Tom Lowe - The 24th Letter

She wagged her tail. He turned off the laptop and headed for the salon door, Max following him to the cockpit. O’Brien picked her up. She licked his face as he held her and climbed the steps up to the fly bridge. He unzipped the isinglass window, sat in the captain’s chair, propped his feet up on the control console, and finished his beer. Max jumped in his lap. He scratched her behind the ears, eyes half closing.

“Max, what would I do without you, little lady?” She kept her eyes closed as O’Brien spoke. “There’s a bad man out there. Human life means nothing to him. I’ve got to find him, and I’m running out of time. I have to try to save another man’s life. It’s my responsibility. I’ll be leaving soon…you be good, and don’t let Nick pour any beer in your bowl, okay?”

O’Brien watched the fog rolled off the Halifax River, blanketing the mangrove islands and hanging over the marina like clouds descending. He could see a shaft of light from the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse rotating every minute, its beam giving the fog a momentary illusion of dimension, the figment of ghosts swirling over the sailboat masts as if dancing albino marionettes were pulled by unseen hands.

Soon the ghosts faded and the real nightmares began. In his dreams, O’Brien saw the dead body of Alexandria Cole. She was lying on her bed, seven stab wounds in her sternum and breasts. Her eyes staring at the ceiling.

He saw a young Charlie Williams, the expression of disbelief in his eyes when the jury read the guilty verdict. The chilling echoes of his pleas as two deputies led him out of the courtroom, his mother weeping in a back row, her eyes hot and lost.

O’Brien saw Father Callahan lying facedown on the cold marble of the sanctuary. His three fingers extended, touching the very edge of a postscript written in blood. His eyes locked on art in stained glass, paintings of salvation backlit by the fractured pulse of lightning. Images of deliverance cast in a dramatic tragedy, flickering, like a silent movie, off the wide pupils of Father John Callahan’s unmoving eyes.

Max heard the throaty sound of the twin diesels first. She cocked her head around the bridge console, peeked through the open isinglass, and barked once.

“Hey, hot dog!” came the voice, coated with a Greek accent thick as olive oil.

O’Brien opened his eyes. He steadied himself in the captain’s chair, now regretting he had fallen asleep on the bridge. His back ached, the muscles constricting between his shoulder blades, his foot tingling from the lack of circulation.

Max wagged her tail, jumped on O’Brien’s lap, and licked his whiskered chin. “Max, thanks for the wake up kiss,” he said, smiling.” He rubbed her head and set her on the bridge floor.

She looked at him through wide, excited brown eyes, trotting to the steps leading down to the cockpit.

O’Brien stood, squinting in the morning sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean. He looked at his watch. 7:39 A.M.

A little more than seventy hours remaining.

“Hey, Sean,” came the Greek accent. “Got plenty of grouper and snapper.”

O’Brien waved toward Nick Cronus who eased his 48-foot fishing boat, St. Michael, into the marina with the skill of an Argonaut. Cronus stood in the wheelhouse of the St. Michael, a boat built from a saltwater pedigree going back two thousand years. He wore dark sunglasses, his skin the color of creosote, a mop of curly black hair styled by the wind, bushy black mustache, and forearms like sides of ham. A life at sea, pulling nets, anchor ropes, diving for sponges and riding out storms had sculpted a man of steel. And at age forty-three, Nick Cronus showed no signs of slowing down. He worked hard. Played harder. He smiled with his eyes. O’Brien had once saved Nick’s life, a debt Nick said he would honor forever.

O’Brien lifted Max under his arm and carried her down the steps to the cockpit. He headed toward Nick’s slip, which was on the opposite side of Dave Collin’s boat.

Nick backed the St. Michael into the slip as easy as a New York cab driver can parallel park. He cut the diesels and brought twenty tons of boat to a gentle stop.

O’Brien helped tie the boat to a second piling. Max scampered up and down the dock, her eyes darting with excitement, the tip of her small tongue showing as she panted in the morning humidity.

Nick pushed his sunglasses up on the top of his head. “Sean, you look like hell.”

“And good morning to you, too.”

“Somebody roll you? Take your money or what, man?”

“No, Nick. Nothing like that.”

“You tie one on without ol’ Nicky to join you, huh?” Nick looked at O’Brien, eyes playful, eyebrows arched and a toothpick in one corner of his mouth. He knelt down to pick up Max. “Hot dog, I miss you when I go to sea almost as much as I miss the ladies on two legs. And even when I’m here, I don’t see you enough. Tell your papa, Sean, to bring you to the docks more, yeeaah.”

Max wagged her tail and licked Nick’s salt and pepper stubble. “I pick you up now ‘cause I know you won’t pee on me. Sean, remember that time I held hot dog up over my head? We were on your boat, I did a Greek dance with her and she peed all the way down my arm.”

“And if you don’t want a repeat, don’t pick her up. She hasn’t hit the grass yet.”

Nick laughed. “She made me jump in the bay. I didn’t know what’s cleaner-the marina or little Max’s pee pee.” He sat Max back on the dock. “Let’s eat. You couldn’t have no breakfast lookin’ the way you do.”

“Nick, I don’t have a lot of time. I have-”

“You have to eat, man. You gotta learn to relax more. I met a girl, and she has this gorgeous sister. Big tits and-”

“Father Callahan was killed last night.”

“What?”

“Murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“Killed in the church sanctuary.”

Nick made the sign of the cross. His mouth parted, a sound like a cough lost in the sinew of his throat.

O’Brien said, “There were no witnesses. I’m trying to find who did it.”

Nick looked out at the water then back at O’Brien. He rubbed his mustache with a thumb, the smile gone from the corner of his mouth. “Can’t believe it. I remember when the priest came to the docks. I was cleaning fish when he asked me, where’s your boat. I told him, and then I asked him to bless my boat. He say a little prayer, and said next time he’s gonna bring holy water. You two were supposed to go fishin’ but it stormed and you drank Irish whiskey with the Father. I brought some Ouzo. We played cards, the guitar, and sang some good tunes. Dave Collins was there, too.”

“I remember.”

“Cops know who killed him?”

“No, but it’s related to an old case.”

“What case, Sean…yours?”

“I don’t have time to get into it. But it’s erupting from an old case I had in Miami years ago. Two people are dead within the last twenty-four hours, Father Callahan and a man who confessed to him about a murder eleven years ago.”

“This man killed someone?”

“No, but he knew who did it. And, in a deathbed confession, he told Father Callahan. Somehow the killer found out and murdered both the guy who confessed and Father Callahan. To make matters worst, an inmate on death row is going to be executed in a few days unless I can prove he didn’t commit the murder eleven years ago.”

Nick shook his head. “No wonder you look like hell, you’re livin’ there.”

“I have to walk Max, grab a shower and hit the road. Father Callahan left a message on the church floor where he died. He scrawled something in his own blood.”

“What?”

“He wrote the number six-six-six, a circle drawing, the Greek letter Omega, and the letters P-A-T. Nick, you grew up in Greece. In a few minutes, tell me all you know about Omega.”