No, you won't.

Chapter One

The luncheonette was long and narrow, with beige vinyl booths down the right side, the upholstery beaten and worn from the assault of a hundred thousand large rear ends, their spread widened by the daily application of biscuits and gravy. Fifteen stools faced the counter on the left, their vinyl just as aged, and the counter itself, while clean, was scarred by various scratches, dents, and cigarette burns. Immediately to the left of the one door, there were four small tables, each with two chairs, stark in the light from the single piece of plate glass that presented the diner to the street, like an exhibit in a zoo. By day, a transparent green shade could be pulled down, now only halfway, to protect those tables and the depressingly fewer and fewer patrons from the glare of the Sun, since the front of the diner faced West. The shade had done little to prevent the tables, the chairs, and the floor from becoming bleached and split.

Since a handful of fast-food boxes had popped up down the street, on the other side of the Post Office and the two banks that served town, Life had ebbed from this place and now the Sun was taking its share. At night, a blue neon sign buzzed “Just Like Home” in the center of the front window. Anyone seated at one of those tables, bathing in that indifferent light, looked like a cadaver. Fresh from one of those refrigerated lockers with the thick, shiny steel door and stainless tray that rolled out about six feet, as if they had suddenly reanimated to come chew slowly on some greasy brisket or sip some thin chicken soup.

At four-thirty in the morning, the neon was off; only the long strips of fluorescent light that ran the length of the diner remained on, and they made the pooling blood look like black oil, shiny and viscous.

“Whatta we got, Chip?”

“Ten out front, Bic, four in the locker, and one poor bastard in the john.”

“Jesus Christ! Why do they have to kill every last one of them these days? Why can't they just lock 'em all in the back office after they grab the take and be done with it?”

Detective Dixie Bic was fifty, twenty-three years on the force after a brief stint in the Merchant Marine. He enjoyed being a cop, he enjoyed the pay, vacation and seniority of his rank as Lieutenant, and he enjoyed even more the freedom and challenge of being a detective. He was an avid reader of detective novels and murder mysteries; he followed murder cases in other parts of the country; and he was a diligent student of human behavior. Dixie tended to be trusting and naïve, but compensated by asking lots and lots of very detailed questions, many of them more than once, until only the most devoted pathological liar could maintain a consistent story. Suspects often made the mistake of thinking that Bic was stupid when he couldn't see the logic of their lies. He was very observant, almost to the level of an Autistic, or an Obsessive Compulsive, and was able to write down and recall even the smallest details of a crime scene.

Bic was six feet, four inches tall, about two hundred and twenty pounds, bald, and scarred about the face from the jagged end of a beer bottle. Hey, he didn't know that she had a boyfriend; Hell, he didn't even speak the language. Some shithole in Port Elizabeth, S.A. almost became his last port of call. He could easily weigh about twenty or thirty pounds more, and look like an ad for the donut and coffee diet, but he managed to run a couple miles every other day, and lifted in the weight room at the police station on the other days. He wasn't handsome even in a rugged way, but he had a friendly way about him that kept a half-dozen good friends close.

“We figure it was two guys, shotguns,” said the Sergeant. Sergeant Charlie Parker was also fifty, had also been on the force twenty-three years, and seemed to everyone on the force that he had been a Sergeant since he had reached puberty. A face like a pile of rubble, lumpy, with a thick beard in a constant state of stubble, Parker had a thick head of curly black hair, which, when combined with eyes that really did look like blue sapphires under eighty-degree Caribbean water, made fending off random attacks by beautiful women a problem ever since he had been that pubescent Sergeant. Fortunately, his body was the rest of that pile of rubble. Somewhere between five and six feet tall, depending, he had thick arms and legs and was almost supernaturally powerful. Parker could take down the plate-clad door of any crack den with ease; nicknames like 'Hulk' and 'Dozer' came to mind, but had never stuck. Bic called him 'Chip'.

Charles Wentworth Parker had excelled in four years of Latin in high school, winning an academic award at Graduation, and had been an English Major in college. He had read the classics, Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hemingway. He loved being a cop. He loved being on the force, part of the fraternal order of police; he loved wearing the uniform, the web belt, cuffs, keys, and his pride and joy, his Heckler & Koch HK45. This handgun, really developed for tactical military applications, used .45 Caliber ACP(Automatic Colt Pistol) rounds, which mirrored Parker's natural gifts in their stopping power. He made a hobby of marksman and quick-draw competitions and his home was filled with trophies. He was nationally ranked; H&K paid him to carry their weapon.

“So, Chip, how much did they get?” asked Bic.

“Nothing. Register's full, none of the stiffs have been touched, and there's no safe in the back.” Parker, in spite of his coarse description and perfunctory tone, cared deeply about these crime victims. He was a devout man, and he held all life sacred. He was categorically opposed to the Death Penalty, even for the men and women he had met over the course of the years and the horrific crimes they had committed on their parents, spouses, and children.

“Look at this place,” he continued. “Four and a quarter for soup and a sandwich: this place is lucky to make payroll at the end of the week. It's got to be something else.”

“Fifteen people shotgunned at point-blank. What is this place?” Bic asked. “Crack? Gambling? Gangs? A coven of witches?”

“I don't think that witches would let themselves be shot in the back of the head in a meat locker...” replied Parker. He would be, however, happy to tie them to a stake and burn them in the town square on market days.

As far as Bic was concerned, no crime couldn't be solved. Everything had a connection. Nobody kills somebody else without a reason. Sure, there were crazies, but they were either onesey-twoseys, or crowded places and automatic weapons. On a distracted tangent, he asked himself: if the crazies always shot themselves in the end, or committed 'death-by-cop', why hadn't he ever seen a suicide bomber? Like they have in the Middle East? God, it would really suck to be a cop in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Not only did you have to deal with the everyday shit: armed robbery; domestic violence; and simple murder; but then some asshole walks into a pizza joint, and BLAMMO! takes out fifty or sixty people.

True, the suicide bombers didn't get to see all those people die, as they died along with them. Maybe the crazies in America wanted to see the people run, hear them scream and beg, maybe even take a final count of their victims before they followed them into the Great Beyond. Plus, there were those people that they had set out to kill that morning, the people that had taunted them—for real or just in their imagination—into the act of revenge. And there were always those cases of mistaken identity: Oops! Sorry! Thought you were somebody else... But even those could be explained. He shrugged

“When do we think this all happened?” he asked.

A Medical Examiner that he hadn't noticed before looked up at him from one of the bodies.

“I didn't check anybody in the locker, figuring that the refrigeration would throw off the timing, but judging by the liver temperature of this one, I'd say about Midnight,” he replied.

“Why don't you check every one, just for laughs, and let me know if you find anybody outside the curve,” Bic told him.

“What do you see here, Chip?” Bic asked.

“Fifteen dead people, and lots and lots of blood,” said Parker.

Parker could be a wise guy, and Bic loved him for that. It took the edge off the scene and made it seem like two guys watching a ball game. It was scary, dangerous work and seeing what one person could do to another could make you tense, jumpy even. It could hone a nicely rounded human perspective into a fine, sharp edge; an edge that some days you weren't too sure what side you were on. But in twenty-three years on the job, Bic had never fired his weapon in the line of duty. Neither had Parker. They had both been punched, knifed, and even shot, which hurt like Hell, they didn't mind telling you, thank you very much for asking. They had even drawn their weapons, but had never fired a single round. Weird. Bic felt a little like a pussy for it, something he would admit freely if asked.

But hey, fuck it. He'd match his jacket with anybody: it was filled with letters of commendation, citations for bravery, and steady promotions. He had made thousands of arrests and had the respect of his peers and the Brass, rhymes with pain-in-the-ass. He was no Golden Boy, no Wunderkind. He liked where he was, the freedom he had, and the lack of any real responsibility. He kept his mouth shut, and his nose clean, and did his job. No management headaches. Sure, on a case like this one, and this was not his first multiple-victim, headline-quality case, there was going to be some heavy, heavy heat. He was, in fact, surprised that his Captain, who was a bona-fide ass-kissing, butt-licking, sperm-burping, rank-racing jackass, was not there already.

“Who found it?” Bic asked Parker.

“The bread guy.”

“The what?”

“The guy that delivers the bread to the store, Bic.” “See, during the night, elves bake the bread, the bread guys take it to all the little shops in the land, and the cooks make it into sandwiches and French Toast and croûtons and meatballs.'

“Meatballs?” Bic had that 'lights out' look on his face.

“Ask me later,” replied Parker. He always enjoyed needling Bic. And Bic always made it so easy by pitching him these softballs.

“Kiss my ass, Chip. Where is he?” Bic asked. “I'm going to see if I can get the recipe for this little meat pie from him. Have a couple of your guys start knocking on doors and asking some questions”, Bic ordered. “Somebody had to have heard at least one of these fifteen shots, maybe some shouting before, or some screaming after,” Bic said.

Bic walked over to where Bread Guy was sitting, one of the tables in the front. The guy looked like shit. His uniform as a jumpsuit, a dork flag from the getgo, unless you were wielding a bloody chainsaw, or a shotgun...blue, with yellow trim and the company logo on the breast pocket. Bread Guy had puked liberally down the front, so unless this was his first time, Bic was pretty sure that bread was all that the guy had delivered tonight. Add to that Bic's assessment that the guy was all of five-six or seven, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds; he was expecting to deliver a few crispy loaves to a sandwich shop, not body bags to a war zone.

Right behind Bread Guy, on the floor, her back to the wall, pieces of her coating that wall, her eyes open wide in pain and disbelief, sat the remains of what had once been an attractive young woman. She was nicely dressed, or had been, in white cotton slacks which displayed her long legs and shapely hips to their best advantage, not enough for today, though, a red and white ribbed cotton top and a ball cap, her hair pulled back through the sizing strap. No matter how beautiful you had been in life, man or woman, movie star or corn-fed Midwestern cutie, you were now ugly in every way. You had voided yourself, so you were stained, and it stunk. Your eyes had lost their color and sparkle; no more dimples, no more smiles, no matter how white your teeth were. And dead flesh has a way of sagging after the loss of the animating tension of life, so if you had perky breasts, they were now flat. Right down to the implants if you had them. And this young woman had a tear in the center of her chest, surrounded by a faint gray ring, which just ruined the whole look of her resort wear.

A red stripe, just a little bigger than the hole in her new top tracked her slide down the wall of the shop, probably right after being blasted out of that chair, maybe even as she was trying to stand up to beg for her life, then slamming against the wall, the room growing dark fast as the voices faded to an infinite distance.

“Hey buddy,” Bic felt genuine sympathy for Bread Guy

“Hey buddy,” he tried again. “I know it looks like Hell. These people aren't afraid anymore, they don't feel anything, they can't hear us, and they don't hate you. Is that coffee OK?” Bic could relate to anybody anytime, anywhere. It was a gift. He might be bored, he might be irritated, but when he was on, he was in the Zone.

“The eyes, they're all open.” Bread Guy's coffee cup rattled the saucer as he shook. “What are they looking at?” he asked.

“I've heard it's a light. A very bright, very calm, and very comforting white light,” said Bic. “Now, when did you get here?” he asked.

“I always deliver at four AM”

“And what did you see?” Nice and easy. Open him up slowly.

“Her. And him. And them. And...” Bread Guy was headed for the edge.

Shit. “Just take it easy buddy. Look over here. Look at me. Drink some coffee. How about a little shot in that coffee? A little fine Scotch?” Bic was always prepared; better to be looking at it than looking for it.

“No. My boss'll kill me if he finds me drinking on the job.”

“Look, pal, I think the Boss would be having a few drinks himself if he had seen what you've seen. Now tell what you saw when you drove up. From the beginning.”

There you have it. more to come