The World in Reverse Read online

  The rain had started at ten that morning and continued all day.

  Nicola stood looking out of the patio door at his masterpiece going to shit with a crooked grin on his face. That was life. At least, that was his life.

  His kids, of course, blamed him. “Why, daddy?” they had asked. He couldn’t give them a reason. “God wanted it to rain, so it rained,” he had said before he began carting things inside. Kids didn’t question God. So, it was easier to incorporate Him in everything.

  By mid-afternoon, over thirty children ran through the old Victorian home screaming and playing, four of which belonged to the Agosto’s. However, despite the unforeseen weather, Nicola refused to let his boys’ birthday be ruined. He pushed the large leather couches to the backs of the walls, moved all of Ivy’s china out of the way and turned on the 60 inch television in the entertainment room to play SpongeBob on loop. The other parents chipped in as the normally impervious dining room was turned into a picnic table complete with red and white checkered tablecloths.

  Nicola emerged from the kitchen clutching a 52-piece Spiderman cake in his hands, while Ivy followed carefully behind him, coaching him with every nerve-racking step.

  “Don’t drop it Nicky,” she begged, hands ever so lightly touching the small of his back.

  “Baby, I got this,” Nicola answered, barely missing a little girl in pigtails, who came whirling by with a squirt gun.

  “No honey, you can’t have those in the house,” Ivy said, turning from Nicola to chase the little girl down the corridor.

  Setting the cake in the middle of the table, Nicola stepped back and raised his brow. “It’s big, huh?” he said to his friend and colleague Moss, standing across the room drinking a beer and talking to his wife.

  “That cake is pure sugar, man. You’re going to have these kids hyper as shit. I’m leaving Malika here with you tonight. Hell, you can babysit her,” Moss said, walking over to the table to take a closer look at the red, blue and white cake. “They definitely supersized it.”

  “No shit,” Nicola said, a little surprised himself. “I just wanted to make sure that I had enough. You know the boys like Spiderman.” He crossed his hands over his chest and ran his tongue around his bottom gum line.

  “What’s wrong?” Moss asked curiously.

  “I’m bummed about the rain,” Nicola answered.

  Moss couldn’t help but laugh. “This is supposed to be the twins’ party, not yours.”

  Nicola didn’t agree. “Hey, baby. Did you give little man his medicine? I hear him coughing again,” he called into the next room.

  Ivy stuck her head into the entryway with raised brows. “No, I thought that you did.”

  “Well, you better get it out,” Nicola said just as both sets of his twin boys came running in the room soaking wet.

  “What in the world?” Nicola shrieked.

  “Daddy, we got the slip and slide out and put in the back yard. Can we use it?” Adamo asked, wiping the rainwater off his flushed face.

  “No. You’re not even supposed to be outside. It’s raining cats and dogs out there,” Nicola said, grabbing a napkin to wipe the floor. He bent down and quickly cleaned it up.

  “It’s not raining cats and dogs, daddy,” Madison said with a frown. “It’s raining rain.”

  “I don’t mean it literally, Maddy,” Nicola said, standing back up.

  Just then two more people came through the front door, dodging the heavy rain with a large Nike umbrella. The grandparents. Ivy’s parents to be exact. Lugging bags of gifts, Sadie and Madison walked into the dining room and looked around.

  “Some kind of birthday, huh?” Madison asked, shaking Nicola’s hand. “How are you, son?”

  “Pretty good, sir,” Nicola said with a smile. He leaned over and kissed Sadie on the cheek. “Hey, Ma.”

  “Hey, baby,” she said, setting down her purse on the dining room chair. “Well, worse things could happen on a birthday,” she said, picking up on the disappointment. Ivy had told her how long Nicola had spent yesterday putting everything together. She was sure that he was bummed.

  “Like what?” Ivy asked, hugging her mother.

  “Like…a tornado,” Sadie laughed. “The point is that we’re all here.” She winked at her daughter. “Trina and Emerald sent a gift from Seattle and they send their love, of course.”

  “Yeah, I know. Emerald landed some huge development deal. So he and Trina said that they would try to come down later in the summer when things cooled down,” Ivy said, hating that her only brother and her best friend couldn’t make it.

  “That is one huge cake,” Madison said, leaning over the table. “Happy birthday, indeed.”

  “Grandma! Grandpa!” the kids screamed, rounding the corner. They burst into the room with arms wide and eyes wider. Both sets of the twins now in dry clothes hugged their grandparents all at once, nearly knocking them down and making them damp.

  “Look at my wonderful boys,” Sadie said, kissing their cheeks.

  “When are you guys gonna give me a girl?” Madison asked, looking over at Nicola.

  “That’s what I keep asking,” Ivy said with a giggle. “I feel outnumbered here.”

  Nicola looked down at his son, Madison, named for his grandfather, and grinned. “Are you ready to open your gifts?” he asked, rubbing through his mass of curly hair.

  “Yes,” they said in unison.

  “Okay, go and get all of your friends rounded up. You think that you can do that for me?” Nicola asked.

  “On our way,” Adam said, bolting out of the room. “Come on, Maddy!”

  A little slow to react, Madison turned around and followed after his brother, determined to catch up.

  Putting one of the boxes that had fallen off the table back on top of the large pile, he heard his work cell phone ring loud in his pocket. It wouldn’t have been more unwanted if it had been a mistress calling.

  Ivy suddenly froze, back rigid and a small vein protruding out of her neck. She stared at him as he pulled out his work Blackberry.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Nicola said to her as he turned his back. “Yeah,” he answered. He listened on and then his shoulders dropped in defeat. “When?” He listened again. Looking up at the wall, he sighed and shook his head. “I’m on my way.” Hanging up, he turned around to face Ivy. “Baby…”

  Ivy’s finger pointed like she wanted to hit Nicola. “Don’t baby me, Nicky. This is their birthday for God’s sake. They have been looking forward to this party for months.” Tears started to form in her eyes. “Can’t someone else…”

  “It’s my case,” Nicola interrupted, voice strained. Walking over to her, he rubbed through her long tendrils and tried to get her to calm down. “And I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to, but someone else’s twins were just found in a dumpster.” He tried to say it low just in case there were children around.

  Ivy’s disposition suddenly changed. Children?

  Moss’s chimed in. “Need me to ride with, man?” he asked, stepping away from his wife.

  Nicola ran a hand through his tousled black locks and gritted his teeth. He could feel the tension from all the women permeating the room. “No, man. Thanks. If you could, just keep an eye out here for me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “You aren’t even going to wait to sing happy birthday?” Ivy whined, voice pitched high.

  “We…we have to make it quick,” Nicola said, disappointed in himself for having to leave. He looked at his watch impatiently.

  Quickly, Ivy ran out of the room, calling the kids together as fast as she could. He could hear the desperation in her voice, the need to cry but the will to keep it buried down with the rest of the crap that he had put her through.

  “She’ll be okay, man. You gotta do what you gotta do,” Moss reassured in a low voice. He nodded at Nicola, trying to make him feel better.

  Nicola barely blinked. “Try to explain that to the kids.”

  2

  The rain h
ad not let up a bit by the time that Nicola arrived at the scene of the crime. It was only about ten minutes away - a little over five miles-from his house - at Overton Park, a well-known place for families to take their children, dog walkers to take their animals and couples to come for romantic picnics. Only today, there was nothing harmonious about the setting.

  Pulling up in his black Escalade, he turned off his truck and watched from the window as the hordes of policeman ran through the raging storm to a garbage dump in the back of the park pushed up against an old fence, adjacent to the Memphis Zoo.

  His headlights shined on the green, banged up dumpster about ten feet away. Rust had eroded the sides of the container away and large cockroaches crawled out of the bottom and fell into the pool of dirty water below it.

  Several trash bags had been pulled out and set side-by-side on the concrete - marked in orange as EVIDENCE. And based upon the uniformed officers who were not used to the smell of decaying bodies, the putrid odor of rotting carcasses was overwhelming even in the open air.

  An uncanny nervousness swept over Nicola, making his stomach clench tight as he watched. Sure he had seen plenty of bodies over his career, but there was something very disturbing about seeing a child that had been mutilated, raped and murdered.

  Every time that he was forced to view one, the image burned indelibly into the back of his mind and haunted him for weeks. He could see it in his sleep, when he daydreamed, when he blinked. This was the hardest part of the job.

  Stepping out in the rain, boots landing in a puddle of mud and grime, he pulled his badge from under his damp t-shirt clinging to his muscular frame and let it hang like a dog tag on his chest. The gleaming gold of the badge against black leather caught the reflection of the streetlight and gleamed in the gloomy setting.

  The cold rain beat against his body as he stalked over past the onlookers and ducked under the yellow police tape, crossing into the restricted scene of the crime.

  “What’s up, Agosto,” homicide detective Luke Johnson said with a handkerchief over his mouth, looking up from the top of the dumpster.

  Detective Luke Johnson was an ethnic enigma. Fair-colored, deep-set brown eyes, arched black brows, bald head, muscular body and deep voiced, he was a mirror image of Vin Diesel in build and appearance, and he had never once told anyone if he was black, white or other. As far as anyone knew, he was just Johnson, and Agosto figured he liked it that way.

  “Nothing is up, man,” Nicola said walking over.

  “I heard about the demotion,” Johnson added with a smirk. “What? You didn’t like being a lieutenant?”

  “It wasn’t that. I didn’t like punks pissing on my female cops. So I made an example out of a couple of them. Who knew that they had good lawyers?”

  Johnson raised his brow. “You’re lucky that all you got was a demotion. Shit, from what I heard about the ass beating you gave those guys, you should have gotten shit canned.”

  “I’ll remember to count my lucky fucking stars from now on,” Agosto said, tired of telling the same story over and over. It had been months since that incident had happened. It should have been old news by now.

  Johnson could see Agosto’s irritation and chose to move on. “So what good thing did this call ruin for you? Because I was in between a beautiful brunette’s thighs. Damn shame to just get up and leave her.”

  Nicola chuckled. “I was at my kids’ birthday party when I got the call. My wife is pissed,” he said, stepping up on wooden crates to look over into the garbage can. His eyes narrowed on the two twin boys discolored and duct taped with their hands behind their back. “Shit,” Nicola cursed disgusted. Fighting the urge to gag at the sight of the maggots crawling out of one of the boy’s ears, he jumped off the crate back into a large puddle of rainwater and took a deep breath.

  “Not a pretty picture,” Johnson said, stepping down beside Agosto with a little more grace.

  “Do we know who the vics are yet?” Nicola asked, spitting.

  “Yeah. A couple reported their kids missing about a week ago. Hunter and Hayden Naples, age 7. They were abducted while riding their bikes down Peabody. They live off Avalon and belong to a Dr. and Mrs. Naples.” He handed Nicola a small container of Noxzema to put under his nose to kill the smell.

  Nicola slipped a little under his nose. “I live on Peabody.”

  “No shit?” Johnson said surprised. It was a pricey neighborhood, far too expensive for a cop’s salary.

  “No shit,” Nicola answered, shaking his head. He was thinking about the proximity of the crime to his house. Much too close for comfort.

  “So let me get this straight. The chief wants you on this why?” Johnson asked, pulling off his latex gloves as the crime scene investigator finished taking his pictures for the case. “You’re a gangland cop last time I checked.”

  “Organized Crime,” Nicola corrected, trying to focus. He looked over at the dumpster again. “The speculation about this being a serial killer is off in every way. The MO changes every time with every kid. It’s not indicative of a serial killer. It’s not indicative of one person. Right now, I’m in the middle of pulling all the pieces together. But I truly believe that this is part of a large organized crime thing and so does the brass.”

  “But why wouldn’t they sell them instead of killing them here, if it’s OC?” Johnson asked intrigued by Agosto’s theory.

  Nicola huffed. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “And not to poke holes in your notion, but why would they shit where they eat? The two kids that went missing before these two were from Memphis and were found in Memphis. Normally, if it’s organized trafficking, they cart the kids off to some other city or country for that matter.” Johnson moved out of the way as the coroner prepared to move the bodies out of the trash.

  Nicola stopped talking out of respect for the boys as he watched the men pull the small bodies to the ground. A petite hand fell over, discolored and cut. Johnson made the sign of the cross and mumbled something under his voice. Nicola cursed again.

  Finally, he managed to pull his attention away from the kids. Turning his head from the van, Nicola looked at Johnson. “We’re making national news with this. Every day the outcry from the community gets a lot louder. I don’t plan to step on homicide’s shoes, but what if I’m right? Wouldn’t it be worth it to work together and stop this instead of letting more kids end up like dead? We’re at four now?”

  Johnson threw up his hands. “Hey, I’m not arguing or complaining. I’ve pulled one fucking out of an abandoned car trunk and another out of a hole in the ground and all in the last month. If you know some way to make it stop, I’ll give you a fucking medal, not a hard time. I just don’t see why some group would do this here and risk getting caught. A serial killer I can understand…the other just doesn’t make sense. If you come up with something, you let me know. Plus, I got the word from Amway just like you. I’m not stepping on his fucking feet.”

  “I plan to figure this out,” Nicola said, wiping more water off his face. “And I plan on putting the bastards responsible for this under the jail.”

  Johnson looked down at Nicola and bit his lip. “I was thinking more about putting them under the fucking dirt, but that’s me. Hey, you need an umbrella or something? You’re getting soaked out here, and you can’t be much help to me with pneumonia,” Johnson said, snapping his fingers at one of the uniform officers standing close by. “Give the lieutenant…my bad, give the sergeant a fucking umbrella,” he shouted.

  Nicola ignored the slick joke. “Have the parents been notified?” he asked, walking over to look at the boys’ faces before the coroner zipped up the little black bags. He wanted to remember their faces, remember their torture for the days to come when he’d be forced to work his ass off and risk pissing his wife off further. It would keep things in perspective.

  Johnson passed Nicola an umbrella. “We’re getting in touch with them now.”

  “Mind if I’m in on it?” Nico
la asked, tilting his head as he looked at the boys’ faded eyes. He felt a sorrow that words could not describe for the children. They had to be his sons’ ages. Such a waste.

  Johnson felt his lunch coming up as he looked at the kids. Popping a cigarette into his mouth, he stood holding his umbrella over his head and puffing on a Kool. After a long drag, he exhaled. “No. I don’t mind at all. I could use the support. These kinds of personal notifications fuck me up,” he said, looking at the black bags as they were loaded into the back of the coroner’s truck. “No matter what kind of day you were having before this, you can’t tell me that this doesn’t put things into perspective.”

  Nicola didn’t respond. He was too far away now, thinking about his own sons and what he would do if something like this ever happened to them.

  A uniformed officer walked over to Johnson and passed him a folded up piece of paper. “Here is the address, phone number and names of the parents,” the woman said, eyes red from tears.

  Johnson took the paper and stuck it inside of his pants pockets. “Thanks. First time seeing a dead body?” he asked the young woman.

  She nodded quickly. “First time seeing dead kids,” she reiterated, looking over at the coroner’s van. “I hope to never see another.”

  “We’re in Memphis, the leading city for infant mortality. You may want to get into another profession if you don’t want to see another dead kid.” Just then Johnson realized how cold he sounded and instantly hated himself for it. Patting the woman on the back, he tried to give her a smile. “Why don’t you go and do something that will make you feel better. Get with Officer Masterson over there and secure the area. We don’t want those fucking reporters to get too close to the crime scene.”

  Still shaking her head, she walked away obediently.

  Nicola watched the woman as she went to the police line and began to chorale the onlookers. “You got someone in the crowd in plain clothes?” he asked, scanning the large group of spectators.