Kifo

By A. A. Clifford

A killer with awesome power. A motive of terrifying reality.

A killer seeks retribution for the unarmed victims of police shootings. He leaves no forensic evidence of any kind at the crime scene, just the unearthly sound of his weapon, the body of the victim-- and its vaporized head.

Jamal Weathers is a Black FBI agent and one of the Bureau’s top behavioral experts. He has followed the suspect across three states, trying to stop the assassin’s next attack.

When Jamal discovers that all of the slain cops bear the names of Black victims of police shootings, it is clear that the killer is a vigilante dedicated to revenge.

And in the inner cities, the killer’s sigil appears with his name “Kifo,” the Swahili word for death.

In the thick of the case, Jamal comes to a startling, but inescapable conclusion: the murderer is either not of our time-- or not of this world.

Kifo is classic science fiction thriller and modern allegory. It is a.a. clifford at his most devilishly provocative. a.a. clifford is the author of the SexLife series and the novels, 4 and 5 in the Numbers Trilogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Hardwick
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463635476

Book preview

KIFO

a novella

a.a. clifford

KIFO COPYRIGHT 2020

© a.a. clifford All rights reserved

ISBN Number 9798649657228

Published by HardBooks Publishing

First Edition

Cover Design by Gary Hardwick

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events except where indicated are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to persons living, dead or yet to be born, are purely unintentional and coincidental.

Without limiting the right under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior express permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

also by a. a. clifford

SexLife

Escape To Sex

The Enkantatum and Other Stories

4

(Book One of the Numbers Trilogy)

5

(Book Two of the Numbers Trilogy)

To the unarmed victims of police shootings,

whose names are too numerous and too

depressing to write here.

CONTENTS

Primer: Of Image and Imagery

ONE -  The Weapon

TWO – Gravity’s Rainbow

THREE - Jamal

FOUR  - Say My Name

FIVE – X-File

SIX - Red Eye

SEVEN – Phantom

EIGHT - Kifo

NINE - Reflection

TEN – Visible Man

ELEVEN  - Tenebrous

TWELVE - Frequency

Primer:

Of Image and Imagery

Image and imagery are twins of thought.

The image of something is the thing itself, the tangible matter, what the conscious mind processes as information. It is supported by practicality and logic, math and science, the essence of reality.

The imagery of a thing is the symbolism of what it has come to mean to us subconsciously. It is maintained by emotion and imagination, superstition and myth, the substance of illusion.

We see a black cat and our conscious mind sees the image of a cat that is dark in color, wavelengths of light working under principles of physics to deprive the image of all color, leaving it black.

But my subconscious sees the imagery of evil and fear. It remembers that black cats are bad luck, witches' familiars and the harbingers of death.

Consider what it does to a mind to be constantly bombarded with the imagery of darkness as evil and light as good. Would that mind grow to fear the dark and worship the light? Would a dark person be endangered by his color and would a light person be protected by theirs?

Now consider the reaction to a human being wrapped in the image of darkness and filled with its powerful imagery within the split second that it takes a police officer to decide to pull the trigger of a gun...

Now, you’re ready to read this.

- aac 2020

The seed of violence yields a harvest of death.

- Codex De Lumine

Book Of Vita

Chapter 8, Verse 5

ONE

The Weapon

Casselton, Ohio.

At eight fifteen am, Police Officer Ronald Madison walked into his backyard on one of his rare days off. He was headed to his garage, where he had a workbench for the many carpentry jobs he did on the side.

He also had a mini fridge with three bottles of a six pack of Heineken he had not finished and he was already thinking of how good it was going to be once he worked up a sweat.

His day was condensed to just those two simple things, working then relaxing, a microcosm of what was in his mind, the perfect life, or at least what he imagined retirement would one day be like.

As he approached the garage door, something grabbed his attention. He sensed someone or something in the yard with him. He turned to check it out, when his head exploded, fragmenting just short of vaporization and separating from his neck at the C-3 cervical vertebrae.

Madison’s head was sprayed onto a mushroom-shaped bush by a back fence, like someone flinging a wet mop.

The torso fell backwards and landed against said fence where it twitched for a few seconds, not knowing it was dead. Then, it lay still.

No bullet or projectile would be found. No forensic evidence of any type or a conventional gun was apparent.

The Bureau’s ballistics experts and physicists at MIT had already done several comparisons and simulations and the weapon had the basic characteristics of a shotgun, albeit one whose load somehow dissipated after firing.

Wendy Madison, the victim’s wife, thought she heard her husband say the word Is. Then she heard the weapon’s unique signature, an amalgam of metal crashing, something being ripped and a hollow explosion.

She came running out of their home, discovered her husband’s corpse and lost consciousness immediately.

She saw no one coming or going from the crime scene. In fact, no one in the entire neighborhood would say they saw anyone at or around the murder house.

FBI Agent Jamal Weathers had heard this story twice. Once in New York, then again in Florida. The man he was after had killed before and each time, this unique ID was left.

Jamal worked in behavioral science. He’d apprehended several serials, including the Gray Devil Killer, a man who left a drawing of the devil on his victim’s bodies.

Jamal was African American, forty-two, tall, dark-skinned and many said he favored a young Muhammad Ali, something he always loved hearing.

He was conservative by nature and this often confused people who always expected him to be liberal if not radical because of his name. He paid no attention to this. He did his job and never played politics, racial or otherwise.

The fact that he was Black never went into his handling of any case no matter what the pressure was. Justice was his guiding light.

The killer had brought Jamal to Ohio and the all too familiar crime scene was before him again.

Palm street was filled with law enforcement vehicles. state troopers, county sheriffs and city boys, of course. Fire and ambulances lined the block as well. When a cop was shot, emotions ran high and everyone wanted to help.

Beyond this crowd, was the usual horde of press and