by Aiden Bates
Ryan bit his lip. That lip had been kissed only a few short hours ago. He couldn't think about that, of course. "Well, Stollarz wants us to at least explore the family. I think that's reasonable."
Nick raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Well, yeah. At the very worst we decide that none of the family are viable suspects. At best, we get our killers." He shrugged. "We literally have nothing to lose."
"And there's no other reason." Nick met his eyes for a minute.
Ryan pressed his lips together. "Sure there is," he said, forcing himself to keep his tone light. "Our bosses' boss just told us to." He grabbed his things and headed back to his desk.
He'd known that the kiss hadn't meant anything, but it hurt more somehow to have it rubbed in his face like this. He tapped his pen against his legal pad and tried to collect his thoughts. There wasn't much he could do to make Nick respect him, or like him. There wasn't much he could do to make Nick want him. He'd been a sympathetic shoulder to lean on for a few hours and that was about it.
And that was fine. Ryan shouldn't be thinking about more, or at least he shouldn't be thinking about more with Nick. He liked him, but he couldn't put his finger on why. There was none of that easy camaraderie that he'd had with Dan, none of the loving affection and gentle warmth. No, there was only hostility and conflict that abated every once in a great while to let them get some work done.
Maybe he did want to feel those arms around him a little bit more tightly. Maybe he wanted to know what it would feel like if Nick kissed him for real. He'd probably be amazing. But if he was going to look for a relationship, he should look for someone more like Dan, not for someone with whom he was constantly butting heads.
The best thing he could do would be to get the case solved, as quickly as he could. He cracked his knuckles and booted up his laptop. The first order of business would be figuring out what the family had been up to for the past forty years. Maybe they were involved with the two murders, and maybe they weren't. The fact that they'd never reported Maureen missing suggested that they knew more than they'd ever let on, and Ryan was going to make it his business to find out everything they knew.
***
Nick didn't see Ryan for the rest of the day, and he didn't really expect to. He knew that he shouldn't have said what he'd said about looking for the O'Neal family. He knew that he'd probably thrown all of his own hard work with Ryan down the drain, and he wanted to rectify it. That was going to have to wait until another day, though.
He knew, without having to go and check, that Ryan was going to be running down the whereabouts and past activity on both brothers for the past forty years. That was fine; it was what they'd been ordered to do. Nick wanted to track down someone tangential to the family, though. Rosa had told them that the older brother's girlfriend, Leanne, had been the only person from the O'Neal family to show up at James Townsend's funeral. Maybe she knew something. After forty years, she might be more willing to talk.
That happened a lot, on cold cases anyway. On hot cases, people close to the case had reasons for not getting involved with the investigation or even for covering up for a murderer. He'd seen people who had been bullied or intimidated into silence when they were young, only to lose that fear as they separated themselves from the bully. Sometimes they covered for a loved one, believing that "Oh, my Jimmy could never do that," only to see that love fade with familiarity and time. High school sweethearts were usually great for that.
A little bit of digging got him what he needed. Leanne had apparently married Will O'Neal, Maureen's older brother, back in 1980. She'd gone and divorced him in 1988, though, and according to court records she'd cited ongoing spousal abuse as the reason why. A long history of ER visits and a stack of doctor's bills backed up her claims. Wasn't that interesting?
Apparently she was now a teacher at an early childhood educational facility in Dorchester, and living down in Stoughton. Wasn't that exciting? There weren't a whole lot of public records for her after the divorce, which was frankly a good thing. She had a mortgage, which she'd paid on time every month since she bought the house. She had a library card. There were no brushes with the law, although she had shown up once to bail her son out for a DUI last year.
He sent Ryan a meeting request to discuss Leanne's role, and suggested that they meet up at the Starbucks just up Rt. 9. They'd both been a little more relaxed at dinner than they'd ever been in the office. Part of Nick thought that might have been more due to the fact that he'd been holding Ryan while Ryan was half naked than to any other cause, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He just wanted them to be productive and to be able to get things done.
If they happened to be able to eventually get to a point where he was able to hold Ryan while Ryan was half naked again, that would be a nice bonus.
That was the wrong way to think, and he knew it. He'd only been allowed that privilege because Ryan had been sleeping when he'd shown up. It wasn't a sign of favor or anything like that at all. Ryan had been groggy and too pissed off to put some clothes on. Nick needed to get his mind out of the gutter and keep his hands to himself.
Ryan accepted the meeting right away. The notice came back with an attachment. Curious, Nick clicked on it, only to find a Marine's service record. He shook his head in amazement. How in the hell had Ryan managed to come up with that? Apparently Will O'Neal had enlisted in the Marines at seventeen, immediately following the death of James Townsend. He served a year in Okinawa with minor disciplinary notes for fighting, followed by a year in Korea at the DMZ. Then he'd come home. His service wasn't exemplary, and it wasn't remarkable for bad behavior. It simply was.
Huh. Nick drummed his fingers on the desk and stared at the service record for a moment. It made some sense for a young man who'd just experienced a great tragedy to want to get away for a while and get his head on straight, but to leave while his sister was still missing? That didn't make a lick of sense.
Then again, everyone processed grief differently. He thought he knew how he'd handle it, if one of his siblings turned up missing, but he shouldn't go pasting his reactions onto other people.
The next day, he called Rosa and asked her some questions about Leanne. "I didn't know her too well," Rosa admitted. "I was older than James, and he didn't exactly hang around with those people to begin with, you know? We spoke on occasion, I suppose, but only casually."
Nick cleared his throat. "Did she ever seem like she was injured to you?" It was an uncomfortable question to ask, but it had to be done.
Rosa hummed for a moment. "I suppose that sometimes she wore long sleeves when it seemed like an odd fashion choice, or sunglasses on cloudy days. I didn't think much about it at the time. She was just one of Maureen's little friends, you know? I know she didn't approve of their relationship, but she didn't seem to have a problem with him or with me." She paused. "She said something once."
"What did she say? When did she say it?" Nick froze with his pen hovering over the notepad.
"She said that she liked James a lot. She hated the thought that anyone would want to hurt him, or Maureen, because they were together." She sniffed. "I didn't think it was odd at the time, you see, because I was thinking the same thing."
"Of course you were," Nick murmured. "How could you not be?"
"Do you know whatever became of her? I hope she's doing well for herself."
"I think she's a preschool teacher now. We're going to try to head out and talk to her in the next couple of days, but I wanted to get a sense of her before I tipped her off. You have to be careful, you know?" Nick tugged at his tie. Had he already said too much?
"I suppose that's true." Rosa heaved a mighty sigh. "Well, I won't keep you. Please do keep me updated, Detective."
"I will. Have a great day, Rosa."
He headed over to the Starbucks to meet up with Ryan. Part of Nick felt a little ridiculous taking two cars from the same place, but he didn't want Ryan to feel boxed in. Once he had his drink in his h
and, he sought out the best table for their discussion, only to find that Ryan had already found it.
Ryan gave him a little smile when Nick walked up to him. "Hope you don't mind. I needed more coffee today, and I hate to be late for things." He looked around the seating area. "Do you think that it makes the baristas feel safer, knowing that their shop is the official Starbucks of the Massachusetts State Police?"
"I'd certainly hope so." Nick sat down across from Ryan and pulled out his notes. "That was some mighty interesting police work you did yesterday. Do I even want to know how you got access to that guy's service record?"
Ryan huffed out a little laugh. "Easy. I asked. I know someone at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology."
"Okay, but they're not supposed to give out service members' information." Nick frowned and picked up his drink.
"Wrong. They're not supposed to give us access to servicemen's DNA that's been collected for identification purposes. It's okay if they share information about a serviceman's record, especially if it could possibly exonerate him." Ryan leaned back in his chair and sipped from his very fluffy-looking mocha drink.
"But it doesn't exonerate him." Nick poked at the file for emphasis.
"No. But I had no way of knowing that at the time." Ryan gave him an appraising look. "Are we going to get into it about me acting independently again?"
Nick fumed. "You know damn well—" He stopped himself. "Damn it. I mean that's not what this is about, but it is about trust."
Ryan waved his hand. "Same thing. It's been made clear that you're not in charge. We're partners. We're working on this as equals, which means that I get to make my own decisions."
"I know. I'm sorry. It's hard to get used to." Nick scratched behind his ear, mostly to have something to do with his hands. "So what do you think about what you found?" That should be neutral enough, right? It shouldn't lead to a fight?
"I think that him taking off to the Marines at about the same time that Maureen would have died is super-duper suspicious, don't you?" Ryan sat up in an exaggerated display of perkiness. "And his parents would have had to sign off on his enlistment, since he was only seventeen." He looked up into Nick's eyes. "There's nothing about that situation that makes me warm and fuzzy."
Nick sighed. "I see what you mean. I do. I was thinking the same thing myself. The thing is, how much of how we feel about that is because we went after him looking to find something icky?"
Ryan blinked at him. "Come again?" His hand was frozen in mid-air, descending toward his coffee.
Nick rubbed at his own face. "I mean, we expected to find something, and lo and behold we found it. We had a bias against him and it was confirmed."
Ryan tilted his head from side to side. "Okay, yeah, that's one way to look at it. The other would be to say, 'Well, you know, we had every reason to look at him, if only to rule him out. We did look, because we're professionals and we don't leave things out just because it makes us uncomfortable to look at a brother for murder, and when we looked we found that the guy had more suspicious signs that warrant investigation.'" He grabbed his coffee, still looking into Nick's eyes.
"It's not that it makes me uncomfortable to look at a brother for murder!" Nick shook his head and clenched his fists.
"No, it makes you uncomfortable that I'm looking at a brother for murder." Ryan passed Nick another pile of notes. "The other brother was taken ill, missed some school time, and then went to visit a relative in New York City for about a year."
Nick picked up the stack of papers. "That's kind of weird too." Damn it.
"Right?" Ryan's mouth and eyes were tight, but he wasn't letting himself react to Nick's discomfort. Nick couldn't tell how he felt about that, but he wouldn't think about that for the time being. "Basically, what I'm saying is that if the brothers didn't know something then it's an awfully big coincidence. That doesn't mean that it's not a coincidence. It just means that it warrants looking into. Which is kind of our job." He spread his hands wide. "That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be following up on other leads. Speaking of which, what've you got on the girlfriend?"
Nick wanted to push back on the brothers issue, but he had to admit that Ryan had a point. He made himself let it go. "That's ex-wife to you, buddy." He showed Ryan his notes and went over his conversation from the morning. "I don't think that Leanne Connor had the physical strength to leave some of those injuries," he said, "but that doesn't mean that she didn't have help."
"Hmm." Ryan looked over the notes. "What are you thinking, same racial excuse?"
"Yeah, probably. She objected to the union, just like Rosa did." He blew out some air. "Honestly, it's kind of weak though. I want to talk to her, just to see what she knew. After all this time, and a divorce, she might have more to say about her ex than she did at the time. Or about his family," he added significantly.
Ryan held his hands up. "Or anyone else who could have been intimidating her. Now that she's not in that situation anymore, it's entirely possible that she'll open up completely." He sipped from his drink, eyes far away. "You should be the one to call her, though."
"Me? You're the more empathetic one."
"Yeah. I am. But we know that she comes from a kind of racist background. Confronting her with a guy named Tran might not be the best way to get started. We'll let that be a fun surprise when we show up." He grinned, for real this time. "See how she reacts when she sees us."
"Interesting plan." Nick checked his calendar. "What about her adult children?"
"I can call the daughter. She lives in Needham, I think." Ryan chewed on his bottom lip for a second, leaving it reddened and swollen. "We'll have to be very careful about how we approach the son, though. He's on the record as working for his father."
"Oh." Nick frowned. "Wait. He had to flee, with his mom, because of spousal abuse, but he went back and decided to work with his dad? Who abused his mom?"
"Happens all the time, Nick." He rolled his eyes. "I'd guess that Will treated his son real well. A proud dad, leaving his son the family business and all that."
"Still, geez. Oh well. Not for me to judge. We'll come talk to him later, I guess." Nick shook his head. "Okay. I guess that about wraps it up, then?"
"Yeah. I've got some leads to follow up with that baseball bat. Something about it doesn't seem right, but I'm not sure how to articulate what I'm thinking yet. I want to go down to Forensics and see if someone can help me make sense of what I'm thinking." Ryan stood up. "Good meeting, man."
"Yeah, you too." Nick licked his lips. "I don't suppose you've got any interest in dinner?"
"What, tonight?" Ryan looked shocked, as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him.
"Yeah. I mean nothing fancy, just something around here, but I figured we might as well." Nick kicked himself mentally for even asking. He shouldn't have. They were supposed to be keeping things professional.
"Yeah, sure. Sounds good." Ryan grabbed his things. "Let me know when and where." He headed off toward the exit.
Nick sat at the table for a minute longer. What kind of idiot move had he just pulled?
Chapter Six
Ryan wasn't sure why he agreed to go to dinner with Nick. Maybe Nick was just trying to get to know him. Maybe this was his way of trying to help their working dynamic. Whatever it was, a very large part of Ryan wanted to just blow it off. What was the point of trying to make nice with the guy when he honestly believed that Ryan couldn't so much as look up a potential suspect—or witness—without close supervision?
At the same time, Nick did keep catching himself in those situations. He caught himself, and he stopped himself. He recognized that this was the wrong attitude to have, and he seemed to want to change it if only to change Ryan's responses. That should be enough of a reason, right? If Nick could make the effort, so should Ryan.
Really, though, Ryan just wanted to be around that anise scent again. It was foolish of him. That scent didn't do good things to him. Wandering around in a state of semi-arou
sal didn't help him to solve a case. Still, he was an omega. He had to accept that part of himself and enjoy what he could of it.
They grabbed dinner at a pub a little ways farther west on Rt. 9. It was on the way home for both of them and didn't look too busy, at least from the outside. Ryan had been there before with some of the folks from Abused Persons, but tonight the place seemed to be pretty much free of anyone they knew.
Nick seemed unusually jovial as he sat down to dinner. "You'll never believe who I tracked down."
Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess. The real Boston Strangler?"
"What? Dude, no, that was all DeSalvo. They got that with DNA and everything." He put his hands on the table and grinned. "You're just messing with me, aren't you?"
Ryan ducked his head and chuckled. "I do have a sense of humor, you know."
"Apparently. Anyway, I tracked down Will O'Neal's daughter, Katherine Tierney. She's living in Needham. I think she works in biotech. How much do you want to bet that she'd be willing to talk to us?" Nick waggled his eyebrows up and down.