You Can't Hide (36 page)

The door opened behind her and she turned to find Keith coming through the door looking tired and worn. He hated his job at the bank. She knew that. He’d turned down a terrific job at a big investment firm in Atlanta to fol ow her to Chicago where she could pursue her dream out from under the shadow of her famous father and his newspaper. But that his smile didn’t reach his eyes wasn’t the bank’s fault today. It was hers. He was still hurt from Monday morning. “I’m sorry, Keith. I was wrong.”

He came over and kissed the top of her head. “I know, baby. It’s okay.” But it wasn’t. She could hear the strain in his voice.

She sent her story to the printer. “You want to grab some supper?”

“I’m tired, Jo. Let’s just call for pizza.” He stripped off his tie, his eyes narrowing at the first page coming off the printer. “This isn’t about Dr. Ciccotelli. Jo, what is this?”

She addressed an e-mail to the features editor and attached the file. “Let’s call it subtle influence.”

His mouth hardened. “Let’s call it extortion. You can’t do this, Jo.”

She hit SEND. “I just did.”

Keith stepped back, his eyes going flat. “I’m not sure who the hell you think you are, but when you decide to return to your senses, let me know.” He turned for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“For a walk before I say something I’l live to regret.”

Wednesday, March 15, 7:25 P.M.

“Fuck,” Murphy muttered. “We’re too late
again
.”

Aidan stood in the doorway of Bacon’s bathroom, his arms locked over his chest looking at the body in the tub with a grim sense of real y bad fate. He’d been the one to find the right apartment. It had been the fifth one on his list, an apartment in the refinished basement of an old house owned by a retired couple who had no idea they harbored a sex offender. The husband had recognized Bacon right away, calling him Mr. Ford. Aidan had called in for a warrant and waited for backup, agonizing with every tick of his watch. Murphy arrived at the same time as the warrant, so they went in together.

Bacon’s computer had been destroyed, his monitor smashed, his hard drive melted in a bowl of sulfuric acid, if the label on the bottle next to the bowl was accurate. Bacon floated in a tub filled with bloodred water. He’d slit his wrists, the bastard. A pile of clothes lay on the floor next to the toilet and Aidan gingerly picked up the pants and the shirt. The pants were soaked from water that had spilled from the tub and run across the floor. He sniffed at the clothes. And frowned. “Smell this, Murphy.”

Murphy shrugged. “I can’t smell anything but cigarette smoke.”

“The pants smell like smoke. The shirt doesn’t.”

Murphy shrugged again. “Sorry.” He looked around with a frown. “Why today? Why did he off himself today?”

“I’m wondering the same thing. He thought Tess would pay him blackmail money, so why kil himself today?”

“Excuse me, Detectives.” The CSU photographer had arrived and Aidan moved out of the way. “I’l make this quick as possible.”

135

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Jack and Rick were right behind the photographer and Rick was already looking around the room shaking his head. “We need to find his stash,” Rick said. “These guys always have a video col ection and they all have their favorite hidey-holes.”

Aidan joined them in the living room. “Can we get anything off that hard drive?”

Rick looked doubtful y at the hard drive soaking in the bowl of acid. “I don’t think so. Bacon must have had something pretty damning on that drive. It’s how we got him the first time as I recall. He had everything stored on his hard drive. All the video of al those young girls. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to get a conviction.”

Murphy’s gaze was directed to the ceiling. “Let’s look for cameras.”

“It’s unlikely he’l have cameras in here,” Jack said. “But we might get lucky and get a picture we can use for a change. It would be ironic.”

“And out of type,” Rick added. “Bacon likes to watch. Liked, anyway. Being watched would make him feel out of control. But I’l check to make sure.”

“For now, we look for his stash,” Jack decided. “How big are we talking, Rick?”

“Some of these guys have hundreds of videos. Bacon was at it for a long time.”

Hundreds,
Aidan thought grimly.
But I only need to find one
. Then he felt guilty. Each video represented a victim, just like Tess. “I’l take his bedroom.”

Each of them took a room to search while the ME tech arrived and fished Bacon’s body from the tub. Aidan had checked every drawer as well as the mattress and box springs before he opened the closet door. He stared, stunned. Then moved.
“Murphy!”

“What did you-Damn,” Murphy breathed as Aidan lifted a tan coat from the closet, hanger and all. “Nicole Rivera’s coat. And the wig, too.”

Aidan hung the coat back up. “Why does Bacon have the coat and wig?”

“And the gun.”

They turned to see Jack holding a semiautomatic pistol. “Same caliber as the bul et we found in Rivera,” Aidan said flatly.

Jack nodded. “It was hidden in the ceiling with some other stuff you need to see.”

The other stuff was pictures-copies of the police photos of Cynthia Adams’s sister and Avery Winslow’s infant son. Lists of Tess Ciccotel i’s patients and her personal routine-exercise, shopping, Sunday brunch with her friends. Her preference for the stairs. “Receipts,” Aidan murmured. “The original receipts for the dol and the bear.”

“And a flash card for a camera.” Rick put it on the kitchen table next to the photographs and receipts. “We’ll check it out in the lab to see what’s on it. And, I found these.” Rick pul ed two more photographs from the bottom of the stack.

Murphy sighed. “Blaine Connell.” It was a night shot, but clearly showed two men. One of them was Connell accepting cash. A second photo, a close-up, showed Connell’s hand closing around a stack of bills topped with Ben Franklin’s face.

“Do you know the other guy?” Aidan asked and Murphy hesitated, frowning. Then his eyes widened and he nodded. “Not his name, but I’ve seen him. He was on the security video of the elevator at Seward’s place. He was dressed in maintenance coveralls. Bacon must have hired him.” Murphy pul ed in a breath. “
Bacon
orchestrated this? All of this?”

Aidan looked at the pictures, the gun. All of it. “It doesn’t feel right.” It felt… anticlimactic.

“Why did he? What motive could he have had?”

Jack pushed a piece of paper forward. “It’s Bacon’s psych evaluation.”

Murphy scanned it with a frown. “Tess did Bacon’s court evaluation.”

“One more thing.” Jack held this paper up so that they could all see. “It’s a suicide confession. He says he did it.”

Wednesday, March 15, 8:15 P.M.

Beside her, Dol y growled and sat up, ears twitching. Tess heard the garage door go up. Aidan was home. He’d have news of the man who’d filmed her. Who might have already sold her

136

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

pictures to any number of porn sites on the Internet. She could be out there, visible to anyone with an overactive mouse finger and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. But even as her gut churned helplessly, she dropped her chin.

It shamed her to be worried about videos when Ethel Hughes’s life was truly ruined. Mr. Hughes.
He was beaten to death.
She could hear Aidan’s voice, so very gentle.
Not your
fault.
Yeah, right.
Be judged by the company you keep.
Mr. Hughes was dead because he was her friend. Who would be next? Amy? Jon? She’d called them, told them to be careful. Not to go out alone. She hadn’t been able to call Ethel, to tell her how sorry she was. Not yet. She would have to, but not yet.

You’re a coward, Chick.
The truth of it had bile burning her throat. Her friends were in danger, yet here she hid. Doing nothing.

Aidan came through the door, his eyes widening in surprise when Dol y leaped against his chest. Affectionately he scratched the dog’s ears, meeting her eyes over Dol y’s head. “Where’s your brother?”

Tess tapped her lips with her forefinger. “Asleep on your sofa. He’d pul ed a double shift before coming out here and then he was up all night worrying about me.”

Aidan looked around the doorway to where Vito sprawled on the sofa, snoring softly, his feet dangling off the sofa’s edge, Bella curled up on his butt.

“Something smells good.” Unbuttoning his overcoat, he walked over to the table, then bent for a closer look, sniffing appreciatively. “Are these cannoli?”

Her mouth tipped up. There was a reverence in his tone that made her heart ease, just a little. “They are. And ravioli, too. All from scratch.”

He sampled one of the cannoli, closing his eyes as he swallowed. “My God, these are good. I’m starving. So where did you get the ingredients to make all this stuff?”

“The local market delivers.” She waved her hand when he scowled. “I had Vito answer the door. I’m not stupid, Aidan.”

“I didn’t say you were. How are you, Tess?”

Shrugging, she set about driving the corkscrew into a bottle of red wine she’d bought earlier that afternoon, finding the stabbing, jabbing, and twisting quite cathartic. “You want some? It’s good for your heart, you know.”

“Is that why you drink it?” he asked.

“Actually it is. My father has a bad heart, so I run three times a week, take an aspirin every morning and a glass of red wine every night.”
So I don’t end up like him. In more ways than one.

“Do you want some or not, Aidan?”

“Just a little. Did the market deliver the wine, too?”

“This? No. This came from a little wineshop a few blocks from my office. I went by today after I finished cleaning up the vault and swearing at Joanna Carmichael.”

His brows went up. “Carmichael came by your office? Why?”

“She still wants an exclusive.”

“She hasn’t been in her apartment any of the times I’ve gone by.”

“Because she’s been fol owing me.” Tess thought about the young girl with the innocent looking braid and the predatory gleam in her eyes. “She threatened to do an exposй on my friends. So now I’ve warned them on two fronts.” Exposure and danger.
Because they’re my
friends.
She’d been trying to keep it from eating her inside all day. His brows furrowed. “What do your friends have to hide, Tess?”

She shrugged, annoyed at the question. Annoyed that her friends were vulnerable.

“Everybody has something they’d prefer stay hidden, Aidan. Even you, I’d imagine.”

His eyes shuttered. “So you went shopping?”

A clumsy segue, but she let him have it unchallenged. “I did. I bought some shoes and a present for your mother and some wine.” She reapplied herself to the cork, her bad mood rippling. “The woman who runs the wineshop used to be the wife of some high-powered CEO

until one day, poof-” She pulled the cork from the bottle with a loud pop. “Her husband says, ‘It’s

137

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

over, Marge,’ and throws her over for some skinny-assed little bimbo barely out of col ege.” The words came out so bitterly she cringed.

“He cheated on her,” Aidan said evenly.

“I suppose I am a little transparent on that score. Anyway, Marge put everything she had into starting her own wineshop.” Tess sniffed at the cork. It was good. “I only buy from Marge. I figure she’s earned it.”

He was studying her steadily. “How are you, Tess?”

Her hands shook as she poured, sending wine sloshing over the glass’s rim. “Scared. Wondering who will be next. I feel like such a coward, hiding here.”

“Sit down.”

She did, sighing when he put his arm around her shoulders and pul ed her close. He was strength and warmth at a time when she had too little of either so she let herself lean, resting her head on his shoulder.

“You’re not a coward,” he murmured in her ear. “Don’t ever think that.”

“My friends are in danger because…” She swallowed hard and forced the words out in a harsh whisper. “Because of the company they keep. And I can’t make it stop because I don’t even know what I did to start it.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, quick and hard. “You didn’t do anything. Tess, do you know the name David Bacon?”

She lifted her head, forcing her brain to think. “I think so. He… He was one of Eleanor’s court evaluations, right about the time she died. It’s been almost four years.”

“Three years, eight months.”

“That sounds about right.” She tilted her head, studying him. His eyes had gone flat. “Why?”

“Eleanor was your former partner, right?” he asked instead.

“Yes. She took me under her wing when I was still an undergrad. Groomed me to take her practice. We thought she had a lot more time. She had a stroke-no warning. I took her court evaluations after she died. I do remember David Bacon. Eleanor had done most of the work so I only talked to him once, then I signed off on the report. I never even had to testify in court.” She shuddered. “He was creepy.”

“You seem to remember him clearly. Was he your first court evaluation?”

“No, I’d done others, but he was my first where I had to work with two branches of law enforcement. The Feds were involved in that one, because… Oh my God. He put cameras in a girls’ locker room shower. It was kiddie porn because most of them were younger than eighteen and the Feds prosecuted.
He’s
the one who put the camera in my shower?”

“It seems so.”

She was afraid to ask. “Did… did you catch him?”

He nodded soberly and relief flooded her mind. The midnight deadline that had taunted her all day was no more. Bacon wouldn’t be selling that video to the media, or anybody else. But something was wrong. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Very.”

“Did you kil him?”

“No.”

“I thought this was good news. I’m supposed to feel relieved, right? Why don’t I?”

His blue eyes were troubled. “Because it doesn’t feel right to me. We found all the evidence that he’d set up Adams and Winslow and Seward. We found the gun that’s the same caliber as the one that killed the voice actress. We found the evaluation you signed. We even found evidence that one of the cops in my old precinct was involved.”