by Pandora Pine
DEAD SPEAK
By
Pandora Pine
Dead Speak
Copyright © Pandora Pine 2018
All Rights Reserved
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Digital Edition: January 2018
For T.M.:
You inspire me every day with your kindness and friendship. Your love of all things paranormal was the springboard for this series.
PROLOGUE
Ronan
June…
Boston was suffering through day eight of an unseasonable early summer heat wave. With rising temperatures came rising tempers. Rising tempers always brought an increase in calls to 9-1-1.
This particular call-out to H Street in South Boston had included members of 48th precinct homicide unit due to the volume of emergency calls. The 48th didn't usually arrive on-scene until after the bullets finished flying, contrary to what programs like Law & Order: SVU portrayed on television.
A man had his family barricaded inside their townhouse and was holding them at gunpoint. Concerned neighbors had heard Manuel Garcia shouting in English and Spanish that he was going to shoot his wife and three small children. They’d called the cops.
Detective Ronan O’Mara was sweating his balls off. Positioned behind a large oak tree in Manuel Garcia’s South Boston backyard, he could feel sweat trickling down his spine to soak into his already sodden black boxer briefs.
He was dressed in a blue button down and navy trousers with his Kevlar vest secured tightly over his chest and stomach. It wasn’t his usual detective garb or the ninety-five degree temperature in the shade that was making him sweat bullets. It was the fact that these kinds of domestic situations had the tendency of going downhill fast and ruining families.
By raising his voice and reaching for his gun, the dirt bag inside the house had fucked his family over forever. His kids would never forget the day their father held a gun on them. His wife, if she had half a brain in her head, would pack their things once the BPD got this guy in custody and run as far away from her husband as possible then file for divorce. Some things were cut and dry like that.
His own marriage and subsequent divorce hadn’t been. Eight weeks after the papers were signed, Ronan was still trying to figure out what the hell had gone so wrong, so fast.
Two months ago, Ronan had it all, a handsome husband, who was also a homicide detective, a nice townhouse in an up-and-coming neighborhood in Southie, a kitchen table littered with brochures from local adoption agencies, and a sweet, newly restored 1968 Ford Mustang fastback painted candy-apple red. Once the envy of every couple he knew, now his marriage was nothing but a floating turd in the sewer of life.
All he had left now was the car, which was parked in front of his shitty one-bedroom apartment in an equally shitty Dorchester neighborhood, that was most definitely not up-and-coming.
The one thing that the shitty studio apartment in the shitty Dorchester neighborhood had was a brand new bottle of Jameson waiting for him in the run down and dented refrigerator. Ronan wasn’t an alcoholic. Well, not yet anyway. He still wasn’t used to sleeping without Josh in bed next to him, his soft snores lulling Ronan to sleep.
The Jameson was just a balm on his battered heart to get him through to when he could finally sleep alone. At least that was the line he sold himself every night when he tucked his buzzed body into bed.
His father had been a useless, wastrel of a no-good drunk, according to Ronan's sainted mother. He had no idea if this was actually true or not. John O'Mara was long gone by the time Ronan could walk.
His mother, Erin, had passed away from a brain aneurysm two weeks after he graduated from the police academy. She'd never met Josh and thankfully hadn't been there when the relationship had crumbled down around him two months ago.
"You see anything, O'Mara?" His partner, Tony Abruzzi's voice crackled through his earpiece.
"Only a view of the kitchen. All I can see is the refrigerator." He swiped the back of his hand across his sweat-soaked forehead, quickly wiping it against his pants.
Tony was situated in the next door neighbor's yard, taking cover behind the wooden fence separating the small plots of land. The row houses were all joined on H Street. There wasn't a break in the buildings until East 7th Street crossed H, about two blocks down. He and Tony were the only two detectives stationed out back.
Realizing what a precarious position he and Tony were in should the suspect make a break for it out the back door, Ronan cleared his throat, about to ask Captain Davidson for some extra bodies to help secure the back of the house.
He'd heard the call over the police band radio announcing the arrival of SWAT about fifteen minutes ago. Negotiations were also ongoing with the Hostage Recovery Team. "Captain, Abruzzi and I are alone back here-"
The unmistakable pops of gunfire stopped Ronan's request for backup in its tracks. Pulling his gun out of its holster he chambered a round and got into position, readying himself in case the suspect should charge out the back door.
"Prepare to breach!" Came the shout from the SWAT commander.
"Jesus, be ready," Tony warned through Ronan’s earpiece.
All Ronan was focused on now was going home at the end of his shift. Nothing else mattered. Not his broken marriage. Not the unopened bottle of Jameson. Not the asshole inside the house who'd possibly been shooting up his innocent family. Just stay alive and go home.
"Why’d you make me do it, Shelly?" Came an outraged shriek. "Why’d you make me do it?" Ronan could see a panicked looking man dart into the kitchen. The bald man was wearing a blood splattered wife-beater and was holding his head with both hands. In his right hand was a Beretta.
"Drop the gun and come out with your hands up, Manuel!" Ronan shouted.
At the sound of his voice, Manuel started to fire wildly out the kitchen window. The glass shattered.
Too late, Ronan pulled his bulky body back behind the oak tree. Fire sizzled down his left arm and he knew he'd been hit.
His heart was pounding so hard, he couldn't hear anything else going on around him. The cacophony of voices coming through his earpiece faded into a dull roar, kind of like the way the breaking waves of the ocean sounded at Salisbury Beach after an Atlantic hurricane passed offshore.
Knowing he had to get it together or this motherfucker was going to kill him, he chanced a look around the tree and could see Manuel tearing down the poured concrete stairs and into his backyard. He was heading right for the tree.
"Gonna take your fucking head off, asshole!" he shouted. His face was a mask of fury.
"Not today," Ronan said calmly. He took careful aim, keeping as much of his body behind the tree as possible and pulled the trigger twice. Blood and brains exploded from Manuel's head before his body melted to the ground.
"Officer down! Officer down!” Ronan managed to shout as he sank to the ground when he saw Tony vault over the fence separating the yards. He tried to put pressure on his wound, but he was losing strength fast now that his adrenaline rush was fading.
"Jesus, fuck! What the hell were you thinking?" Tony shouted, pulling a pressure bandage from his belt and secured it around Ronan's left shoulder.
Ronan felt himself starting to slip toward unconsciousness. Maybe that was why Tony sounded so pissed at him. "The fucker shot me, said he was going to blow my head off. He just killed his family."
Tony’s brow creased in what looked like confusion. "Dude, Garcia didn't kill anyone. The gunshots w
e heard were fired into the ceiling. He wanted to draw a SWAT response. Suicide by fucking cop, man." Tony shook his head. "It all came over the radio. The hold-fire command came over repeatedly."
Ronan shook his head. He hadn't heard anything of the sort. He would never have fired his weapon if he'd heard the command. He would have tried to talk Garcia down instead. In twelve years as a member of the Boston Police Department he'd never once fired his service weapon in the line of duty and now he'd just killed a man.
If what Tony was saying was the truth, Detective Ronan O'Mara was totally fucked. He blinked up into his partner’s brown eyes and let the darkness take him.
1
Ronan
January…
Ronan's eyes felt like they were each filled with ten pounds of sand. No matter how many times he'd read the witness statements and looked at the photographs of the missing and presumed dead boy's bedroom, nothing was catching his eye that hadn't caught the eyes of the previous detectives who'd worked this cold case over the last seven years.
Taking a swig out of his room temperature cup of coffee, Ronan surveyed the squad room. At just past 11pm the place was a virtual ghost town. All of the homicide detectives he used to work with had bugged out a few hours ago and if he stuck around much longer, they'd all be back, freshly showered after a night in bed with their wives or God knew who else.
Ronan sighed. The last six months after the shooting on H Street hadn't been easy on him or on the department.
His shoulder wound had been a through-and-through. He'd spent two nights in the hospital, surrounded by bouquets of flowers and the friends who had his back. They'd done the best they could to keep Internal Affairs out of his room and off his case until the doctors had taken him off the morphine drip for the pain.
After those quiet two days, everything turned on its head. He'd spent days being interrogated over the shooting. Reporters waited for him trying to get an exclusive interview outside the squad house. More waited to ambush him outside his shitty apartment in Dorchester.
The worst part, aside from being stripped of his badge and gun, was not being able to communicate with Tony Abruzzi and his wife Carlotta. They'd been there for him when Josh left, making him meals and letting him crash on their couch when the pain of being alone was just too much to bear.
In those first few weeks, he'd been on his own. Barely sleeping, barely eating, mostly drinking. Friendless and completely alone.
Inevitably a lawsuit had been filed by the Garcia family against the Boston Police Department and Ronan for wrongful death. The suit had been dismissed after it had been ruled that Ronan’s lethal shots had been fired in defense of his life after Manuel Garcia shot first.
In the end, the shoot had been ruled clean by Internal Affairs. Ironically, it had been the bullet in the shoulder that saved him, as the board ruled he’d been in eminent danger when he fired the shots that killed Manuel Garcia. It had been the drinking that sank him.
Still not willing to admit he was an alcoholic, Ronan was given two choices: rehab in the Sunshine State, while he served a ninety day paid suspension while the shooting was investigated or be relieved of duty, no pension, no benefits.
Not a stupid man by any means, Ronan went to Florida. He learned to meditate and walked on the beach for three months.
He'd been reinstated to the Boston Police Department when he'd returned to Massachusetts in October, but not as a homicide detective.
"Motherfucker," Ronan muttered to himself, after spilling the dregs of his now cold coffee. The spill dribbled off his desk to land on his tan pants.
Motherfucker was a word he'd become well acquainted with in the two months since he'd been assigned to the cold case squad.
If he'd thought turning in his badge and gun was the lowest point of his career, he'd been wrong. Sitting in Captain Davidson's office after he’d gotten back from rehab and listening to how the department determined he'd be best placed in the cold unit had been a new all-time low for him. Everyone in the BPD knew the cold case unit was where careers went to die.
Getting up from his desk, he strolled into the break room where the television was permanently tuned to Channel 5, Boston's ABC affiliate. Usually, he paid no attention to the news, but the man being interviewed was absolutely gorgeous. His dark eyes were glowing with happiness and pride, not usually something you saw on the nightly news, while his riot of dark curls blew around his cold-pinked cheeks.
At a quick glance the guy reminded Ronan of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, but there was no way a smoking hot babe like Kit Harrington would be doing a news interview in Boston.
Needing to know what was making the guy so damned happy, Ronan pressed the volume button on the remote control.
"How did you know where to find the missing Lanski boy, Tennyson?"
Oh... Ronan rolled his eyes. The story of some dime-store psychic from Salem finding a missing boy from Scituate had been the top news story all day. The other cold case detectives had been talking about it since the news broke around lunchtime.
Ronan should have noticed the banner under the handsome fruitcake's face which read, Tennyson Grimm, psychic. Led police to missing boy.
"He probably knew where to find the boy because he was the one who took the kid." Ronan shook his head and wet a paper towel to dab at the coffee stain on his pants.
"Well, John, I had a vision of a basement. I could see the boy in shackles and the next thing I knew I could see the number on the mailbox and the front door.” Tennyson grinned at the reporter with perfect white teeth.
Ronan snarled at the man on the television screen who was now explaining how his “gift” worked. “Gift, my rosy red ass!”
“I simply asked my spirit guide to show me the boy. I’d assisted the police a time or two here in Salem in small matters, but never in something as big as this before. I just got lucky that I was able to see where he was so clearly. It doesn’t always happen like that...” A darkness crept into Tennyson’s once vibrant chocolate-brown eyes.
The camera panned back to the news reporter. “Due to the viral nature of this case, RSN, the Reality Show Network is in town looking to sign Tennyson Grimm to a deal to showcase his talent on a national level. Reporting live from Salem, this is John…”
Ronan pressed the mute button. “What a crock of bullshit.”
There was a snort followed by laughter from the doorway of the break room. When Ronan turned around he saw his ex-husband, Josh Gatlin, leaning against the jamb like he didn’t have a care in the world. A cinnamon-flavored toothpick was sticking out of the left side of his mouth. Ronan’s breath caught in his throat like it always did when he saw Josh, but it was quickly tempered by the glint of gold shining on the third finger of his left hand.
His dark, slicked back hair looked the same as always. Ronan knew if he reached out to touch it, the locks would be stiff and hard from the globs of mousse and hair gel his ex meticulously applied after his shower, but before he got dressed.
While Ronan had been in rehab learning how to find his Zen, Josh had been busy knocking up and then marrying one of the badge bunnies who hung out at Nick’s Irish Pub, a local police watering hole, two blocks from the station house.
He took a deep, calming breath, not wanting to betray the riot of emotions barreling through his body. “Something funny, Detective Gatlin?”
“Yeah, I was just thinking you could use that nut job to help solve your cold case about that missing kid.” Josh took two quick steps into the room, invading Ronan’s personal space.
This was one of the tricks Josh often used with perps. Ronan had worked alongside his ex-husband for enough years to know all of the weapons in his arsenal. They’d been partners long before they’d been lovers and then husbands. Ronan raised an eyebrow, but other than that, didn’t move a muscle.
“Rumor has it, Ro, that you’re one step from being busted back down to patrol.” Josh raised a finger to course down the side of Ronan’s left cheek.
> It was almost like old times. Ronan could smell Josh’s spicy aftershave and the cinnamon from the toothpick. His spine tingled at his ex’s touch, but it was the hateful look in his icy blue eyes that broke the spell, that, and the memory of Josh shouting that he hated Ronan for making him the laughing stock of the department for being a gay cop in South Boston. “Take your fucking finger off me before I break it,” Ronan said in a low voice just above a growl. He took a cautionary step back just in case Josh continued to push his luck.
Josh burst into a sunny smile. “Still a dick, huh, Ro?” Josh patronizingly patted his cheek. “Guess it’s ‘cause you miss mine, huh?” Josh grabbed his package, waggling his eyebrows at Ronan before heading out the door. Ronan could hear him laughing as he walked away.
“Asshole,” Ronan muttered.
His mind cast back to the handsome psychic on television. Obviously, the man had nothing to do with the boy’s abduction, otherwise the Scituate Police would have arrested him too. Thinking he had something to do with the kidnapping was Ronan being a dick just like Josh said.
What if the curly-haired fruitcake could help with the disappearance of Michael Frye? What if Tennyson Grimm could help bring the now twelve-year-old boy home to his family like he did for the Lanski family?
Would Ronan be a fool to ask for Tennyson’s help?
Would he be a bigger fool not to?
2
Tennyson
“Wow!” Carson Craig marveled as he set a bag of Chinese food down on his mother’s reading table in the back room of West Side Magick, the storefront he and Tennyson Grimm now shared.
“Still a mob scene out there?” Tennyson ran a hand through his mop of curls before taking a seat and opening the bag of food.
“Yeah,” Carson grinned, his blue eyes sparkling. “People just want to catch a glimpse of the hero psychic.” Carson made air quotes over “hero psychic.”
“Oh, please. You’re the hero, saving Truman’s life a year ago by taking the bullet meant for him.” Tennyson handed Carson his usual lunch, the number seven special from Lotus Blossom, beef and broccoli with white rice.
