Chapter 7
Ronan
Ronan needed to find out what happened with Tennyson in Maria’s hospital room. Jude seemed none the worse for wear, so whatever was making Ten look pale as a ghost had come courtesy of his gift.
Ten leaned against the side of the Mustang, resting his head on the roof, looking as if he were trying to catch his breath.
“What’s going on?” Ronan asked, tossing Jude the keys to the car, after he’d unlocked his own door.
“I have a lot to tell you about what I saw in Maria’s room,” Ten began, but was interrupted by Ronan’s vibrating phone.
“Damn, it’s Fitz. Hold on a sec.” Ronan sighed. “Hey, Cap.”
“Are you finished interviewing Maria Cullen yet?” Fitz asked, his voice echoing.
“We just walked out of the rehab center.”
“Great, get your asses to the elementary school gym!” Fitzgibbon sounded relieved. “Cheer practice starts in fifteen minutes. Everly’s worried you two aren’t going to make it. Let Jude know I’ve got Wolfie.”
“On our way.” Ronan opened the door and ushered Ten into the backseat. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“Same here. Hurry, but drive safe.” Fitz disconnected the call.
“Hurry, but drive safe, what kind of bullshit order is that?” Ronan muttered as he buckled his seatbelt and started the engine.
“I guess we’re gonna have to fill Fitzgibbon in at the gym.
He said Everly is worried we’re gonna miss practice and that he’s got Wolf with him.
” Pulling out of the parking lot, Ronan turned left.
As Ronan drove, he kept an eye on Tennyson, who was slumped back with his eyes closed.
What the hell had his husband seen in the hospital room?
Was it something that exonerated Maria and explained where the head had come from?
Or had seen how the man was murdered and by who?
Ronan couldn’t hazard a guess and wasn’t looking forward to talking about this in the elementary school gym where Everly and Aurora were learning to cheer.
Jude flipped on the radio, Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” blasted out. He sat in the passenger seat playing air guitar along to the music.
Ronan sang along with the chorus he’d known by heart for nearly as long as he’d been alive. Erin has been a huge classic rock fan, although the music wasn’t considered “classic” back then. He relaxed and focused on his daughter’s new adventure.
Everly wanting to be a cheerleader was all Ronan’s fault.
Over Christmas break when they each had little colds, Ronan spent the entire day tucked in bed with Everly watching the High School Musical movies.
Ten brought them soup and later popsicles.
By the time they’d watched the first movie, Everly had been on the phone with Aurora telling her she needed to watch the movies as well.
Not only had she been hooked, so had Fitzgibbon.
When the permission slip to join the cheer squad had gone out in the first week of January, both girls had been eager to join the squad.
“Here we are,” Ronan said, parking the car in the Salem Elementary School lot. He climbed out of the car and held the seat for Tennyson, who looked like he could sleep for a week and still wake up tired. “You gonna be okay? If you want, take the car home and we’ll get a ride back with Fitz.”
Ten shook his head. “I’m okay. Just tired and sick of carrying what I saw in my head.”
Ronan felt like a total dick. He and Jude had been singing at the top of their lungs while Ten had been sinking into a quicksand of his gift’s making. “Let’s go find Fitz.”
Nodding, Ten zipped his jacket and jogged alongside Ronan into the school.
Walking into the gym a few minutes later, Ronan found Fitz and Greeley sitting up high in the bleachers.
Most likely so their fat heads didn’t get in another parent’s way.
Wolf was sitting with other kids closer to the gym floor.
Climbing up the steps, Ronan sat down beside Fitz.
Ten sat on the level below, while Jude sat beside Greeley.
He spotted Everly instantly. Someone had put her strawberry blonde hair in ponytails.
She was wearing a red cheer dress with the word “Witches” stitched diagonally across the chest and a pair of black leggings.
Black and orange would have suited the Salem Witches much better, but Ronan supposed they didn’t want to look like it was Halloween every day.
“How cute are they?” Fitz asked. “Miss Weathers put the girls’ hair in ponytails and brushed a little blush on their cheeks.
Ronan pulled out his phone and started taking pictures of the girls.
They were sitting around the center court logo and having their team pictures taken.
Another teacher walked around and passed out black and red pom-poms. Everly took that moment to wave hers at her fathers. Ten and Ronan waved back.
“What did you two learn today?” Ronan asked Fitz, as Miss Weathers led the tiny cheer squad in stretching exercises.
“Greeley and I spent hours looking through missing person reports for the time period we think our Head Doe died, from 1965 through 1985. We did a search of Massachusetts, then widened out to all of New England, then the whole country.”
“Did you find any matches?” Ronan asked, assuming there must be thousands.
“Almost ten thousand,” Fitz said. “We uploaded a photograph of the head and it wasn’t clear enough to be used.
We got in touch with a forensic artist and hooked her up with Doctor Greenfield to get certain skull measurements and photos so she can approximate the hair and eye color.
She’s going to make mockups of Head Doe that we can upload to the Missing Persons Database to see if we can narrow our search field. ”
“It’s crazy how many people go missing in this country every year.” Ronan shook his head.
“The late 60s and early 70s were a tumultuous time with the Vietnam War raging. Men were burning their draft cards and fleeing to Canada. Soldiers who’d come home from the war struggled to assimilate back into civilian life.
A lot left home to try to make their own way, kind of like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.
Police departments didn’t have the resources to track them all down.
A lot of people fell through the cracks. I think our Doe might be one of them.”
“Why do you say that?” Ronan asked.
“It’s been nearly nine hours since the news broke about finding a head.
The Salem News and other media outlets have been reporting that the man appears to be in his twenties or maybe early thirties.
So far, there have only been two solid leads from the tip line.
All the rest of the calls were from the usual assholes trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame or cruel jokes. ”
“That sucks.” Christ, Ronan couldn’t imagine how horrible it must have been to die and be forgotten. He hoped that never happened to him when he shuffled off his mortal coil. Although, with his asshole mouth, it was a possibility.
“How did things go with the three of you at the morgue?” Greeley asked.
“I had a vision or something,” Ten said. “I felt like my chest and throat were on fire.”
“Dr. Greenfield is testing for all manners of poison,” Jude said. “It’s gonna be a few days to get lab results.”
“I expected that much.” Fitz kept his eyes on Ten. “Any chance you met the head’s spirit in the morgue?”
Ten shook his head. “No. It was the strangest thing, there were no spirits there at all.”
“Ten had been about to say he thought it had to do with crime being down in Salem.” Ronan rolled his eyes.
“Ah,” Fitz snorted. “He was going to jinx us, huh?”
“He was, but Jude and I put the kibosh on that before Ten reached the point of no return.” Ronan pressed a kiss to Ten’s head. Ronan knew the reason the morgue was empty of spirits was because there hadn’t been any murders in Essex County since December.
“We went to see Maria Cullen after lunch,” Jude said. “She didn’t give us anything. Neither did her family.”
“Either she really was hopped up on morphine or she was a great actress.” Ronan chose to believe it was the former.
If it was the latter, that meant the sweet old lady they’d met might just be a murderess.
“She said she didn’t know about a head in her freezer, for all she knew, someone put it in there after she’d been transported to the hospital with her broken hip. ”
“Christ,” Fitz sighed. “Anything is possible, but Maria is of an age with the head, which makes it a lot more likely she knows who Head Doe is. We need to visit her again when she’s off the pain meds.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Ten said.
“What do you mean?” Fitz asked. “I know a ton of guys at Boston PD who’d had broken hips and they were good as new in a few weeks.”
“Maria is never going to be good as new ever again.” Ten sighed.
“Why not?” Ronan asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“Maria is riddled with cancer. From what I could see, it looks like it metastasized from the lungs. She doesn’t have long left. One, maybe two weeks at the most.”
“Jesus, Ten.” Jude’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “Maria never mentioned anything about cancer. What about Sofia, Ronan? Did she say anything to you?”
“Not a peep.” Ronan felt gobsmacked. He’d been put off by Maria preferring to flirt rather than answering questions about the head, but to find out she was dying was not something he expected Tennyson to reveal. It explained what had been upsetting his husband when they’d left the rehab facility.
“No wonder you were so out of sorts on the way over here.” Jude set a hand on Ten’s shoulder.
“I hate to say this, Jude, but that’s not the only reason I wasn’t myself.” Ten sighed.
“Christ on the cross,” Ronan muttered. “What the hell could be worse than an imminent death sentence?”
“Six dead men with duct tape over their mouths.” Ten shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.
“What?” Fitz asked, looking alarmed. “Who are they? How did they die? Do they know Maria?”
“Take a breath, Fitz” Ronan said softly. “I haven’t seen Ten this upset on a case in a long time.”
“It’s okay, Ronan. The more Fitzgibbon knows, the quicker we can solve this case.
” Ten looked to Fitz, who nodded. “I wasn’t getting anything from Maria.
She kept pressing the button on the IV for more morphine.
I’m guessing that’s the reason why I couldn’t read her.
I didn’t get anything else until Ronan stepped into the hallway with Sofia. ”
“Sofia is Maria’s great-niece,” Ronan supplied.
“Right,” Ten agreed. “When Ronan left the room, Jude turned on the charm and started flirting with Maria. I’d seen that song and dance before and I tuned out, trying to see if I could read anything else from the room. The doctors or nurses, you know, anything that could help us solve this case.”
“After telling us that Maria is dying, I really hope you’re not going to tell me that sweet lady is a serial killer.” Jude set a hand over his heart.
Ten shook his head. “I don’t know that’s the case.”
“What happened while Dr. Feelgood was examining the patient?” Ronan rolled his eyes.
“That’s when the men started appearing at Maria’s bedside.
Some were dressed in suits. Others, more casually.
Each of them had the duct tape over their mouths.
I tried asking who they were and how I could help them.
None of them would answer me, but the fifth one set his finger over his lips, telling me to be quiet.
I knew I wasn’t going to get anything else out of them, so I started writing descriptions.
” Ten paused, he pulled his notebook out and handed it to Ronan.
“When I looked up from my notes, a sixth man had arrived. I tried again to ask what happened to them and they all started bleeding from the chest.” Ten tapped a finger over his heart.
“I couldn’t see bullet holes or knife wounds, just the blood.
They all disappeared when Ronan walked back into the room with Sofia. ”
“Holy shit,” Fitz snapped a picture of Ten’s notes and handed the book back to him.
“There’s one more bit of information we got,” Ronan said. “Maria’s maiden name is Marino.”
Fitz’s eyes widened. “Talk about burying the lead. Is she Fat Sal’s daughter?”
“I don’t know. Sofia gave me that bit of information.
She was pissed enough as it was with us showing up at the rehab and I didn’t want to press my luck any further.
” Ronan had buried the lead. The second Sofia mentioned Marino, his first thought had been of Sal.
He’d been retired from the family business for quite some time and had to be in his nineties.
He might have given up the boss’s chair, but he was still a very dangerous man.
“At least this gives us a couple of things to work with,” Greeley said. “Ten knowing about Maria’s condition might get her to drop the act and open up.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Fitz agreed.
“Let’s show up there tomorrow afternoon.
Greeley and I will bring Sofia and the nephews in for questioning while the three of you try to talk to Maria again.
Jude, if she really did connect with you today, use that to get her to do the right thing, before it’s too late.
Head Doe’s family deserves to lay his remains to rest. Find out who he was, how his head ended up in the freezer, where the rest of his remains lie, and who the hell Maria’s guardians are. ”
“You got it, Cap.” The last thing Ronan wanted to do was try to coerce a dying woman into confessing her deepest darkest secrets, but if Ten was right and her time was running short, it was more important than ever to find out what Maria knew before it was too late.
Not wanting to think about Head Doe anymore, Ronan concentrated on Everly and Aurora, who were learning the words to the team cheer.
“Double, double, toil and trouble! Salem Witches on the double!” Ronan laughed as the girls learned the follow up cheer.
“Bubble, bubble, brew and hiss! You can't match a team like this! Goooooo Witches!"
“Witches here and bitches there, we can beat you anywhere!” Jude cheered along with them.
Fitz snorted. “Crying bitches lose the game. Salem Witches bring the pain!”
Ronan knew the concession stand at games sold pom-poms, he was going to get a couple for their grown-up cheering squad. Ten laughed while Jude came up with more ridiculous cheers. With as upset as he’d been when they came into the gym, Ronan would call that a win.