Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz) Read Online Free Page A

some of my secrets. I diverted an uncomfortable conversation by sharing details about the teeth. “The cops just grilled me on how I ended up with them, and frankly, I’m still baffled about what to do next.”
    I shrugged, as if the whole episode were no different than any of the hundreds of news tips I’d received during my career. But the plain truth—I was a little spooked, hence my eagerness to hand the teeth over to the cops. Nobody mails a letter like that to a TV station without a mission. To seek glory for a crime? To scare me silent? If the former, I was supposed to broadcast something. If the latter, I was supposed to keep something quiet. I had no idea which, but a wrong guess might upset the sender and bring us face-to-face in the dim alley behind the station.
    “You seem uneasy.” Father Mountain startled me from my internal debate. “Perhaps you should pray to St. Apollonia for guidance.”
    “Saint who?” I routinely say a prayer to St. Anthony whenever I lose something. Sometimes my prayers are even answered. But for grace to work, the item has to be tangible. After all, once a television sweeps month is lost, not even God can change viewer demographics.
    “St. Apollonia,” he repeated.
    “Apollonia?” I recalled the rock movie Purple Rain, part of Minneapolis’s music and film culture. “Wasn’t Apollonia Prince’s hot love interest? I know creative geniuses can be a challenge to work with, but that shouldn’t qualify her for sainthood anymore than me having to work for a bozo.”
    “The Apollonia I’m referring to is the patron saint of toothaches.”
    Father Mountain pulled a leather-bound Catholic Encyclopedia from a shelf and turned to a painting of a beautiful woman holding a set of pincers against her chest. Her story: Apollonia was a virgin martyr whose teeth were pulled from her mouth during an uprising against Christians in the year 249. Afterward, when her attackers gave her the choice of renouncing her God or being thrown into a fire . . . she leaped into the flames.
    “Wow. That’s a pretty disturbing tale,” I said. “But how did she become a saint? I thought the Catholic Church disapproved of suicide.”
    “Apollonia was making a statement,” he said. “Dying for a cause is quite different than dying for one’s own sake. One is noble; the other, selfish.”
    This was another topic I regretted raising because once, in a closed garage with a running engine, I considered leaving this world behind. Nothing as dramatic as St. Apollonia’s exit, but Father Mountain never missed an opportunity to confer with me about my nearly fatal error. That spell of despair was the selfishness he had alluded to. He didn’t want a repeat performance and regularly claimed his priestly prerogative to probe my state of mind and ensure I was keeping a healthy distance from the dark abyss that had once tormented me.
    My husband had died a hero’s death in the line of duty while our marriage was barely past the newlywed stage. Grief and guilt messed me up for a while. Not in a mood to watch reruns of that part of my life just then, I thanked Father Mountain for his hospitality and left to brush a light coating of snow off the windshield of my car. On the drive home, I worried about slipping from cynical to bitter.
    •  •  •
    Flossing that night, my gums bled. I envisioned horrific scenarios involving my own teeth as I spit blood into the sink. Later, Iburied my face in my pillow but couldn’t shake the bad omen. I prayed to Apollonia for distraction.
    Too haunted to sleep and too cowardly to lay awake, I got out of bed to search online religious history websites on my computer to ponder what might be a suitable cause for me to aspire for sainthood. My curiosity did not pay off; the good causes were already taken. St. Francis de Sales had become the patron of journalists because, back in the sixteenth century, he wrote the first religious tracts. I had no problem with him