The Taliesin Story

Taliesin: The Gemini Agenda

"Introduction: 'Screw That Dark and Stormy Night' Bullshit"

11:34 P.M.

The phone rang twenty-two times before Andrew Taliesin decided he was forced to answer it. He wasn't asleep, he was awake watching TV while twirling his cane like a color guard, the way he always spends his Friday nights. He scoffed at the name on the caller ID: "La Fayette Police Department." Hesitant, he answered the phone in his usual manner in handling Captain Gregory Ross: "What the hell do you want?"

"Andrew," Ross shot back, "still as charming as ever."

"I've been known to have my moments. Seriously, what do you want?"

"You have a case. Two--"

"Call Rade," Taliesin snapped. "He's on call tonight."

"He's here, and he said that you were on call."

Taliesin bit his lip at this. "Figures he'd say that. He probably thinks his daddy would bribe me to take his night on call. Then call Blake or Tong. Tong would be there in a heart beat... Blake may have to jump off the guy she's on."

Ross said the one thing Taliesin would regret hearing for the rest of his life. "Your whole team is here, and they're baffled. Rade threw up upon seeing the corpses, Blake and Flora turned pale, and Tong... well, Tong did nothing."

"'Nothing' is bad. It means Tong's puzzled. Why would that be?"

Ross sighed, tried to catch his breath, then sighed again. "Two bodies, one male, one female, on opposite ends of a painting of an angel. The letters "VI" are written over the angel. And the victim's faces were skinned off and switched."

Taliesin limped to the closet to grab is sweater jacket, then noticed the rain and grabbed his black, military dress rain coat. "Flora didn't get anything from it?"

"No... why?"

Taliesin rolled his eyes. "Because," he spat, "it's not 'VI.' It's "six." They were married, or living together. And had it not been the fact that you distacted me from a 'Babe's R Topless' commercial before it changed to a psychic hotline commercial, I'd gone to my sister first about the set up."

Ross muttered under his breath, then asked Taliesin, "Andrew, what the fuck is going on?"

Taliesin put on his jacket, and picked the phone up again. "It's a Tarot card, Greg. 'The Lovers.' Give me the address--"

"It's Lou Shmeckie's Bar--"

"I know the place. I'll be there in two minutes." He almost hung up, then said, "more likely after a huge police chase, or a major accident. Expect a shit load of back up."