3
Ronan
The man he and Jude had brought into the conference room was stark, raving mad.
In all his years in law enforcement, Ronan had never seen a man this crazed before.
The man looked to be in his early fifties.
His greying hair was unbrushed and he was dressed in wrinkled pants paired with an equally wrinkled button-down shirt.
Unless he missed his guess, this was the outfit the man had worn the day before.
“Sir, we need you to sit down so we can figure out what’s going on that has you so scared,” Ronan said, already feeling exhausted.
“I’m not saying a word until the psychics get here. I want Tennyson and Carson. I need them. I’ll die without their help.” The man paced the room like a restless tiger.
“I’ll see what’s keeping them.” Ronan headed for the door.
“This isn’t how I planned to spend our Fitz-free morning.” Jude sighed.
Ronan rolled his eyes. “Me either.” Fitz had planned to work for a few hours this morning before he and Jace were off on their romantic weekend, but he’d changed his mind and wasn’t coming into the office at all.
Ronan and Jude’s new plan was to work until noon and then take everyone to Lobster Charlie’s for lunch.
He’d been dreaming of a hot-buttered lobster roll and couldn’t help but wonder if that plan was going to be put on hold.
He also wondered if he should just call Salem EMS and let the professionals take care of the crazed man.
When he walked into Ten’s reading room, he found his husband and Carson in a whispered conversation. “Everything okay?”
Ten jumped, letting out a little yelp. “Not really. That reading was strange and horrible and about you.”
“Wait! What?” Ronan didn’t understand what Ten was trying to say.
“It’s not going to make any more sense if I say it again. We’ll talk about what happened later. How’s the man in the conference room?”
“A couple nuggets shy of a Happy Meal, but insisting he isn’t going to say a word until you and Carson join us.
” Ronan didn’t like this one bit. An unhinged man insisting on speaking with Ten didn’t sit right with him and that was before Ronan considered that the man had been yelling about being murdered. What the hell was going on?
“Before we go in to see this man, there’s something you need to know.” Ten exchanged an uncomfortable look with Carson.
“What is it?” Ronan’s stomach tumbled like he was riding a rollercoaster.
“My gift isn’t working.” Ten’s eyes were on his shoes as he spoke.
Ronan set a hand under Ten’s chin, angling it up so he could look his husband in the eye. “What happened?”
“It was that man, Dan Rogers, the one who insisted on seeing me today for double my usual fee.”
“Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?” Ronan’s hands curled into fists. If that man had laid so much as a finger on Tennyson, he was going to pay.
“Like I said, I’ll explain it all later. I’m still processing what happened. He transferred a burst of emotion and images and it blew out my gift like an overloaded transformer. I’m not going to be of any use to you in there. I won’t be any use to that man either.”
“Bullshit,” Ronan said, wrapping Ten into a hug. “You’re sharper than half the detectives in the SPD without your gift. Let’s just get through this meeting and then I want to hear all about what happened with that man.”
“Me too,” Carson said, sounding nervous.
“Deal,” Ten said. He headed for the conference room door which had been left open. Jude stood near the man trying to calm him down, but didn’t seem to be having any luck.
“Tennyson! Carson! Thank God you’re here.” The man took a seat, still clutching the piece of paper he’d been waving around in the shop.
Carson sat to the man’s left, while Ten took the seat to his right. Ronan and Jude sat opposite.
Ronan took out his notebook and grabbed his pen. “We’re all here, Mr.?”
“Jones. Paul William Jones,” he said, sounding as if everyone in the room should know who he was.
Ronan frowned. He’d heard that name before. But how? Where? “You have us at a disadvantage, Mr. Jones. I’m afraid I don’t know who you are.”
The others nodded their agreement.
“I was the warden at MCI-Cedar Junction before it was shut down by the state.” Jones started back and forth between Jude and Ronan.
“That’s right,” Ronan said. “I’m used to seeing you in your uniform.
It’s been a while since the prison was shut down and even longer since the last time we’ve been there.
” The Walpole prison had closed not a moment too soon in Ronan’s eyes.
It had shuttered operations due to the low number of inmates serving there, along with the high maintenance costs of running a seventy year old detention facility.
The first time he’d visited the prison had been with Tennyson when they’d been asked by Tank Hutchins, proclaiming his innocence, to look into his murder conviction.
It was through that visit to the prison that they’d met Jude for the first time.
Ronan would also never forget how ill being near to the prison walls had made Tennyson.
He’d had to pull the Mustang over to the side of the highway so Ten could get sick.
He’d been violently ill every time they’d gone back to that wretched place.
From what Ronan remembered of Warden Jones, he’d been a hard, but fair man, at least in the eyes of the law enforcement community.
He had a feeling the inmates might have seen things differently.
“When my partner and I came into the shop, you were ranting about dying at midnight.” Ronan nibbled on his bottom lip trying to figure out how to phrase the question on his mind without offending Jones.
“You’ve had your share of threats from inmates over the years, working your way up from corrections officer to warden,” Jude began. “To be honest, you’re the last person I’d expect to act the way you were this morning.”
Thank fuck for Jude. If it had been left up to Ronan, he would have asked what the hell had caused the man to lose all the stuffing from his comforter. “Tell us what happened to bring you here today.”
“After the prison closed, I moved to Salem. I wanted to get out of Foxboro. I love the Patriots, but between the games and concerts at Gillette Stadium, it was too much with traffic being tied up and assholes parking on my lawn. My first ex-wife moved here after our divorce and I’d like to see if we could make a second go of it without my job getting in the way, so I moved here too.
Her husband didn’t like me coming around and he’s finally decided to do something about it.
” Jones held out the crumpled piece of paper.
Ronan reached across the table with his pen and dragged the page toward him. He was shocked to see the letter was written in fancy calligraphy with a stylus. There were tell-tale drops of black ink staining the paper in several spots.
The contents of the letter quickly captured Ronan’s attention. He read the words once, then twice. Sweet Jesus, what the hell was going on here? He cleared his throat and began to read. “Ding! Dong! You’re dead!”
Ten and Carson gasped in unison.
“Your time on this earth is near its end. Make amends, pray for forgiveness, for you die when the midnight bell tolls.” Ronan looked over at Jude, who didn’t look particularly concerned. “Do you have the envelope this letter arrived in?”
“It’s at home.”
Of course it was. “Was it stamped with a postmark or hand-delivered?”
“It had a Salem postmark,” Jones said.
“What’s your ex-wife’s name and address?” Jude asked.
“Janet Robinson. Her husband is Steve Robinson. They live at 63 Whittier Drive here in Salem.” The former warden stared down at his shaking hands.
“I spent my entire professional life being in charge. I enjoyed the power my position brought, but I never abused it. At least I didn’t think I did.
As for Janet, she hated the hours and the danger I was in every day when I went to work.
The last straw for her was when she said my personality changed.
She said I’d become domineering at home and that I was treating her like one of my inmates. ”
“Were you?” Ronan asked.
Jones paused, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess I was. Janet was a good wife. She worked as a legal secretary, took care of me and our home. I don’t know why I changed or why I couldn’t go back to the man I’d been when we met. Now that I’m off the job, I think I can go back to being that man again.”
Ronan wasn’t so sure. “Are Janet and Steve happily married?”
“I don’t know that I’d call their marriage happy. I know Janet misses me; the old me. I think she wants to give me another chance.” Jones sighed. “The one thing I can tell you for certain is that I don’t want to die.”
“I believe that, Mr. Jones.” Ronan turned to Ten and Carson, who both wore unreadable looks. “Can the two of you add anything?”
“Janet might want to give things a second try with you, but she’s worried you’ll sweet talk her now and turn back into a tyrant later.
She’s never fully gotten over you,” Carson said.
“I’m not seeing that Steve is a threat to you.
He’s not happy his wife might leave him, but he suspected this very thing could happen one day. ”
“Hearing you say that means a lot, Carson, but I would feel so much better if we could figure out who sent this letter in the first place.”
“May I touch the letter?” Carson asked. “I might be able to see the letter-writer or pick up information about him or her. I can’t imagine there are a lot of people who are still able to handwrite calligraphy.”
“I can,” Ten said. “We learned how to do it in art class back in high school.”
“I can’t let you touch the letter now, Carson.
We’d like to fingerprint it and swab for DNA.
” Ronan’s eyes were on Tennyson. He shot his husband a questioning look to which Ten shook his head.
Ten’s gift was still offline. He trusted Carson’s reading, but would feel so much more at ease if Ten had been able to see the same thing.