“She married Brian in 1979, so maybe they met at college?”
“Sounds likely,” Ronan agreed. “After graduation, Maria became a first grade teacher at Salem Elementary. She retired in 2005, when she was fifty. I wonder why?”
“Maybe the school system offered early retirement?” Jude asked. “Remember how we were hoping the kids would have Mrs. Roberts for second grade, but she left at the end of last year.”
“Right, she said something about retiring to Fort Myers where she’d be close to Sanibel Island and could see the Red Sox Spring Training games.” Ronan sighed. With as cold and as snowy as this winter had been, he wouldn’t mind retiring to sunny Florida either. “Anyway, back to Maria, she has good credit, not one late payment and no moving violations of any kind. Lastly, she was drug tested twice a year while she was a teacher. All the results were negative.”
“Shit,” Jude muttered under his breath. “How the hell did a retired elementary school teacher with no criminal record end up with a frozen head in her house? Do you think she killed Head Doe?”
“It’s always the quiet ones who surprise you.” Ronan had come up against several killers in his career who were the absolute last suspect he would have ever considered. None of them had been school teachers, but that didn’t mean teachers were incapable of killing people. “But with her father being a notorious crime boss, it certainly ups the ante on human remains ending up in a freezer.”
“That’s just a stereotype, Ronan. Shit from the movies.” Jude grabbed his coffee cup and took a long sip.
“I hate to say this, Jude,” Greeley said, walking into the conference room, “but you’re wrong. Richard ‘The Iceman’ Spaventosa was a famous hitman in New Jersey. He worked for the Puglisi crime family who made their legit money as butchers. He put his hits in commercial freezers belonging to his family’s enemies after he killed them. It made time of death hard to confirm. And made the other families look guilty as hell.”
“Guess I’m not the only one who finds mob history interesting.” Ronan waggled his eyebrows at Greeley.
“I worked for one of the Boston families when I was on the streets growing up,” Greeley said.
“WHAT?” Ronan and Jude said together.
Greeley snickered. “Calm down, I wasn’t a hitman or anything. I was a runner. I delivered messages. Picked up lunch and dry cleaning. Stuff like that. They never cared that I was a homeless, gay kid. I worked hard, followed the rules, and kept my mouth shut. I was always well-fed and had a bed to sleep in.”
“Holy shit!” Ronan said, as Fitz walked into the room. “Does your father know?”
“Know what” Fitz asked, his eyes moving back and forth between Ronan and Greeley.
“That I was a mob runner.” Greeley grinned at Fitz.
“Yeah, I knew that,” Fitz agreed. “Is your former profession helping us out on this case?”
“Only to prove to Ronan that the mafia did, in fact, hide bodies in freezers.”
Fitz frowned in obvious disappointment. “You guys get any leads?”
“We found out that Maria was married for twenty years to an Irishman, named Brian Cullen.”
Fitz’s eyes widened. “LuckyCullen’s son?”
“How the hell did you know that?” Ronan asked.
“Homicide worked closely with Major Crimes on a lot of joint investigations. I worked a couple mob hits with that department. Several of the active hitters had a call sign they’d leave at the scene of their kills.”
“Don’t tell me that Lucky’s was a shamrock.” Ronan snorted at his own cleverness.
“No, asshole. Lucky would remove his victim’s hands with a meat cleaver.”
Ronan gasped. He was all business now. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack. Why?” Fitz narrowed his eyes on Ronan.
“The medical examiner told us that Chilly Willy’s head could have been severed by a meat cleaver.” Jude turned to Ronan. “I mean that can’t be a coincidence, right?”
“Doesn’t sound like one to me.” Ronan sighed. “Let’s pay Brian a visit and see if he learned a thing or two from dear old dad.”
“Take Tennyson with you,” Fitz said. “Cisco wants me to hold a press conference asking for leads on the head’s identity.”
“You got it.” Ronan grabbed his phone and jacket. Jude followed him out the door.
