Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page A

pierced the night as they took away the bodies after the coroners released them.
    Oliver Randall, the head coroner of New Orleans had received the call a little past six in the morning. The chief of police shouted at him to get the hell out of bed and to get to Audubon Park as fast as he could. He screamed something about a murder and what he thought he said, was that there were nearly one hundred bodies. Oliver hung up the phone, wondering how much Scotch the chief had consumed earlier that night to make him hallucinate.
    Oliver found the chief sober and accurate to a fault about the body count. The crime scene looked like something out of a horror movie. There were bodies strewn everywhere as far as the eyes could see. Men, women, even senior citizens had been grossly killed ritualistically, which included cutting out the heart, removing the eyes and draining the blood from the bodies. He had vomited for nearly fifteen minutes when he first arrived. His knees still shook as he made his rounds with the assistants he’d called in to help him. Two of them had to hold each other’s hair as they vomited.
    Oliver zipped up another body bag and made the sign of the cross. Then he signaled for two paramedics to come over and take the body away. There were so many they had to be stacked on top of each other, and loaded into the backs of ambulances.
    Anthony Norris, the Chief of Police walked over to him. Anthony was an average looking man of fifty, tall and balding on the top of his head. One would think he’d seen everything in his line of work, but for the last hour he sat on a gurney in one of the ambulances, recovering from a faint.
    “Looks like some kind of gang sacrifice,” Anthony said in his laid back, slow southern drawl.
    Oliver nodded. “Looks like the work of a cult.”
    Anthony scratched the top of his bald head. “What kind of cult could possibly be this big and organized and we not know anything about it?”
    Oliver shrugged. “That’s for you to find out, Chief. My hands will be full for some time to come.”
    Anthony looked around. “Mayor Boudreaux is going to have a fit when he learns of this, and he’ll probably blame me—as if Orleans Parish didn’t have enough problems. Why couldn’t this have happened in Jefferson or Saint Tammany Parish?”
    Anthony signaled for some of his officers. They hurried over to him. “I want every inch of this area searched. I want to know who did this. I want their asses caught, be it dead or alive and dragged into jail before me.”
    Captains shouted out orders to their men. They pulled huge yellow flashlights from their cars and vans and spread out to comb the area.
    “Get a couple of birds in the air,” Anthony shouted to one of his men. “I want those helicopters covering this area by air at first light.”
    “Yes, sir,” the officer replied.
    “And get the dogs…the best ones you can find. Dogs which can sniff out a coon’s ass at one hundred paces.”
    The officers left quickly. Anthony’s men knew better than procrastinate.
    There were news vans representing all six local stations and the World News team had arrived, broadcasting the story around the country. Reporters jammed mobile mics into the faces of tired and dirty police officers who had been working since the early morning hours to find a clue…any clue.
    The last body was removed, the coroners returned to their labs and the long, grueling process of identifying the dead and notifying the next of kin began.
    * * * *
    Malcolm Boudreaux, a handsome charismatic black man in his early forties had been mayor of New Orleans for less than a year. He always looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine, and he still looked very dapper after so many hours of being at a crime scene. Malcolm was the product of one of the city’s prestigious universities. He was intelligent, eloquent, and a real people’s person. With a warm smile and a strong handshake, he was elected to office