The 24th Letter

FIFTY-TWO

As O’Brien started his Jeep, two ambulances and half a dozen police cruisers flew past him screaming like a posse racing to Club Oz. O’Brien pulled onto Washington Avenue, cut over to Ocean Drive, and headed north toward North Shore State Recreation Area. He didn’t know if Russo was dead or alive. And he didn’t know what the state attorney would say about the confession on tape. O’Brien thought it might be tossed out, acquired under duress. But at least it was an admission of guilt. God, he thought, please let it buy Charlie Williams some time.

The prime question, the one Russo hadn’t had time to rehearse answers to, was what happened to Sam Spelling’s letter? Why hadn’t he shown the slightest sign of deception when he was asked about the letter?

Something in O’Brien’s gut was rumbling-something unsettling about Russo. The information Father Callahan left in blood-how did it connect to Russo? Omega, did it refer to the watch Russo was wearing? Doubtful. The image Father Callahan had drawn…was it something from Club Oz? A witch flying across the moon? Or was it something else? The 666? P-A-T? What did it all mean?

Russo would do or say anything to survive. The cockroach in him was indestructible. The psychosis in him was a personality trait that kept his lawyers deep in six figure retainers. Russo’s attorneys would argue that the confession was acquired under physical threat of violence. O’Brien wasn’t an officer of the law. There were no Miranda rights. Nothing but a confession on tape. But it might give the state attorney a

card to deal-something to get a federal judge to sign an order for a stay of execution. If the FBI crime lab could find that Sam Spelling left a sufficient handwriting impression, maybe it would point to the location of the murder weapon. And it would give O’Brien time to find physical evidence.

Russo may have left a print somewhere on the knife-an object he was so sure would be buried under tons of garbage in the dump. But he didn’t know that Sam Spelling was watching him that night.

So close, O’Brien thought. But something was coalescing in his gut. Russo, the subhuman that he was, seemed credible under the stress of an intense interrogation and the threat of a crab snapping his appendages. If he didn’t kill Father Callahan, maybe it was someone Russo had sent.

O’Brien parked under a tall royal palm. He could hear the breakers and smell the sea salt. He took his boat shoes off, lifted the lethargic crab out of the purse, and walked toward the surf. He said, “Hold on, pal. You’re almost home.”

He stood in the rolling waves and gently set the crab in the water. The salt water rinsed the exhaustion from the animal. The crab scurried a few inches. Then it was lifted by the pull of a swell, vanishing into the dark sea.

O’Brien stepped back to dry sand, up to the line of royal palms. He sat under one palm tree, drained, resting his back against its trunk. The ocean breeze felt good on his face. He closed his burning eyes for a moment and simply listened to the sound of the waves. He could feel the fatigue rising in his mind, a fog drifting through layers of consciousness. He leaned back and looked at the moon shining down between branches of the tall palm. What was the image he’d seen earlier? The one he captured on his cell phone? He lifted the phone from his belt and retrieved the image. A woman in the moon? Where had he seen it? He was so tired, the concentration was getting difficult.

O’Brien stared through the palm fronds at the moon directly above him. He could see the profile of a roosting bird, an osprey sitting on one of the branches.

He remembered seeing a bird in the same painting with the moon-a hawk or an eagle. But the other details in the picture were obscure. He glanced back at the photograph on his cell phone screen. His eyes blurred. The image now looked like his dead wife, Sherri. But the picture was murky. He shook his head. She was still there. Shadowy. He snapped the phone closed.

O’Brien stared toward the breakers. He remembered the day he emptied Sherri’s ashes into the ocean, pouring them slowly from the bowsprit of their sailboat. But now he couldn’t remember the details of her face-of the wondrous smile she had. God, he missed her. He watched the crashing surf, the flowing white water, pieces of sea foam scattering by the breeze and tumbling like cotton balls onto the sand. He remembered first meeting Sherri in Miami Beach years ago. The way she played in the surf caught his eye. The way she played in life caught his heart.

O’Brien shook the ghosts out of his head and walked to his Jeep. He lifted a garbage can lid and tossed the purse inside. The odor of dead catfish, pizza, and coconut oil crawled from the garbage.

On the drive to the hotel, he thought about the image he’d seen in the moon, the image captured on his cell. He thought about the osprey sitting atop a royal palm, and he thought about Sherri. If he could get some sleep, maybe in his dreams he could travel to some point in time, some place in his subconscious where the painting is more than abstract art. If he could hold the subliminal up to the light, what would he see? Where in the frame of grainy film-his memory, did the painting make an impression? And where in the archives of his mind did the painting hang? A life depended on finding it.

He just couldn’t remember. Think! He closed his eyes, but now he couldn’t even remember the details of his wife’s face. He wished she were there.

To talk.

To listen.

O’Brien looked at his watch. It was two a.m.

What is it?

Where is it?

The pressure felt as if his brain was being cooked in his skull.

When he got back to the hotel, he would only allow himself four hours to sleep. He hoped sometime in those four hours of sleep that the dream weaver would visit and help tie the loose ends together.