Page 11 of Dead Drunk (Cold Case Psychic #36)

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.

“If it’s the latter, you’re going to need to wait until I leave the room,”

Brad said, with an amused smile.

“It wasn’t hard to get information on any of the four names you gave me Tennyson.”

Ash opened a folder sitting beside him and picked out several sheets of paper.

“Let’s start with Duncan MacBain. He’s been a member of the SPD since 1990 and retired in 2020. He’s got a clean record, but has a gambling problem. Spends four nights a week at that new casino in Boston. Duncan started having financial problems in 2018. He’s into a couple of heavy hitters for a lot of money. He owes one shark a little over ten thousand dollars and the other a touch over twenty-five thousand.”

“Which makes him vulnerable to blackmail,”

Fitz said.

“Or could force him to do some shady work off the books,”

Jude added.

“As for Robert ‘Bobbo’ Oliveri, he’s as clean as the day is long. He’s been retired from the SPD for almost a decade. He’s a member of his local Lions chapter, volunteers and raises money for the Boston Marathon. He works part-time at a local animal shelter, running background checks on potential pet parents. His finances are stable with no red flags.”

“What do you mean red flags?”

Ten asked.

“His credit rating is high and he’s never had a late payment, there’s also no history of large cash deposits, which can sometimes be a marker of nefarious business dealings. As far as I’m concerned, you can cross Bobbo off your list of suspects.”

“Bobbo?”

Jude asked.

“What the hell kind of nickname is that?”

“Kind of like Dano in Hawaii Five-0?”

Ronan suggested.

“What have you got on Fallon Kirkpatrick?”

“This is where things get interesting.”

Ash grinned at the detectives.

“I like interesting,”

Fitzgibbon said, his demeanor perking up.

“Fallon has been an attorney with the public defender’s office for nearly twenty years. He’d graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Law School.”

“Wait a second,”

Ronan began.

“Why the hell is this guy a public defender if he went to Harvard? Is he wealthy and represents poor clients out of the goodness of his heart?”

Ash shook his head.

“I told you this was where things got interesting. According to Fallon’s boss, he’s a miserable SOB. He hates his clients, his co-workers, his life. When I spoke to Harvard classmates, they all told me Fallon was a creep. There was something about him that was off-putting. He didn’t come from money or connections and seemed desperate to somehow break into that world. Whatever he did, didn’t work. He was the only member of his graduating class not to have secured a job at a law firm prior to graduation. He’s the only one from his class not to have passed the bar on the first try. He’s also been before the board of review twice for disbarment hearings.”

“This sounds promising,”

Fitzgibbon said, rubbing his hands together.

“But wait, there’s more!”

Ash laughed.

“Fallon has a long history of bad credit. He had evictions, repossessions and defaults on his credit report up until 2007, when he got himself out of debt completely. There’s no record of him winning the lottery, being the beneficiary of someone’s will, or anything like that.”

“Is there more?”

Fitz asked.

“How did you guess? Fallon started having credit problems again in 2018. It seems that whatever scheme he was involved with had gone bust.”

“Motherfucker,”

Ronan whispered under his breath.

“What is it, Ronan?”

Jude asked.

“Oliveri retired in 2018. Fallon’s potentially criminal enterprise ended in 2018. MacBain started having financial trouble in 2018.”

“Christ, if we’re right, that the murders stopped in late 2017 to coincide with Oliveri’s retirement, that opens an entirely different can of worms here. We might not have one killer, but two.”

“I don’t understand,”

Ten said.

“What do MacBain and Fallon’s money trouble have to do with Oliveri retiring from the police force and you thinking there are two killers?”

“Whatever cash cow they were milking ran dry in 2018. MacBain and Fallon were making a lot of money that I can’t trace. What if they were involved in murder for hire schemes with Cisco pulling the strings?”

Brad asked.

“No, there’s no way,”

Jude was quick to say.

“I’m with Jude,”

Ronan said.

“If you’re involved in a money making scheme why end it because someone in the food chain retired?”

“It wasn’t just that Oliveri retired in 2018, Cisco was made interim chief of police after Chief Alcott died.”

“How did Alcott die?”

Fitzgibbon asked, in a worried tone.

“I don’t know. None of us were with the department back then.”

Ronan reached for his phone and started tapping.

“Jesus, Fitz, you don’t think that-?”

“One step at a time, Ronan.”

Fitz sounded like he did think it was possible Alcott’s death wasn’t a natural one.

Was it possible that Cisco had killed four prisoners and the chief of police? Tennyson had never sensed anything off with Cisco. He’d trusted the man in his home, with his kids. There would have been something Ten would have picked up over the last seven years, right?

“I’m not finding a cause of death for the former chief. We’ll have to do a deeper dive,”

Ronan said.

“Hold on a second,”

Jude interrupted.

“What about Cisco? What information did you find out on him?

“The chief has been with the department for almost thirty years. Married. One adopted child with a second adoption in the works. Has no credit cards. House and vehicles are paid in full. He’s well-liked by almost everyone who works for him,” Ash said.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming on.”

Jude steepled his hands in front of his face.

“The chief is living above his means. Drives a Mercedes, husband has a new SUV. There have been lavish vacations, home remodels. None of those things on their own is incriminating, but taken together with him having zero debt is concerning.”

“It’s even more concerning when you add the information about the murders along with Fallon and McBain’s gravy train running dry.”

Ronan shook his head. He looked as confused as Ten felt.

Tennyson’s head was spinning. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be another explanation. It wasn’t possible that Cisco Jackson was a criminal mastermind with boatloads of cash dealing in murder for hire.

Or was it?