“Here we are,” Ronan said, parking the car in the Salem Elementary School lot. He climbed out of the car and held the seat for Tennyson, who looked like he could sleep for a week andstill wake up tired. “You gonna be okay? If you want, take the car home and we’ll get a ride back with Fitz.”
Ten shook his head. “I’m okay. Just tired and sick of carrying what I saw in my head.”
Ronan felt like a total dick. He and Jude had been singing at the top of their lungs while Ten had been sinking into a quicksand of his gift’s making. “Let’s go find Fitz.”
Nodding, Ten zipped his jacket and jogged alongside Ronan into the school.
Walking into the gym a few minutes later, Ronan found Fitz and Greeley sitting up high in the bleachers. Most likely so their fat heads didn’t get in another parent’s way. Wolf was sitting with other kids closer to the gym floor. Climbing up the steps, Ronan sat down beside Fitz. Ten sat on the level below, while Jude sat beside Greeley. He spotted Everly instantly. Someone had put her strawberry blonde hair in ponytails. She was wearing a red cheer dress with the word “Witches” stitched diagonally across the chest and a pair of black leggings. Black and orange would have suited the Salem Witches much better, but Ronan supposed they didn’t want to look like it was Halloween every day.
“How cute are they?” Fitz asked. “Miss Weathers put the girls’ hair in ponytails and brushed a little blush on their cheeks.
Ronan pulled out his phone and started taking pictures of the girls. They were sitting around the center court logo and having their team pictures taken. Another teacher walked around and passed out black and red pom-poms. Everly took that moment to wave hers at her fathers. Ten and Ronan waved back.
“What did you two learn today?” Ronan asked Fitz, as Miss Weathers led the tiny cheer squad in stretching exercises.
“Greeley and I spent hours looking through missing person reports for the time period we think our Head Doe died, from 1965 through 1985. We did a search of Massachusetts, then widened out to all of New England, then the whole country.”
“Did you find any matches?” Ronan asked, assuming there must be thousands.
“Almost ten thousand,” Fitz said. “We uploaded a photograph of the head and it wasn’t clear enough to be used. We got in touch with a forensic artist and hooked her up with Doctor Greenfield to get certain skull measurements and photos so she can approximate the hair and eye color. She’s going to make mockups of Head Doe that we can upload to the Missing Persons Database to see if we can narrow our search field.”
“It’s crazy how many people go missing in this country every year.” Ronan shook his head.
“The late 60s and early 70s were a tumultuous time with the Vietnam War raging. Men were burning their draft cards and fleeing to Canada. Soldiers who’d come home from the war struggled to assimilate back into civilian life. A lot left home to try to make their own way, kind of like Lieutenant Dan inForrest Gump. Police departments didn’t have the resources to track them all down. A lot of people fell through the cracks. I think our Doe might be one of them.”
“Why do you say that?” Ronan asked.
“It’s been nearly nine hours since the news broke about finding a head. The Salem News and other media outlets have been reporting that the man appears to be in his twenties or maybe early thirties. So far, there have only been two solid leads from the tip line. All the rest of the calls were from the usual assholes trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame or cruel jokes.”
“That sucks.” Christ, Ronan couldn’t imagine how horrible it must have been to die and be forgotten. He hoped that never happened to him when he shuffled off his mortal coil. Although, with his asshole mouth, it was a possibility.
“How did things go with the three of you at the morgue?” Greeley asked.
“I had a vision or something,” Ten said. “I felt like my chest and throat were on fire.”
“Dr. Greenfield is testing for all manners of poison,” Jude said. “It’s gonna be a few days to get lab results.”
“I expected that much.” Fitz kept his eyes on Ten. “Any chance you met the head’s spirit in the morgue?”
Ten shook his head. “No. It was the strangest thing, there were no spirits there at all.”
“Ten had been about to say he thought it had to do with crime being down in Salem.” Ronan rolled his eyes.
“Ah,” Fitz snorted. “He was going to jinx us, huh?”
“He was, but Jude and I put the kibosh on that before Ten reached the point of no return.” Ronan pressed a kiss to Ten’s head. Ronan knew the reason the morgue was empty of spirits was because there hadn’t been any murders in Essex County since December.
“We went to see Maria Cullen after lunch,” Jude said. “She didn’t give us anything. Neither did her family.”
“Either she really was hopped up on morphine or she was a great actress.” Ronan chose to believe it was the former. If it was the latter, that meant the sweet old lady they’d met might just be a murderess. “She said she didn’t know about a head in herfreezer, for all she knew, someone put it in there after she’d been transported to the hospital with her broken hip.”
“Christ,” Fitz sighed. “Anything is possible, but Maria is of an age with the head, which makes it a lot more likely she knows who Head Doe is. We need to visit her again when she’s off the pain meds.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Ten said.
“What do you mean?” Fitz asked. “I know a ton of guys at Boston PD who’d had broken hips and they were good as new in a few weeks.”
“Maria is never going to be good as new ever again.” Ten sighed.
