Everyone Was Left Behind Read online

  Everyone Was Left Behind

  A Novel

  By Steve Armstrong

  Published by

  Alreadynotyet Books

  Cortlandt Manor, NY

  Printed on Createspace

  June 2016

  Copyright © 2015 by Steve Armstrong

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2015

  ISBN-13:978-1534982680

  ISBN-10:153498268X

  Alreadynotyet Books

  Cortlandt Manor, NY

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  April 24 ended in the most anticlimactic fashion.

  The minute and hour hand met at twelve, signaling the start of a new day. Jesus did not appear. No trumpet sounded. The skies did not part. As Pastor Graham Wilcox crossed the invisible boundary into April 25, he realized he had been mistaken. Like everyone else, Wilcox had been left behind.

  But how had he been wrong? Wilcox checked the time on his phone on the off chance the clock on the wall was fast. No—it was actually two minutes slow. After the last of his dejected parishioners departed, the Reverend retreated to his office, where he revisited the reasons for his prediction of Jesus’ return. His vision of evil crawling across peoples and nations until it established a chokehold on the entire world had seemed so clear. As did the various numbers Wilcox had traced through scripture, which all pointed to April 24, 2016 as being the date of Jesus’ return. But the day had unfolded like any other. For the briefest of moments, dark clouds had consumed an otherwise pleasant spring afternoon, but the ominous skies faded as quickly as they had arrived, without shedding one raindrop or producing a single clap of thunder.

  Wilcox sat at his desk and stared at the webcam attached to his computer, searching for the right words to say to all his brothers and sisters who had believed his prediction and to all the critics who had spent the last year mocking him. His emotions were volatile—a powder keg of disappointment, confusion, anger, and guilt. Yet, even in that moment, Wilcox’s mental filter began to organize these feelings through the lens of his tenacious faith in God.

  He turned the camera on and began to record the message fermenting in his soul. The pastor’s unwavering belief in the ancient promise of Christ allowed him to speak with resolve. Now that he had worked through his initial weakness, he stared at the camera in a way that bordered on defiance.

  A noise in the back of the empty church interrupted him. Wilcox stopped recording. He waited for someone to emerge from the back room —perhaps some straggling congregant struggling with Jesus’ failure to appear. When no one appeared, the Pastor rose to investigate the sound. But before he could even take a step forward, Wilcox came face to face with the evil he had been railing against—the shadow surreptitiously spreading across the world. Though he had foreseen this darkness, witnessing it so clearly with his own eyes surprised him.

  The intruder’s hand tightened around the gun. Unable to move, Wilcox stood frozen in place.

  “Why are you doing this?” Wilcox asked.

  His assailant squeezed the trigger in reply. Graham Wilcox’s last thought was that perhaps he would get to see Jesus after all—just a little late.

  Chapter One

  Detective Daniel Seitzer hesitated to enter the quaint brick structure of Holy Spirit Tabernacle. Even though he had never visited the place before, all churches conjured memories he would rather have forgotten. He surveyed the quiet, residential dead-end street, its typical midnight peace disrupted by the flashing lights of police cars. Seitzer exhaled deeply and stepped forward.

  “Mike? Tom? You in here?”

  He poked his head through the open door of the church and took a few tentative steps into the dimly-lit foyer before a masculine voice called, “Yo, Dan, back here.”

  The detective traced the reply to his left and began to follow a distant light down a corridor to another open door where the barrel-chested frame of Officer Mike Kelly appeared to escort him the rest of the way.

  “Got a call from one of the neighbors who thought he heard a gunshot from the church,” Kelly said as the two walked through a room with a desk under a window and shelves lined with books on the back wall. The officer, who always dialed his volume to the max, even when his audience was standing right next to him, proved to be even more jarring at two in the morning. “Church was unlocked, no sign of forced entry; light was on back here and that’s where we found him.”

  The two policemen entered into a second, similarly furnished room. Seitzer immediately spotted the lifeless body on the floor.

  “White middle-aged male, gunshot wound to the head. No pulse, no signs of life. Called the paramedics who verified he was dead.”

  Seitzer stared at the body and traced the splattering of blood across the room. A smattering of red had stained an oil painting of Jesus on the wall, five feet behind the corpse. The detective searched the placid blue eyes of Christ, which seemed unfazed by what they had witnessed. Every church Seitzer had ever been to possessed one of these paintings of a European Jesus. Sometimes He held a lamb in His arms, other times He knocked on a door, either way, offering nothing more than vague sympathy to all who passed by.

  “This is our first murder of the year, right?” Kelly asked.

  “First one,” Seitzer said.

  Woodside, New York was a town of eighteen thousand and many years its residents managed to go all three-hundred and sixty-five days without killing each other. Seitzer’s day-to-day work orbited around tracking down drug dealers and investigating robberies and assaults. The few murders they did see mostly involved domestic cases, where the perpetrator tended to fall among the unoriginal selection of boyfriends, husbands, and the occasional vengeful co-worker. Though large enough of a community that not everyone knew one another, Woodside was small enough that any murder—no matter how mundane—would rupture its soul. A least, until the crime faded from the town’s collective consciousness and people felt safe again.

  The detective turned his a
ttention back to the body. “Did you ID the victim?”

  Mike shrugged. “No. I didn’t want to disturb the scene. You know how Lindsey gets if we screw something up.”

  Seitzer bent down over the corpse. The detective was well aware how the medical examiner felt when people did not follow her protocols. He pulled some latex gloves out of his jacket pocket and stretched them across his hands. “It’s a church on a Friday night, so we’re probably either looking at the church janitor or the Pastor.” Judging by the dead man’s buttoned-down dress shirt, tie, and khakis, Seitzer ruled out janitor. Carefully, he reached into the victim’s left pant pocket and pulled out a wallet.

  “Graham Wilcox,” the detective read out loud after he had opened the billfold and produced a driver’s license. “Thirty-nine years old, brown eyes, wears glasses. According to his driver’s license, he lives about forty minutes from here.”

  “Maybe he was just a visiting preacher,” Kelly said.

  Seitzer surveyed the room, locating a picture frame propped up next to a computer on the desk. He walked over to examine the photo of a smiling husband and wife with a small boy and girl sitting in each of their laps.

  “This looks like our guy. He must have been the Pastor. Maybe the address on the license is old.”

  Mike stood beside Seitzer to get his own look. “Poor kids,” he murmured.

  “Yeah.” Seitzer studied the children in the photo. They had green eyes, like their mother, a striking woman with wavy brown hair and a captivating smile. None of the preachers’ wives Seitzer knew looked like her. He put the frame back on the desk, exactly where he had found it.

  “Let me see that for a second,” Mike said, his brow furrowed. “His name sounds kind of familiar and I think I might recognize that face.” He picked up the picture to inspect it closer.

  “Hello?” someone called from around the corner.

  “In here,” responded Seitzer.

  A tall, lean, but muscular man with short dark hair joined them in the deceased Pastor’s study.

  “Look who decided to show up,” Kelly said, a rueful grin on his face as he stared down the young detective who had just joined them. “Nice of you to join us, Harrison.”

  The man looked sheepishly at Seitzer and Kelly. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, addressing Seitzer, “I got here as soon as I could.”

  Seitzer stared at the young man, too. Though barely forty himself, he felt every year of his life when he looked at his new partner. Time had seemingly stood still for Seitzer the last few years, but one glance at Harrison’s unlined face reminded him that the years had indeed been hurtling forward.

  “He’s just giving you a hard time, Harrison. I got here five minutes ago,” Seitzer said after he collected himself.

  Harrison seemed relieved until he spotted the body on the floor.

  “You gonna be okay, kid?” Kelly asked.

  “I’ve seen a dead body before,” Harrison replied.

  Seitzer knew the young detective had had the misfortune of handling corpses—maybe even more than Kelly, who was ten years Harrison’s senior. The young man had been promoted to his new position after a well-regarded run as a New York City police officer. Suffice to say, New York City produced many more dead bodies via murder and accidental death than Woodside.

  “That’s who it is—Graham Wilcox—he’s the one that predicted the end of the world!” Mike exclaimed. Seitzer and Harrison stared blankly at him. “What, you didn’t hear about the local preacher who said Jesus was coming back? It was on TV and in the newspapers.” When neither detective appeared to know what Kelly was talking about, he added, “You know, the rapture? Jesus comes back to earth and takes all the faithful Christians to heaven so the antichrist can take over the world, or something like that?”

  “I know what the rapture is, I just didn’t remember this guy at first,” Seitzer said.

  “Why not? It was a pretty big deal around here. They had a billboard up on the other side of town, warning people to get ready for Jesus to come. Even my oldest kid was talking about it with friends at school. The day was coming up soon, I think.”

  “I tend to ignore raving lunatics. As far as I’m concerned, this guy’s no different from the crazy people who go around holding ‘The End is Near’ signs, other than the fact he’s better dressed and had a bigger audience,” Seitzer said, his tone caustic enough to elicit questioning looks from both Kelly and Harrison. “You happen to remember when the end of the world was supposed to be?”

  “Shoot, when was it?” Mike tapped his fist lightly against his forehead. “It was … April … 24.”

  Seitzer peeked at his watch. “If you’re right, that was yesterday.”

  “Wow,” Kelly said, “there’s some irony for you. Maybe someone was pissed he got the date wrong.”

  Harrison, quiet during the previous exchange between Seitzer and Kelly, steeled himself against the carnage and knelt down next to Wilcox’s body. Neither of the other two cops could tell what he was looking for, but he exuded a genuine sense of sorrow toward the deceased man.

  While Harrison studied the body, Seitzer let out a sigh. Why did it have to be a Pastor who was killed? If the murder of some random person caused Woodside to reconsider its current level of security, the slaying of a Pastor would make even more waves. The story—particularly with the added benefit of a failed rapture prediction—might even draw national attention. But Seitzer dreaded the case for another reason. The victim’s identity would force him to interview a plethora of bible thumping, evangelical Christians. He knew their scene better than he wished and possessed precious little patience for religious people. Already, he could hear their moral hand-wringing, sentimental theology and apocalyptic paranoia.

  “Where’s Tom?” Seitzer asked.

  “He’s out talking to the neighbor who made the 911 call,” Mike replied.

  “Did you sweep the church, make sure no one’s hiding away somewhere?”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah. Tom and I went through every nook and cranny. No one else is here.”

  “Why don’t you take another look, see if there’s anything else that seems out of place. Harrison, you go with him. I’ll go out and talk to our witness.”

  The younger detective stood still, watching the corpse like he expected it to pop up at any moment.

  “Come on, rookie,” Mike said, grabbing Harrison by the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  The two entered the low light of the church’s sanctuary to ensure no one was hiding in the shadows. While they walked away, Seitzer returned his gaze to the serene image of Jesus. His ex-wife liked these kinds of pictures. She used them as screensavers and wallpaper on her computer and phone. She even hung a few in rooms of their house that Seitzer didn’t frequent. For some reason, vaguely sympathetic Euro-Jesus brought her a sense of peace during difficult times, when Seitzer’s own touch offered little consolation to her. The paintings were the first thing he threw out after she left him.

  “You have anything to say about this?” he asked. Jesus’ expression didn’t change. “Didn’t think so. Never seem to.”

  “Were you saying something?” A middle-aged woman with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail strode into the room; she looked tired.

  “Nope—just talking to myself, Lindsey,” Seitzer replied to the Medical Examiner.

  “Well, don’t let me interrupt.” She placed a duffle bag down on the floor and surveyed the scene. “Someone really didn’t like this guy, huh?”

  “So it would seem. But there are worse ways to die.”

  Lindsey gave Seitzer a sideways glance. “I could think of some better ways, too. Is this a way you’d want to go? Anyway, doesn’t matter—we don’t get to choose.”

  The detective nodded but said nothing.

  “You ever notice murders are like childbirth—they always happen in the middle of the night?” Lindsey asked.

  “No, I hadn’t noticed. Then again, I’ve never been to a childbirth before.”

 
“I have. I could draw some other points of comparison, but I doubt you’d want to hear them.”

  “No, I would not,” Seitzer replied, anxious to move off their current topic.

  “You ready for me to get started?” Lindsey asked, meeting Seitzer’s eyes.

  “Yeah. Do your thing. I’m gonna pay a visit to the guy who called 911. Mike and Harrison are in the church, double checking for anything suspicious.”

  “Okay, Dan. I’ll get to work.”

  Lindsey took out her camera and began her painstaking analysis and documentation of the scene. Seitzer left her to work in peace. He exited through the main door of the church and walked past the squad cars. Tom Glass, the second officer on site, stood on the front porch outside the house across the street, speaking with an older man wearing a bathrobe.

  Glass saw Seitzer approaching and nodded his head in the detective’s direction. “Mr. Hayes, this is Detective Seitzer. He’ll be handling the case from here on out.” The officer stepped aside as Seitzer ascended the stairs to the house. Glass was a bit younger than Kelly, taller, and ganglier. He wore his hair short, just a few centimeters from his scalp.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hayes. Can you tell me what happened?” Seitzer asked, most likely repeating a question Glass had already posed. The detective produced his phone from his pocket and loaded an app that recorded sound. He held the phone near the witness. Richard Hayes appeared to be in his sixties. His thinning, unkempt gray hair betrayed the fact he had been sleeping. Hayes’ expression mixed equal parts concern and annoyance.