“You’re welcome. Please let me know if you have any other questions.” Gathering her laptop, Dr. Spaulding left the room.
“Well, that gets us absolutely nowhere.” Jude shut his notebook with a slap.
“We knew this was a longshot at best,” Fitzgibbon said. “Medical examiners do the most basic blood tests. The county and state would be angry if they requested expensive and timely blood tests on someone who died from a heart attack. If poisoning was suspected, then tests would be run, but with our four potential victims, there was no need.”
“How are things with you and Ten? You know, with him not being here this morning.” Jude wore a guilty look, as if he were uncomfortable asking about Ronan’s marriage.
“Everly had her annual physical this morning, that’s why Ten isn’t here. As for the two of us, we’re okay, but I’m an asshole.”
“We already know that,” Fitz said with a grin. “Care to be more specific?”
“Ten has incredible gifts, we all know that. When he works on cases with us, we trust him implicitly.” Ronan sighed.
“But you came for him when he suggested Cisco could have killed Jefferson McGrath,” Jude said softly.
“Yeah, I did,” Ronan agreed, “which makes me an even bigger asshole. If Ten had suggested any other member of the Salem Police was a killer, aside from Cisco and the three of us, my reaction would have been completely different.”
“Not that you need me to tell you, but you’ve always been emotional, Ronan,” Fitz said, with no trace of his usual sarcasm. “Most of the time your sensitivity is an asset to our investigations, but in this case, you instantly ruled out a potential suspect and hurt your marriage. Don’t get me wrong, Jude and I aren’t perfect angels. We’ve both been guilty of the same things ourselves.”
“But none of thoserareinstances affected our husbands.” Jude waggled his eyebrows.
“I hear you.” Ronan shoved his notebook in his pocket and stood up. He hated talking about his feelings. He knew what he’d done and said to Ten was wrong. He also knew he needed help dealing with his emotions causing him to fly off the handle, with Ten and at work. Fitzgibbon was right, because of his relationship with Cisco, he decided his friend couldn’t possibly be a killer, when the cold hard truth of the matter could very well be the complete opposite.
It was possible Cisco Jackson was a killer. Ronan was going to do everything in his power to prove that wasn’t the case, but if it was, he’d slap the cuffs on Cisco himself.
10
Tennyson
Ronan was probably going to kill Ten, that was if Jude and Fitz didn’t get to him first. After all the work they’d done to identify possible victims whose deaths matched up with the circumstances surrounding Jefferson McGrath’s demise,the detectives had identified four possible suspects. A retired detective. A public defender. A jailer. The chief of police.
All four men were public figures, most of them beloved. Fitzgibbon said their investigation had to be by the book. Unimpeachable. After Ronan’s angry reaction to Cisco being a possible killer, Ten realized they needed outside help. Unbiased help. The kind of help that included the secrecy only attorney/client privilege could provide. When Ten picked up the phone to call Bradford Hicks, the Boston defense attorney Jude worked for prior to moving to Salem, he was certain the man wouldn’t remember who he was. Not only had Hicks remembered him, but was eager to help when Ten explained the situation and his plan.
“They’re back,” Ten said, walking into the conference room where Hicks and his new investigator sat. He hadn’t known when Ronan, Fitz, and Jude would be back from the medical examiner’s office, so he’d had to guess on a meeting time. Thankfully, Hicks had only been kept waiting for fifteen minutes, not that he cared, billable hours accrued no matter what.
“Ten, what’s going on? Why the emergency meeting?” Ronan asked, as he walked into the room. It only took a beat for him to recognize Ten’s guest. “Brad! How the hell are you?”
“Can’t complain.” He shook hands with Ronan. “Jude! It’s good to see you.”
Jude hugged his former boss. “Brad, I don’t think you’ve met Kevin Fitzgibbon. He was captain of Boston’s cold case unit when we worked the Hutchins case and now he serves the same role here in Salem.”
“Good to meet you.” Brad shook his hand as well. “This is Ashton Dokes, my new investigator. He took Jude’s place in my law firm when he pulled up stakes and moved up here.”
As all of the introductions were being made, Ten had gotten up to shut the door. He didn’t want any of the customers in the shop or down the block to hear the holy hell Fitz was going to raise when he realized what Tennyson had done.
“Are you guys up here working a case?” Jude asked. “I wish I’d known you were coming, we could have met for lunch.”
Brad turned to Tennyson. “I am working on a case, but before I get into it, Ten needs to tell you why I’m here.”
Ten’s heart hammered in his chest. “Don’t kill me, but I knew we needed help with Jefferson McGrath.”
The room was dead silent. All three detectives sat with confused looks on their faces. “Each of the men we’ve listed as suspects are high profile. Fitz said this investigation needed to be above reproach and I thought the best way to do that was to go outside our Salem family.”
“What exactly did you do, Ten?” Fitz asked, sounding curious, but with an undertone of danger.
Ten knew he was skating on very thin ice. “I called Brad, Venmoed him a dollar, and explained the situation. Since I’m now his client, he can’t reveal anything we spoke about. I gave him the names of our four suspects and asked if Ash could do a little background on them.”
“I don’t know if I should kiss you or kill you,” Ronan said.
