his wallet about ten feet over there. Money and credit cards are gone.”
O’Brien knew the answer to the question before he asked it. “You found no papers in his pockets, a letter maybe?”
“He was clean.”
The corner stepped over to the detectives and said, “You don’t have to be a religious man to know whoever did this has a date with the devil.”
Dan Grant looked at the body. “May have been the devil himself-sis-six-six, the initials P-A-T, a drawing and some Greek letter.”
O’Brien said, “Father Callahan has already given us a big clue.”
“And what would that be?” Detective Henderson asked, his tone skeptical.
Valdez said, “Maybe the priest didn’t know the perp’s name. Otherwise he’d have written it, or at least part of it, right?”
“Not if Father Callahan thought the killer might see it,” said O’Brien.
“What about the initials?” Henderson asked. “Could be the perp’s.”
O’Brien squatted down near where the body had lain. He was silent for half a minute, his eyes locking on every detail-blood patterns, religious relics scattered acrossbthe floor. O’Brien stood and followed the blood trail away from where the body was found. He walked slowly, tracking, his eyes looking for the smallest specks of blood.
When he was about forty feet away, heading in the direction of the rear exit, he turned and said, “Father Callahan was shot about here. This is ten to fifteen feet from the first sign of blood. After he was shot, he turned and started in the direction of the altar.” O’Brien walked back toward the detectives. He knelt down. “He fell here first. There’s a bloody palm print. Then he got up and staggered toward the altar. He crawled to within a few feet of the steps-his last breaths were taken at the first marble step. That’s where he died. Why would he crawl in this direction?”
“Maybe to get to a phone,” Detective Valdez said.
O’Brien looked to his left. “The church offices are that direction.”
“Cell phone,” Detective Grant said.
O’Brien lifted the cell phone off his belt and punched in numbers. A phone rang. The detectives looked in the direction of the sound. Detective Grant walked toward a small antique table in a dark corner of the vestibule, near the entrance door to the church. The cell phone was sitting at the base of a large silver bowl.
O’Brien disconnected. “If Father Callahan’s cell is lying over there on the table, why wasn’t he crawling in that direction? Why wasn’t he trying to dial 911?”
The detectives were silent, and then Henderson mused, “Phone was too far away.”
“Then why was he here? Why was his body at the base of the altar?”
Detective Grant said, “When you are dying-right at the cusp of death-people try to get right with God.” Grant gestured with a hand in the direction of the burningbcandles, the statue of Mary, and the figure of Christ hanging from a cross above the altar. “Maybe the priest was saying his last prayers in a place that he knew best.”
O’Brien said, “Why would a man so close to God feel a need to redeem himself in his last minute of life?”
No one spoke.
“I think he was crawling in this direction for another reason,” O’Brien said.
Detective Valdez said, “Maybe the Father was crawling in that direction because he was in shock. And as Dan said, he was trying to get in the vicinity of the altar-a very holy spot to pass into Heaven.”
“Those things are symbols. I knew Father Callahan well,” O’Brien said. “He could be as close to God on a boat as he would in his own church.”
O’Brien stepped up onto the altar. Except for the artifacts tossed on the floor, all else appeared intact. He looked behind the dais and beneath it. There were two incense burners, half a dozen church books, and a stack of printed agendas from last Sunday’s mass. He removed a pen from his shirt pocket and used it to leaf through a few pages of the large Bible that lay open on the dais stand.
“Pardon me,” said a woman dressed in a navy blue jump suit with letters CSI Volusia County on it. She held two boxes of fingerprint equipment. Another investigator climbed up from the back of the altar. He held a portable light and stand.
O’Brien nodded and moved to the front of the altar, then slowly descended the steps. He looked at the message written in blood. “What was he trying to tell us? The rough drawing-could be a circle and face. Who? The Greek letter Omega-the end? The letters…P-A-T. Is it the name Pat? Patrick? Patricia? Or is it something else?”b “Could be a warning,” said Grant. “But if it is…then who was he warning?”
“Dan, you said that Spelling told you if something happened to him to see Father Callahan immediately.” O’Brien stared at the message in blood.
“He was adamant about it.”
“Meaning, as Father Callahan told me, the identity of the killer is on that written statement. If Spelling happened to use a pad of paper when he wrote it, he might have pressed down hard to leave an impression on the next page. Even if it’s only a few words-enough letters to spell a name-we might have something.”
“You mean as in P-A-T?” asked Grant.
“Exactly. We need to get to the hospital now.”
“I was just heading that way. The ME is a busy man tonight, too.”
“Call your officers. Don’t let them remove any notepaper.”
“Paper?”
“The killer’s ID could be on the sheet of paper that was under the original-the one he wrote for Father Callahan.”
O’Brien looked at the figure of Christ on the cross. He watched as a dark cloud passed over the moon. He thought about Charlie Williams locked in a place where light from the moon, stars, or the sun never penetrates. O’Brien walked faster.
b
TWENTY-THREE
Lyle Johnson pulled off Highway 29 onto the gravel road leading to the old pioneer village, reached across the seat and felt for his pistol. He turned off the headlights and slowly made his way about a half-mile until he came to the entrance. There was no gate, only an old Florida farmhouse the Volusia County Historical Society used for an office. The faded sign read:
Volusia Pioneer Village amp; Museum
An Authentic 19 th Century Replica of a Florida Farm Community
Open Monday — Saturday 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m.
Johnson was an hour early. He wanted to arrive in plenty of time to stake out the grounds. One street lamp hung near the office, the light illuminated a few of the old buildings scattered nearby. The rest of the grounds and buildings were in black and white and shades of gray, silhouettes standing under the oak trees in the moonlight.
From the gravel road, Johnson could see the replica of and old country store, a Burma Shave sign painted on one wall. Not far from the store was a cypress-hewn barn. A steam engine sat frozen in time on rusty rail tracks beside a reproduction of a train depot. The sign hanging from the side of the depot read: DeLand, Florida, Pop. 319. The rest of the grounds consisted of share-cropper shacks, a tiny white clapboard church, a one-room schoolhouse, and a small barnyard where a cow and a pony stood quietly.b Johnson could see two large peacocks pecking at a cornhusk. A few chickens roosted under an A-frame platform that looked like a doghouse for birds.
Johnson parked behind some bushes, beneath a lone pine tree. He pulled the overhead bulb from the dome light in his pickup truck. He worked the pistol under his belt, gently opened the door, and got out.
There was movement.
A bat flew in and out of the light cast from the streetlamp. It attacked large moths that orbited the
