Tom Lowe - The 24th Letter

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.

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.

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.