Tom Lowe - The 24th Letter

“Maybe he took a break. Sam Spelling will be in recovery for some time.”

“No doubt. It’s just that Deputy Gleason is here to relieve the guard.”

“If I see him, I’ll pass that along.”

As Callahan walked down the hall, Deputy Gleason noticed that the priest had a slight limp. The left foot. Almost undetectable, but it was there.

Charlie Williams paced in his tiny world like a trapped animal. He walked from the steel bars to the thick wall of reinforced concrete, back and forth. A cage, eight by nine feet, had been his home for more than ten years. Soon they would be moving him to another cell, this one closer to the death chamber. At thirty-three, he felt life fifty-three. Face and body now a scarecrow. His hair had turned gray. The dark circles under his eyes never faded. His stomach burned as if a pipe constantly leaked acid. He could feel his rib cage under his skin. Weight dropping because food seemed almost obscene as the state readied him to die.

He stopped pacing and looked at the picture of Alexandria Cole. It sat next to a photograph of Charlie and his mother. In the picture, he was a boy holding his mother’s hand on the banks of the New River in North Carolina. It was where the family went weekends in the summer. It was where Charlie Williams learned to swim-where he was baptized. Now he felt like a man drowning.

He stepped to the small steel shelf, picked up the picture of Alexandria and said, “You know I didn’t do it. You’re probably the only one who knows that-just you and the bastard who really did it. But you can’t tell a soul. I miss you, Lexie. Looks like I’ll be joining you soon, baby. Maybe I can get it right with you in the next world.”

A single tear rolled down his check and splashed across the forever smiling face of Alexandria Cole.

Father Callahan walked out of the front entrance to Baptist Hospital, said good night to a security guard, and looked around for any reporters. Two TV news satellite trucks sat in parking lot, their diesels humming, engineers adjusting antennas while reporters scribble notes and spoke loudly into cell phones.

Father Callahan carried his Bible, umbrella in one hand, and walked from the hospital down the city streets toward his church. Dark clouds rolled over the moon as if a candle had been snuffed out. Lightning flickered in the distance. He opened his cell phone to dial Sean O’Brien’s number. Before he could punch the keys, the phone rang. “Hello,” Father Callahan said.

“Father, this is Detective Grant. I wanted to make sure I heard you correctly. What did you say was the name of the Sentinel reporter?”

“Brian Cook.”

“I just called the Sentinel. The only Brian Cook they have is the food writer.”

“That’s strange. I’m sure that’s the name he gave me. He looked legitimate. Carried a copy of the newspaper folded under one arm. Had one of those reporter’s notebooks and a pen.”

“He probably got the name of the food guy right out of the paper. He’s an imposter.”

“I don’t follow you, Detective.”

“I think the guy you spoke with is the man who tried to kill Sam Spelling.”

Father Callahan disconnected with the detective, stopped under a streetlamp to see the numbers on his phone, as the battery grew weaker. He punched in Sean O’Brien’s number. “Sean, are you near? My phone battery’s about to die.”

“Be there soon, Father. Bad storm’s moving your way. It blew down a tree across State Road 44. I’m in my Jeep. I’ll go around the cars and cops. I’ll just be a few minutes late.”

“I just spoke with a detective. He said the reporter who approached me in the ER lobby was an imposter.”

“What?”

“The detective said he believes the man was the same person who shot Sam Spelling. Spelling’s letter says-”

“Father, can you hear me? You’re voice is fading. If you can hear me, I’ll be there very soon.

Deputy Tim Gleason was hoping to get a final refill of his coffee when he saw a priest approaching, walking down the long hospital corridor. There was something different about the way Father Callahan walked. The slight give to the left foot was gone. Now he moved with an aggressive step. He had a more determined gait than when he’d spoken with Gleason and Detective Grant earlier.

Deputy Gleason could see the man approaching wasn’t Father Callahan. This man wore a fedora hat. Could be because of the pouring rain, thought Gleason. The priest had wider shoulders, neatly trimmed dark beard and black frame glasses.

Maybe priests have a shift rotation, too. Maybe he was from a different church.

The priest stopped a few feet away from the room door.

Deputy Gleason stood and said, “He’s still out of it, Father.”

The priest nodded. In a low whisper he said, “Sometimes just a voice, the word of God, can penetrate a sleeping man’s soul. The power of prayer aids recovery.”

The veiled, black eyes held on Gleason. The deputy felt tension and embarrassment at the same time. There was something about this priest that didn’t seem right-but he was a man of God, and who was Gleason to judge him?

“Father, I’m a firm believer in prayer for healing the sick.”

“Bless you, my son.”

“Thank you, Father.” Deputy Gleason stepped aside. “You can go on in.”

“Thank you. Please open the door. I hurt my wrist playing tennis.”

Sam Spelling dreamed in shades of red, pink, yellow, and purple, like film processed in morphine and projected through stained glass onto the front of his brain. He saw himself in waders fishing a Montana stream, the cool air traveling deep into his lungs. He pulled a bull trout from the water, the iridescent colors bright and alive. Spelling removed the hook and lowered the fish back into the clear stream.

He smiled and slowly opened his eyes. The morphine dripped from the IVs into Spelling’s bloodstream, his vision was like looking though opaque glass, smoky, clouded.

A man dressed in black stood next to Spelling’s bed.

“Father?” he asked. “Is that you, Father John?” Spelling smiled. “You said you’d come back.” He coughed. His chest pounded, his vision growing watery.

“Yes, it’s me. Good to see you again, Sam.”

The voice.

Even through the fog of drugs, Spelling could tell the voice didn’t come from Father Callahan.

Spelling opened his eyes as wide as he could. Focus. The man wore a priest collar, but the face. He couldn’t see the face clearly. Vision blurred from drugs. But the man’s voice was there. He remembered where he’d heard it. “It’s you!”

“Who else?” The man stepped closer and leaned over the bed.

“Get away from me! Guard!” Spelling’s lungs were too weak to scream. He could only whisper. “Why are you here?”

“I think you know why. You are the reason I’m here. You decided to talk after all these years, eh? I’m so disappointed. I compensated you. We had a nice little agreement. Then, after you blew all the money, wound up back in prison, I get a note from you. Clever how you got your letter mailed out of prison without raising eyebrows. Your coding was exceptional-suggesting that I visit your mother’s home to exchange Christmas gifts. Impressive. After I read it, though, I knew you were about to cause me a lot of trouble, and I’d never be safe with you alive because you violated our agreement. Too bad the rifle bullet didn’t take out your heart. I aimed for it.”

Spelling wanted to crawl out of bed. “It was you! You shot me?”

“Even you find it hard to believe. That’s good. Police will never figure it out. When the marshals delivered you to the courthouse to testify in a drug trial, it gave me the perfect opportunity to take you out. No one, not even you, would have suspected it was tied to a murder years before. Timing is almost everything in life…and death. You’ve got a really big mouth that must be sealed…forever.”