. Or somethin’ to that affect.” Luke senior shook his head. He’d learned a thing or two in his fifteen years working for NASA. He knew there were plenty of phenomenons that existed in this world. He’d seen his fair share of those that had explanations and those that did not. One thing he decided long ago was to accept that which could be explained and leave the rest alone. He wasn’t sure yet which category this one fell in, but he was leaning towards the latter.
“So it’s normal then.” Luke asked, even though he suspected by his father’s demeanor that it wasn’t.
“Course it is son. Ain’t nothin’ more than reflections of light.” His dad stated with confidence, rubbing his chin back and forth with his fingers. A tell tale sign, to anyone who knew him, there was serious contemplation going on behind his soft brown eyes.
“Are you sure?” Luke prodded.
Luke senior only nodded his head and continued rubbing his chin. He glanced at his watch, then back to the suns. A stiff breeze picked up a few leaves, tumbled them about. Pam shivered, moving to stand closer to her husband.
“Well you better get on the road son before rush hour or you’ll never make practice.” He patted his son on the back. “Can’t have the star quarterback ridin’ the pine for the game, now can we?”
Luke shook his head and glanced at the suns one more time. Ominous gray clouds rolled in at a fast pace blocking out the blue skies, but not the suns. Reluctant to leave, but not knowing what else to do, Luke got in his car.
“Nothin left to see.” Luke senior took Pam’s hand. “Honey your hands are like an ice cube. Let’s get you inside.” He led her to the house, where she stopped at the door, turning back to watch her son leave.
“Be careful.” She yelled out, waving to Luke.
He stopped at the bottom of the driveway, rolled down his window and stared at his parents. A foreboding washed over him, sending a chill down his spine. He shook it off, waved good-bye and drove off. Half way down the street he checked his rear view mirror, but his house was no longer in view.
Luke drove on, turned the corner and the neighborhood disappeared from sight. He sighed, thinking maybe he was being stupid or paranoid, but unable to shake the feeling something wasn’t right. A snow flake hit the windshield and quickly melted. Another flake hit, this one landed right in front of Luke, but he was zoned out and didn’t notice it was snowing. It wasn’t until visibility was nil that he snapped out of his daze.
“Shit. That’s snow.” He commented to the empty car. His furrowed brow deepened. He didn’t like this or the tingle he felt on his scalp. That same tingle he felt right before something bad happened. Normally the sensation was brief and barely noticeable, but right now his scalp was crawling like a giant ant hill. Luke slammed on the breaks. The car skidded a few feet before stopping. He threw it in reverse and backed all the way to his street, where he whipped the car around and sped to his house. Sliding to a stop in the street, he barely took the time to throw the gear into park before jumping out and running to the door.
Luke stood frozen inside the kitchen doorway, his mouth hanging open. The table was turned upside down and lying on top of his dad. He could see the top of his father’s head, but the angle was off, almost sideways. Luke inched closer to the table. “Dad?” Luke senior didn’t respond. Luke stepped over the table and his dad’s face came into full view. “Shit.” Luke covered his mouth, ran for the sink where he retched up his breakfast. After a few dry heaves, the convulsions stopped.
***
Hours later the Taylor kitchen remained in a state of disarray, but Luke senior’s body had been removed. A trail of blood led through the laundry room, out the back door to the covered porch where Luke sat next to his father’s corpse. He’d wrapped his dad in a yellow and purple blanket. Perspiration slid down the side of Luke’s face. A small sign of the arduous undertaking it had been to drag his father from the kitchen. Luke senior had pushed two forty alive; a number not made any less because someone had decided to remove his insides.
The wind blew snow on the porch, Luke shivered from the cold, but his mind was numb from the past hours events and didn’t register or react to the drop in temperature. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed nine-one-one. No answer. He called the police direct, again no answer. Endless rings, endless snow, endless wind. Luke hung his head to cry, but no tears came.
A hair splitting scream from the neighbor’s house curdled his blood, and shocked him into action. He jumped the fence between the yards and ran to the back door. “Mrs. Bowers.” He pounded on the sliding glass doors. “Mrs. Bowers, are you ok?” He peered inside her house. She didn’t answer or come to the door. Through the doorway to her dining room he could see what appeared to be a hand lying on the floor. Luke tried the handle. Locked. Using a flower pot from the porch Luke smashed the glass.
Inside, the house was in perfect order, as anyone who knew Mrs. Bowers would expect. She ran a tight ship; everything had its place. There was no overturned table, no pool of blood, no head snapped off at the neck, but there was a hand. Luke’s gaze came to rest on that hand. He shoved his own hands deep into his pockets. The air inside the house was suffocating his entire body. The sight of that hand choked the breath from his lungs.
Just two months shy of twenty, Luke’s only exposure to death was when he buried Tiger, a yellow lab he had for twelve years. Sometimes the image of Tiger lying in his grave haunted Luke’s dreams. Now, here in a span of eighty minutes, he’d managed to add the image of his father’s mutilated body and was on the verge, he assumed, of adding a gruesome picture of Mrs. Bowers to his mind’s album of unforgettable sights. The thought of leaving tempted him. He didn’t have to look, he reasoned with himself. He didn’t have to know if she died in the same way as Luke senior. He didn’t have to, but he did.
“Mrs. Bowers?” He almost whispered her name, taking a step closer. The hand didn’t move. He grabbed the edge of the wall, pressed his face against the sheetrock. For several seconds he remained glued to the wall, before he took a deep breath and rolled his head around to the other side. “Oh man.” He leaned up against the wall. The hand was attached to an arm and that was all. There was no body to associate with the limb. Luke relaxed against the wall. He wasn’t sure if feeling relieved was respectful, but that’s what he felt.
Back in Mrs. Bowers’ living room, Luke perched on the edge of her couch. Never having been so completely on his own before, he had no idea what his next move should be or where he should go. Luke Senior made all his decisions for him. He was the one that decided Luke would play football, that he would be a quarterback, and not just any quarterback, but the quarterback for the Louisiana State University. The all time winningest college football team in the history of college football. Go Tigers. And when Luke senior was not around, Coach Cale stepped in to run his life for him.
Luke went along with his father, because that’s what he was supposed to do. Honor his father and mother, but especially his father. Disobey him? Never. Even to think it would have been considered blasphemy. Luke, who tended to gravitate towards peaceful solutions in most situations, avoided confrontation as much as possible. To have an original thought or idea was asking for conflict and conflict was avoided by doing as he was told.
His aversion to conflict and anything of a violent nature was a flagrant contradiction to the physical game of football, but was the very thing that made him the top ranked quarterback in the nation. At six two and a solid two hundred ten on the scales, he could take a hit. He’d rather not, but he could take one. The thing he couldn’t do very well at all was hit back. He didn’t possess the same aggressive nature he had witnessed in every other player on the field, including the kicker. It was this weakness that drove him to perfection.
There was only one person who had ever guessed his secret. Emma. She knew him better than he knew himself, yet she liked him anyway. Hell, she liked him more for his chicken shit ways than all the touchdown passes, awards and Championship Bowls put together. He wondered again if it was possible she was ok.
He took out his phone and scrolled through his contacts, but stopped short of pressing the call button. Maybe he would send a text. But what would he type? My dad’s been murdered, my mom’s missing and all that’s left of the neighbor is her right arm. Anything strange happenin’ on the West Coast? He pressed cancel and shoved his phone back in his pocket.
Maybe a deranged killer, on the loose in Baton Rouge, was responsible for what happened. He could almost make himself believe this, except for two facts, he couldn’t get through to the cops and no one else had answered his calls. Not his teammates, not Coach Cale and he’d bet the farm that if Kirsten really was his girlfriend she wouldn’t have answered either. But maybe Emma would. He’d try her when he got back to his house.
Luke forced himself up from Mrs. Bowers’ couch. There wasn’t a soul around when he stepped out on her front porch. There was snow and plenty of it. There was the cussed biting wind. And there were those three suns just above the horizon, still visible despite the gray skies. Luke stared at the trio and wondered what it was his dad thought when he saw them. He looked over at his house, half expecting his mom to come running out with a laundry basket in her arms. The realization that he she might be dead hit hard, pent up tears of fear and frustration slid down his face. Through the snow, thirty or so yards down the street, an object came crashing down to the ground. And then another.
4 MADISON
Tampa Bay, Florida
6:35 am
Lieutenant Madison Capra hurried up the steps of the Tampa Bay police department. A place she’d called her home away from home for the past seven years. Being the youngest and only female lieutenant in her unit didn’t faze her. She entered the department with the confidence of a veteran.
Madison didn’t take flack from the guys, and that included the old timers. Her slender five foot seven frame gave the impression she might be frail or weak, but the multitude of awards decorating her office wall said otherwise. A rookie only made the mistake once of underestimating the dark haired, hazel eyed lieutenant.
Madison strolled into the station and was startled to see a long line of people waiting to speak to Sgt. Allen, the current desk sergeant on duty. Sgt. Allen didn’t notice Madison breeze by; her focus being on the person in front of her, fingers flying across the keys of her laptop, taking down whatever tale was being told. Madison continued down a hallway and disappeared behind a door that had her name plate stuck to the front.
Inside her office everything had its place, organized to a state of perfection that any Type A personality would appreciate and envy. One glance at her wall of fame would erase the most stubborn of doubts that she was capable of doing her job. It was covered from corner to corner with a multitude of awards that included a Medal of Honor, Purple Heart, and even a golden key to the city for extreme acts of valor presented to her by the mayor himself.
Madison sat at her desk, flipped through a file and took notes. Her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID, crinkled her nose and went back to writing. A few minutes went by, and her phone rang again. She let out an irritated sigh, and snatched the receiver to her ear.
“What?” She ground her teeth.
“Hello to you to.” A female’s indignant voice replied. “Come on Madison. Can’t we talk about this?” The voice pleaded from the other end.
“There’s nothing to discuss Syd. I hope you and Tom are very happy together. I hope you have two point five wonderful children, an overpriced home in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a dog named Rufus that humps everything in sight.”
“Does that mean you’ll be my maid of honor?” She begged.
“No. That doesn’t mean I’ll be your maid of honor.” She leaned back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling. She had this conversation more times than she wanted or needed.
“Maddie please.”
“Burry it Sydney. I’m not going to be in or at your wedding. End of story. Whatever! I gotta go.” She hung up the phone, silencing her sister’s whining voice. “And I hope you both get obesely fat. Add that to my list of well wishes.”
Madison stared at the phone. She knew at that very moment Sydney was crying to their mom about how selfish Madison was, how cruel and unreasonable she was acting. She knew in a matter of minutes she’d receive a second phone call and have a similar unpleasant conversation with her mother.
A loud crash outside her office was a welcomed distraction. Madison would rather have teeth pulled than deal with her unpleasant family situation. Her desk phone rang. She ignored it to go investigate the noise.
She walked down the hall, out into the lobby and froze. The place was packed full of people. Some sat on the few available plastic chairs, but most were leaning against the wall. All waited their turn to speak to the desk sergeant. Madison waded through the crowd to reach the front desk.
“Hey lieutenant.” Sgt. Allen glanced up long enough to acknowledge Madison, her expression haggard.
“Sgt. Allen.” Madison looked around the crowded room. “What’s goin’ on? And why are you still on duty?”
“Missing persons. Hundreds of them.” She typed information into a laptop. “And I’m still here because Sgt. Conrad didn’t show this morning.”
“What do you mean hundreds of them?” Madison took a peek over the sergeant’s shoulder at the computer screen.