Tom Lowe - The 24th Letter

O’Brien looked at Sherri’s framed photograph standing on a wicker table near his porch chair. Her smile was still as intoxicating as a summer night, fresh, vibrant and so full of life. So full of hope. He deeply missed her. He set his cell phone by her picture.

Max barked.

O’Brien looked down at Max, his miniature dachshund. “I know you have to pee. We have two options, I can let you go out by yourself and risk an owl flying off with you, or I can grab an umbrella and try to keep us both dry while you do your thing.”

Max sniffed and cracked a half bark. She trotted over to the screen door and looked back at O’Brien through eager brown eyes.

“Okay, never delay a lady from her trip to the bathroom.” O’Brien reached for an umbrella in the corner, lifted Max under his arm like a football, and walked out the door. He set her down near the base of a large live oak in this yard. Sherri had bought the dog as a puppy when O’Brien was spending long days and nights on a particularly extreme murder investigation.

She named the dog Maxine and allowed her to sleep in their bed, something O’Brien discovered after he had returned home one night, exhausted, awakening before dawn to find Maxine lying on her back, snuggled next to his side, snoring. In a dreamlike stupor, he sat up, momentarily thinking a big rodent had climbed onto the bed. But Max had looked at him too lovingly through chestnut brown eyes. They’d made their peace, and now it was only the two of them.

O’Brien held the large umbrella over Max as she squatted, the rain thumping the umbrella, the frogs chanting competing choruses.

A foreign sound sliced through the air like a bad note.

O’Brien could hear his cell phone ringing from the table on his back porch. “Ignore it, Max. Go with the flow. No need getting a bladder infection. If it’s important, they’ll call back.”

Max bolted from underneath the umbrella and sniffed fresh tracks left in the dirt near an orange tree O’Brien had recently planted. He watched rain pooling in the tracks. O’Brien knelt down and placed his hand over one imprint. He let out a low whistle. “Florida panther, Max, looks like it was running.” O’Brien’s eyes followed the tracks until they were lost in the black. Max growled.

“That tough dog growl would certainly scare a panther. Not many of them left. But, boy, do we have the black bears in that old forest. That’s why you, young lady, have to eat the leftovers. We don’t need bears rummaging through the garbage cans. Coons are bad enough.”

The cell phone rang again.

O’Brien stood and looked up towards the house and porch. “Come on, Max, let’s see who is it that needs our immediate attention.”

Max sniffed the damp air, sneezed, and followed O’Brien up the sloping yard. She climbed the wet steps and stood on the porch to shake the rainwater out of her fur.

O’Brien picked up has cell at the last ring. “Hello.”

Nothing.

“Maybe it went to voice-mail, Max.” O’Brien looked at the caller ID.

Not a good sign.

The caller was a close friend of his. Father Callahan had been there for him when Sherri died.

And now maybe the priest needed him.

O’Brien hit the number left behind on his phone’s received calls register. It rang four times and went into message mode, Father Callahan’s voice asking the caller to leave a message. “Father Callahan, this is Sean O’Brien. Looks like you were trying to reach me. I’m around, give me a call.”

Max sat, her eyes following a mosquito that made it in before the door shut. O’Brien picked up a dry towel that he had hanging from a sixty-year-old nail driven half way into a white oak support beam. When O’Brien bought the house, an old horseshoe hung from the lone nail. He had painted the porch, painted around the nail, cleaned and polished the horseshoe, and hung it back in the same spot. He kept a clean towel there for rainy days and a little wet dog.

O’Brien picked Max up, set her on the towel in the center of the porch, and dried her. “We have to head to the marina. Are you ready to visit Nick and Dave?”

Max cocked her head.

“Maybe Nick has some fresh fish. I have to replace the zincs on the props this weekend or Jupiter might be sitting on the bottom of the bay soon.”

O’Brien was almost to the Ponce Marina when his cell rang. He pressed the receiver button. “Hello, Father.”

“Sean, you’re either a psychic detective or you have caller ID.”

“It’s all about technology.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve always been exceptional at reading things in people that no machine can detect.”

O’Brien drove through the heavy shower, the rain now falling in larger drops like schools of silver minnows pouring from the sky. “Storm’s moving on, Father. Good to hear your voice. It’s been awhile. How are you?”

“You visited me more after Sherri’s death than in recent times. Are you okay?”

“Yes, thanks. I don’t get out as much as I’d like to. Fixing up my old house and boat keeps me busy.”

“Earlier today I was at Baptist Hospital where I heard a confession. It came from a prisoner who was shot as he was being transferred to testify in court this morning. After he was stabilized, he suffered a series of heart attacks. He underwent surgery.”

“I’m listening.”

“This poor chap believes he died on the emergency room table, and in the near clutch of the devil, he says he was resuscitated. Says he saw evil…absolute evil.”

“Maybe it was just a bad dream.”

“The man believes he’s been given a divine chance to make amends. He saw something, Sean, something that led him to confess.”

“It may have more to do with the brain in an oxygen-deprived state than it does with good or evil.”

“No,” Father Callahan lowered his voice, “he saw something eleven years ago.”

“What?”

“A murderer. Saw him leave the scene right after the devil’s work was done. And the man who did it was never caught.”

“Why doesn’t he go to the police?”

“He’s a convict. It’s complicated. Time’s running out, and he’s under the knife.”

“Father, start from the beginning?”

“The real killer is free, and the man accused of the murder is sitting on death row. The state is going to put him to death at 6:00 A.M. Friday. That about four days.”

O’Brien could feel tightness in his chest. “What does this have to do with me?”

“You might be the best man to free the condemned man and catch the real killer.”

“Why me, Father?”

“If it’s true, Sean, it was you who caught the wrong man, and he’s about to be executed.”

O’Brien pulled in the Oyster shell parking lot of Ponce Marina and shut off the Jeep’s engine. The rain stopped and he unzipped the windows. “Wrong man? Who, Father?”

“Charlie Williams.”

“Williams? That was ten, maybe eleven years ago.” O’Brien’s thoughts raced. In his mind’s eye he saw the murder scene. Blood covered the victim’s bedroom. Young. Beautiful. Stabbed seven times in the chest and throat. Her blood was in the ex-boyfriend’s truck. His prints in her condo. His semen in her body. He was found drunk. Passed out in his pickup truck. He said they’d fought, but he didn’t kill her.

Father Callahan said, “I remember the press coverage. You were at the top of your game as a homicide detective with Miami PD. It was followed closely in the media because the victim was an internationally-known celebrity.”

O’Brien was silent. A dull pain started above his left eye. The adrenaline flowed, and he could almost hear his blood rushing through his temples. “This man-this inmate-what’s his name? What did he say?”