Page 12

After the nightmare and Ten’s revelation, which brought more questions than answers, Ronan hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep for a long time. He was able to catch a few broken hours, but he definitely wasn’t at his best.

He knew the day was going to be spent going over Jumping Jack’s case file and running criminal background reports on the members of the circus. Thankfully the Boston Police had made a list of all the employees, down to the roadies, whose job it was to break down the apparatus, like the trapeze.

As Ronan was making a pot of dark French roast coffee, Jude and Fitz walked into the office. Both men looked tired as well. “Hey, guys. Everything okay?”

Jude rolled his eyes and sunk into his seat. “The kids didn’t want to go to bed last night.”

“You only had Lizbet and Ezra. They’re usually both in bed by eight.”

Ezra wasn’t a fan of the early bedtime, but he and Ten were sticklers about it.

“They teamed up.”

Jude said, rubbing his eyes.

“What do you mean they teamed up, like in wrestling?”

Fitz asked.

“Sort of. They were talking and laughing until about nine. Cope and I figured they’d eventually fall asleep, but we were wrong. We moved Ezra in Wolf’s room, but then they kept running back and forth between the rooms. It was like someone slipped them sugar.”

Jude shot Ronan a suspicious look.

“Not guilty,”

Ronan said, holding up his hands. Ten brought Ezra over right after we got back from Boston. We didn’t feed him anything.”

“Maybe it was the carbs from all that pasta?”

Fitz asked. “I know Jace and I were extra frisky last night.”

Fitzgibbon bounced his eyebrows suggestively. “What happened with Ten? Did he have the nightmare again?”

“I’ll never unsee that.”

Ronan grimaced, picturing a naked and frisky Fitz. While one set of friends chased unruly toddlers, the others fucked like bunnies. His tale of the night before was a bit different. “So, Ten thinks I’m going to die in a bloody heap on the floor of the Boston Garden. I really love the Celtics, but this is going too far.”

Humor was the only thing standing between Ronan and a nervous breakdown. That and coffee. He poured himself a cup and tried to compose his thoughts.

Jude and Fitz gasped. “Way to bury the lead, asshole,”

Fitz said, taking a seat and grabbing a pen and notepad from the center of the table.

“Start from the beginning and tell us everything,”

Jude said more gently, taking a seat across from Ronan.

Ronan took a deep breath. “Ten said he heard people screaming in the dream. He tried to find the source of the noise, but he said it felt like he was running through quicksand.”

“I hate those kinds of dreams,”

Jude grumped. “The faster you try to run, the further what you’re chasing gets.”

“Right,”

Ronan agreed. “Only in Ten’s case the closer he got the more fuzzy the picture became. He saw someone lying in a pool of blood with Celestina hunched over them. Blood was soaking into the hem of her dress. Ten couldn’t tell who the victim was.”

“You said that Ten thinks you are going to die. How does he figure that, if he couldn’t see the person lying on the floor.”

Fitz paused, his pen hovering over the notepad.

“He heard Everly screaming, but couldn’t find her.”

Those words had chilled Ronan to the bone. “Ten said the way she screamed made him think it was me. I can deal with being wounded and on the verge of death, there are ways we can hopefully stop that from happening, but what if the main focus of this dream is Everly being missing?”

“Shit,”

Jude thumped a hand down on the table. “He’s sure this dream took place at the circus?”

Ronan nodded.

Jude sat up straighter and reached for his briefcase, which sat on the floor beside his chair. He opened it and pulled out a folder full of papers and a legal pad. “Okay, so then we need to get to work on the Jumping Jack case. If we can figure out who murdered him, we can stop the killer from striking again, therefore keeping Ronan and Everly safe.”

“Maybe,”

Ronan tentatively agreed. “Ten’s always telling me how the future is fluid. One change of plans here or there and the outcome changes completely.”

“I’ve heard him say that repeatedly as well,”

Fitz began, “but the dream has stayed the same. Pink dress. Someone screaming. Ten calling for Everly. These things make me think whatever is going to happen is more concrete than not. What do you think?”

Fitz turned to Jude.

“That scenario makes sense to me, but I don’t want to waste another second thinking about what Ten’s nightmare may or may not mean. Let’s get to it.”

Jude opened the folder and pulled out a set of pictures. He passed them to Ronan and Fitz. “I have to tell you that the pictures of the crime scene are pretty sparse. There’s a couple shots of the body inside the tiger cage and then only a few more once Jack was removed. I’m assuming the cops thought he’d been mauled and that was that.”

Fitz frowned as he looked over the pictures. “We’re trained to look at every unattended death as if it were a homicide.”

“I hate to say this, Fitz, but I don’t think the officers put a lot of effort into this until they found out Jack was murdered, and even then, it felt half-hearted to me.”

“I agree,”

Ronan chimed in. “When the cops started interviewing witnesses, all they were doing was throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it would stick to someone. The interrogators were threatening the circus crew with indefinite imprisonment and with having their kids taken from them. In my opinion, the goal was to make someone confess, quick and dirty.”

It killed Ronan to say this about fellow officers. Yes, they were brothers and sisters in blue, but that didn’t mean they all came at their job with the same dedication and need for the truth as Ronan did. “What did the autopsy say?”

“Jack was shot once. There were no other signs of violence on the body.”

Fitz pulled out the photographs and handed them to Ronan. “It was the medical examiner’s opinion that Jack had been shot from a distance of about twenty feet. There were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms.”

“Were there any sign of drugs in his system? GHB or sedatives?”

Jude asked.

Fitz shook his head. “Those tests weren’t run. They checked his blood alcohol level and it was well beneath the legal limit. I’m guessing he had a shot before the show started. Maybe a toast of some sort for luck on opening night.”

“Fuck,”

Ronan muttered under his breath. “So what are we saying here, that the killer shot Jack, and then moved him into the tiger cage?”

“Yeah,”

Jude said. “The only blood outside of the cage is what flowed under the bars.”

He flipped through the pictures and pointed to the one showing trails of blood. “The killer must have cleaned up the blood from where the shooting actually took place.”

“There aren’t a lot of circumstances that would force me into a cage with a seven hundred pound tiger. I’d do it for Ten and the kids, but that’s it.”

Ronan shuddered at the thought of being in an enclosed space with an apex predator.

“So, what you’re saying is that you’d let Fitz or I become Meow Mix?”

Jude asked with a grin. “Jack was shot. The killer figured the tiger would attack the body and tear it apart, making it impossible to tell the man had been murdered.”

“That makes sense,”

Fitz agreed. “But why didn’t Sheba attack Jack?”

“According to what Celestina told me back in 1995, Sheba was raised around people. The cat knew people weren’t a food source. It’s possible that even with a fresh kill only feet away, Sheba knew not to eat him.”

Ronan realized he had inside information the cops at the time wouldn’t have known.

“If that’s true, then it opens up a whole new suspect pool,”

Fitz said, as he jotted notes on his pad.

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,”

Jude said, looking confused.

“There were only a certain number of people who had the keys to the tiger’s cage. Nava, Celestina, Hank, the tiger keeper, and the owner of the circus, who, according to the police notes was out of town. That gives us three people who knew Sheba intimately.”

Ronan turned to Fitz. “All three knew the tiger wouldn’t eat a person. That would leave us with the rest of the crew as suspects because the killer assumed the tiger would eat or mangle Jack’s body.”

Fitz nodded in agreement. “I imagine it would have been pretty easy to steal a key during the performance. Everyone is in high gear getting ready for their act. You’ve got people running around, changing costumes, and only paying attention to themselves.”

“I get what you’re saying,”

Jude started, “but a murder isn’t a quiet thing. Is it possible for the killer to have shot Jack and dragged him into the tiger cage him without anyone hearing?”

Ronan grinned. He knew the solution to that problem. “During the curtain call at the end of the show, everyone comes out to take a bow, even the roadies. I remember the ring master asking the crowd to give them a round of applause.”

“The killer knew that would be the time to strike because no one would be backstage. In a crowd of workers that big, it would be easy not to notice someone was missing,”

Fitz added.

“Kent told us he remembered Jack not being onstage for the curtain call. What we need to find out is if he noticed if any of the other cast or crew were missing too.”

Jude shook his head. “After twenty plus years, I’m not so sure anyone’s going to remember such an insignificant detail.”

“Not so fast.”

Fitzgibbon flipped the page of his legal pad. “Kent knew Jack was missing because they were lovers. Other members of the crew were in relationships with each other as well. Maybe they noticed someone was missing, the same way Kent did.”

“We need to talk to Nava and Celestina. Find out if Vincent was present at the curtain call.”

Ronan bounced out of his seat and reached for his jacket. “What are you all waiting for? Rehearsal starts at one. Let’s go.”

If Ronan was going to be the killer’s next victim, they didn’t have a moment to lose in catching him. His life was in Jude and Fitzgibbon’s hands.