Tom Lowe - The 24th Letter

“If he did, might as well have called his executioner.”

O’Brien felt around and beneath the mattress. He pulled a yellow legal pad from behind the flattened pillows and bunched sheets. He lifted the top sheet of paper by the edge, turned on the bedside light and held the paper toward the light. He examined both sides. “This is the paper Spelling used, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Legal sized, lined.”

“If we’re lucky, we might get something from it. Even with the naked eye, I can see where he made an imprint on this sheet, especially the first paragraph or so. He was either angry when he was writing it or his strength was better when he began. See, it’s more pronounced on the first third of the page? And if he mentioned the killer’s name there, we might have him.”

Grant looked at the page. “I’ll have to get it to the state crime lab on this.”

“We don’t have time, Dan. I have a FBI contact. She’ll help. But first, I’m going to see Charlie Williams.”

Grant grinned. “Our man on death row. Bet he’ll be real happy to see you.”

The hospital security center was on the first floor, hidden through a labyrinth of corridors. Two security technicians sat in front of forty monitors, all taking live video feeds from every floor in the hospital-lobby, cafeteria, parking lots, and rooftops.

O’Brien looked at the identifying locations superimposed on the bottom of each monitor. “Why monitor the roof?” he asked.

The man at the console said, “To spot jumpers. We had two guys do swan dives to the street the last couple of years. I’m glad they double-locked the door to the roof.”

“What do you have on our elusive priest between seven and eight p.m.?”

“I cued it up for you. All digital. Stored in some pretty hefty hard drives. Archived and erased at the end of ten day cycles. It’s done automatically unless we tell the computers to store it. Camera nine caught a priest.”

The man pressed four buttons and the time of day appeared at the bottom of the screen. It was calculated in military time, down to the second. O’Brien, Grant and the other two security officers watched in silence. On the screen, they saw nurses making their rounds, a custodian pushing a mop, a family huddled at the far end of the hall, and a man dressed as a priest walking toward Deputy Tim Gleason.

O’Brien leaned in toward the monitor, his eyes searching every facet. Although the images were in color, the shot was too wide to see much detail. The man wore a fedora hat, collar, dark church-issued suit, and black shoes.

O’Brien studied the man’s body language. He wasn’t animated. Movements more conciliatory. Brotherly love. Head nodding. He moved a Bible from his left hand to his right and reached out to touch the deputy on the shoulder. “Can you back it up about fifteen feet before he approaches the deputy?” O’Brien asked

“Sure.”

“There, that’s fine. Play it. Can you get any closer?”

“Some. Cameras don’t have high resolution. You’ll see some loss of quality when I push in.” The security tech zoomed in closer on the image. “Look,” O’Brien said, pointing. “See that, Dan?”

“See what?”

“The perp knows there’s a camera, and it’s not an easy camera to spot. He looked toward it just a half second. That’s why he turned profile. He moves the Bible from his left hand to his right-the right hand is supposed to be hurt, remember? He scratches his left cheek while he’s talking. Doesn’t want his lips read. Can you go in any closer?”

“Just a notch,” said the technician. “Pixels in the picture start to come apart.”

“That’s good. See that, Dan?”

“I see his hand.”

“Look closer. I don’t know many priests who are married.”

Dan Grant leaned in toward the monitor. “Wow, he’s wearing a gold ring.”

“I wonder if the lady of the house knows she’s sleeping with a killer.”

By the time O’Brien got back to the marina it was a few minutes after 3:00 a.m. As he walked down the dock to his boat, he could see a mist rising over the estuaries, moving with an eerie crawl across the water. The humid night air carried the scent of mangroves, salt water, barnacles and fish. Nothing moved. The silence could be felt. It was one of the rare times O’Brien could hear the punch of waves breaking a quarter mile away. The tide was rising.

Jupiter groaned against the ropes in a gentle tug-of-war with the incoming tide. O’Brien stepped over the transom and onto the cockpit. The floor was damp, wet from a heavy dew. He unlocked the salon door, kicked his shoes off, and entered.

Max sat up from her bed on the salon couch. Her tail thumped against the leather. She whimpered and coughed a slight bark as O’Brien stepped inside the salon.

“Hey, Max. You been holding down the fort? I bet Dave fed you like a princess before he had to go fix a broken moat, right? I missed you today. Want a snack?”

Max danced in a circle on the couch before jumping off and following O’Brien down two steps into the galley. In the refrigerator, he grabbed one of the last two bottles of Corona from a six-pack he’d shared two weeks ago with Nick Cronus.

O’Brien tossed two aspirins in the back of his mouth and took a long pull from the bottle. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten. He broke off a piece of cheese, sliced an onion, wrapped the cheese and onion in pita bread and laced it with hot mustard. He handed a nibble of cheese to Max.

O’Brien sat down at the small table in the galley. He was physically exhausted, almost too tired to eat. But his mind kept playing back the events that unfolded after he received Father Callahan’s call. Sam Spelling killed in his hospital bed with an armed guard outside. Father Callahan killed in his church with God inside. O’Brien thought about the message on the bloody floor. He looked at the image from a picture he’d snapped on his cell phone.

What does it mean?

He bit into his sandwich, gave Max a piece, opened his laptop computer and typed in Omega and clicked on a link that took him the web page, Religions of the World. In reference to the Greek letter Omega, it read: Omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Often meaning the end, something final. The opposite is the first letter in the Greek alphabet ›, Alpha. Jesus used these two symbols, the Alpha and Omega to say: “I am the beginning and I am the end.

O’Brien rubbed the back of his hand over his chin. The stubble felt like sandpaper. He keyed in 666.

“Two million pages. That narrows it down.” He sipped his beer and started reading, his eyes scanning the first few pages. He stopped and re-read a sentence: 666, often referred to as the mark of the beast. First attributed to Saint John in his description of the Apocalypse, as seen in a vision from God when Saint John lived in exile.

Okay, he thought, popping the second beer. He mulled over the information, trying to see a connection. ‘…and I am the end.’ One half of a Jesus parable…and some guy called Pat…or the initials, P…A…T.

‘Saint John lived in exile.’ O’Brien stared at the sentence. Reverse the spelling of lived and we have… devil…devil in exile.

“Father Callahan, what were you trying to tell me?” O’Brien’s voice sounded hoarse. His eyes were heavy, and he was nodding off. He looked at his watch, too tired to calculate the hours left in Charlie William’s life.

He tried to think back eleven years ago, searching his memory for scraps that might have fallen between the cracks-the smallest pieces of information that he might have missed at the time. Who would want Alexandria Cole dead? And why was the killer resurfacing a few days before Charlie William’s date with death? O’Brien thought about the odds, the time it normally takes in a typical murder investigation. Then he thought about the time left to prove Charlie William’s innocence. What would he tell Williams? What could he say? How could he ever right the wrong? “If I don’t sleep, Max, maybe I can track this bastard down. Want some fresh air?”