Seasons of Heaven by Nico Augusto Read Free Book Online Page A

Thomas had caused him. It tormented him night and day. At first, the alcohol helped. It numbed the feelings and took the sharp edges off of the memories. But the more used to the anesthetic his body and mind became, the less it worked its magic.
    As much as James loved his son, and as much as he still held out hope that he’d see him again someday, he almost wished that he could forget that day two years ago when Thomas had disappeared. Instead, it was the clearest memory his mind held onto. It was there when he woke up and when he went to sleep, even when he finished off a bottle of bourbon. He truly knew what people meant now when they referred to a memory as “haunting.”
    James, Sarah and Thomas had been living in Little Rock at the time. It was a peaceful little town with friendly people and good schools. It was the perfect place to raise a family…or so he and Sarah had thought. Not long before they’d lost Thomas, strange events had begun to take place in the town, causing panic and paranoia to run rampant amongst its normally contented residents.
    James hadn’t been raised in a small town. He was well-educated and he had written off the ramblings of his neighbors as simply rumors fueled and spread about by uneducated people. The jest of their complaints was that they were being visited at night by a strange man, not once but several times.  Some of the accounts told of the man sneaking into their children’s bedrooms. Although the inhabitants of the entire county were terrified by these stories, at that point, there was no concrete evidence to back up what they were saying. James was a facts kind of guy, so he chose not to concern himself with any of it. He had a career and a family to spend his time worrying about. He didn’t have the time to waste on fantasies.
    Hindsight however was turning out to be a bitch. After Thomas was abducted, James and Sarah were relentlessly interrogated by the police. They thought the child was dead and that one of his parents had killed him. Luckily, the lead investigator was good enough at his job to realize that wasn’t the case and he ultimately linked Thomas’ disappearance with a child molestation case he was working on.
    It was the largest case the county had ever been hit with. It happened at a local Children’s outdoor center where kids went for day camp and learning activities. At first, the perpetrator had begun taking only their backpacks…seemingly mesmerized by stealing and touching their things. As these things go, however that had escalated to molestations. Like the investigator, James was convinced that Thomas disappearing in the midst of all of that wasn’t a coincidence and the cases were linked somehow.
    James was not only an intelligent man, and an excellent surgeon; he was also the son of one of the most brilliant detectives of the Paris Criminal Squad during the ‘50s. He’d listened to his father speak about cases for hours on end as he grew up. He was predisposed to weighing the facts and based on those facts, making assumptions. James thought about his father then. He missed him too. At the close of his career, his father was working a murder case. It was a strange case and one that local police had failed to gain any leads on. Unfortunately, his father was killed for his efforts and the case was never solved.
                  James finally made it to JFK. He pulled into the parking lot and parked in long term parking. Jumping out, he slammed the door and headed inside. His feet felt heavy and his legs wobbly. James was smart enough to know he was drunk, but he was stubborn enough to not admit it.
                  Once inside he began looking for the flight board to see if his flight was on time. The overhead announcements seemed louder than usual and James was tempted to yell,
                  “Shut-up!” at the top of his lungs at all of the loudly chattering people. He didn’t though. This one time today,