Dameon Redding sat up straight in his chair. The service was over and he could feel the tears coming again. At the age of 23, he was still afraid of people seeing him cry. Kara was gone. She hadn't deserved to die; she was only twelve years old. Now he'd never get to see his baby sister grow up. Wiping away the tears with the back of his hand, he stood up and began shaking peoples hands. He tuned out their words of sympathy. They didn't know how he or his parents felt. Sure they knew Kara, but they hadn't lived with her, hadn't nurtured her from infancy. Dameon closed his eyes and thought back to the fateful night.
It had been 8:19 pm on November 18th when Dameon had received the call. A local had found a child dead in a ditch. He quickly grabbed his coat and keys and alerted the squad cars in the surrounding area. He unlocked his own car, flipped on the siren and sped out of the station. He raced down the highway at a breakneck speed. A light rain began to fall as he headed for the location the woman in dispatch had given him. As he neared the scene, he mentally ran through whom it could be. As he pulled up alongside the road, the light rain became a wild torrent. He stepped out into the drenching flood like wetness and turned on his high beam flashlight. He quickly moved through the small crowd that had gathered. He peered down into the ditch and the sight wrenched his stomach. His 12-year-old sister lay among the grass, mud and dirt with a bullet hole in the middle of her stomach and blood dripping profusely from her wrists and throat. She had been murdered.
Murder was the first thing that sprang to Dameon's mind as he beheld the scene of his dead sister's body. Fighting back tears, he put a call into the hospital to send an ambulance. "Officer Redding!" called a woman in her mid forties with chin length red hair and bright blue eyes. "Yes Mrs. MacTerny?" he asked tiredly. "I thought it was you! How are you dear?" she asked pleasantly as if not noticing her surroundings. "I've been better. Now you'll have to excuse me. I have to file a report," Dameon responded as he headed for his squad car. He had no intention of writing the report. Instead he took out his silver cell phone and dialed his parents' phone number. On the third ring, his father, Michael, picked up. "Hello?" he said. "Hi dad, it's Dameon," his son began. "Oh hey! What's up?" Michael asked. "Is mom with you?" Dameon continued. "Y-yes," Mike said a bit confused. "Abigail!" his father called, covering the receiver with his hand. Dameon heard a click and knew his father had put him on speakerphone. "Dameon. What's wrong?" his mother asked immediately. "I have some bad news," Dameon said. Swallowing hard he continued. "Kara is dead," he finished, his voice cracking on the word 'dead'. Silence. Utter and complete silence. "Dead," came his mother's weak voice. "Someone found her in a ditch on the side of the highway," Dameon informed her. "This isn't happening. I don't believe it," she continued, tears choking her. "You can come down and see for yourself mom," Dameon said.
With that, he hung up. Returning his phone to his pocket he ventured back to the ditch. The paramedics had arrived and where examining her body. Dameon suddenly noticed that she was still wearing her ice skates. She never wore them unless she was on the ice. Just as the paramedics were loading her dead, soaking wet, blanket covered body into the ambulance; Michael and Abigail arrived. Jumping out of their car, the couple rushed over. One look at the body told Abigail that her baby was indeed dead. Tears overcame her and she collapsed to the ground. Her face was buried in her hands, her curly black hair sticking in wet clumps to her head. Thunder could be heard in the background as this heartbroken woman mourned her child on the side of the highway.
The sound of his name brought him back to the present. Mr. Ricardo Diaz, Kara's seventh grade history teacher was reaching his hand out. "I-I-I'm so sorry for your loss," the tall, black haired, cocoa-eyed man said. "Thank you," Dameon mumbled. "We will all miss her. She was a great student and a wonderful girl," the teacher finished and moved on. 'At least he wasn't crying like baby like some of the other people who had come to the service,' the twenty-three year old thought. He hadn't known all of the people who had come to Kara's service. There were former teachers and neighbors and some of her friends but there were others who had come too, people who didn't seem to know Kara at all. He knew that he wouldn't know every person at the service but there seemed to be a surplus of these strangers.
After the service was over he stopped at his apartment and changed and then headed to the station. He was going to find her murderer if it took him years. Pulling into the garage of the station, he saw his partner, Tyler Morganton. "How you doing Dameon?" Tyler asked. "Not so good. There were so many people I didn't know there," he said taking off his black leather jacket and hanging up on a hook just inside the door. "How are your folks taking it?" Tyler questioned. "My mom still cries herself to sleep at night," Dameon said. "I've been spending the nights there just so my dad can get some sleep," he finished. "What are you doing in on a Sunday anyways Red?" Tyler continued, using Dameon's nickname. "I'm going to find out who killed her," he answered his partner with determination and resolve. "We don't even know if it was murder Red," Tyler said. "I do. She was murdered and I'm going to find out who did it and make sure they pay Ty," Dameon said through gritted teeth.
