The Second Coming Read Free Page A

live.
    At the top of the stairs, Mike went down the hall checking the bedrooms and bathroom. Nothing was amiss. All of the rooms were immaculately clean and decorated with the same type of simple, old wood furniture. It wasn’t antique; it was plain like someone built it for a boarding school or abbey.
    There was one more room Mike needed to check, the master bedroom, which was directly above the living room. Mike slowly opened the door, half expecting to find a body hanging from the ceiling. As he cautiously stepped into the room he was in awe of what he saw.
    Painted on the wall above her queen sized bed was a life size mural of the crucifixion of Jesus nailed to the cross. Holy shit! Mike’s eyes opened wide as he folded his arms and admired the mural. Whoever painted it put a lot of work into the details of the nails in his hands, the crown of thorns, and the cut by his ribs. It was amazing. It was one of the strangest things he had ever seen until he looked up at the ceiling and saw a mural of the resurrection of Jesus painted like a fresco at the Sistine Chapel. Jesus was wearing a white robe with his hands reaching out towards Mike and there was light illuminating all around him. Why the fuck was this old lady decorating her house with artwork from the scenes of the New Testament?
    Mike checked the windows and they were all locked down. When he tuned to leave the room, he found her purse hanging from her door knob. He unzipped it and found a small wallet with $46 dollars. It didn’t appear that anything was missing.
    Mike trudged down the stairs. He could hear Big Pete and Scotty talking. The smell of death lingered in the air like spoiled fish. Mike glanced intothe darkened living room and motioned with his head for Big Pete to join him on the front porch.
    “Did you find anything?” Big Pete asked.
    “There is no sign of forced entry or any sign of struggle,” Mike said as he lit a cigarette.
    “Do you think he knew her?” Big Pete asked.
    “She either knew him or trusted him enough to let him into her house.”
    “Why would she let a stranger into her house?”
    “The whole house is covered in religious art. Wait until you see the murals in her bedroom.”
    “What does that have to do with letting a stranger into her house?”
    “I don’t know. She strikes me as someone who was probably naïve and would trust someone if they wanted to come in and talk about God.”
    “Maybe, but that doesn’t answer who the killer is or why he strangled her. Do you have any theories?”
    Mike shook his head as he took a long drag off of his smoke. He hated smoking without a drink, but it beat the shit out of the taste of death that was resonating in his nose and mouth. “I don’t have enough clues yet to form an opinion. Maybe a relative killed her so he could collect his inheritance.”
    “That’s a possibility. What do we need to do next?”
    “We need to talk to the people she worked with and to her friends and family to find out if they know of anyone who would have wanted her dead. We also need to find out who is the beneficiary of her estate. We need to find out who the last person was to see her alive and check to see if anyone in the neighborhood saw anything suspicious.”
    Big Pete nodded his fat head in agreement. “You can start with Mrs. Fleming over there,” he said, motioning to the young lady in the red tank top standing on her front porch. “She’s the one who found the deceased.”
    Mike glanced over and saw the distressed young lady talking on a cordless phone and looking at them with eyes of dread. He wondered how she found the body. Did she see someone coming or going from the house around the time of the murder? What did she know?

chapter 4

    A S M IKE SHUFFLED across the neighbor’s lawn, he glanced up at the lanky woman with sympathetic eyes. The rims of her eyelids were red from crying. As Mike approached the stairs, she shifted her weight from one side to the other with her arms