Everyone Was Left Behind

by Steve Armstrong

  “But why would you think he meant those messages for you?” Seitzer asked.

  She shrugged and looked at the ground. “Because I hoped it was true. I’ve always hoped it was true—that he felt the same way about me that I did about him.”

  Seitzer expected the girl to break down, but despite the shame, her voice remained resolute. Although the detective felt some of the same exasperation Elizabeth did, especially after the multiple opportunities he had given Charity to come clean, he found himself sympathizing with her.

  Watkins just stared at the young woman who had served next to him on the Holy Spirit Tabernacle music team. He must have missed numerous longing glances from the teen while he developed his own forbidden feelings for someone he could never have.

  “By the last message, I realized he was texting Elizabeth and not me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. It was stupid.” She looked specifically at Jason Watkins. “I should’ve told you but I was too embarrassed. So I just deleted the messages you sent and hoped it would go away somehow. I’m sorry.”

  The man with the wandering eye gazed at her with his mouth wide open. “This was all for nothing. Do you know what you’ve done to me, Charity?”

  Seitzer didn’t want to give any more time for the man’s confusion to turn to rage against the young girl.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he said, pushing the man into the police car. He signaled to one of the officers. “Why don’t you guys take him back to the station and start processing him. It’s going to take a while to sort this one out. Harrison and I will be down there in a bit.”

  The officers complied and boarded their car to transport Watkins to the police station. Despite the drama of the scene, Seitzer didn’t know if he had apprehended Graham Wilcox’s killer or not. But he did feel much better about ruling out Elizabeth’s involvement.

  If Elizabeth realized the same thing, the detective couldn’t tell. She continued to watch Charity Price. After another moment of impasse, the widow stepped toward the young girl.

  “He killed Pastor Wilcox, didn’t he? And it’s all because of what I did. I made all of this happen,” Charity said. The dam burst and she broke out into sobs.

  “Now, hold on,” Seitzer cautioned. “We don’t know that Jason actually killed Pastor Wilcox.”

  “Even if he didn’t, I still ruined his life, didn’t I?” Charity asked. “He never would’ve left his wife if I hadn’t—”

  “Now you listen to me, young lady,” Seitzer said, closing the distance between them with two long steps. “You made a mistake, no doubt about it. But you are not responsible for him sending that message to Elizabeth.” He turned toward the widow. “And you aren’t responsible for his feelings toward you, for that matter. If he ever thinks that either of those two things is true, then he’s lying to himself. He needs to own what he did.”

  Whether Seitzer’s words accomplished their goal, he didn’t know. But after he finished, Elizabeth Wilcox embraced the young girl, which constituted about the thousandth hug the detective had witnessed that day. His phone rang, causing him to turn away from another moment of reconciliation.

  “Detective Seitzer,” he answered.

  “Someone is in here!” a voice urgently whispered.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Hope. I’m in the parsonage with the Wilcox kids. Someone is in the house! Please hurry!”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “Harrison! Kelly! Glass! Let’s go. We have an intruder in the Wilcox house. Hope Price and the Wilcox kids are in there!”

  Harrison immediately bolted toward the house. Elizabeth Wilcox released Charity from their embrace and started to run toward the house too. Seitzer placed his hands on her shoulders. “No. You have to stay here. In fact, go to the church.”

  “No, I need to—”

  “We’ll take care of this, I promise. But we’ll do that better if you’re not there. Trust me, okay?” The detective turned to Charity Price. “Please! Take her to the church!”

  Charity shook off her temporary paralysis and pulled the widow toward the church. Harrison had already reached the door while Kelly and Glass entered through the back door. Harrison pushed open the unlocked door and moved toward the playroom, service weapon drawn, making sure each room he passed through was clear. Seitzer followed close behind. The open kitchen window brought in a breeze that moved the curtains, but no one lurked behind them.

  Once they reached the playroom, they saw the door to the basement was open. Mike and Tom reached the door at the same time. A loud crash erupted in the basement.

  “He’s down there!” Harrison yelled. Glass and Kelly had entered through the back. Harrison cautiously stepped down a few of the stairs before pausing. “Dan, he made it through! He broke right through the barricade!”

  “Shit! Harrison, Glass—you guys go through the tunnel! Kelly, come with me to the church! We’ll intercept him in the church if he goes that way.”

  Harrison and Glass jumped down the steps into the basement. Seitzer sprinted out the front door toward the church with Kelly hot on his heels. The detective heard a yelp of pain from behind him. He looked back just long enough to see that Mike Kelly had fallen to the ground, grasping his ankle. Seitzer kept running. Once the detective made it into the church and navigated through the office area toward the door to the basement, he found Elizabeth Wilcox and Charity Price, right in the potential line of fire. He could already hear footsteps ascending the basement staircase.

  “You guys need to move, now!”

  Before they could react, the door swung open. Seitzer stepped in front of the two women and aimed his gun at the door. A man wearing a black hoodie appeared in the doorframe, gun at his side.

  “Drop your weapon!” Seitzer yelled.

  The man raised his right arm which brandished the handgun. Seitzer didn’t give him another chance to comply and fired two quick shots into the man’s center mass. Even as his bullets penetrated the assailant’s flesh, he fired back at Seitzer. The bullet hit the detective in his stomach, sending a searing pain through his midsection. Seitzer struggled to remain upright as the shooter moved toward him. The detective fired again. His third shot found its target, but the assailant only stopped for a second to absorb the impact before continuing his determined march toward Seitzer. The man in the hoodie struck the detective with a second shot in nearly the same place as the first.

  Seitzer slowly slumped to the floor. He found enough strength to fire two more times. He thought he scored two more hits, but the man pressed forward unaffected. Charity and Elizabeth huddled in fear next to each other. Seitzer wondered why Kelly hadn’t reached them yet and where Harrison and Glass were.

  Now the man was close enough for Seitzer to look into the grizzled, emotionless face of Ray Browning.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “He told me to do it.”

  The man raised his arm once more, this time aiming his gun directly at Seitzer’s forehead. Seitzer heard a gunshot, but it wasn’t Browning’s. He looked beyond the intruder to see Harrison standing at the door. Browning turned toward the new target, but Harrison fired four more rapids shots into Browning. When even that didn’t topple him, Harrison fired one final shot directly into Browning’s head. Finally, the man’s body crumpled to the ground. Harrison kept his weapon trained on the fallen perpetrator and kicked away his gun, just in case. Glass followed him and stood over Browning, while Harrison turned his attention to the wounded detective.

  “I’ve got an officer down,” he said into his radio as he bent over Seitzer. He relayed his address to the operator who assured him that medical help was on the way.

  “How many times did he hit you?” Harrison asked.

  “He got me twice. I got him at least three times, but he didn’t seem to feel it. Was he wearing a bulletproof vest?” Seitzer asked, his speech labored but his curiosity refusing to stay quiet.

  Glass, who had attended to Browning while Harrison inspected Seitzer, shook his head.
“No, he wasn’t wearing a vest. But I put four bullets in him and they barely seemed to faze him, either,” Harrison said.

  Seitzer chuckled weakly. “Maybe he was possessed.”

  “Hang on Dan, help is on the way,” Harrison said, pulling open Seitzer’s shirt to examine the wounds. Elizabeth Wilcox had recovered enough from her brush with death to take off her sweater and pressed it lightly against Seitzer’s wound. She placed her free hand on the detective’s hand.

  “I guess you were right. It was the mysterious stranger after all,” Seitzer said.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” Harrison said. “Just hang tight.”

  The wounded detective looked up, a movement that should have brought Elizabeth Wilcox into his field of view. She smiled at him but he gazed beyond her. She closed her eyes and moved her lips in an unspoken prayer.

  Seitzer shook his head. “I’m going to die under that damn painting of Jesus, aren’t I?”

  “You’ll be okay,” Elizabeth Wilcox said softly, now opening her eyes. But it took her too long to get the words out to be convincing.

  Harrison glanced up at the painting of Jesus. His countenance turned even graver. “Dan, if this is the end, you can die at peace with God—”

  “Nah.” Seitzer managed to shake his head a bit. “I’m good.”

  Harrison frowned. At first, it seemed he would give up his deathbed evangelistic attempt, but spurred on by the gravity of the moment, he pressed forward. “All you have to do is call out to Jesus and ask for mercy. We all need mercy—”

  “Wouldn’t be right. I gotta die the way I lived. And this is how I lived. I can’t fool God with words of faith now. I never did believe He could save me.” He smiled. This time his eyes did find Elizabeth Wilcox and the tear stained face of Charity Price, who crouched next to the widow. “Anyway, there are a lot worse ways to die than this.”

  Elizabeth Wilcox placed her hand on his cheek. “Thank you, Detective. For protecting my family and keeping us safe.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “And thank you for listening to me.”

  Seitzer closed his eyes.

  “Dan. Dan. Dan!” he heard Harrison call. “Dan, hold on—”

  Epilogue

  John Harrison leaned back in his office chair at the station, moving a pencil back and forth between his lips. The activity surrounding him had faded from his consciousness about thirty minutes ago. Now, the only object that captured his attention was the small, outdated burner phone in front of him.

  “Hi John,” a female voice said from behind him. He turned to see Felicia Monroe, clad in a pink petticoat, standing at his back.

  “Hello, Ms. Monroe,” Harrison said.

  The journalist circled around the detective and sat in the chair in front of his desk. “I’m sorry about Dan. I know you weren’t partners long, but he was a good guy.” Harrison’s expression didn’t change. “If it hadn’t been for you and Dan, a lot more people would have died that day. You saved people, John.”

  Harrison nodded, then looked off to an unknown point in the back of the station.

  “This might seem like a stupid question, but are you sure Browning killed Graham Wilcox?” Felicia’s question seemed to have an obvious answer, but Harrison had also entertained the notion that the shooting at the church the previous Sunday could have been mutually exclusive to Wilcox’s murder.

  “The gun Browning used Sunday was registered to Elizabeth Wilcox’s father and matches the weapon used to killed Graham Wilcox. The theory is that he found the gun in Wilcox’s office, hid in the tunnel, and then after everyone else left, he came upstairs and killed him.”

  “Do you have any idea why Ray Browning did this? Why he killed Graham Wilcox and came back to church last Sunday?” she asked.

  “No,” Harrison replied, glancing down at the phone again, which had been recovered from Browning after his death. “Our best guess is that Wilcox tried to help Browning, but couldn’t, and that set Browning off somehow. But we don’t have anything from Browning that explains his motives, other than the threat he left on the church’s YouTube page.”

  Felicia folded her hands across her lap. “I guess that’s usually how these kinds of shootings go. We never get to hear their reasons for what they did. Probably wouldn’t matter anyway—Browning was just troubled.”

  “It’s more than that,” Harrison said. “He wasn’t just hearing voices, he was getting texts.”

  The reporter cocked her head to its side. “What do you mean?”

  “We found a phone on Browning. He received several texts Saturday night telling him ‘it was time’ and ‘kill them all before they stop you.’”

  “You mean someone put him up to it? Who would do that?”

  “I’m not sure. The texts came from another burner phone. There’s no way to trace who it belonged to. But I have an idea.”

  “Who?”

  “You should be careful, Felicia.”

  She looked at him questioningly. “You think Stevenson Industries was behind this? Why?”

  “I don’t know yet. But they’re the only other group or individual I can link to Browning and Wilcox. So tread lightly if you keep on working for them.”

  Though Felicia appeared disturbed by Harrison’s words, she quickly recovered. “Come on now, John, let’s not get paranoid.” She stood up. “I’m sure there’s some other way we can explain this. Maybe he met someone else on the Internet.”

  “All I know is that it took nine bullets fired at close range to stop Ray Browning and that he busted through a barricade of plywood and two by fours in a second without using any kind of tool. And he seemed to know whenever we were closing in on him.”

  “What are you saying, John?”

  “I’m saying that maybe Stevenson Industries found someone with the kind of power they were looking for.”

  “Are you saying Browning was really possessed?”

  Harrison folded his arms. “I don’t know, but if Stevenson Industries was involved, I’m going to stop them.”

  Felicia smiled slightly as she stood. “Good luck, John. Let me know if you need help.”

  She began to walk away. The click clack of her heels signaled her ongoing departure until the door outside squeaked open and the rhythm faded away.

  Harrison stared at the phone in his hands. Yes, Ray Browning had killed Wilcox and Seitzer. But Browning had only been a bomb—someone else had detonated him. But who? And why? Harrison would answer those questions. He had to answer those questions.

  Steve Armstrong lives with his wife and two daughters in Westchester County, NY. He grew up in upstate New York and graduated from Binghamton University with a BA in English. Steve also holds a Master of Divinity of Degree from Bethel Seminary. For the last 13 years, he has been on staff at First Baptist Church of Tarrytown. Although he has mostly retired from recreational sports, if you toss a Frisbee his way, you’ll likely convince him to play. Connect with Steve Armstrong on facebook.com/stevearmstrongbooks or on his website, stevearmstrongbooks.com.

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