The Second Coming (35 page)

Mike stared down at her sweet, golden face as Kate bit her lower lip seductively and he knew he had to get out of there before this went any further and he did something that he would regret. If she invited him up for a drink, he wouldn’t be able to say no, and once he got inside all he would be able to think about was getting naked and under the warm sheets with her. He didn’t want to do that on their first date, not that she would either, but if she did, he didn’t want to put himself in the position where he would either end up sleeping with her, thus ruining their chances for a long term relationship, or having to deny her, thus insulting her which would also ruin their prospect for a meaningful relationship. He had been down this road too many times before and he wasn’t about to repeat the same mistake he made with those other women whose relationships turned out to be nothing more than a short dalliance. He needed to make a graceful exit before it was too late.

“Thank you for a great night,” Mike said with a mesmerized voice and then cleared his throat. “Can I call you some time?”

“I would like that,” Kate told him softly as she pulled away from him while rubbing his arm affectionately.

Mike pulled his beanie back on his head and adjusted it carefully around his wound. “Next time I’m buying.”

“Okay.” Kate held her door tauntingly open.

“Good night.”

“Good night. Don’t forget to call Dr. Schafer about the symbol,” she reminded him casually. “If he doesn’t know what it means, then nobody except the killer does.”

“I will,” Mike told her as he jogged down her steps. “I mean I won’t…forget to call him that is,” he said as he turned around at the bottom of the stairs with a smile.

Kate was standing in the doorway leaning against the door, the light behind her casting a curvy silhouette. “Drive safely,” she cautioned him caringly as she shut the door.

On his drive home, Mike sat in the dark with the glare of the lights from the dashboard shining reflectively upon his sullen face as he silently contemplated what Kate said about him being his father’s legacy. She was right. There was no reason his father’s life had to be defined by his suicide. He was so much more to Mike as a father and a mentor. It was up to Mike as
to how he wanted to remember his dad. Was he going to let all of the years of memories be ruined by that one selfish act or was he going to choose to remember him as the loving father that he was?

Why should he give a shit what anybody else thought about his father? Those who knew and loved him would remember the great person that he was, and those who didn’t know him really didn’t matter.

Mike realized that maybe it was time to forgive his dad in the same way that he hoped Denise and her family would one day be able to forgive him. Once he caught the Sterling Killer, maybe he would be able to forgive himself and walk into a room full of people and not be embarrassed to be Michael McCormick Jr., son of Michael McCormick Sr.

But first he needed to figure out if Father John was the Sterling Killer and if he wasn’t, how did he know what he knew about the crime scenes. Maybe Kate’s colleague would be able to tell him what the symbol meant and why the Sterling Killer was leaving it at the crime scenes.

chapter
57

A
LL OF THE
doors and windows of the shanty style Watch Dawg Bar were locked and covered up. From the street outside, the leaning, one story, wood frame hovel appeared dark and closed, as if no one was inside.

Inside the aroma of musty, stale beer permeated the bar where Jenny, Mark and Chris were sitting under a dim light nursing their pint glasses of beer as Nirvana Unplugged played softly in the background so as not to draw attention to any passer-byes. It had been a quiet night and Jenny closed the bar early so that she and her two friends could partake in extracurricular activities.

Jenny, a darkly clad young bartender, stood on the tender’s side of the bar chopping up a pile of cocaine on a small Bailey’s mirror that lay flush on the worn and splintered bar. Chris and Mark watched from their stools on the other side of the bar with silent anticipation as her ring covered fingers with black painted nails spread out three 2 inch long lines with her drivers license.

“Who wants to go first?” She asked in a soft, southern accent and seductive raise of her pierced eye brow.

“Go ahead,” Chris encouraged her politely with a nod of his head. “Ladies first.”

Jenny took a deep breath and exhaled as she readied herself and then leaned her platinum covered head over the stripes of cocaine. She lined one end of a rolled up $5 bill at the tip of a line and stuck the other end decisively up her nostril as she inhaled the white powder deliberately with a suction sound like a vacuum. She raised her head and threw it back as she pinched her nose closed in an effort not to allow any of the intoxicating powder to escape her now burning nostril. Her eyes watered as the numbing chemicals
dripped pleasingly down her throat. Blindly, she held the bill out across the bar and Chris grabbed it and eagerly repeated the process with the same results, handing the make shift straw to Mark who inhaled his line and then let out an audible sigh of relief.

A moment of silence followed as they tweaked their noses and took hard swallows of their beers as the rush of cocaine seized a tightening grip on their hearts.

“That’s good shit,” Chris said appreciatively with a voice that sounded like he was holding his breath.

Jenny smiled proudly in agreement, her young angelic face littered with silver piercings that stood out against her black eyeliner and lipstick as she sipped from her pint glass.

“No shit,” Mark said impressed with blinking, squinty eyes. “Thanks Jenny.”

“You’re welcome darling,” she replied with a sassy, country twang in her voice.

Jenny moved the mirror with the pile of cocaine behind the bar and the three kids resumed their game of liar’s dice as they smoked cigarettes and drank pints of beer incessantly.

Eventually the conversation turned to their youths and Jenny’s mood quickly changed from enthusiastic to somber.

“Where did you go to high school?” Mark asked curious about her accent.

“Dallas, Texas,” Jenny answered matter-of-factly as she crossed her left arm over her Motor head t-shirt, using her hand to support her right arm at the elbow as she held the cigarette to her thin lips and took a deep drag with a slightly trembling hand.

“I knew your accent was from Texas,” Mark exclaimed unconvincingly.

“How did you end up out here?” Chris asked sensing her apprehension.

Jenny stood with a stern glare as she smoked and fiddled with her cigarette. “It started when I was a freshman in high school. One of the mother’s of one of the girls trying out for cheerleading started a rumor that I was doing drugs and hanging out with a bad crowd because I was friendly with a girl who dressed differently than all of the preppie cheerleaders.” She paused and took another drag from her cigarette. “She knew I was a better cheerleader than her daughter and she figured her daughter would have a better chance of
making the squad if I was out of the way. The next thing I knew, I was being black listed by all of the mothers of the girls trying out for cheerleading.”

“She made all of that shit up just so her daughter could be a cheerleader?” Chris asked with disbelief.

“None of it was true?” Mark asked skeptically. “You weren’t doing any drugs?”

Jenny shot him a tight lipped look of disdain. “No,” she replied emphatically.

“Why didn’t you tell someone that it was all bullshit?” Chris asked as he leaned his elbows on the bar.

“That’s what my best friend Amy told me to do, but I was already so bitter about how these shallow people had so easily cast me aside for no reason other than their own petty prejudices that I told her it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to spend my High School years worrying about what people were saying about me or having to defend myself because of who I was hanging out with or what we were wearing. Why should I have to justify myself when I didn’t do anything wrong except not conform to their rules? I despised their ignorance and their superficial attitudes and I wanted them all to know that I didn’t need their approval or acceptance to enjoy my life.”

“Fuck no you don’t!” Mark agreed angrily as he slammed his glass on the bar. “I know exactly what you are talking about. I hate people like that.”

“We’ve all had to deal with fuck-heads like them at some point in our life,” Chris acknowledged regretfully.

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t be subjected to that when you’re just a kid,” Mark reminded him as he sat erect on his stool with an air of disbelief as he firmly gripped his pint glass.

Jenny looked at Mark with a smile of appreciation as she put her cigarette out in the ash tray. “That’s when I decided that if they were going to black list me, then I was going to dress in black every day as reminder to them that this is what they wanted me to be,” she explained with a mischievous grin. “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t feel sorry for myself; I did it because it empowered me. I enjoyed sticking my finger in their face and telling them to fuck off.”

“You fuckin’ rock Jenny,” Mark said fervently as he wagged his index finger at her.

“That took a lot of balls,” Chris agreed with a nod of his head.

“I started hanging out with the kids that dressed in dark clothes and listened to dark music and found that they were really smart and dressed the way they did as a form of rebellion. They weren’t bad kids at all. They were just misunderstood and trying to establish their own independence.” And then a dark sneer came across her lips. “My old cheerleading friends made fun of me and my new friends. Amy, my best friend on the cheerleading squad, tried to convince me to come back and try out for cheerleading again the following year, but by then I despised everything the cheerleaders represented and I told her that she needed to reevaluate who she called a friend and what that word really meant to her. We never spoke again.”

“Was that because she didn’t want to talk to you or you didn’t want to talk to her?” Chris asked

“It was because she was murdered,” Jenny said calmly as she grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the bar and lit it. “Everyone thought I did it,” she said as she exhaled casually.

“Why did they think you did it?” Mark asked confused.

Chris glared at Mark with disgust and then back to Jenny with compassion. “Did they have any proof or evidence that you did it?”

“No, they didn’t have any fucking proof,” Jenny told him with an annoyed tone. “They just needed a convenient scapegoat to pin it on and I was the most obvious.”

“How was she murdered?” Mark asked.

“She was stabbed multiple times with a large carving knife,” Jenny said plainly and then took a drag from her cigarette with a trembling hand and lips.

“Why did they think you did it?” Chris asked indignantly.

“They said that the killer picked Amy up to take her to a party, so the killer must have known Amy and had to have a motive, which they argued I had both. The police said that Amy would have got in the car with me because of our prior friendship and that I wanted to kill her because I was jealous of her.”

“What did they think happened after Amy got in the car with you?” Chris asked with discerning eyes as he tried to piece the whole scenario together.

“They said that I told her that we were meeting people in this church parking lot to go to a party with them and then I parked the car so that
I could confront her about abandoning me as a friend. Supposedly Amy became uncomfortable and felt threatened, so she got out of the car and ran to a neighbor’s house to ask if she could use their phone to call her parents because, she tells the couple, her friend is ‘acting weird’.”

“So the neighbor’s testimony is how the police came up with that theory,” Mark said as he rubbed his chin with his right hand.

“Amy obviously didn’t tell the neighbors who the friend was that was driving the car,” Chris postulated.

“Evidently Amy didn’t think she was going to be killed,” Jenny continued as if she had relived the story many times in her head. “The neighbors even offered to drive her home, but she declined after she spoke with her parents who were coming to get her.”

“Didn’t she tell her parents who the friend driving the car was?” Chris asked confused.

“She didn’t think anything of it and just asked them to pick her up at the address of the house next to the church,” Jenny explained. “The neighbors were having a dinner party and Amy told them she would just wait for her parents outside, not wanting to be a disturbance.”

“What the fuck did she do that for?” Mark asked incredulously.

“Dude, Amy didn’t think her friend was going to kill her,” Chris explained perturbed with his stupidity. “She just thought her friend was acting weird.”

“Exactly,” Jenny confirmed pointing at Chris with her cigarette clinched between her first two fingers. “As Amy waited for her parents out on the front porch, the couple who owned the house watched from their kitchen window as her friend approached from the darkness of the street into the shadows of the front lawn. The couple couldn’t see her face, but they later testified that she had long blonde hair. The couple could hear the muffled voices of the two girls talking and watched as Amy walked into the shadow of the front lawn and approached her friend. At first the couple thought they were reconciling, but then they heard their muffled voices turn to angry shouts and they watched in disbelief as they saw the glimmer of the blade as the girlfriend began to mercilessly stab Amy.”