Tom Lowe - The 24th Letter

U.S. Marshal Deputy Bill Fisher had never done it before, and after that morning he swore to God he’d never do it again. Never had he let a prisoner have a cigarette before entering a courthouse to testify, but Sam Spelling had been cooperative and polite on the long ride from Florida State Prison to the U.S. district court in Orlando. And they were early. The news media were on the other side of the building, out front. Maybe, thought Deputy Fisher, it wouldn’t hurt if Spelling smoked half a cigarette.

Spelling was to be the star witness in the government’s case against a bank robber turned cocaine trafficker. Since Spelling was helping the government, at a possible risk to himself, what harm could a quick cigarette do? Might calm the boy down, help his testimony. Marshal Fisher and a second marshal escorted Spelling up the worn steps leading to the courthouse’s back entrance.

At the top of the steps, Spelling looked around, eyes searching the adjacent alley, the delivery trucks and sheriff’s cars parked along the perimeter. His dark hair gelled and combed straight back. Two white scars ran jagged above his left eyebrow like lighting bolts-leftovers from a diet of violence. He had a haggard, birdlike face, beak nose with feral eyes, red-rimmed and irises the shade of blue turquoise.

He squinted in the morning sun and said, “I’d really appreciate that smoke, sir. Just a quick one to relax my nerves. I gotta go in there and say things that are gonna send Larry to where I am for a hellava long time. State’s promised me he’ll go to some other prison. If he don’t, it’ll be a matter of time before he shanks me, or has somebody do it. Right now a smoke would make my time in the witness stand a whole lot easier.”

The rifle’s crosshairs swept up Sam Spelling’s back as he reached the top step. The sniper looked through the scope and waited for the right second. He knew the. 303 would make an entrance hole no larger than the width of a child’s pencil on the back of Spelling’s head. The exit wound would plaster Spelling’s face into mortar supporting the century-old granite blocks.

He didn’t anticipate Spelling turning around at the rear entrance to the courthouse. Even better, now he could put one between the eyes. Through the powerful scope, he saw the flame of a cigarette lighter. Magnified, it looked like a tiny fire in the marshal’s hand. He watched while Spelling used both his cuffed hands to hold the cigarette, bluish-white smoke drifting in the crosshairs. Spelling took a deep drag off the cigarette as the sniper started to squeeze the trigger.

Then Spelling nodded and coughed, turning his head and stepping backward.

He lowered the crosshairs to Spelling’s chest and pulled the trigger.

Sam Spelling fell like a disjointed string puppet. The gunshot sprayed tissue, bits of lung and muscle against the courthouse wall. Blood trickled in a finger pattern down the white granite, leaving a crimson trail that glistened in the morning sun.

Sam Spelling knew one day he would go to hell. He didn’t know it would be today. The hospital emergency room staff patched the bullet wound in his chest, restored his erratic heartbeat, and pumped him full of chemicals. Then they left him chained to a gurney behind privacy curtains.

He tried to focus on the acoustical ceiling above him. Concentrate on the little holes. They looked like tiny black stars in an all white sky. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually slept under the stars-or even seen the stars.

He could hear the constant beep from the heart monitor-the slowing.

Where are they?

He could feel the flutter in his chest, nausea in his gut, bile in his throat. His pores leaked the medicinal smell of copper and sulfur. The black stars were dimming. The sounds from the monitor were like the pounding of off-tune piano keys as Spelling’s heart tried to jumpstart life and catch up with losing time.

A man’s not supposed to hear his own death! Where are they? Somebody!

Then taste in his mouth was as if someone had crushed a cigarette butt on his tongue. Sweat dripped onto the flat pillow.

Better pillows in the cell! His neck muscles knotted.

The pain was now connecting from his chest through his left shoulder and down his tingling arm. He tried to lift his head to see if the guard was still standing outside the drawn curtain. The continuous beep. So damn loud.

Why couldn’t they hear? Somebody!

The room was swallowed in black and then it didn’t matter to Sam Spelling anymore because he was gone. He was caught in a dark whirlpool sucking him into a vast drain-down into a sewer of total darkness.

When the nurse yanked back the curtain, she didn’t know if Sam Spelling if was dead or alive.

Father John Callahan never got used to it. Performing last rites didn’t come easy to a man who, at age fifty-seven, could drill a soccer ball dead center from midfield. He was competitive by nature. Death was to be fought, and for the young, it was to be fought hard. Never throw in the towel. People need time to get it right.

He thought about that as he walked through the rain, stepped over cables from a TV news satellite truck, and entered the hospital emergency room. Father Callahan had a chiseled, ruddy face, prominent jaw line, and green eyes the shade of a new leaf in spring. He saw four police officers-one sipping coffee, the others filling out reports. A plainclothes man, an African-American, Callahan took for a detective, stood in a corner talking with an officer. A blond TV reporter applied pink gloss to her lips.

A veteran nurse with tired eyes looked up from her desk as the priest fastened the cord around his umbrella. Father Callahan said, “Nasty day.”

The nurse nodded, glancing toward the packed waiting room. She said, “The reporters don’t make the job any easier.”

“Why are they here?”

“A prisoner was shot on the courthouse steps this morning. He was supposed to testify in that big drug trial.”

Father Callahan nodded. “How is Nicole Satorini? She was brought in earlier? Head-on collision. I heard she’s in IC. Is the family with her?”

The nurse inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, Father. She passed. I think the family left the hospital a little while ago.”

Sam Spelling gripped the doctor’s white coat the way a drowning man grasps a life preserver. “It’s okay,” the doctor said, holding on to Spelling’s wrist. “You need rest. Lie back down. We re-started your heart.”

The Department of Corrections guard started to enter, but the doctor shook his head and lowered Spelling’s hand to the gurney. He looked at the digital numbers on the monitor and said, “Pressure ninety-fifty. Pulse thirty-nine. Start another pac-cell drip.”

A nurse nodded, following the doctor’s orders.

Spelling lifted his head. The prison guard stood just beyond the bed, close enough to watch the proceedings. The guard was built like a linebacker, his forehead thick with bone, nose flat and scarred.

Spelling looked beyond the guard. He saw a man dressed in a black suit standing by the nurses’ station. The man in the suit wore the collar of a priest. Spelling blinked, the tears spilling from his eyes. He smiled, his cracked lips trembled, his left cheek quivered from pulsating nerves and muscle.

“Father!” screamed Spelling.

Father Callahan looked in the direction of the shouting.

“Father!”

The priest started towards the frightened man. The guard held up a large hand, as if he stood at a school crossing. “Hold it, sir.”

“That man called out for me,” said Father Callahan.

“That man’s a prisoner.” The muscle in the guard’s lower jaw tightened.