The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller))

by Tom Lowe

  Still, the man said nothing, the sound of the rain pelting the parking lot.

  “Would you’d be good enough to close the door? At least you can step from the shadows and show yourself. All we have is good old fashion candle power, but for hundreds of years it was all the church needed.”

  The man said, “No need for tea or brandy. No need to shut the door, for that matter. I won’t be saying long.” He stepped out of the recess, the long shadows from candlelight dancing off his face. Father Callahan could not see the man’s features.

  But he did recognize the voice.

  Stall him, Sean’s almost here…

  He thought about the souvenir Colt .45 pistol his father had given him thirty years ago. He kept it in his office, in a framed box with Old West memorabilia. The bullets were in his desk drawer. Father Callahan said, “I detect a very slight accent. Are you from Greece?”

  “That’s impressive, Father. Very few people can pick that up. I was born there. One of the islands.”

  “I’ve studied linguistics and art history. Which island?”

  “Patmos.”

  “Indeed, the sacred island. The place where Saint John wrote Revelation.”

  The man said nothing.

  “Odd,” Father Callahan said, “that you’re Episcopalian rather than Greek Orthodox.”

  “I’m neither. Where’s the letter?”

  “Letter? What letter?”

  “The one Spelling wrote.”

  “Perhaps you’re mistaken.”

  “Where’s the letter? Answer me!”

  “So you’re the one who took the life of the young woman, Alexandria Cole.”

  “And I’ll claim yours. Give me the letter!” The man pulled a pistol.

  “Please, like a confession, it’s in God’s ear…and his forgiving heart.”

  Father Callahan’s cell rang, the sound ricocheting noises in the farthest reaches of the old sanctuary. Father Callahan turned to run to his phone. The intruder fired two shots into the priest’s back. Father Callahan fell down, the bullets hitting him like sledgehammers.

  Father Callahan lay on the marble floor a second. He slowly crawled in the direction of the altar. He knew he was going into shock. The darkness was descending—the ringing of the cell phone reverberating in his ears. He could crawl no further,

  stopping at the first marble step, the right side of his face now against the chill of the stone.

  Father Callahan felt his wallet being removed from his back pocket, coat pockets searched. Lying on his stomach, he sensed the man step over him, approaching the altar. There was the sound of bowls crashing from the communion table to the floor. He could hear the coins and dollars stolen from a collection plate.

  Father Callahan fought the rising darkness.

  He’s making it look like a robbery.

  Sweat stung his eyes. He could feel his blood pumping onto the floor. He knew one bullet has exited through the right side of his chest, his body fluids seeping across the white marble. In thirty seconds, the blood pooled close to his face.

  The shooter opened the door to Father Callahan’s study and began searching through his desk. He pulled out drawers and rifled through papers.

  Father Callahan felt his heart racing. Stay awake. Sean will be here soon. Hold on. Just breathe. Easy. In and out…breathe.

  He could taste the blood in his mouth, the gases fueled by fear and adrenaline boiling in his gut. Father Callahan dipped the end of one finger into this blood. He began to write on the marble. His hand shook and he concentrated hard to control his trembling finger. Sweat dripped from his face. He could not get enough air into his lungs. His finger moved across the marble, scrawling symbols in his own blood.

  The man in the priest’s study saw car lights rake across the window. He ran from the study, bolting by Father Callahan, the sound of his shoes hitting the marble floor hard as he sprinted to the back door. The man stepped into the dark, leaving the door open.

  As Father Callahan wrote, he whispered, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…hallowed be thy name…thy kingdom come…thy will be done in earth as…as it is in heaven...”

  Thunder boomed with the ferocity of a mortar round exploding outside the church. The rain sounded like a hail pelting the roof.

  “…give us this day our daily bread…”

  Stay awake! Must write!

  His strength was fading, mind racing, the energy—the life—seeping out of his pores. He could move only his eyes. He looked at the stained-glass windows, backlit from lightning. He scrawled symbols in his own blood.

  “...and forgive us our trespasses…as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

  Father Callahan felt the chill of the night air, the dark and dampness blowing through the open back door, brushing like ghost fingers against his damp face. The draft caused candles to flicker, light and shadow dancing across the sanctuary.

  An explosion of thunder shook the foundation of the church. Father Callahan looked up at the stained glass window as streaks of lightning ignited dark sky. Through the radiance, he could see the face of Christ in the glass.

  “…but deliver us from evil…amen…”

  The pulse of lightning ended, but the face on the stained glass lingered in Father Callahan’s mind for a few seconds then faded like a dream. His index finger quivered a beat and became still.

  A single drop of blood fell from the tip of Father Callahan’s finger and splashed onto the marble.

  EIGHTEEN

  O’Brien drove through the St. Francis Church parking lot and thought about the last time he attended mass. It was a couple of months after the death of Sherri. More than a year and a half ago.

  He had moved back to Central Florida, trying to reconnect with those things he knew growing up. Father Callahan was one of those things—one of those people. He was a special man—a man who loves unconditionally and lives large, splicing his covenant to God into his relationship with people. When O’Brien was trying to come to grips with his wife’s death, Father Callahan had been there for him.

  “It’s all about loving and being loved,” O’Brien remembered Father Callahan telling him. “It’s in your heart, Sean. That’s what made you a good detective. Justice begins in a virtuous heart. It’s one thing that won’t leave you. Talent will. Even memory will drift, however, character of heart remains true to you, because it is you.”

  But somewhere along the line, somewhere between the war in the Gulf, the body counts on the streets, and the heinous evil in the dull-eyed killers he tracked down, the death of his wife—somewhere in it all, O’Brien had lost something. Father Callahan had tried to help him find it.

  Maybe he still could, O’Brien thought.

  Maybe Father Callahan was sitting in his study knocking back an Irish whiskey and didn’t hear his cell phone.

  Maybe all of O’Brien’s cop instincts—the signs—were wrong. Maybe Sam Spelling really had died from complications caused by the shooting.

  Maybe if he’d gotten it right eleven years ago, he wouldn’t be trying to save a kind, loving man’s life—a priest’s life. God, let me get there in time!

  O’Brien shut off the Jeep’s engine and rolled to a quiet stop beneath an oak tree in the east side of the parking lot, the farthest corner away from the sanctuary.

  He chambered a bullet in his Glock, got out of the Jeep, and crouched by its rear bumper for a few seconds. He wanted to listen beyond the rain. To listen for anything moving. Someone running. A car starting. A dog barking.

  There was only the patter of rain off the canvas top of his Jeep.

  O’Brien started toward the annex section of the church, keeping away from the street lights and hanging close to a row of shrubs. He ran along the wall of the building, coming to a breezeway that separated the two structures. Something moved.

  O’Brien leveled his pistol as a cat bolted from the breezeway and ran behind a dumpster. He saw Father Callahan’s white Toyota in the parking lot. There were no o
ther cars. There seemed to be a dim light, possibly coming from burning candles inside the sanctuary, the light barely illuminating the stained glass windows.

  O’Brien held the Glock in his right hand and slowly opened the sanctuary door with his left. Then he gripped the pistol with both hands. He listened for the slightest sound. Sweat dripped through his chest hair. He moved silently down the entrance foyer and around the atrium that led to the sanctuary. He could smell burning candles. There was the lingering smoky scent of incense and something else. He could almost feel it. It

  came to him after years of shifting through crime scenes, a sixth sense of sorts—an inner sonar that detected death before he saw it. It was the way time stood still at a murder scene. The spool of life caught in a macabre freeze-frame. The grisly still image often laced with the coppery smell of blood and the inherent odor of death.

  O’Brien’s heart raced. As he stepped around the corner of the vestibule, he held his breath and listened. There was only the sound of rain. Nothing he had investigated in the past prepared him for what he saw as he entered the sanctuary.

  Father John Callahan was lying face down in a pool of blood.

  The flickering candles caused shadows to move eerily across the paintings of saints and angels, a marble statue of Virgin Mary, Moses with the Ten Commandments, and images of Jesus Christ on the cross. Lightning in the distance backlit a stained glass window depicting three wise men following a star in the sky near the town of Bethlehem.

  O’Brien wanted to run to Father Callahan. But, even from across the sanctuary, he could tell his old friend was dead.

  O’Brien labored to control his breathing. He pointed the Glock in corners and at darting shadows cast from the candles. Nothing else moved. He could hear the rain falling near an open back door, the drops thumping the gutter and falling into parking lot puddles. Instinct told him the killer was no longer in the church. Probably fled the way he’d entered, through the rear door. But he still checked darkened crevices, tried locked doors. Nothing.

  O’Brien ran to Father Callahan. He could see the wallet tossed on the floor. A bowl of holy water and a half dozen other bowls on a communion table scattered across the marble. He remembered a gold cross that adorned the altar. It was gone. O’Brien

  wanted to scream. His head pounded. He felt a wave of nausea travel from his stomach to his throat. His friend was slaughtered in a church.

  O’Brien knew it wasn’t a robbery. He knew it because the same man who killed Alexandria Cole eleven years ago had left a deliberate trail to an innocent man. And now he killed one of the most compassionate men O’Brien had ever known.

  As he came to within a few feet of the body, he stopped and placed a finger on Father Callahan’s neck. Two bullet wounds to the back. No pulse. O’Brien fought the urge to scream, to curse. How could this happen to this man? A man of God? O’Brien spotted something scrawled near the left hand. Father Callahan’s thumb and small finger were bent under his hand. Only his other three fingers were extended. And next to that was a message Father Callahan had managed to smear in his own blood. O’Brien felt the message was left for him—a clue and warning. The image resembled the outline of a faceless woman wearing a shawl, the number 666, the Omega symbol, and the smeared letters P A T.

  O’Brien slowly stood. A milky shaft of diffused light seemed to float through the skylight in the high ceiling. The rain stopped and the dark clouds dissolved in front of the moon. A soft beam fell across a statute of the Virgin Mary near the altar, illuminating the face. O’Brien looked into the unblinking eyes of Jesus’ mother. Then he looked down at the body of Father John Callahan. O’Brien wanted to pray, and he wanted to scream. But he could do neither. He felt empty. Very alone.

  His hand shook, eyes now welling with tears, as he slowly reached out to touch the priest’s shoulder. “I am so sorry, Father…sorry this happened to you…it is unforgivable…and I’m to blame.” He stood, holding his clinched fists by his side. His

  eyes closed tight, trying to shut out the aberrant, the absolute isolation he felt as the horror of Father Callahan’s murder fell around him with a numbing silence of moving shadows cast by candle flames.

  A cloud parted from the moon when O’Brien looked up at Mary’s face, the light hitting her eyes. It was a connection that locked into something deep within O’Brien. It was ethereal and yet caring. His eyes burned for a moment looking at Mary’s face, and he felt a single drop of sweat inching down the center of his back.

  O’Brien turned and walked out of the church into the cool night air. He lifted his cell off his belt and sat down on the steps to dial 911. Where would he begin the explanation of the scene inside the church? What did the message mean…the circle drawing? The 666 and the letters p-a-t with the letter Omega from the Greek alphabet? Were the numbers, 666, supposed to the biblical “sign of the beast?” Was Pat the killer’s name, or his initials? The crude drawing? What had Father Callahan meant? Think.

  The clouds parted and the three-quarter moon revealed itself. O’Brien could see it was slightly more rounded. It would be a full moon this time next week. And unless O’Brien caught a killer, Charlie Williams would be executed as a full moon rose over the Atlantic.

  NINETEEN

  The howl of a dog was soon replaced with the wail of sirens. Sean O’Brien sat on the church steps and listened to the cavalry approach. They came from all directions, a disjointed parade of blue and white lights—the out of sync blare of police cruisers, fire and rescue trucks, ambulances, and a sheriff’s helicopter.

  They were all too late. One was not.

  O’Brien watched the coroner’s car pull through the maze of emergency vehicles and stop. He could see a man inside the car with a cell phone to his ear.

  Three uniformed officers raced up the church steps. They looked at O’Brien, their eyes wide, breathing heavy, adrenaline pumping. O’Brien said, “Inside.”

  One officer stayed on the steps while the others entered the church. He pulled out a notebook. “You call it in?”

  O’Brien nodded.

  “What did you see?” asked the officer.

  As O’Brien started to answer, the sheriff’s helicopter circled the church. The rotor noise echoed off the concrete steps. The sound took O’Brien back to a night rescue in the first Gulf War. He glanced up at the sheriff’s helicopter, the prop blast blowing trapped rainwater out of gutter corners, the smell of rust and decaying leaves raining down on O’Brien and the officer. From the belly of the chopper, a powerful spotlight moved over roofs, trees, cars, apartments, and houses in the surrounding area.

  The CSI people, coroner and one of the three detectives, walked past O’Brien. Two detectives didn’t. A white-haired detective with a ruddy, narrow face was flanked by another man who resembled the actor, Andy Garcia. Both men looked like that had just sat down for dinner when they got the call. The white-hired man had a fleck of tomato sauce in the corner of his mouth. He introduced himself as Detective Ed Henderson. His partner was Detective Mike Valdez.

  “Sean O’Brien?” Detective Henderson asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “Tell us what you saw.”

  “Unfortunately, I didn’t see a lot. I found it, though. If I’d been here five minutes earlier, Father Callahan might be alive.”

  “Were you meeting Father Callahan?”

  “At eight.”

  Henderson looked at his watch. “It’s going on eight now. You’re not late.”

  O’Brien cut his eyes toward the detective without turning his head. He waited a beat. “I said if I’d been here earlier, he might be alive.”

  “Why were you meeting the priest?”

  “To pick up a confession.”

  “A confession? You mean you were here to confess something?” Henderson’s mouth stayed slightly open.

  “No. I came here to get a statement—a written statement. Father Callahan was witness to a dying man’s confession, a near deathbed confession. If it’s true, it
’ll prove a

  man sitting on Florida’s death row with”—O’Brien looked at his watch—“a man with eighty-two hours to live, is innocent.”

  Henderson glanced at his partner. Both were at a loss for words.

  A man approached. Someone O’Brien recognized. Detective Dan Grant climbed the steps. Grant looked between Henderson and Valdez to the man sitting on the top step. And now Grant, too, was at a loss for words.

  “Hello, Dan,” O’Brien said. “It’s been awhile.”

  TWENTY

  The other two detectives turned toward Grant. Valdez scratched at a spot above his right eyebrow. He looked across the lot toward the growing mob of media and lowered his voice. “It’s getting weird. You know this guy?”

  “Yeah,” Grant said. “I know him.” Grant extended his hand to O’Brien. He stood and they shook hands. “It’s been more than a year since we worked together.”

  “Worked together?” asked Henderson.

  “Not in an official capacity” Grant said. “Sean O’Brien, retired Miami PD, homicide. One of the best. He offered a little assistance to Leslie Moore and me when that serial killer Miguel Santana was stopped.”

  “So you’re the one…” Henderson’s words faded like a distant radio signal.

  Valdez said, “They never found Santana’s body, right?

  O’Brien said nothing.

  Grant nodded. “Let’s go into the church where it’s less noisy. Sean, you can take us from the beginning. How you wound up here tonight, on a night when a priest is murdered in his church.”