The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller)) (19 page)

O’Brien grabbed Barbie by the hand and stepped out of the suite.  Dozens of people crept out of their VIP suites.  As O’Brien passed by Nikki he said, “Mr. Russo is picking up the tab for the Krug.  You’re right.  It was a good year.”

Barbie took off her high heels and ran to keep up with O’Brien as he descended the acrylic steps, weaved through the crowd, and stepped into the warm Miami Beach air.

They stood for a moment in front of Oz, the wail of police and ambulance sirens drew closer.  O’Brien signaled a cab.  He looked at Barbie, holding her shoes and both purses.  He said, “Here’s some money.  Take the cab home.”

“Can I go with you?”

“No, it would be too risky for you.  Police will have my description.  If Russo lives, he’ll come after me.  How’d you know that guy, the one who recognized you?”

“I’ve seen him at the club.  He was there about a week ago.  Creepy guy.  He’s been around for a few weeks.  One of the girls said he’s an enforcer for some of the drug dudes.  He’s just probably a high-paid errand boy for people like Russo.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Carlos Salazar.  I remember ‘cause one of the girls said he was beyond kinky.” 

“Barbie, I have a feeling that Salazar is more than an errand boy for Russo.  Since he recognized you, be very careful.  Lay low.  Stay with your mom or a girlfriend for a few days.  Don’t go places alone.”

“You’re scaring me, Ken.”  The sounds of the sirens were closer.  “You’re doing the right thing…speaking for that poor dead girl and those others.”

The sirens were less than two blocks away.

“Barbie, I have to go.  Give me the big purse.”

She smiled.  “You do look weird carrying a purse.  But here, nobody will bat an eye.  What are you gonna do with the crab?”

“Let him go.  Crab’s earned its freedom.”

Barbie paused.  She leaned in and kissed O’Brien on his cheek.  “You’re a good man, Ken.  Take care of yourself.”

O’Brien smiled.  “You do the same.”

He took the purse and started walking towards his Jeep.  As Barbie opened the taxi door, she turned to watch O’Brien in the distance.  In a whisper she said, “Thanks for the date, handsome.  Too bad we never got to dance.”

FIFTY-TWO

As O’Brien started his Jeep, two ambulances and half a dozen police cruisers flew past him screaming like a posse racing to Club Oz.  O’Brien pulled onto Washington Avenue, cut over to Ocean Drive, and headed north toward North Shore State Recreation Area.  He didn’t know if Russo was dead or alive.  And he didn’t know what the state attorney would say about the confession on tape.  O’Brien thought it might be tossed out, acquired under duress.  But at least it was an admission of guilt. 
God
, he thought,
please let it buy Charlie Williams some time.

The prime question, the one Russo hadn’t had time to rehearse answers to, was what happened to Sam Spelling’s letter?  Why hadn’t he shown the slightest sign of deception when he was asked about the letter?

Something in O’Brien’s gut was rumbling—something unsettling about Russo.  The information Father Callahan left in blood—how did it connect to Russo?   Omega, did it refer to the watch Russo was wearing?  Doubtful.  The image Father Callahan had drawn…was it something from Club Oz?  A witch flying across the moon?  Or was it something else?  The 666?  P-A-T?  What did it all mean? 

Russo would do or say anything to survive.  The cockroach in him was indestructible.  The psychosis in him was a personality trait that kept his lawyers deep in six figure retainers.  Russo’s attorneys would argue that the confession was acquired under physical threat of violence.  O’Brien wasn’t an officer of the law.  There were no Miranda rights.  Nothing but a confession on tape.  But it might give the state attorney a

card to deal—something to get a federal judge to sign an order for a stay of execution.  If the FBI crime lab could find that Sam Spelling left a sufficient handwriting impression, maybe it would point to the location of the murder weapon.  And it would give O’Brien time to find physical evidence. 

Russo may have left a print somewhere on the knife—an object he was so sure would be buried under tons of garbage in the dump.  But he didn’t know that Sam Spelling was watching him that night.

So close,
O’Brien thought.  But something was coalescing in his gut.  Russo, the subhuman that he was, seemed credible under the stress of an intense interrogation and the threat of a crab snapping his appendages.  If he didn’t kill Father Callahan, maybe it was someone Russo had sent.      

O’Brien parked under a tall royal palm.  He could hear the breakers and smell the sea salt.  He took his boat shoes off, lifted the lethargic crab out of the purse, and walked toward the surf.  He said, “Hold on, pal.  You’re almost home.”

He stood in the rolling waves and gently set the crab in the water.  The salt water rinsed the exhaustion from the animal.  The crab scurried a few inches.  Then it was lifted by the pull of a swell, vanishing into the dark sea.

O’Brien stepped back to dry sand, up to the line of royal palms.  He sat under one palm tree, drained, resting his back against its trunk.  The ocean breeze felt good on his face.  He closed his burning eyes for a moment and simply listened to the sound of the waves.  He could feel the fatigue rising in his mind, a fog drifting through layers of consciousness.  He leaned back and looked at the moon shining down between branches of the tall palm.  What was the image he’d seen earlier?  The one he captured on his cell

phone?  He lifted the phone from his belt and retrieved the image.  A woman in the moon?   Where had he seen it?  He was so tired, the concentration was getting difficult.

O’Brien stared through the palm fronds at the moon directly above him.  He could see the profile of a roosting bird, an osprey sitting on one of the branches.

He remembered seeing a bird in the same painting with the moon—a hawk or an eagle.  But the other details in the picture were obscure.  He glanced back at the photograph on his cell phone screen.  His eyes blurred.  The image now looked like his dead wife, Sherri.  But the picture was murky.  He shook his head.  She was still there.  Shadowy.  He snapped the phone closed. 

O’Brien stared toward the breakers.  He remembered the day he emptied Sherri’s ashes into the ocean, pouring them slowly from the bowsprit of their sailboat.  But now he couldn’t remember the details of her face—of the wondrous smile she had.  God, he missed her.  He watched the crashing surf, the flowing white water, pieces of sea foam scattering by the breeze and tumbling like cotton balls onto the sand.  He remembered first meeting Sherri in Miami Beach years ago.  The way she played in the surf caught his eye.  The way she played in life caught his heart.

O’Brien shook the ghosts out of his head and walked to his Jeep.  He lifted a garbage can lid and tossed the purse inside.  The odor of dead catfish, pizza, and coconut oil crawled from the garbage.

On the drive to the hotel, he thought about the image he’d seen in the moon, the image captured on his cell.  He thought about the osprey sitting atop a royal palm, and he thought about Sherri.  If he could get some sleep, maybe in his dreams he could travel to some point in time, some place in his subconscious where the painting is more than

abstract art.  If he could hold the subliminal up to the light, what would he see?  Where in the frame of grainy film—his memory, did the painting make an impression?  And where in the archives of his mind did the painting hang?  A life depended on finding it.

He just couldn’t remember. 
Think!
  He closed his eyes, but now he couldn’t even remember the details of his wife’s face.  He wished she were there.

To talk.

To listen.

O’Brien looked at his watch.  It was two a.m.

What is it?

Where is it?

The pressure felt as if his brain was being cooked in his skull.

When he got back to the hotel, he would only allow himself four hours to sleep.  He hoped sometime in those four hours of sleep that the dream weaver would visit and help tie the loose ends together. 

FIFTY-THREE

O’Brien set his internal alarm clock for 6:30 a.m.  He stretched out on the hard mattress in his motel room and listened to the air conditioner shift gears.  The old machine blew alternately warm and cold air across the room, the air smelling like it was filtered through a used vacuum cleaner bag.

He watched the pulse of a lavender neon motel
vacancy
light spill through a long horizontal strip where a piece of Venetian blind was missing.  Between the deep noises from passing semi trucks and the rattle of the air conditioner, he drifted off to sleep.

In his dreams, O’Brien was in a medieval setting, a cathedral.  It was in a remote area—fields of dark flowers at the edge of an ancient forest, trees and trunks all the color of dark green olives.  The massive wooden door on the front of the cathedral opened slowly.  It made no sound.  O’Brien didn’t walk into the cathedral, he floated in—his body settling on a pew carved from stone.  No one was there.  Then O’Brien saw something scurry between the pews.   

He knelt down, the floor cool and damp on his hands and knees.  O’Brien looked beneath a stone row and saw a large rat.  The animal stared at O’Brien, its eyes the size and shape of marbles, but the color of fire.  Then the rat morphed into an elfish figure, a small gnome-like man with a face as old as time.  The little man snarled at O’Brien and darted out into the fields of black flowers.

The interior of the cathedral turned from gray to a shade of lemon yellow.  O’Brien looked toward the front of the church and saw something descend from an open

window.  He slowly walked toward it.  The figure was that of a young woman with delicate features.  She had wings that folded behind her back when she reached the floor.  The angelic figure smiled, closed her eyes demurely, and floated toward the pulpit. 

From the open doors, a hawk flew in and landed on the back of a stone pew.  O’Brien turned around and watched the bird move its head, following the floating motion of the woman.

In the next instant, O’Brien was on a high bank overlooking a harbor with ships in the bay.  The water was the shade of tea.  It was late in the evening and a dark cloud was dropping, revealing the moon.  O’Brien could see the image of the woman floating out of the moon, this time he could see her face, the face of the Virgin Mary. 

“Who are you?” O’Brien heard himself say.  “Where am I?”

He reached out to touch the figure and touched wet paint on a canvas.  He looked at his fingers, the tips dripping in flesh tones, and he looked back at the woman in the painting.  Her face was smeared.

O’Brien sat up in bed.  His heart hammered in his chest.  Sweat rolling down his sides, over his rib area and into the sheets.

He looked at his watch: 6:30 a.m.  Somehow the inner timepiece always went off when set.  It always managed to stir him from the dark.

O’Brien showered, changed into a fresh shirt and jeans, then headed for the Jeep.  He drove a few miles until he came to a Seven-Eleven on Arthur Godfrey Road, where he parked to use a pay phone.  He called the Waverly Condos to report loud noises coming from 1795.

 Soon he crossed MacArthur Causeway, turned south, and pulled next to The Corner Café for breakfast.  It had the feel of a wannabe Irish pub and restaurant—a dozen green and white booths and as many tables.  The tired bar had a single customer and an older bartender with the nametag JESSE clipped on with only one clip holding it.  The place smelled of bacon, beer, and cigarettes. 

A forty-something waitress with a smokers’ hack, picked up a menu, yellowed under the scratched plastic, and led O’Brien past the bar to a corner booth.  A television over the bar was tuned to a channel broadcasting the
Today
show. 

“Need a few minutes or do you know what you want?” asked the waitress. 

“Eggs, scrambled.  Wheat toast, potatoes and black coffee.”

“Be right back with your coffee, darlin’.”

 O’Brien handed her the greasy menu, and after she walked away, he picked up his cell and began typing an email to Dave Collins.  He attached the image of the moon and the cloud he shot.  

Dave, attached is the moon image you may remember me mentioning last night.  Do you think it resembles what F Callahan drew?   I’ve seen it— or something like it somewhere.  A painting.  Very old, I think.  Probably Renaissance or before.  Could have a bird of prey in it.  Maybe you can do a little research…see what you can find, ok?  Thanks.  How’s Max?

The waitress brought O’Brien coffee.  “Order will be up in just a minute.”

O’Brien nodded and sipped his coffee.  He opened the case file to read.  When he got to the transcript notes from Judy Neilson, Alexandria Cole’s roommate, he read something he’d forgotten.  Responding to a question about how often Jonathan Russo came around their apartment, Judy said,
“Too much.  And then he stopped coming over.  I don’t know why.  Alex didn’t want to talk about it.  I think she thought I’d tell Charlie.  Anyway, then Alex started getting calls and she’d have to go.  She hated going.  Said the guy was creeping her out.  She’d come back from meeting him, in a motel, I guess, and take long showers.  One day, when I heard her crying in the shower, I sat her down and we talked.   Said she’d thought about suicide.  I told her if her life had gotten that bad, it was time to do something else.  Cut your losses and run.  She was killed three days later.”

O’Brien re-read the statement.  He sipped his coffee and thought about what Judy had said.  Something wasn’t coming together.  Why would Russo meet Alexandria at a hotel?  He had a private office in his club, a Mediterranean-style house on the bay.  When Alexandria was killed, she was twenty-four years old, not prime age for a pedophile.