The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller))

by Tom Lowe

“Few hours, tops. Some reddening on the neck and intracutaneous hemorrhages around the eyes. Died in her child’s bedroom.”

  “Talk with you later, Doc,” said Dan as he led O’Brien into the home. A half dozen uniform deputies and crime scene investigators moved around the house. One investigator dusted the walls for prints. O’Brien and Dan could see flashes from a camera coming from an open door down the hall. They entered the room just as the crime scene photographer was shooting the final pictures of the body.

  Anita Johnson’s body was on its back, hand on her chest. Eyes open.

  A detective got up from squatting beside the body, jotting in a small notebook. He seemed to be near retirement. White hair about two weeks beyond the need for a haircut. He had a look of resolve and pessimism over the state of mankind that the body seemed to represent to him. He stepped next to Dan and O’Brien, pursed his lips in a low whistle and said, “Another young one. A mother. What a waste.”

  Dan made the introductions and said, “What do you think, Ralph?”

  “No apparent sign of rape. No sign of burglary. Neighbor next door heard the kid crying and screaming. Came over to check and saw the font door open. Found the body and the little boy in that crib crying his eyes out.”

  “So he saw his mother die?” asked Dan.

  “Looks that way. Neighbor is taking care of him until social services gets here.”

  “Anyone see anything? Stranger? Delivery person?”

  “I questioned the neighbor. She didn’t see or hear a damn thing until the baby started wailing. Not much to go on here. Maybe we’ll get some prints, but I doubt it.”

  O’Brien looked around the room, tuning out the drone of the detective. Near the child’s bed, on the floor, he saw a small piece of paper about the size of a postage stamp. O’Brien used the clip on his pen to lift the paper off the floor.

  “Got something?” Dan asked.

  “Don’t know. Looks like it is a piece of an envelope. I can make out the top of a curved letter. Possibility an ‘S.’ Maybe she’d just opened her mail, reading a letter, walked in here to quiet the baby and was attacked.” He handed the paper to Dan who

  dropped it in a Ziploc bag. O’Brien crouched next to the body. He looked at the position on the floor. The angle of her head. Hands. He was silent for more than a half minute.

  “Sean,” said Dan. The guys are here with the body bag.”

  O’Brien said nothing.

  “Come on Sean, the place has been picked over. Photographed. Examined by the CSI team.”

  “Got a pair of tweezers?” asked O’Brien

  “Tweezers?”

  Dan turned to an investigator standing near the door, “Hey, Jimmy,” he said. “Hand me some tweezers out of your box.”

  The investigator dug around in a box twice the size of an average fishing tackle box and handed Dan a pair of long tweezers. Dan gave them to O’Brien.

  They watched as O’Brien used the tool to lift something from a ring on Anita Johnson’s left hand. Caught in a prong, barely detectible, was a dark fiber that O’Brien slowly lifted with the tweezers.

  “What do you have?” asked Dan.

  “Looks like a piece of wool. Probably not from something she’d wear in the summer in Florida. Doesn’t match the carpet color. Maybe it’s dyed black. Hand me a bag.” O’Brien placed the fiber in the bag, stood, and said, “How would a piece of wool get embedded on the woman’s ring?”

  “Good question,” Dan said.

  The senior detective, Ralph, put his glasses on and leaned over the body. He said, “That was a nice catch.”

  “It stood out against the stone, which, at that size, looks like a nice imitation diamond. If it is wool, the fiber might have come from a ski mask.” O’Brien used his pen to point. He added, “There, near the corner of her mouth…the lipstick goes from a horizontal application—the way she applied it—to a vertical serration.”

  Ralph said, “Maybe that’s were she sipped her coffee.”

  “Maybe,” said O’Brien. “But it might mean she bit the hand of the guy snapping her neck. Check her teeth for skin cells, and if the perp wore plastic gloves, see if any tiny bits of plastic might be between her teeth.”

  O’Brien started for the door.

  “Where’re you going?” asked Dan.

  “To see if our only eyewitness might have seen something.”

  Ralph cleared his throat and said, “Who’s the only eyewitness.”

  “The postman.” O’Brien turned and left.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  Dan Grant followed O’Brien to his Jeep. O’Brien pulled out his cell phone. He paced the length of the Jeep for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

  Dan said, “Some nice work in there. Superman’s vision got nothing on you.”

  “Wish I’d had better vision investigating Alexandria Cole’s death. If I had, we wouldn’t be standing here today with all these people dead. We have a big problem.”

  “Tell me about it. The woman’s dead.”

  “The problem is that the person who killed her is definitely not who I thought was behind this.”

  “Talk to me, Sean.”

  “Russo’s confined to a hospital bed. The guy I thought did the hits, Carlos Salazar, is dead. Whoever killed Alexandria has murdered four people in the last three days: Spelling, Father Callahan, Johnson, and now his wife Anita…and perhaps Salazar.”

  O’Brien pounded the fender of his Jeep with an open hand. He turned to Dan. “I’ve been chasing a ghost. The real killer just wiped out the last person alive who knew his name. I’m sure he destroyed any letter that Johnson may have sent to his wife.”

  “So the son of a bitch who’s gone on this killing spree is as clueless to us now as that stuff the priest left in his own blood.”

  “Right now the stuff the priest left in his blood is the only thing pointing us in the right direction.”

  “Which direction?”

  “Call your office and have someone call the post office. Find out who has this route. We need to know where that person is right now!”

  #

  O’BRIEN PUSHED THE JEEP, hitting speeds of near one hundred miles an hour though the back roads of rural Lake County. Dan Grant sat in the passenger side, hands gripped on the door and center console. He said, “Hey, man. If you kill us driving like this, who the hell is gonna stop this perp?”

  “What’s the next turn?”

  “Should be the next left. Quarter mile up, tops. Dispatch told me that the post office says this mail carrier ends his route on River Lane, a long mile stretch.”

  O’Brien turned down River Lane and took out a plastic trashcan someone had set too near the street. “Whoa!” yelled Dan.

  “There he is!” said O’Brien, looking at a slight incline where the white mail truck poked along. The postman was opening a mailbox when O’Brien brought his Jeep to a screeching halt directly in front of the truck. Both O’Brien and Dan got out and approached the frightened letter carrier. He reached for his cell. “I called 911! Cops are on their way!”

  “We’re here. Fast enough for you? ” Dan said, flashing his shield.

  “I didn’t do anything!” the postman shouted.

  “Everyone’s done something,” said O’Brien. “But that’s not why we’re here. Do you remember the Johnson’s residence. Lyle and Anita Johnson?”

  “Sure. I got three Johnson’s on this route. But I know their box.”

  “Do you recall making a delivery there today?”

  “Yep. That’s an easy one because Mrs. Johnson was at the mailbox to greet me.”

  “What’d she say?” asked Dan.

  “Not a lot. Looked a little anxious. I remember the only letter she got today.”

  “How so?” asked O’Brien

  “Because it was a handwritten letter…large block letters with a guy’s kinda handwriting. None of that stuff is the postal service’s business. But I remember reading something right below the zip code.”


  “What was that?” asked Dan.

  “S-W-A-K.” he said, almost shyly. “You know, sealed with a kiss. Used to see that all the time. Now, hardly ever. Maybe it’s because of email.”

  “Did she say anything to you?” asked O’Brien

  “Not really. Mrs. Johnson seemed…seemed anxious, I guess is the best word.”

  O’Brien asked, “Did you see anyone around? You know, maybe a delivery person…a car or truck there that you don’t normally see?”

  He thought a moment. “No. What happened? Is she okay?”

  “She’s dead,” said Dan

  #

  O’BRIEN AND GRANT WERE less than a mile away from the Pioneer Village when O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Tucker Houston.

  “Sean, state’s refusing to hear it. I’ve got it hand-delivered to the Fifth Circuit. A clerk’s ready to receive it.”

  “Good!” said O’Brien. “You can put this in that habeas corpus mix—we have another body. Wife of the prison guard who overheard Spelling’s confession to Father Callahan. Neighbor found her murdered. Now I know Russo didn’t do it.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Buy me a little more time and I will find out.”

  “What this latest murder will buy us is coverage on the whole damn broadcast spectrum. If we can get the exposure we’ll get the ear of somebody’s court.”

  EIGHTY-THREE

  The yellow crime scene tape was still around the front porch of the old general store. O’Brien looked at the porch from a half dozen angles. He watched the windmill turn. He listened to the cluck of nearby chickens and tried to picture the scene the night Lyle Johnson died on the front porch.

  Dan said, “They found his body sitting right there in that chair.” He pointed to a rocking chair on the porch.

  O’Brien said nothing. He knelt down in the Bahia grass next to the porch and looked at the surface of the old cypress slats. He stood and slowly walked up the three timeworn steps leading to the porch. He looked at the bloodstain beneath the chair and then at the wooden barrel behind the chair.

  “Place has been gone over by a team, Sean. Except for the blood, Johnson’s pistol lying next to the chair, they got nothing. I know you wanted to come here, but we might be wasting time we don’t have.”

  O’Brien said nothing.

  Dan said, “What do you do, man? Go into some kinda zone? Do you put yourself in the vic’s place or the perp’s. Because the expression on your face looks damn funky right now.”

  O’Brien studied at the pitchfork and looked across the porch, staring at a spot in the knotty wood. He pulled a paper napkin out of his pocket and used it to move the

  pitchfork from the back of the barrel to the front. He stepped across the porch, knelt and looked at a small hole in the wood. “Look at the angle of this hole.”

  “Lots of old wormholes in these planks. Some ought to be replaced.”

  “This is new, Dan. Rain and mildew haven’t had time to set in, but there is rust in there. Wood doesn’t rust. And look at the angle. That could only have been made from something coming from a trajectory near the rocking chair.”

  “What are you saying?”

  O’Brien pointed to the far right prong on the pitchfork. “The rust on this point has been knocked off. The other three prongs all have a covering of rust on the tips. This one doesn’t, and like the hole in the porch, the elements haven’t discolored it.”

  “You think Lyle Johnson picked up this pitchfork and threw it like some kind of javelin at the perp, right?”

  “That’s exactly what I think. Maybe he made contact. Maybe not. But get a forensic team to check for any DNA that might be in the hole and on the pitchfork. Get this stuff to the lab quick as you can.”

  Dan looked out toward the windmill. “O’Brien, you’re like a bird dog. Wish I could have worked with you in Miami. Where to…Sherlock?”

  “To where Sam Spelling was shot.”

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  Grant led O’Brien up the side entrance steps of the U.S. district courthouse in Orlando, a forty-year-old building. Dan pointed to the top step. “Spelling had reached this point. The federal marshals escorting him said Spelling had turned around and asked if it would be okay to smoke a cigarette over there on the side before he went in to testify. He was nervous. The sniper’s bullet caught Spelling about here,” he pointed to a spot between his heart and top of his shoulder. Bullet was a .303 British.”

  Dan took half dozen steps and pointed to the far left door. “That spot on the door, the one that’s been sanded, filled and painted over, is where we dug out the round after it passed through Spelling. Clean shot. Didn’t even hit a bone.”

  O’Brien looked in the direction of a parking garage across the street. Then he backed up and stood next to the door. He marked his height at six two with his right hand, made a small line on the door with his pen, and used his driver’s license to mark off three-inch increments down to the spot that was sanded and painted. He looked at the place where Spelling was standing when he was shot.

  Dan said, “I see where you’re looking. I almost hate to say it, but they combed the garage. It’s only nineteen floors. Spent two days up there. Metal detectors. Dogs. Nothing. Not even a sweat stain or boot mark left anywhere that we could see.”

  “How well do you think they checked the roof?”

  “That’s the first place they started.”

  “Should have been the last. How about the third floor?”

  “Out of nineteen floors, the largest parking garage in the city, why the third?”

  “The building is about one hundred yards from this spot. Spelling was five-eight. If he stood right there, and the round hit here, the bullet dropped about a half inch. The shot came from between the second and fourth floors. Let’s go in the middle, to the third.

  #

  O’BRIEN PARKED HIS JEEP close to the opening of the third floor that provided a view of the courthouse. He got a pair of binoculars out of the glove box and said, “Let’s try to see it from the shooter’s perspective.”

  “I guess that would be the closest thing we got to a scope right now,” said Dan.

  O’Brien walked to the farthest right-hand corner. “I don’t see any surveillance cameras in this vicinity.”

  “Most are in the high traffic areas. We checked the hard-drives to see what came and went an hour before and a half hour after—on either side of the time Spelling was hit. Everything checked clean except the second vehicle to leave. Two minutes after the shooting. A blue van. Tag stolen.”

  “Who was it registered to?”

  “Guy’s name is Vincent Hall. Says it was stolen off his Mercedes.”

  “Where was his Mercedes parked?”

  “Third floor.”

  “Where on the third floor?”

  “Over there,” Dan pointed to a far corner

  .

  “I bet the blue van was right beside the Mercedes. Perp may have arrived early—first thing—got here early to find the best spot. Check that on the tapes. He laid low here. Waited for Spelling to be paraded up the courthouse steps, and fired one shot. Guy’s damn good, an expert.”

  O’Brien walked to the corner. A red Cadillac was in the spot closest to the corner and the large concrete pillars. He stared out the open breezeway across to the courthouse steps. He looked through the binoculars.

  O’Brien surveyed the area. He found a crumpled cigarette pack. No sign anyone had been smoking. There was an empty five-gallon bucket of roofing tar. It sat adjacent to an opening between one of the concrete pillars and the steel girder. O’Brien squatted down behind the bucket. “Let me see the glasses from here.” Dan handed him the binoculars. “I believe the shooter used this bucket to steady the rifle. The bucket’s been left behind from some construction work. Have your department set up a laser right here. It should match the trajectory to the hole in the door.”

  O’Brien looked down at a gutter with half-inch grates spaced to allow the wate
r in but to keep most of the leaves and debris out. The gutter ran the entire length of the floor. He looked in one of the slots and said, “Too dark to see anything.”

  “I’d doubt if you’d find a casing in there. Perp probably picked it up. Bouncing in one of these holes would be like hitting one of the ring tosses at the county fair.”

  O’Brien heard a car door close. He looked over in the garage and saw a woman locking her door. “Dan, give me your badge for a second.”

  “Sean, it’s one thing to be out here with me impersonating a cop. But if you take my ID, you’re busted. In case you haven’t looked…our skin color is a little different.”

  O’Brien grinned. “They always look at the shiny badge first.”

  Dan sighed, handing O’Brien his detective’s shield.

  “Ma’am!” shouted O’Brien.

  The woman, dressed in a business suit, turned to look. O’Brien approached her with the ID and said, “Police ma’am. We’re investigating a shooting. And we’ve run into a little challenge. Maybe you can help.”

  “I’m late for court. I don’t—”

  “May I borrow the mirrored makeup compact in your purse?”

  “How’d you know I carry one?”

  “Lucky guess.” O’Brien smiled,

  “Okay, I suppose.”

  She opened her purse. “Just take it.”

  “Thank you. If you can afford to wait thirty seconds, I’ll hand it right back.”

  O’Brien took the compact, opened it, and angled the mirror so the sun would reflect through the slots in the gutter near the bucket. He dropped to his knees, trying to peer through the grates. He moved the mirror slowly, like a small searchlight in the dark. He saw loose nails, a dime, leaves, and something the color of polished brass near a leaf. “Dan, would you get a coat hanger out of the back of the Jeep?”