by Pandora Pine
“Thank you,” Tennyson said. He sounded as if he didn’t know how to respond to Lincoln’s offer.
Ronan didn’t have to look at Ten to know he was blushing. Ten always ate up compliments about his gift. “We asked you in here today, Jace, to talk about the case that we’re investigating.”
“Oh, you mean about the street kids going missing?” He leaned forward in his seat, an eager look on his face.
Ronan nodded. “You seem to have a really close bond with the boys I met the other night.”
“Those kids don’t have anyone to look out for them, so I kind of act like a surrogate father to them when they are in the shelter.”
Ronan exchanged a nearly unreadable look with Ten. He wanted Jace to think the look meant more than it did. “Have you noticed any of your boys going missing?”
Jace shook his head. “Those kids, boys and girls, come and go. I used to know all of their names and faces, but it got too hard. I was constantly heartsick when they wouldn’t come back, or worse, when cops would come looking for them because they’d been accused of committing a crime.”
Oh, so Jace wanted to turn this around and blame the BPD, did he? Ronan raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Actually, I wasn’t a hundred percent truthful with you the other night. This case is about more than missing kids.”
“I don’t understand. If this isn’t about missing kids, what is it about?” Jace’s curious look morphed into one of confusion.
Ronan exchanged a wordless glance with Tennyson.
“We’re dealing with a serial killer.” Tennyson’s voice was level, betraying no hint of emotion.
Jace Lincoln didn’t move a muscle. His eyes darted back and forth between Tennyson and Ronan. Without warning, understanding dawned in his eyes and he exploded backward out of his seat, sending the chair crashing against the back wall. “Jesus fucking Christ! I’m not here for a friendly interview about the kids at my shelter. You think it’s me! You think I’m the killer!” Jace’s eyes were wild, his arms gesturing all over the place.
“Is it you?” Ronan asked easily. To be honest, he wasn’t expecting this sort of reaction at all. Do-gooders like Lincoln usually responded with a desire to help the cops catch the killer. He usually only saw these kinds of histrionics from guilty men.
“Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?” Lincoln practically screeched. “I’ve dedicated my life to these kids. I love my kids.”
“Why aren’t you married, Jace?” Tennyson asked, seemingly out of the blue.
Ronan turned to look at him. He’d gone way off-script and Ronan had a feeling Ten was reading something in their very emotional suspect. He was perfectly content to hand the steering wheel to Tennyson and let him drive the interview.
“That’s none of your fucking business, freak. Get out of my fucking mind.” Jace grabbed his head with both of his shaking hands as if the gesture could somehow keep Tennyson out.
“I’m not in your head,” Ten said simply. “I’m just wondering why a young, handsome, loaded man with a penchant for philanthropy is still single.”
“If you’re not in my head, how do you know I’m single?” Jace raged defensively.
“I read it in Boston Magazine.” Tennyson shrugged. “You were one of their Hot Thirty Under Thirty.”
“Oh.” Jace took a deep breath and seemed to settle a bit. Some of the wildness drained out of his eyes and his breathing wasn’t as ragged.
Tennyson got up from the table and grabbed the chair Jace had sent flying. He set it to rights and motioned for the upset man to have a seat. “That article played you up as one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors.”
Jace sighed. He sat back down and took a moment to compose himself. Running a hand through his dark hair, he seemed to study Ronan and Tennyson. “I’m so deep in the fucking closet I can practically see Narnia.”
Ronan sat up straighter. The kind of rage their killer was exhibiting could certainly be indicative of a closeted gay man angry at not being able to live an authentic life. Ronan jotted that down on his legal pad.
Tennyson made a sympathetic cooing sound. “I’ve been there too. What’s keeping you in the closet, your work?”
Jace’s barked out a bitter laugh. “My father. He doesn’t want my aberrant behavior to taint the Lincoln legacy.”
Ronan started to salivate. Being closeted plus having Daddy issues? Mama fucking Mia! This man was a psychiatrist’s wet dream in the flesh. If he’d brought the facts of this case to an FBI profiler he was certain they’d send back a picture of Jace Lincoln. Ronan wanted nothing more than to tear into this guy, but he’d hold back. Tennyson was getting more information with his conversational tact than he would with his adversarial one.
Jace threw his hands in the air. “I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s the twenty-first century. Who the hell gives a fuck anymore?”
You mean aside from all of the red states in the country? Ronan wisely kept that thought to himself. Tennyson was building rapport with Jace and he wasn’t about to spoil that with his big stupid mouth.
Tennyson leaned forward, a conspiratorial look in his eyes. “So, how do you get off? I mean you can’t always party with Mary Palm and her five sisters, right? Even if you switch it up and bat left-handed from time to time.”
Jace’s face broke into a grin he appeared to be trying hard to hold back. “Back Page and Craig’s List. I answer ads for anonymous hook-ups.”
Tennyson looked confused. “How does that work? Your face is all over the news and on magazine covers. How is it possible to hook-up without the guy not recognizing you?” He turned to Ronan and shrugged.
Jesus H. Christ, Ten could win a friggen Oscar with this performance. Ronan was going to owe him big time for this later. And he wasn’t going to mind paying the piper.
“Dark alleys, the back seat of my car. Shit like that.” Jace was blushing.
“What about hotel rooms?” Ten asked. “I mean rushed blow jobs in the back seat were hot when we were teenagers but now that we’re adults, don’t you want to spread out and get a bit more adventurous?”
“Fuck no!” Jace looks appalled. “If any of these pricks knew who I really was, they’d blackmail me to within an inch of my life.”
“You have money?” Ronan blurted out. Shit, that wasn’t the classiest way he could have asked that question.
Jace raised an elegant brow at him. “Yes, detective. I have money. I made a deal with the devil long ago.”
“What kind of deal, Jace?” Tennyson asked.
Ronan snapped his mouth shut so hard that his teeth clacked together. He was grateful to Ten for turning the conversation back to him.
“My father agreed to fund my dream of turning the old church on Tremont into a homeless shelter. He’d even give me a trust fund to live off, if I stayed in the closet. I knew it would be my only opportunity to make this dream come true, so I took it. Waiting for him to die to inherit his billions was out of the question. We all know that only the good die young.” Jace shook his head.
“So, let me get this straight,” Ronan started. “You gave up the opportunity to fall in love and someday have a family of your own to open a homeless shelter? Why?”
Jace shot Ronan a look that asked if Ronan was stupid or just plain crazy. “Five million dollars a year, detective, goes to feeding, clothing, housing, healing, and educating the most vulnerable neighbors among us. All I had to give up in return was my heart. I’d say it was a fair trade.”
Ronan was stunned, but then again, that’s what a brilliant psychopath does. He throws you off his trail with charming bullshit like this. “That’s a great story, Jace, but answer me one question.”
“Anything, detective.” Jace Lincoln was back in control of himself now. His smug attitude firmly back in place.
“How is it that when I left the Tremont Street Mission the other night Dylan Charles was alive and twelve hours later, we found his mutilated corpse out on Rumney Marsh in Saugus?”
All of
the blood drained out of Jace’s face. “What did you say?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know, Jace.” Ronan opened a folder with the crime scene photos in it. He pulled out one with the yellow tarp hiding the body and held it up for Lincoln to see.
“W-What is that?” His eyes instantly went to Tennyson who sat with a blank look on his face, offering no help.
“That’s Dylan Charles,” Ronan said simply. “Maybe you don’t recognize him because that isn’t how you left him. How about this?” Ronan held up a picture that the detectives took of the body before the tarp had been placed over it.
Jace gasped. He reached out to the picture with shaking hands. His fingers traced the dead boy’s face. “My sweet, sweet Dylan.” Jace looked up at Ronan before pushing back from the table and vomiting everywhere.
31
Tennyson
An hour later, Tennyson’s stomach was still doing flips of its own. It had been like a scene out of The Exorcist. Once Jace Lincoln had started spewing, there had been no stopping him. In the end, the interrogation room had looked like a crime scene.
It was so bad Tennyson had to run from the room or risk sympathetic barfing himself. He’d always been the type to start gagging when someone else was tossing his cookies. He had no idea how Ronan had managed to stay in the room the entire time or how Fitzgibbon had watched the entire spectacle from behind the two-way glass.
“I got you some ginger ale.” Fitzgibbon set the can down next to Tennyson who’d been hanging out in the captain’s office where, so far, the smell of vomited cheeseburgers and fries had not yet permeated.
“Thanks, Kevin.” Tennyson smiled at the cop. “You’re turning into a regular Mr. Mom, huh?”
Fitzgibbon laughed. “My sister told me being a parent was instinctual. I guess she was right.”
“She sure was,” Ten agreed, managing to take a small sip from the green can. “Where’s Ronan?” Tennyson figured he would be hovering over him like a mother grizzly bear but he’d been absent so far.
“He’s typing up interview notes and trying to get a hold of Rod Jacobson.” The captain took a seat behind his desk and seemed to be studying Tennyson.
“Shit, he still hasn’t called back?” That wasn’t good. Why the hell wasn’t the newspaper reporter returning Ronan’s phone call?
“Ronan’s called him twice already.”
“Did he leave Ronan type messages or regular person messages?” Tennyson snorted.
“Christ, maybe you should have been leaving the messages.” Fitzgibbon sighed.
“I heard that, cap.” Ronan snorted from the door to Fitzgibbon’s office. “Still no word from Jacobson. How’s my delicate hot house flower feeling?”
Tennyson shot him the bird. It wasn’t graceful, but got the job done.
“Shit, Ten, I’ve never seen a man run so fast in my entire life!” Ronan laughed. “No, wait. I take that back. There was that one time when I was a beat cop in Jamaica Plain when those bank robbers threw a die-pack bag of money out the window of their getaway car and people on the street were running after the cash.” Ronan sobered. “Maybe I should try Jacobson on his line at the paper?”
Fitzgibbon shook his head. “No. He could be on deadline with an article. We don’t want to freak him out and alert him that this interview is anything more than just that, an interview. Talk to me about your impressions of what went on with Lincoln, Ronan. Then I want to hear from you, Ten.”
“I think he looks good for this, cap. That shelter is a fertile hunting ground.” Ronan smacked his lips as if he were about to sit down to a steak dinner.
“I heard what you said about the lion and the wildebeest, there Mufasa.” Fitzgibbon rolled his eyes. “It’s a good point, but for the fact that someone was bound to notice kids going missing from the shelter.”
“Not necessarily,” Ronan disagreed. “Shelters are transient places by natures. Jace even said it himself the other night that kids aren’t there as much during the summer because they can sleep outside. All kinds of people come and go from Boston. Some move on to different towns, some have a change of fate, some get arrested. The homeless population is the most difficult segment of the population to keep track of.”
“No offense, Kevin, but aside from Keegan Mills, no one noticed the fact that any of these kids went missing. If Justin Wilson’s spirit hadn’t been so persistent in wanting to speak to me, we wouldn’t be working his case at all, let alone have been able to connect thirteen other dead teenagers to Justin’s murder.”
“You’ve both got me there,” Fitzgibbon said, before raking a hand through his hair. “So what about the hotel he’s using in Revere? Someone had to have seen his comings and goings. A desk clerk, another regular. We need to find out if this is the kind of place that rents rooms by the hour.”
“Are you willing to overlook that little fact if they are that kind of establishment, cap?” Ronan knew it would be a lot easier to get the hotel manager to talk if he wasn’t worried about getting busted himself.
“To catch a serial killer? Hell yes!” Fitzgibbon slapped a hand on his desk.
“If Tennyson is feeling up to it, we’ll head out to the Beach Inn and talk to the desk clerk. Show pictures of Jacobson and Lincoln and go from there.” Ronan took a deep breath. “Captain, I think...”
“I know what you’re going to say, Ronan.” Fitzgibbon sounded world-weary.
“Oh, so you’re the psychic now?” Ronan’s voice was full of snark.
“We have to alert the media.” Kevin Fitzgibbon looked like he could sleep for a week.
“I think we’ve reached that point, don’t you? I mean I’d like to interview Jacobson first. I promised him an exclusive on this story, but that was before he became a suspect. If we can’t find him to interview him, it makes him look guilty.” Ronan rolled his shoulders and waited for Fitzgibbon to give him the go ahead.
“Now hold on a second, Ronan. The day you were out with him, you were gone for ten hours and never once checked in with me or Tennyson. Didn’t you have your phone shut off for the whole day?” Fitzgibbon pinched the bridge of his nose; his exhaustion was evident in his bloodshot eyes.
“Yeah. He wanted my phone off so that it wouldn’t spook the kids.” Ronan wore a strange look on his face as if he were just realizing how odd that request sounded.
“There you go. Let’s give the Pulitzer Prize winning author the benefit of the doubt for a few more hours, okay?”
“You got it, cap.” From the sound of Ronan’s voice, he didn’t like the captain’s order.
“Okay, Ten. What impressions did you get of Lincoln with your sixth sense?”
Tennyson nodded and took a deep breath. Fitzgibbon wasn’t going to like what he was about to say. “His angry outburst was impressive. It reminded me of a giant temper tantrum a two-year-old would throw at naptime. He was genuinely shocked that we would think him capable of this crime. I didn’t get any kind of vibe from him that he was capable of killing teenage boys, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it.”
“You realize that makes no sense, right?” Ronan shot Fitzgibbon a confused look.
“Our killer is a psychopath and their brains work differently than ours do. We saw that with the Michael Frye case, remember?” Tennyson hated bringing this back up to Ronan after all the progress they’d made recently, but it was the only way to make him and Fitzgibbon understand what he was up against.
“I remember all right. It almost cost both of us our lives.” He shook his head as if he were trying to knock those memories free.
“I couldn’t read Michael’s killer and I might not be able to read this killer either.” The one time when Tennyson’s gift would have been the most useful and it had been almost no help at all. He’d been able to tell the killer had been a rotten human being, but lots of people were rotten, that didn’t make them killers.
“Explain that to me if you would, Tennyson.” Fitzgibbon looked
completely lost.
“Begging your pardon, captain, but at this moment, you’re worried about Greeley and about this killer striking again before we can arrest him. I can read you like a book because you’re not a psychopath.”
Fitzgibbon barked out a surprised laugh. “Uh, thanks, I think?”
“Your thoughts are very organized. Psychopaths don’t read like that. Their thoughts are jumbled. More crisscrossed, I guess you could say. Imagine all the sentences in The Odyssey shuffled together with the sentences in Huck Finn. There’s no way they’d make up a discernable story, right? That’s the way a serial killer’s brain would read to me.”
“That makes more sense. So, what did you get when we were in the room with Lincoln?” Ronan asked.
“I got a jumble of thoughts all at once, but that could just be because he was nervous and scared out of his mind when he thought we were accusing him of being the killer.”
“Okay, hold on a minute there, Nostradamus.” Ronan sighed. “His mind was a jumble of thoughts and you’re telling me that you can’t tell if that’s because he’s psycho or because he’s scared shitless?”
“He’s not Norman Bates, Ronan! He doesn’t walk into a room to the accompaniment of creepy violin music. Jesus! I’m doing the best I can here. This isn’t an exact science, you know. All I can tell you is that there were no thoughts in his brain about any of these murders.”
“But he could be hiding them just like Michael Frye’s killer did, right?” Ronan was shouting now.
“Yes! Okay? Yes, he could be hiding his thoughts under layers of good fucking will. There, happy now?” Tennyson was breathing heavy. He could feel the pounding of his heart in his toes. He hadn’t been this angry in years. Probably not since his parents had kicked him out of the house.
“Now that the two of you have had a chance to shout it out,” Fitzgibbon paused, giving each of them withering looks. “I want you to get your asses out to Revere and speak to the people at the Beach Inn. Make up in the car. I swear to fucking God that if I hear one complaint about either one of you, I’m busting Ronan down to patrol and Tennyson, I’ll…”