You Can't Hide (15 page)

“Sonofabitch likes to watch,” Murphy muttered. “How did you know it was there?”

“Rick saw that there was no dust on the corner of this one vent cover,” Jack said, a twinge of pride in his voice. “Nice job.”

Rick’s smile flashed. “Thanks.”

“How many more of these cameras are there?” Aidan asked, stepping off the stool.

“We wondered the same thing.” Jack led them back into the living room. “They wouldn’t want to miss the grand finale,” he said and pointed to the vent cover over the desk, now empty as the computer had been taken back to the lab. “Try that one.”

Rick grimaced as he strained to reach the vent cover, which was spattered with blood and brain matter. “Man, this is nasty, Jack.”

Jack chuckle was dry. “Do you good to get your hands dirty for a change. Rick is one of the unit’s electronics experts,” he told Aidan. “Normal y he’s in the lab, but I called all hands.”

Rick handed the vent cover to Jack who careful y set it aside. “You were right,” Rick said.

“Another camera with a mike and…” He shone his flashlight into the dark opening, then turned around, perturbed. “And a speaker mounted to the inside of the wall.” He pul ed it loose so they could see it-a small box the size of a plum. “Why a speaker?”

“A neighbor came by while you were with Tess, Aidan,” Murphy said. “She said she heard a baby crying all day. I thought he might be watching a video. Now we know.”

Rick frowned at the speaker in his hand. “We’ve got ourselves one sick bastard.”

“Where does the video feed go?” Aidan asked.

56

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“I’l have to find the receiver,” Rick said, “but my first guess? It goes to the Ethernet. And then…” He waved his hand. “Out there.”

Murphy blinked. “Ethernet?”

“It’s a way to get to the Internet,” Aidan murmured, his mind racing, the implications too overwhelming.

Rick nodded. “Streaming video. It’s all the rage, man. Normally I see the cameras pointing straight up through the floor or on their shoes so that pervs can look up women’s dresses. This one was meant for surveillance.”

Murphy was shaking his head. “So this is on the
Internet
?” he repeated. “Like on a Web site or something? You’re telling us anybody could have been watching Winslow blow his brains out?” “Maybe.” Rick lifted one shoulder. “Depends on what your perp is looking to do. If this is a private show, it’s not going to show up on your standard Google search.” He lifted his brows. “But if it’s not private…”

Aidan’s stomach gave a sick twist as Rick’s meaning hit home. “Oh my God. Like pay-perview?” He looked at Murphy, saw he’d arrived at the same conclusion.

“Twenty-first century snuff movies.” A muscle in Murphy’s taut jaw twitched. “This is unbelievable.”

“Any idea how long these have been there?” Aidan asked.

Jack crouched down to inspect the vent cover. “There’s dust on the vents themselves, but hardly any around the screws. Maybe a week or two?”

“So we need to find out who’s had access to this apartment in the last two weeks,” Murphy said. “What kind of person are we looking for? Would they need special tools?”

Rick stepped down. “Honestly, any teenage hacker could do the job.”

Aidan blew a weary sigh up his forehead. “Jack, we need to check Cynthia Adams’s apartment for the same devices.”

Jack looked up at Rick. “Can you do it tonight?”

Rick nodded. “To catch this guy? Oh, yeah.”

“We’ve got to fol ow a lead on the flowers from Adams’s place,” Murphy said. “Can you finish up here, Jack?”

Jack dismissed them with a flick of his hand. “Go. Let’s meet in Spinnelli’s office at eight. Tell Spinnelli to order Chinese. It’s going to be a long night.”

Monday, March 13, 8:30 P.M.

She was still here. Sitting at her dining room table in a red silk robe and white sweat socks, half a glass of red wine at her elbow, browsing through files. She was still here. Not where she should be-cowering in a holding cell surrounded by unwashed vermin, waiting for one of her so-called friends to post bail, or standing before a judge. But patience was a virtue. And Ciccotelli’s face was showing evidence of strain. Her hand trembled when she picked up the wineglass and occasionally a look of sheer horror would turn her skin pale and her eyes glassy. She was remembering the way the bodies looked. She was thinking about how they’d felt just before they died, thinking she’d betrayed them. She was wondering who’d be next.

That would have to be enough for now.

As for the police, they’d be lucky to find their asses with both hands. Eventual y they’d go through the victims’ financial records and find the nails that would secure Ciccotelli’s pretty little coffin. Until then, there was the angle of the state licensing board. They’d stepped in earlier than expected, thanks to Cy Bremin and his front-page spread. How entertaining it had been. Well worth a replay. A mouse click on the sound file brought the scratchy voice of Dr. Fenwick to life.
The board finds such allegations both serious and unacceptable.

57

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

No.
Really?
Not both serious
and
unacceptable. It was one of the more asinine comments the microphone had recorded in the weeks since it had been hidden behind a filing cabinet in Ciccotelli’s office. The board had nothing on Ciccotelli and everyone in the room had known it. Fenwick, Ciccotelli, and her attorney, who’d dispensed with old fart’s threats handily. But the visit itself left a foundation on which to build. The imperious Dr. Fenwick would likely find the death of Mr. Avery Winslow even more serious and less acceptable. Strike two, as it were. The third pitch would be aimed at the licensing board, not the police. It wasn’t the ultimate payoff, but might relieve the boredom while the police bumbled around. And it would, above all, be so much fun to watch.

Monday, March 13, 8:30 P.M.

“Well?” Spinnelli sat at the head of the table, frowning as they ate. Around the table were Aidan, Murphy, Jack, Rick, and Patrick, who had glumly informed them the number of appeal notices was now up to eight.

“Give us a minute to eat, Marc,” Jack protested. “I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

“We didn’t eat lunch,” Aidan muttered. They’d been too busy with the florist shops. “But we can show you some video while we eat.” He stood up and grabbed the disc they’d taken from the mailbox store’s security camera, then grabbed his carton of General Tso’s when Murphy cast a greedy eye at his food. “We didn’t have to go back too far.” He inserted the disc, hit PLAY, then stepped back so the group could see the TV screen. “This was last Thursday afternoon.” A woman walked into the picture, wearing a tan coat. Her black hair fell in waves around her shoulders. She was roughly the same height as Tess Ciccotelli but the bulk of her coat disguised her build. The woman appeared to be Latina. And her face, while slightly thinner than Ciccotelli’s, was similar enough that she could pass for Italian in the memory of a harried desk clerk or the poor quality store video.

“Tess wears that same color coat,” Murphy said. “This part really steamed me,” he added.

“Watch her unbutton her coat, just enough to show off the scarf around her neck. She wanted to be sure the clerk saw the scarf because Tess always wears one.”

Unless she’s wearing a black turtleneck that fits her like a second skin,
Aidan thought, then shoved that mental picture as far away as he could.

Spinnelli’s jaw tightened. “Because of her scar from that attack last year.”

Now the mental picture Aidan shoved away was his own hands around the throat of the con who’d nearly killed her.

“Damn,” Patrick murmured, staring at the screen. “She looks like her.”

“No way in hell she looks like Tess,” Murphy shot back. “What, are you blind?”

Patrick shook his head. “No, I’m not, but a judge might see enough resemblance to let those appeals go through. Especial y with all the other physical evidence that’s piling up. Without motive, there’s not nearly enough to charge her,” he added, “but plenty enough to muddy the waters. Shit. This is not good.”

Aidan was watching the woman walk to her box, lean over, and insert the key. “Nobody in their right mind would think that was her. This woman doesn’t move anything like Tess Ciccotelli.”

“I can’t quite see myself using that argument in front of a judge, Aidan,” Patrick said, wry humor in his voice. “Although I will give you that few women move quite like Tess.”

Aidan looked over his shoulder to where Patrick sat, wearing as close to a smile as he’d ever seen. Murphy had developed a sudden interest in the bottom of his carton of twice-cooked pork. Jack was openly grinning and Rick looked like he wanted to. Feeling his cheeks heat, Aidan rol ed his eyes. “I meant she… Never mind.”

Spinnelli’s mustache twitched. “We
all
know what you meant, Aidan.” He cleared his throat, sobering. “But regardless of the fluidity of this woman’s movement, Patrick’s right. We still have to prove she’s not Tess. Can we get any prints off that mailbox?”

58

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“I’l send a team over there, Marc,” Jack said. “But it looks like she kept her gloves on the whole time.”

The woman in the video shoved the mail from the box into the side pocket of the briefcase she carried. “So could this be our mastermind?” Patrick mused.

“I don’t know,” Aidan said. “She looks awful y… nervous to me. Twitchy.”

Patrick shrugged. “I might be twitchy if I was planning to kill two people. But it doesn’t feel right to me, either. She’s too out in the open. She knows she’s being taped and she’s posing. We need to find out who she is.”

Murphy crossed his arms over his chest, his brows crunched. “She was on the tape from the lobby of Adams’s building, too. The building super disengaged the camera at the elevator on Adams’s floor, but not the one at the first-floor elevator. We’l find out if anyone saw her in Winslow’s apartment.”

Spinnelli steepled his fingers under his chin. “What about the cameras you found in the apartments themselves?”

Rick pushed the remnants of his dinner aside. “I found the same camera system in Adams’s apartment. One above her bed, one in her living room. One in her bathroom, too,” he added, puzzled.

“She slit her wrists the first time she attempted suicide,” Aidan said, taking the mailbox store security disc out of the machine. He sat down next to Rick. “People usually do that in the bathtub. Maybe our guy thought she’d try that again.”

“Maybe. At any rate, I found similar setups in both apartments. Wireless cameras and speakers. Everything was wiped clean and whoever installed them didn’t leave any prints behind on the vent covers, either. And before you ask, it would be nearly impossible to trace the parts themselves to point of purchase. They’re generic surveillance systems. Good quality. You can buy them in any electronics store or off the Internet, and they’re leaping off the shelves. It’s a needle in a haystack.”

“What about the transmissions?” Aidan asked. “Can we trace them?”

“As long as the feed stays live we can try. The feed at Adams’s apartment isn’t live anymore, but the cameras in Winslow’s apartment are still transmitting. I found the router that the wireless camera is feeding into. I can put a packet sniffer onto the network and read the IP

address it’s going to.”

Patrick blinked. “English, Rick.”

Rick chuckled. “Sorry. Internet transmissions get broken into packets, sent to wherever they’re going, and get reassembled on the other end. Packet sniffers break each packet into its component parts. One of those parts is the IP address-where it’s headed. I can read IP addresses on my screen as the messages pass across the network. There are two big problems, though. The first one is you guys,” he said to Patrick. “It’s like wiretapping a phone. I’l need a warrant to even get started.”

“I figured you would.” Patrick drummed his fingers on the table. “What else?”

“This is the bigger problem. Once I find the IP address, there’s no guarantee that it’s real. Any hacker worth his salt isn’t going to send this video to himself. He’s going to send it to a zombie computer somewhere. If he’s smart, he’l have the first zombie send it to a second.” He shrugged.

“By the time I find the final IP address, I still have to connect it to a person and ISP providers don’t cooperate. It’l mean another warrant.”

“Sniffers and zombies,” Spinnelli muttered. “How long’s this going to take, Rick?”

“A few days, maybe. But you need to know that some of these ISP’s are run through foreign holding companies. The smart ones are.”

“This looks pretty damn smart to me,” Patrick grumbled. “If it’s foreign, it’s like hitting a brick wall.”

Aidan rubbed his temples. “You’ve done this a lot, Rick.”

“Unfortunately, yeah. One of the big areas for us right now is Internet crime, kiddie porn being at the top of the list. These pedophiles know the system, man. They can spin your wheels

59

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

till you’re too dizzy to see straight. And by the time you get to the end, you’re screwed because they’ve picked up and started all over again somewhere else. I’l do what I can. Be assured of that.”

“But you don’t hold a hell of a lot of hope,” Aidan said.

Rick shook his head. “Nope. I wish I could say otherwise.”

Patrick blew out a breath. “But it’s all we have to start with. I’l have your warrant in less than an hour, Rick. Get back over to Winslow’s apartment and wait.”

Rick gathered his things and waved. “Thanks for dinner, Lieutenant. Oh, and one other thing. Your guy turned off the juice to Adams’s cameras. I expect he’l do the same to Winslow’s pretty soon. Once that happens, I got nothin’.”

Spinnelli made a frustrated noise as Rick left the room. “He always so optimistic?”

Jack shrugged. “He deals with kiddie porn peddlers most of the time. How optimistic do you expect him to be?”

Patrick pushed himself away from the table. “I’ve got to go get that warrant,” he said. “Keep me up to date. Marc, call me as soon as you have anything I can use to refute this and get those damn appeals off my back.”