Page 9 of Dead O’Clock

“Out of those men, are there any who’d be looking for revenge against you?” Ronan knew it was a shot in the dark. He’d been in law enforcement for twenty years and there’s no way he’d be able to provide a comprehensive list of people who’d be gunning for his head.

“There’s one inmate. Gianni Franco. He was connected to the Andruzzi crime family, or so I was told when he came to the prison. Franco bellyached day and night that he was innocent. That he’d been railroaded and that a man named Bruce Jennings was the real killer.” Jones shrugged. “If I had a nickel for every inmate who’d ever told me they were innocent I could buy my own island in the Mediterranean. There’s always an exception to the rule and in this case, Franco was telling the truth. His family hired some high-powered lawyer and a private investigator who dug up additional information on the murder. The lawyer got Franco’s conviction overturned and he was released from prison. I was there the day he walked out a free man. He called me an asshole and said Karma was coming for me. I guess he was right. Karma’s here.”

“Jude and I will get to work on this. We’ll get in touch with your ex and her husband and see what we can find on Gianni Franco. We’ll be in touch.” Ronan stood up.

“In the meantime, you might want to pack a bag just in case it’s safer to spend the night away from home,” Jude said. “Let me walk you out.” Carson followed them out the door, shutting it behind him.

“Are you okay?” Ronan asked. “Your gift is still down, right?”

Ten nodded. He wore an embarrassed look. “I’m sure I’ll be fine in a few hours. Carson knows what he’s talking about.”

“I know, but you’re my ride or die. I trust you above everyone else.” Ronan wished there was something he could do to speed Ten’s recovery. He felt helpless.

“I hear you.” Ten rubbed his hands together, as if to warm them up.

“You wanna tell me what happened with that other guy?” Ronan got out of his seat and walked around the table to Tennyson.

“He was just one of those skeptical assholes who wouldn’t give me any information about who he was or why he was here. He enjoyed taunting me. I was just about to kick him out when he grabbed my hand and fried my gift.”

“How did he do that?” Even after all these years, Ronan was still learning about the limits of Ten’s gifts. These situations didn’t present themselves very often, but when they did, Ten was off-balance for hours or even days.

“At first, he flooded me with rage. Jesus, Ronan, I’ve never felt that level of emotion in my entire life. If his hate were candy bars, I’d own the whole damn chocolate factory. After the rage came a series of images. I only caught a few of them and none made sense.” Ten shook his head. “I saw a headstone, flashing police lights, a cop kneeling beside a body on the ground and you.”

“Me?” Ronan yelped, alarm flooding his body.

“I could see you standing with your hands fisted, looking like you were ready to take on all comers. Before Rogers grabbed me, he said you were the reason he couldn’t reunite with someone he loved. His mind was very well guarded, as if he’d learned how to shield himself from me.”

Ronan sighed. “I’ll have Carson go through the video footage to take screen shots of this guy, and we’ll see if I recognize him. Did he threaten me or you in any way?”

Ten shook his head. “No, nothing like that, but then Warden Jones burst into the shop and started screaming, so I walked out of the room to see if I could help. By the time you and Jude got him settled in here, my client had left.”

“I hate to say this, but this client is low on my priority list at the moment. We need to get to work on Warden Jones and find out what’s going on with this letter. Once he’s safe and out of harm’s way, then we can revisit this Rogers guy.”

“Okay,” Ten agreed.

Ronan noticed the relief on his husband’s face. It wasn’t like Ten to be ruffled by client readings, but there was definitely more to this particular client that Ten was letting on. He promised himself to question Ten more thoroughly about Dan Rogers when he had more time.

4

Tennyson

Two hours later, Tennyson was still unable to use most of his gift. He gauged it was spotty at best, which wasn’t the best case scenario, but it was far from the worst.

This situation reminded him of Justin Wilson, a young spirit he’d met who’d been murdered by a serial killer. Justin hadn’t yet mastered the art of dead speak and his only means of communication with Tennyson had been through the use of images. He’d shown Ten a picture of Justin Timberlake followed by one of Wilson, the volleyball from the movie Cast Away and that was how his name was revealed. He’d helped Ten find and identify his remains, and gave clues critical to finding the vicious killer who’d set his sights on Boston’s population of gay, homeless men.

Over his time in Salem, Ten had come across two or three other spirits who’d communicated in the same fashion, but, in all the years he’d had his gift, had never come up against a living person who did the same thing.

“I’ll take the ex-wife,” Ronan said.

“That leaves me with the exonerated inmate.” Jude sat across from Ten with his computer. “I’ll also look into known threats against former wardens in general and Jones in particular.”

“Good plan.” Ronan turned to Ten. “Are you staying here with us or going home?”

“I’ll stay,” Ten said. “Cope is taking the kids to McDonalds after the library. We’ll do Lobster Charlie’s tomorrow.” Or whenever this case ends, Ten thought. “I want to do some work on people who can control what information they transmit to psychics and some other stuff.”

Ronan looked curious about what the “other stuff” was, but didn’t ask.

Ten’s first step was to visit his favorite psychic forum to do a keyword search for communication through images. It was slow going at first, with a jumble of results, mostly dealing with showing images to spirits to see if they could answer questions. It wasn’t until Ten nearly reached the end of the list when he found what he was looking for; an article about image communication.