by Pandora Pine
Over the last few months, he’d gotten especially close with Truman Wesley’s family. Truman was married to Carson Craig, who was not only Tennyson’s best friend, but was being mentored by Tennyson as well. After a bit of a harrowing courtship in which Carson took a bullet which had been intended for Truman, the couple had just become parents to triplets, which had been conceived via invitro fertilization, back in February.
Tennyson shook his head no before bending double and trying to take a deep breath.
Ronan relaxed a bit. “You? Are you all right?” Hesitating for a brief second, Ronan reached out and set his hands on Ten’s shoulders, lifting him upright so he could see into Tennyson’s dark eyes. His lover looked like shit. Tennyson was about 5’9” which was about half a foot shorter than himself. Ten’s dark eyes mirrored the hurt and sleepless nights he saw every time he looked into his own blue orbs the mirror.
“What then? What is it?” Ronan cupped the side of Ten’s face with his left hand. It felt so damn good to hold his lover again, but the psychic flinched at the contact before knocking Ronan’s hand away. His eyes reflected not the anger that was there the last time they saw each other, but something else.
“Justin Wilson. We have to find Justin Wilson. He came to me last night. Was sitting on my bed when I woke up. Showed me Justin Timberlake and the volleyball from Castaway and then started bleeding all over my bedroom floor. Asked me to find his murderer and then vanished.” Tennyson sucked in a deep breath, his panicked look now replaced by one of sheer determination.
Ronan blinked a couple of times in shock. If Tennyson was saying these things to just about any other cop in the room after his dramatic entrance, they’d be calling for the paramedics and then for an open bed in a psych ward. “Come sit down.”
Obviously talk of their fractured relationship was going to have to wait for later. Ronan sat Tennyson down in the chair next to his desk before walking over to the water cooler and getting him a paper cup filled with lukewarm Poland Spring. “Take a sip and then start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.” He offered Tennyson a warm smile. God, he’d missed this man so much. There was so much he needed to tell him, but it would all have to wait until Ten unraveled the mystery of Justin Wilson.
Ten nodded and surprisingly obeyed. Draining the cup, he took a deep breath and fished a brightly colored crystal out of his pocket, which he rubbed between his right thumb and the side of the first knuckle of his index finger.
Not able to help himself, Ronan snorted. If he had a nickel for every fluorite crystal Tennyson had handed him over the course of their relationship, he could buy a small island in the Caribbean. Ten was forever slipping one of the rainbow-colored anxiety-busting rocks into his hand or pocket to help him find his Zen.
“This is the spirit that has been visiting me for a few months now but can’t speak yet,” Tennyson started.
Ronan remembered hearing the story a few times now. He didn’t fully understand the whys and hows of spirit communication from the other side, but remembered Tennyson saying this was the ghost who short-circuited his ability to read what the young man was try to tell him. “He visited you last night?”
“Yes. He’s learned how to speak through images and has better control over the information he’s sending me. I only got one image at a time, this time.”
Ronan studied his lover. He didn’t look unduly tired. The last time this spirit visited and Ronan had been there, Ten hadn’t been able to get out of bed all day. He’d had to baby his lover, practically spoon-feeding him chicken soup with tiny oyster crackers.
Tennyson’s work with the spirit world was a part of their daily lives as a couple and was just another stress they had to learn to deal with. Ronan was ashamed to admit it was another thing that led to their fight two weeks ago. Spirits were everywhere. Finding a person in the physical world who could speak to them was not something they found every day and they took full advantage of Tennyson.
There were always messages to relay from the other side and Tennyson was always more than happy to do it. This, more often than not, resulted in missed movie times, late dinners, and no sex. Ronan knew being upset at changes in plans was juvenile when the people they’d met were grieving, but he had needs too. Of course, none of those needs were getting met now and he was lonelier than ever before, but he was going to fix that, just as soon as they got to the bottom of who Justin Wilson was.
“Okay so he showed you an image of Justin Timberlake?” Ronan prompted.
“Right and then when I asked him if Justin was his first name, he nodded. Same with the image of the volleyball. He agreed that Wilson was his last name.” Ten took a deep breath. He had a determined look in his eyes. “Then this is where the story gets weird.”
Gets weird? If Ten were telling this story to anyone but him, it would have been weird from word one. He just nodded silently and let Tennyson tell the story.
“His clothes have been changing since I met him. It’s always the same outfit. Jeans and a grunge band tank. Over his visits, the outfit is morphing into what it looked like during his attack and then last night, what it looked like when he died. Ronan,” Tennyson reached a hand out to cover the detective’s, “this has never happened before.”
That old familiar thrill of attraction zinged through Ronan’s body. His slumbering cock started to wake up. Now was, of course, not the time for that, but there was no telling his sex-starved dick that this was a false alarm. Abort, asshole…
“What’s never happened before? The spirit changing its appearance?” From what he remembered, it was usual for Ten to see a ghost more than once unless the set of circumstances were unique.
Tennyson nodded absent-mindedly before shaking his head. “It kind of reminds me of the old Wolfman movies where the technology sucked and you’d see the time-lapse filming of Lon Chaney’s transformation from Larry Talbot into the Wolfman.”
Ronan laughed. They’d spent a week back in February after the conclusion of the Michael Frye case at Captain Fitzgibbon’s cabin on Cape Cod. There was no cable television, but there was the captain’s extensive monster movie collection. They’d watched some of the tamer flicks, which included the old black and white Universal monster movies.
“I need you to check missing persons reports to see if Justin’s name is there.” Tennyson sounded earnest, like they didn’t have a moment to lose.
Ronan’s fond smile over his and Tennyson’s week on the Cape faded. Justin Wilson was the reason Tennyson was here, sitting in his usual seat at Ronan’s desk, talking to him like this was the old days.
Nodding, Ronan shifted away from Ten and moved back to the computer, which of course was taking it’s sweet-ass time in loading the page he needed to see. Once it was finally ready to use, he typed Justin’s name into the search bar and hit the button. He had no hope that the computer would get a hit on the name.
Seconds later one search result was returned. Shaking his head, Ronan clicked on it and was looking at the picture of a young, blond man holding a small dog and smiling. “Is this him?” Ronan turned his monitor toward Tennyson.
“Jesus Christ. That’s him. What does it say?” Ten moved his chair closer to Ronan.
“Justin Wilson, born in July of 2000, so that would make him eighteen years old now.”
“He wasn’t that old when he died though. I’d guess he was about seventeen. Maybe sixteen.”
Jesus Christ was right, Ronan thought. “He was reported missing by a friend of his. Kid named Keegan Mills. There’s no address listed for him here in the report. Okay, so Justin wasn’t reported missing by his parents who live in Hamilton, which is up on the North Shore. Rich community. Which is odd.”
Tennyson looked confused. “What’s odd? That the town Justin is from has money? Or that it wasn’t his parents who reported him missing?”
“Yes, all of that but also that this is a handsome, white boy that went missing and I don’t remember hearing anything about this on the local ne
ws. Do you?” Without bothering to wait for an answer, Ronan pulled up an internet browser and started a search for the young man’s name. “Nothing. No search results returned at all.”
Tennyson still looked confused. “What does that mean?”
“To my cop brain, it means a couple of things: drugs or homophobic parents with a runaway gay son.”
3
Tennyson
It was odd for Tennyson to be back at Boston Police Headquarters. He hadn’t been here at the precinct since his final rounds of interviews wrapped up for the Michael Frye case. During the last stages of that investigation, Tennyson had been kidnapped from this very building by the boy’s deranged killer.
The events that followed his abduction were what led, in his mind anyway, to the state of his and Ronan’s relationship now. Even still, Ten couldn’t help grinning when he’d thought back to the way they’d met in January.
Ronan had been at the end of his rope on the Michael Frye case. The five-year-old boy had gone missing from his South Boston front yard in October of 2010 without a trace. The case had been cold for seven years when it had been assigned to Ronan.
With no leads left to process or witnesses left to interview, Ronan had taken the unusual step of consulting a psychic to help find the missing child. Tennyson, for his part, had just assisted the Scituate Police Department with a missing child case of their own. With that boy back safe in his parents’ arms, Ten’s face had been all over the local news.
It hadn’t been love at first sight when the detective walked into West Side Magick to ask for Tennyson’s help. Ronan had been defensive and skeptical of Tennyson and his gifts. That attitude had softened over time, while the wildfire attraction between them had exploded into a full-fledged conflagration.
They’d each had their own healing to do after the Michael Frye case ended in dramatic fashion, but Ronan had seemed unwilling or somehow unable to do the work necessary to find himself again. It hadn’t been easy, but two weeks ago Tennyson had made the decision to walk away from Ronan and the relationship they’d been building together.
He didn’t anticipate seeing Ronan again so soon after issuing his ill thought out ultimatum, but he couldn’t let Justin Wilson’s spirit suffer when he knew Ronan was uniquely qualified to help. Whatever was or, more to the point, was not going on between the two of them could wait until they figured out what the story was with Justin.
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Tennyson tried to refocus on Justin’s situation and not his own. “You think my nighttime visitor was a street kid who met a bad end?”
Ronan shot Ten a sad look. “What other reason is there for wealthy, white parents to not have raised a human cry for their missing son?”
Tennyson knew his own parents wouldn’t have looked for him either if he’d run away after they’d disowned him. “What’s our next step then?”
Reaching out a tentative hand, Ronan set it on top of Tennyson’s. “I know this hits close to home for you.”
Ten nodded, comforted by Ronan’s touch. That didn’t matter right now. What mattered was Justin Wilson.
“Did you get any idea from Justin in any of your meetings with him where he died?”
“The only thing I can remember from his picture dump into my brain was seeing a naked body in a frozen field.” Tennyson shivered, despite the warm temperature of the squad room.
“That doesn’t give us much to go on.” Ronan pulled his hand back from Tennyson’s. He went back to his computer and started hunting and pecking on his keyboard.
Tennyson watched Ronan’s face while he worked. He knew his former lover was looking for John Doe bodies dumped under similar circumstances. The only break, so far as Ten could see, was that the body he’d seen in the vision from Justin was in a frozen field, which limited when it could have been placed there.
“Jesus Christ,” Ronan muttered, getting to his feet and hurrying over to the printer.
That didn’t sound good. Ten watched with interest while Ronan collected a stack of papers and walked back.
“There are twenty-five John Does,” Ronan said with defeat in his voice.
“From when to when?” Tennyson realized his question sounded ridiculous, but knew Ronan understood him.
“The missing person’s report said the last time Justin Wilson’s friend saw him alive was two days before he was reported missing. I used that as my starting date and yesterday as my ending date.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Twenty-five unidentified young men with no one to claim their bodies.
“And that was just in Boston proper.”
“What do you mean?” Even though Tennyson had lived in Massachusetts for twelve years, he still wasn’t a master in Bay State geography.
“Well, I looked within Boston city limits, but there are other small towns that make up Boston as a whole. There’s Roxbury, Dorchester, Southie, East Boston, Charlestown, Jamaica Plain…” Ronan trailed off. “See what I mean? I used Boston as my jumping off point because that’s where the report was filed.”
Tennyson knew there were more small towns that made up Boston as a whole: Roslindale, Allston, Brighton and Hyde Park, just to name a few more. “So, there could be more bodies?”
“There are always more bodies, Ten.” Ronan shook his head. “That’s the first thing you learn at the Police Academy. Crime never sleeps, never takes a day off.”
Tennyson knew there were always more bodies. More spirits to be exact. Eventually, they all made their way to him.
“There are also more towns. Just because the missing person’s report was filed in Boston doesn’t mean that his body was dumped in the city. Hell, I can’t think of too many wide-open fields here in Boston.”
“We’re going to need to work this case together then.” Tennyson knew he was stating the obvious. What he didn’t know was if his always stubborn, sometimes illogical, former lover would agree to work with him again.
Ronan looked at Tennyson with his head tilted to the side as if he were measuring the words he was about to say very carefully. Under any other circumstances, Tennyson would laugh at the look on Ronan’s face, but with the state of Justin Wilson’s soul and physical remains in the balance, there was a lot riding on the next words to come out of Ronan’s mouth.
“You think that’s wise? Us teaming up again.” The look on Ronan’s face said he didn’t think that was wise at all.
It was a fair question. “Justin came to me because he knew I could help him. I came to you because I knew you could help me. I know we’re going through some tough shit right now, Ronan, but I know you’re the kind of man who steps in to help when innocent victims need you.”
“We were able to work the Michael Frye case because it was assigned to me by Captain Fitzgibbon. I can’t imagine he’s going to want me to go off on this wild goose chase about Justin Wilson when I haven’t solved Rebecca Tyler’s twenty-year-old murder yet.”
Tennyson’s face broke into a wide grin. “Well if that’s all that’s holding you back from agreeing to work with me then the answer is simple.”
“Oh, is it now, Nostradamus?” Ronan grinned around the old nickname he’d given Ten.
“The boyfriend killed her.” Tennyson made a motion like he was dusting his hands off.
Ronan shook his head. “Sorry to burst your bubble, Witch City Medium, but Ralph Scott was on a fishing boat, ten miles out to sea when Rebecca was killed. We have sworn affidavits from every member of the crew of the Lucky Lucille to attest to the fact that Ralph was on that boat.”
“I know,” Tennyson said to the thin air next to him. “You’d think that after I solved a murder case for him single-handedly, he’d listen to me.” Tennyson shrugged. “Watch this.” He waggled his eyebrows at the empty space next to him before turning back to Ronan. “Roger Scott was on the Lucky Lucille. Ralph Scott was murdering his girlfriend, Rebecca Tyler. He used his favorite haddock filleting knife to kill her.”
“I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch. T
wins?” Ronan looked stunned. “That’s the oldest cliché in the book.”
“Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. Now that your case is solved, Columbo, what do you say to working with me to find out what happened to Justin Wilson. Partners, again?”
Ronan snorted, looking more sure of himself. “Partners again.”
4
Ronan
Three days later, Ralph Scott was locked in a cell at the Suffolk County Jail awaiting arraignment on murder charges. It had taken a little convincing on Captain Kevin Fitzgibbon’s part, but after Ronan played up how Tennyson had solved another cold case, the captain finally agreed to allow Ronan some time to look into Justin Wilson’s disappearance and possible murder.
Ronan had grown up in a single-parent family. His father had skipped out on him and his mother when he was little. Life had been a struggle, but growing up with Erin O’Mara had been a blessing. His mother had been there for him when he’d come out, hugging him close and promising to support him no matter what.
It hadn’t been like that for Tennyson. Ronan knew the psychic had grown up in a more privileged household in terms of money and had a bedroom full of toys, but when push had come to shove, both of Ten’s parents had shoved him out of their home and out of their lives when he’d worked up the courage to come out to them.
Ronan had made a pretty big leap assuming that Justin Wilson was a gay teenage runaway, but it would explain a lot of things, chief among them why his parents had not reported him missing, and why a friend had. Street kids were notorious for banding together and keeping a close eye on each other.
Ronan took a deep breath as he turned his red Mustang down the familiar streets of Salem, Massachusetts. In the two weeks he’d been away, more of the winter snow pile had melted and the trees lining Essex Street had started to come into bud. It wouldn’t be long before spring would be in full bloom. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be around to see it.