The 24th Letter som-2 Read online

  The 24th Letter

  ( Sean O'Brien mystery - 2 )

  Tom Lowe

  Tom Lowe

  The 24th Letter

  ONE

  U.S. Marshal Deputy Bill Fisher had never done it before, and after that morning he swore to God he’d never do it again. Never had he let a prisoner have a cigarette before entering a courthouse to testify, but Sam Spelling had been cooperative and polite on the long ride from Florida State Prison to the U.S. district court in Orlando. And they were early. The news media were on the other side of the building, out front. Maybe, thought Deputy Fisher, it wouldn’t hurt if Spelling smoked half a cigarette.

  Spelling was to be the star witness in the government’s case against a bank robber turned cocaine trafficker. Since Spelling was helping the government, at a possible risk to himself, what harm could a quick cigarette do? Might calm the boy down, help his testimony. Marshal Fisher and a second marshal escorted Spelling up the worn steps leading to the courthouse’s back entrance.

  At the top of the steps, Spelling looked around, eyes searching the adjacent alley, the delivery trucks and sheriff’s cars parked along the perimeter. His dark hair gelled and combed straight back. Two white scars ran jagged above his left eyebrow like lighting bolts-leftovers from a diet of violence. He had a haggard, birdlike face, beak nose with feral eyes, red-rimmed and irises the shade of blue turquoise.

  He squinted in the morning sun and said, “I’d really appreciate that smoke, sir. Just a quick one to relax my nerves. I gotta go in there and say things that are gonna send Larry to where I am for a hellava long time. State’s promised me he’ll go to some other prison. If he don’t, it’ll be a matter of time before he shanks me, or has somebody do it. Right now a smoke would make my time in the witness stand a whole lot easier.”

  The rifle’s crosshairs swept up Sam Spelling’s back as he reached the top step. The sniper looked through the scope and waited for the right second. He knew the. 303 would make an entrance hole no larger than the width of a child’s pencil on the back of Spelling’s head. The exit wound would plaster Spelling’s face into mortar supporting the century-old granite blocks.

  He didn’t anticipate Spelling turning around at the rear entrance to the courthouse. Even better, now he could put one between the eyes. Through the powerful scope, he saw the flame of a cigarette lighter. Magnified, it looked like a tiny fire in the marshal’s hand. He watched while Spelling used both his cuffed hands to hold the cigarette, bluish-white smoke drifting in the crosshairs. Spelling took a deep drag off the cigarette as the sniper started to squeeze the trigger.

  Then Spelling nodded and coughed, turning his head and stepping backward.

  He lowered the crosshairs to Spelling’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  Sam Spelling fell like a disjointed string puppet. The gunshot sprayed tissue, bits of lung and muscle against the courthouse wall. Blood trickled in a finger pattern down the white granite, leaving a crimson trail that glistened in the morning sun.

  TWO

  Sam Spelling knew one day he would go to hell. He didn’t know it would be today. The hospital emergency room staff patched the bullet wound in his chest, restored his erratic heartbeat, and pumped him full of chemicals. Then they left him chained to a gurney behind privacy curtains.

  He tried to focus on the acoustical ceiling above him. Concentrate on the little holes. They looked like tiny black stars in an all white sky. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually slept under the stars-or even seen the stars.

  He could hear the constant beep from the heart monitor-the slowing.

  Where are they?

  He could feel the flutter in his chest, nausea in his gut, bile in his throat. His pores leaked the medicinal smell of copper and sulfur. The black stars were dimming. The sounds from the monitor were like the pounding of off-tune piano keys as Spelling’s heart tried to jumpstart life and catch up with losing time.

  A man’s not supposed to hear his own death! Where are they? Somebody!

  Then taste in his mouth was as if someone had crushed a cigarette butt on his tongue. Sweat dripped onto the flat pillow.

  Better pillows in the cell! His neck muscles knotted.

  The pain was now connecting from his chest through his left shoulder and down his tingling arm. He tried to lift his head to see if the guard was still standing outside the drawn curtain. The continuous beep. So damn loud.

  Why couldn’t they hear? Somebody!

  The room was swallowed in black and then it didn’t matter to Sam Spelling anymore because he was gone. He was caught in a dark whirlpool sucking him into a vast drain-down into a sewer of total darkness.

  When the nurse yanked back the curtain, she didn’t know if Sam Spelling if was dead or alive.

  Father John Callahan never got used to it. Performing last rites didn’t come easy to a man who, at age fifty-seven, could drill a soccer ball dead center from midfield. He was competitive by nature. Death was to be fought, and for the young, it was to be fought hard. Never throw in the towel. People need time to get it right.

  He thought about that as he walked through the rain, stepped over cables from a TV news satellite truck, and entered the hospital emergency room. Father Callahan had a chiseled, ruddy face, prominent jaw line, and green eyes the shade of a new leaf in spring. He saw four police officers-one sipping coffee, the others filling out reports. A plainclothes man, an African-American, Callahan took for a detective, stood in a corner talking with an officer. A blond TV reporter applied pink gloss to her lips.

  A veteran nurse with tired eyes looked up from her desk as the priest fastened the cord around his umbrella. Father Callahan said, “Nasty day.”

  The nurse nodded, glancing toward the packed waiting room. She said, “The reporters don’t make the job any easier.”

  “Why are they here?”

  “A prisoner was shot on the courthouse steps this morning. He was supposed to testify in that big drug trial.”

  Father Callahan nodded. “How is Nicole Satorini? She was brought in earlier? Head-on collision. I heard she’s in IC. Is the family with her?”

  The nurse inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, Father. She passed. I think the family left the hospital a little while ago.”

  Sam Spelling gripped the doctor’s white coat the way a drowning man grasps a life preserver. “It’s okay,” the doctor said, holding on to Spelling’s wrist. “You need rest. Lie back down. We re-started your heart.”

  The Department of Corrections guard started to enter, but the doctor shook his head and lowered Spelling’s hand to the gurney. He looked at the digital numbers on the monitor and said, “Pressure ninety-fifty. Pulse thirty-nine. Start another pac-cell drip.”

  A nurse nodded, following the doctor’s orders.

  Spelling lifted his head. The prison guard stood just beyond the bed, close enough to watch the proceedings. The guard was built like a linebacker, his forehead thick with bone, nose flat and scarred.

  Spelling looked beyond the guard. He saw a man dressed in a black suit standing by the nurses’ station. The man in the suit wore the collar of a priest. Spelling blinked, the tears spilling from his eyes. He smiled, his cracked lips trembled, his left cheek quivered from pulsating nerves and muscle.

  “Father!” screamed Spelling.

  Father Callahan looked in the direction of the shouting.

  “Father!”

  The priest started towards the frightened man. The guard held up a large hand, as if he stood at a school crossing. “Hold it, sir.”

  “That man called out for me,” said Father Callahan.

  “That man’s a prisoner.” The muscle in the guard’s lower jaw tightened.

  “He’s also a human b
eing in need.”

  Spelling looked up at the young doctor through watering, pleading eyes. “Doc, please, can I talk to the priest? Just for a half minute?”

  “You’ve had a second heart attack in less that an hour. You need rest.”

  “Please, Doc! I saw something I don’t know how to describe. I can’t go back there. I need to tell the priest-to confess. Man, I need God right now!”

  THREE

  A news reporter stood by the nurses’ station, looking down the hall to where Sam Spelling was being treated. The doctor glanced up at the priest and cut his eyes to Spelling’s pleading face. “Okay, Father. No more than a couple minutes. This man will be in surgery soon.”

  The hospital personnel left as the Father Callahan stepped past the department of corrections guard to Spelling’s bedside.

  “Father,” Spelling began, looking at his trembling free hand, now with an IV taped near his wrist. “Look at me, shakin’ like I’m comin’ off a four-day drunk. Father, I haven’t been a religious man most of my sorry-ass life…but I always believed in God.” Father Callahan nodded.

  Spelling said, “I saw something a few minutes ago that scared the livin’ shit outta me. Pardon my language, Father, but I think I died…died and went straight to hell. Man, I’m a believer now. You mind closing the curtain. I want to make a confession.”

  Father Callahan nodded and stepped to the curtain. To the guard he said in a whisper, “Please give this man a moment of privacy to confess his sins.” The guard grinned. “Gonna take a lot longer than a moment.”

  Father Callahan pulled the curtain closed and turned to Spelling.

  “Father…I ain’t sure how to say this…”

  “Simply say it from your heart, son.”

  “Heart’s almost wore out, but I’ll try. Can I ask your name?”

  “Father John Callahan.”

  “Can I call you Father John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Father John, maybe you can put in a good word for me above,” Spelling cut his eyes up to dots in the ceiling. “I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. I hope God can see what caused me to do that stuff and forgive me for some of it. What I got to say, Father, it ain’t about me. Maybe God will take pity at this stage of my sorry-ass life. Any chances of that, really?”

  “It is never too late to seek our Lord and his forgiveness. You wish to confess?”

  “It’s about makin’ something right.” Spelling paused, glanced at the digital impulses of his weak heart on the monitor. “There’s a man on death row up at Starke. State of Florida’s gonna kill him. He’s not guilty. They say he raped and killed a girl-a supermodel down in Miami. Happened eleven years ago, but he didn’t do it.” “How do you know?”

  “ ‘Cause I know who did it. I’d been sittin’ low in my car in a condo parking lot when I seen him come out of one condo. I was there to sell some coke when I spotted this dude. Wasn’t long after I’d seen this first fella stumble shit-faced drunk outta the same place. I saw where the second man hid the knife. I got the knife. I took it from the dumpster when I saw the dude toss it. Wrapped in newspaper. Got a good look at him and even memorized his tag. I hid the knife. Girl’s killing was all over the news. Nobody was arrested…so I got in touch with the dude. Told him for a hundred grand, his takin’ out the trash would remain our little secret. He wanted the knife. I kept it as an insurance policy. Got the money, and it wasn’t but a few days before they’d arrested somebody else for the girl’s killin.’ I figured I was now an accessory to the whole f’d-up mess. In a year, I’d sucked the money up my nose…robbed a bank and got caught. They sent me to Starke for a dime. The guy on death row, Charlie Williams, is an innocent man. A real fuckin’ innocent man. Forgive me for that slip again, Father John.”

  Father Callahan was silent a moment. He said, “You’re doing the right thing.”

  Spelling glanced down at the floor toward the end of the curtain. He saw the large black books of the guard standing as close as possible to the curtain. “Father, come closer. The murdered girl was Alexandria Cole. She was one of those supermodels?”

  “I remember the case. Who killed her?”

  The heart monitor beeped. Spelling chewed at his cracked lower lip. “Father, I have sinned bad…will God set it right? Will he forgive me?”

  “God will embrace you for your confession. The police may need more. Write down your confession, many details as possible…name the person who did it and sign it.”

  “Is this in case I die?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I die…if you got it in writing, proves a dying man’s confession is more than only your word, Father. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Feds want me to testify real bad. I heard they are gonna keep me in here ‘till I’m well enough to testify.”

  Two nurses and the ER doctor approached. He said, “Dr. Weinberg has arrived. We’ll be taking the patient up for surgery”

  Spelling’s eyes popped. He looked up at Father Callahan. “Say a prayer for me Father John. If the good Lord sees me through this alive, I’ll write it all down. Names and places, and where the weapon his hidden.”

  The priest nodded. “May or Lord bless you.”

  As they wheeled Spelling from the area, he asked, “What time is it, Father?”

  Father Callahan looked at his watch. “It’s exactly six o’clock.”.

  “Time’s runnin’ out.”

  “I’ll pray for you, son.”

  “I’m talking about Charlie Williams, the fella on death row. He’s next in line for the needle. If it’s three, by my calculations, he’s got eighty-four hours to live, and he’s gonna need more than prayers to save his soul.”

  FOUR

  Sean O’Brien stood on the worn cypress wood of his screened-in back porch and watched lightning pop through the low-lying clouds above the Ocala National Forest. Each burst hung in the bellies of the clouds for a few seconds, the charges exploding and fading like fireflies hiding in clusters of purple grapes. He could smell rain falling in the forest and coming toward the St. Johns River as the breeze delivered the scent of jasmine, wet oak, and honeysuckle.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rolling noise, the burst and fade of light reminded O’Brien of the times he witnessed night bombing in the first Gulf War. But that was many miles and years in the past. He deeply inhaled the cool, rain-drenched air. The sound of frogs reached a competing crescendo when the first drops began to hit the oak leaves. The river was like black ink, white caps rolling across its dark surface

  As the temperature dropped, the wind picked up, bringing a wall of rain across the river and through the thick limbs of old live oaks, soaking the gray beards of Spanish moss. Within a few seconds, moss hung from the limbs like the wet fleece of lamb’s wool caught in the rain and stained the shade of tarnished armor.

  O’Brien sipped a cup of black coffee and listened to the rain tap the tin roof over the porch. The old house was built in 1945, constructed from river rock, Florida cypress and pine. Wood too tough for termites, nails, or even hurricanes. The house sat high above the river on the shoulder of an ancient Indian mound.

  O’Brien bought the home after his wife died from ovarian cancer fifteen months ago. Following her death, he had a fleeting romance with the bottle and the genies it released in his subconscious.

  He sold his house in Miami, quit his job as a homicide detective, and moved to a remote section of the river about fifty miles west of Daytona Beach. It was here where he repaired the old home and his life. His closest neighbor was a half-mile away. The nearest town, DeLand, was more than twenty miles away.

  O’Brien looked at Sherri’s framed photograph standing on a wicker table near his porch chair. Her smile was still as intoxicating as a summer night, fresh, vibrant and so full of life. So full of hope. He deeply missed her. He set his cell phone by her picture.

  Max barked.

  O’Brien looked down at Max, his mi
niature dachshund. “I know you have to pee. We have two options, I can let you go out by yourself and risk an owl flying off with you, or I can grab an umbrella and try to keep us both dry while you do your thing.”

  Max sniffed and cracked a half bark. She trotted over to the screen door and looked back at O’Brien through eager brown eyes.

  “Okay, never delay a lady from her trip to the bathroom.” O’Brien reached for an umbrella in the corner, lifted Max under his arm like a football, and walked out the door. He set her down near the base of a large live oak in this yard. Sherri had bought the dog as a puppy when O’Brien was spending long days and nights on a particularly extreme murder investigation.

  She named the dog Maxine and allowed her to sleep in their bed, something O’Brien discovered after he had returned home one night, exhausted, awakening before dawn to find Maxine lying on her back, snuggled next to his side, snoring. In a dreamlike stupor, he sat up, momentarily thinking a big rodent had climbed onto the bed. But Max had looked at him too lovingly through chestnut brown eyes. They’d made their peace, and now it was only the two of them.

  O’Brien held the large umbrella over Max as she squatted, the rain thumping the umbrella, the frogs chanting competing choruses.

  A foreign sound sliced through the air like a bad note.

  O’Brien could hear his cell phone ringing from the table on his back porch. “Ignore it, Max. Go with the flow. No need getting a bladder infection. If it’s important, they’ll call back.”

  Max bolted from underneath the umbrella and sniffed fresh tracks left in the dirt near an orange tree O’Brien had recently planted. He watched rain pooling in the tracks. O’Brien knelt down and placed his hand over one imprint. He let out a low whistle. “Florida panther, Max, looks like it was running.” O’Brien’s eyes followed the tracks until they were lost in the black. Max growled.