Dead of Winter (Cold Case Psychic #15) - Pandora Pine Page 0,21
police reports if you need me.”
Ronan knew solving this case was a longshot, but he knew nothing was impossible with the team he’d surrounded himself with. They were going to find Skye’s killer. He’d bet the house on it.
10
Tennyson
Even though he’d been home for over an hour, Ten felt chilled to the bone. He was in the kitchen making dinner, homemade spaghetti and meatballs. One of Ronan’s favorites. While he worked on the sauce, Ronan made the meatballs. Everly was in the living room watching her favorite movie with Dixie. They’d both run into the kitchen every ten minutes or so to make sure everything was okay.
“Is that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” Ronan asked when Everly and Dixie ran into and then out of the kitchen.
“It is,” Ten agreed. He turned on the heat under the sauce and grabbed a box of pasta out of the cabinet. “Since we have a few minutes until the warden passes back this way, tell me what’s been on your mind all day.”
Ronan sighed. He put the meatballs into the pre-heated oven and set the time before sitting across from Ten at the table. “You remember Tommy O’Neil?”
“I do,” Ten agreed. Tommy was Ronan’s second grade best friend. The little boy had been kidnapped in broad daylight right after he and Ronan parted ways while walking home from school.
“Tommy was the reason I wanted to become a cop. Him going missing like that and growing up thinking, but for the grace of God, that could have been me. I never wanted another child to go through what happened to him.”
Tennyson understood where Ronan was coming from. If something similar had happened in his childhood, he would have used his gift and joined the police academy as well. “You’re thinking about him because of what happened to Skye?” There weren’t a lot of similarities between the cases, so far as Ten could see.
“Sort of. Tommy was the reason I wanted to become a cop, but Delilah Madison made me want to become a detective.”
Ten had never heard that name before. “Who is Delilah Madison?”
“During my rookie year, an Amber Alert came over the radio and I was assigned to the search. Delilah was a twelve-year-old girl from Roxbury, and no one had seen her since school let out. I was assigned to look for her near the playground side of Franklin Park.” Ronan sighed.
“You found her, didn’t you?” Ten broke one of his fundamental rules and read his husband. The guilt and grief were overpowering.
Ronan nodded. “There was nothing I could do for her. It was cold that night, and it was obvious she’d been dead for some time. She was nude from the waist down, and I knew what happened to her. All I could think as I was waiting for backup and the ambulance to come was that three hours had gone by from the time school let out until the BPD was contacted about Delilah being missing. No one had missed her.”
It all made sense to Tennyson now. “I’m so sorry, Ronan.”
“I stood there watching the medics try to revive her and then had to leave her for the coroner to examine. I thought about Tommy and all the other missing kids whose pictures had come across my desk that first year with the BPD.”
“Was the crime ever solved?” Ten asked gently.
Ronan swiped at a rogue tear coursing down his cheek. “Dirtbag sex offender who’d been out of prison and on parole for two weeks. There was nothing any of us could have done to stop the kidnapping of that little girl. It’s the same with Skye, only we don’t have any clue how she ended up out of her bedroom and dead in the Salem Towne Forest.”
“I’m going to sit and read Skye’s diary tonight. Muriel told me no one from Skye’s circle was questioned seriously. Not her male teachers, or any of the kids in the high school. They hadn’t really even spoken that much to her friends.” Ten knew law enforcement had come a long way in thirty-five years, but he still couldn’t believe an entire school full of boys wasn’t interviewed.
“Skye’s spirit wasn’t in her room today, huh?” Ronan shook his head. He looked worried.
“No, she wasn’t.” Ten paused for a moment, unsure how to tell Ronan why that could have been.
“Spit it out, Nostradamus. I know you’ve got something to tell me. You’re wearing that constipated look.”