by Pandora Pine
“I’ll keep that in mind for when we’re looking for a place to retire in sunny Florida.”
“You want to retire to Florida?” Ten didn’t know that about his husband.
“Of course, don’t you? I don’t want to be in my sixties and still shoveling snow. You don’t have to shovel sunshine, Nostradamus. Didn’t you know that?” Ronan laughed at his own joke.
Tennyson laughed along with him. “Surprisingly, yes, I did know that. Can you imagine us retired? No more bullets flying at your body. No more trips to the ER. No more brown accordion files or excursions to the morgue, although, I will miss Vann Hoffman. He made the morgue fun.”
“That’s the first thing I look for in my coroner, a sense of humor.” Ronan slapped a hand on the steering wheel.
“What’s the second thing?” Ten couldn’t wait to hear this answer.
“Abs of steel. What else?”
“Of course.” Ten had never seen the good doctor without his blue scrub top but knew enough about the man to know there were abs to spare under it. “Vann was the medical examiner on the McAlpin case. We’re going to need to read his report at some point.”
“Agreed,” Ronan nodded. “What did you think about Tank? What were your impressions of him, beside what you read?”
Meeting and then reading Tank was another thing contributing to Ten’s queasy stomach. “I liked him. He’s a good man who didn’t kill anyone. I can’t imagine being arrested for a crime I didn’t commit and then being tried and convicted for it too.”
“The worst part though has to be knowing that your brother, your twin, no less, is the one who killed this woman.” Ronan shook his head. “You hear so much about the twin thing and how close identical twins are and I just can’t get over the fact that Tim is letting Tom rot in prison.”
“Let’s not string Tim up by the neck just yet. He could be innocent too. He had an alibi after all.” Ten found it hard to believe that one brother would do this to another, but he’d grown up as an only child and had nothing to base his theory of sibling loyalty on except reruns of The Brady Bunch and Eight is Enough.
“His wife was his alibi, Ten.” Ronan shot him a look of disbelief. “Spouses are notoriously bad alibi witnesses.”
“Are you kidding me, Ronan? No offense here, but if I thought you killed someone I wouldn’t want you in our home or sleeping in our bed. That would go double if we were parents. I can’t imagine Tim’s wife, Michelle, wanting him home with their three young sons if there was even a shred of doubt in her mind that he did this awful thing.”
“Come on, Ten. Don’t be so naïve. We watch those trashy daytime shows all the time where the wives are convinced their husbands are faithful to them and it turns out that the men are cheating on them left, right, and sideways.”
Ten snorted. “How exactly do you cheat on someone sideways?”
“I’ll show you tonight.” Ronan winked at his husband. “But before we can get to that, the first thing we need to do is talk to Fitzgibbon. Can you call him and put it on speakerphone?”
Ten dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number.
“Hey, Ten, how’s prison treating you? Any chance they decided to keep Ronan? I sure could use a few days off from his constantly running motor-mouth.” Kevin sounded downright jovial.
“Hilarious.” Ronan deadpanned. “That’s no way to treat your best detective, boss. Ten and I were just talking about living in Florida.”
“You were? Hell, why didn’t you say so! I’ll start writing your letter of recommendation now. Take my best detective, please!” Fitzgibbon laughed.
“Ten, take him off our Christmas card list, would you? And buy extra eggs and toilet paper when you go grocery shopping this week.” Ronan winked at his husband.
“It’s like working with preschoolers.” Ten shook his head. “We have intel for you, Cap.”
“Intel? Christ Ten, this isn’t the CIA. Or is it? Have you been drafted by The Company?” Fitzgibbon asked.
“That’s above your paygrade, Cap.”
Ten whacked Ronan’s shoulder. “You’re grounded, so hush. If you and Greeley don’t have any plans, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Ronan and I will fill you in on what happened.”
“Are you cooking, Ronan, or calling for take-out?” Kevin laughed.
“Probably calling for take-out. Why?” Ronan asked.
“No reason,” Fitzgibbon sounded relieved. “We’ll bring dessert. See you at six. Bye!” The phone beeped three times to signal Kevin had ended the call.
“What’s his problem?” Ronan sounded genuinely puzzled.
“No clue,” Ten said gently. Ronan had been taking cooking lessons from Truman, but so far only knew how to make three things. Everyone was full up on shrimp and grits, spaghetti and meatballs, and black bean chili. “You didn’t tell me Jude Byrne was so…” Ten was having a hard time picking out the right word to describe the difficult man. There were so many adjectives to choose from.
“Handsome?” Ronan supplied.
Ten turned to Ronan with his mouth hanging open. “Noo, that wasn’t the word I was going for.” That didn’t mean it was untrue though. Jude Byrne, with his leonine eyes and bad attitude was gorgeous, no doubt about it. There was something about him though that Ten couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Okay, open mouth, insert foot.” Ronan laughed. “What word were you going for?”
“He is handsome with those eyes. I’ll give you that. There’s something different about him, aside from his bad attitude.” Ten cocked his head to the side, still trying to puzzle out what he was trying to convey to Ronan.
“What do you mean different?” Ronan sounded curious.
Ten shook his head. It had been bothering him since he’d met the surly P.I., but there had been so much else going on in his head that he hadn’t had time to examine it fully until now. “I couldn’t read him, Ronan.”
Ronan looked confused. “What do you mean you couldn’t read him? Did he have his guard up?”
Ten shook his head no. “Some people are harder to read than others. Some shield their thoughts or try to hide things when I’m around. Jude was different though. This guy was a blank page.”
Ronan took his eyes off the road to give Ten a shocked look. “What does that mean? Is he a talent too and he’s blocking you?”
Ten grimaced, shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s it. I think there’s something more to it than that. I need to talk to Carson about him.”
“You’re freaking me out here, Ten. Is he dangerous?”
“I have no idea. I think we should do a little internet research on him and look him up in your criminal database at work on Monday. He’s a literal blank page, Ronan. I can’t tell if he’s friend or foe or something else entirely.”
It was the something else entirely that scared him.
15
Ronan
The first thing Ronan did when they got home, after taking Dixie out for a walk, was to look up Jude Byrne on the internet. The first and maybe the most interesting thing Ronan learned was that Jude wasn’t his real first name. “Uh, Ten?” Ronan carried his laptop into the kitchen where his husband was tidying up for their guests.
“Let me guess, Jude isn’t his real name?” Ten grabbed for a dish towel to dry his wet hands.
Ronan sagged. “I hate when you do that.”
Ten held his hands out in a who-me gesture. “What? Make an educated guess?”
“No, take the wind out of my sails. Did you know that’s what I was going to tell you or did you really guess?” Sometimes it just wasn’t any fun living with an all-knowing, all-seeing, oracle.
“I really guessed. Remember I told you that I couldn’t read him at all.”
Ronan was about to remind Ten that he was psychic and probably read him instead. Thankfully, the doorbell rang, saving him from sticking his foot in his own mouth. Again. Dixie barked and raced toward the front door. “Hi, Cap,” Ronan greeted wh
en he opened the door. “Hello, sweet Lola!” Ronan took Dixie’s sister from his boss and brought her into the house. Dixie danced at his feet.
“Hello to you too, Uncle Ronan. Don’t mind me. I just brought dessert.” Greeley grinned and headed toward the kitchen with a bakery box from Holy Cannoli.
“Hi, Greeley,” Ronan managed between dog kisses.
“You don’t look any worse for wear from your trip to Walpole.” Kevin sat down in the high-backed chair across from Ronan and the dogs.
“I’m fine. It’s Ten who had trouble.” Ronan’s look darkened. He remembered the way Tennyson had ordered him to pull over and way his entire body had shaken when he was getting ill on the side of the road.
“What do you mean trouble? Did someone try to hurt him?” Fitzgibbon was instantly in cop-mode.
Ronan shook his head. “No, nothing like that. He got really sick when the prison came into view. Ten said it had to do with the energy of the place. Sixty plus years of evil men leaving their residue on the place. He actually made me pull over so he could get sick.”
Fitzgibbon grimaced. “I had no idea that kind of thing could happen.”
“Neither did Tennyson until he was yelling at me to stop the car.” Ronan hoped to God they didn’t have to go back to visit Tank again. Or, if they did, that he could go alone.
“How did the reading go? Did Ten find out if Thomas Hutchins killed Lorraine McAlpin or not?” Kevin leaned forward to balance his elbows on his knees.
Setting Lola down on the floor, Ronan looked up at Fitzgibbon. “According to what Ten saw, Tank was home all night watching the Sox game just like he said. We did get two small leads. Tank thought he might have used the remote to pause the Red Sox game, so Jude Byrne is going to try to get access to Tank’s cable records. They might keep records of that kind of thing. Although with the way Tank’s luck has run here, I’m going to doubt the cable company can give us that kind of data, or if they can, it’s been wiped out after three years.”
“Jude Byrne? Is he the private investigator?”
“Yeah, he’s a bit of a wildcard in all of this. I had just thought he was an arrogant prick when I met him the other day, but then Ten said something to me on the way back today that has me wanting to dig deeper into his background.”
“What did he say?” Fitzgibbon sounded intrigued.
“Ten can’t read Jude at all. It’s not that Jude is blocking him or anything like that. Ten says he’s a literal blank page. He’s going to talk to Carson and Bertha about this phenomenon and see if they know anything about it.” Ronan hadn’t liked the look in Ten’s eyes when he was talking about this guy. He was equal parts freaked out and fascinated.
“Check into him on Monday, just don’t send up any red flags. Byrne isn’t the subject of this investigation, but to cover our own asses we have to make sure he isn’t wanted in any other criminal investigation and doesn’t have any warrants out for his arrest either.”
Ronan nodded.
“You said you had a couple of small leads. What’s the other one?”
“This is actually the more interesting of the two. Tank remembered logging on to his work computer to look at the Japanese Stock Market at 8pm the night of the murder. He said he made notes about some shares on a yellow legal pad on his coffee table. I told Tank that I’d look at the evidence inventory and see if we had the pad in custody. If we don’t, the lawyer told us that Tank’s twin brother has everything from his condo boxed up in a storage facility over in Somerville.”
Fitzgibbon was silent. He rubbed his hands together while he seemed to be thinking over what Ronan had told him. “Is there any chance Tank’s firm would still have a record of his time online that night?”
“It’s worth asking the question, don’t you think? I’m wondering if that request would be better coming from us or from Tank’s appeal lawyer? You said to bring everything we found out to you first, so I haven’t made a move on this evidence. I didn’t even check the inventory sheet to see if we have a yellow legal pad in evidence.”
“Let me think about who the request should come from. In the meantime, go check the inventory and see if we have the legal pad.” Fitzgibbon sat back in his seat.
Ronan crossed the room to the table where he’d stashed the Hutchins’ files. Dixie and Lola were at his heels. “Well, hello, ladies.” He stepped around them as he walked back to the couch with the files. Both dogs hopped up beside him when he sat back down. One on either side of him.
When he opened the first accordion folder, Lola stuck her head into the first partition. “Not helpful, honey.” Ronan pulled the folder away from her, only to come face to face with Dixie on his other side. She offered him a doggie grin before licking the side of his face.
Fitzgibbon burst out laughing. “This has to go on Facebook!” He had his phone up recording the whole thing. “My best detective being bested by puppies!” He was laughing so hard the phone was shaking.
Snarling his lip, Ronan dove into the file and found the inventory list. He scanned through it but did not see a yellow legal pad. “It wasn’t collected. So that means it’s probably in a box in that storage locker. How helpful will the notation be anyway? Unless Tank dated it?”
Fitzgibbon nodded. “In conjunction with proof from his company’s IT department showing he was online at that time and with whom, it could be corroborative, but alone it won’t be enough to get him a new trial.”
“Makes me wonder though why no one thought of this the first time around. Or why Tank didn’t remember himself.” Ronan scratched behind Dixie’s ears. Lola climbed into his lap and nosed her head under his other arm.
Kevin shrugged. “You know how those trials go. In the confusion and anger of it all, Tom might not have remembered going online and looking at the Japanese stocks. When you’re innocent, you think it’s all going to work out in your favor. He could have had a shit trial attorney or he could have had a good one who thought his client was innocent too. Then there was the DNA. I still can’t believe that with twins sharing the same genetic material the jury didn’t find room for reasonable doubt.”
That had bothered Ronan too. Tank Hutchins had no criminal background. Not one witness called to testify had a bad word to say about the man. The only shred of evidence against him was his DNA on the murder victim. This jury was not sequestered and there had been no rumors of trouble in the jury room. Usually stuff like that had a way of leaking out after the verdict, but nothing like that had ever come to light. The five men and seven women considered the facts in evidence, voted, and all agreed that Thomas Hutchins killed Lorraine McAlpin.
“I think the request for the IT records should come from the attorney. If I make the call, it’s going to look like the Boston Police Department is reopening the case, which we’re not doing.” Kevin sighed. “You’re putting me in a tough spot here, Ronan.”
“I know, Cap.” Ronan agreed. “Aside from the episode we were in about Michael Frye, you ever watch Dateline?”
Kevin shot him a confused look. “No, and I barely watched the episode we were in.”
“Bullshit!” Ronan laughed. “You’ve got it saved on your DVR! I saw it there the other night when I couldn’t sleep.”
“What’s your point, Ronan?” Fitzgibbon’s hackles were up.
“Aside from the fact that I’m a kick ass detective?” When Fitzgibbon’s frown only deepened, Ronan pressed on, “They talk about old cases on that show sometimes, where the wrong person was convicted. Whenever they interview the original detectives on the case, they always, to a man, stick by their original conclusion that the person they arrested was the murderer, even when there’s stone-cold, irrefutable proof that person is innocent of the crime.”
Fitzgibbon rolled his eyes. “You’re saying that you don’t want to be that detective when Dateline comes back to town to interview people for the McAlpin murder?”
“Something along those lines.” Ronan shook his head. “We’re in this job to arrest cri
minals. There’s no crime in admitting we made a mistake. Granted, this wasn’t our case.” Ronan pointed back and forth between himself and Kevin. “It was a BPD case with rock-solid DNA evidence. It just might be that we got it wrong. What was it that Thomas Jefferson said about letting guilty men go free?”
“It was Benjamin Franklin, and he said, ‘It is better that one hundred guilty men should go free than one innocent man should suffer.’ Or something along those lines. Not that I agree with the hundred guilty men part, but I see what point you’re driving toward. You do realize that I’ll be in for a whole lot of butt hurt when the commissioner gets wind of this off-the-books investigation, right?”
“I had no idea he swung that way!” Ronan grinned.
“Not funny, Ronan.” Fitzgibbon’s lips were curling into a smile.
“I know. I know. We’ll figure out how to spin it when the time comes. If the time comes. The Massachusetts Court of Appeals is notoriously stingy when it comes to overturning verdicts from the lower courts. From what I read in the trial transcript there was nothing glaringly wrong in any of the judge’s rulings or in the way Tank was represented. The only way he’s going to be granted a new trial is if new evidence comes to light.”
Fitzgibbon nodded. “I know, but I’ll be working on my letter of resignation anyway. On a positive note, I already know who my successor will be.” His grin was as wide as the Charles River.
“You do?” Ronan had a sinking feeling about this.
Fitzgibbon pointed at Ronan. “There’s no better man for the job. I’ll even leave a new bottle of lube in my top drawer for all the butt hurt you’ll be in for.”
16
Tennyson
“Now I know how Charlie Brown feels, Uncle Ten.” Greeley pouted as he walked into the kitchen carrying the box from Holy Cannoli.
“Did someone pull a football away just as you were about to kick it?” Ten took the bakery box from him, setting it on the counter, and gave the sulky teenager a hug.
