“Another one?”
“Why is this happening?”
“What’s going on in Mauville?”
“Are we even safe here anymore?”
John heard all this as he made his way through the crowd gathered in front of Andrew’s house and towards the crying wife on the front porch.
“John….”, said the crying Merin.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Merin”, replied the consoling John.
“I’d just gone out for 20 minutes to the pharmacy. He was watching the TV, one of those stupid shows he liked to watch. When I came back, I saw the door was ajar and…..“
“I understand, Merin. Why don’t you take some rest? Go to your friend’s place for now. Let me take care of this.”
“I don’t want to go, John…”
“I get that, Merin. But we need to handle this and you don’t want to be near that. I’ll let you know once the body has been shifted. I might ask more questions then. For now, go.”
Merin looked at her husband’s body one last time and turned away crying some more. John also asked the onlookers to keep away from the house and he went in to examine the place.
The door was wide open now, Merin’s pharmacy bag and its contents were scattered on the floor. Andrew’s body was on the couch, his arms were crossed across his chest as if he were blocking something coming to attack him. There was a huge gash on his throat and the blood was already drying up. His shirt was soaked with the devil’s color and made the otherwise yellow clothing into a red devil. His eyes were closed, at least there was courtesy there. The TV was playing in the background, John switched it off.
Once again, John felt a presence watching over him. This time however he did not immediately go and confront it. Instead, he waited to see whether they would take any other action. However, no such action came and he felt the presence leave.
John went outside to see if anyone was there just in case and he was startled by Joanna standing right outside.
“Joanna! You scared me there. Were you the one who was peering in from the windows?”
“From the windows? What do you mean? I just got here.”
“I felt someone was watching me, it happened at the mayor’s place too.”
“Not a clue about that. I just came to see if you needed any help. I knew Andrew, he was quite kind and helpful.”
“Well, apparently not to the murderer. I don’t think I need any extensive help but it would be nice to have some company and split up some of the search.”
“Sure thing, John.”
They searched the ground floor for clues but it was spotless. The murderer knew his job. However,
“John? Come here a moment, would you?”, Joanna called from the couch.
“Yeah? Did you find anything?”
“I was just looking on the floor and I think I may have found a writing of sorts underneath the couch. We need to turn this couch over.”
They shifted the body elsewhere and then turned over the couch. In what seemed to be like writing from the bloody finger of Andrew was the letter ‘B’.
**
“Two of them down, one more to go. Andrew didn’t mention who the third one was so I had no choice but to kill him.”
“Alright, alright. I hope you swept up the place afterwards?”
“It was a close call, but I made it out before the wife came in. I stuck around for a bit till John was examining the body to see if I had left something behind but it didn’t look like it, so I left.
“Continue your investigation for the last man and call me when you find something.” The other cut the call.
‘Oh, I did find it out. I’m coming for you.’, the other thought.
‘Probably must’ve figured it out, I know. The job’s done in any case, I need to take care of this now.’, the mystery man thought to himself.
The game commenced.