The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller)) (6 page)

Spelling smiled.  The little sparrow with the lost foot had retuned to the windowsill.  Spelling saw himself open the window.  He reached down and cupped the tiny bird in his hand.  It was as light as a cracker and its heart raced.  “
You’re okay, little bird.  You’ve got wings.  I do, too.” 

Sam Spelling jumped from the windowsill, soaring over the parking lot, flapping his wings, feeling the heat of the morning sunrise as he flew toward the light.

SIXTEEN

Father John Callahan stood in the sanctuary of St. Francis Church and lit seven candles.  Lightning, from a storm blowing off the Atlantic coast, illuminated the sanctuary’s massive stained-glass windows.  The priest stepped toward a marble statue of the Virgin Mary, made the sign of the cross, and whispered a prayer.  He reached inside his coat pocket and retrieved the letter.  He wanted to read Sam Spelling’s letter one more time before Sean O’Brien arrived. 

As he finished reading, Callahan stood next to the pulpit and folded the letter once in the center of the paper.  He opened the large Bible that sat on the podium, and he carefully placed the letter in the first chapter of Revelation, slowly closing the Bible.  

Lightning struck close to the church, the sound of thunder exploding and rumbling like echoes bouncing off canyon walls in the night.  The lights in the church flickered and faded out.  Father Callahan found a lighter, lit a candle, and picked up the church phone.  No dial tone.  He lit more candles.   He plugged his cell phone in the charger just as he heard a noise.  He looked up to see the back door to the sanctuary open, the wind blowing rain into the dark alcove.

“Thought I locked that,” he said, walking toward the rear of the church to close the door, the chill of wind and the smell of rain meeting him.

Lightning popped and the wind blew rainwater into the hall.  Father Callahan glanced in the direction of the alcove to see a man step out from the shadows, the burning candles tossing a soft light on the left side of his face.

“Who enters the house of our Lord?” Father Callahan asked.

The man was silent.

Father Callahan assumed the bearded stranger, who wore a hat pulled down low, was homeless, someone needing a dry place until the storm passed.  He had always extended a helping hand to the homeless.  But as he walked toward the new arrival, he could tell the man was not a homeless person.

He was a priest.

“Welcome,” Father Callahan said.  “Glad you could duck out of the rain on a night like this.  Just took me ol’ nerves back a notch.  Most folks come in the front door.”

The man said nothing.

#

SEAN O’BRIEN LOOKED at the GPS navigation map on the screen in his Jeep.  He signaled, pulled off the highway, and drove on the right shoulder.  Drivers hit their car horns.  One man in a pickup truck gave O’Brien the finger as he sped past the truck.

O’Brien pulled completely off the shoulder, driving through a pine thicket, the limbs slapping at his window, birds scattering.  He looked at the navigation map, cutting the wheel to the right and following under the clearing of a high-tension power line for less than a half-mile, and then he drove down a slight embankment that connected to a paved road, SR 46.  He tried the priest’s cell again.  No answer.

SEVENTEEN

Father Callahan’s cell rang as he turned toward the stranger.  “Regardless of your point of entry, I’m delighted that a fellow priest is visiting.  Not the best of nights for a social, but please enter our Lord’s house.  You must be soaked.  I can put on some tea, shot of brandy perhaps.  I have a change of clothes that ought to match yours well.  What brings you to St. Francis?”

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 other 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.