You Can't Hide (6 page)

“That makes three of us,” Aidan returned evenly. He looked over his shoulder to where their lieutenant leaned against the back wall of the small observation area, a scowl bending his saltand-pepper mustache straight down. “You still don’t agree.”

Lieutenant Marc Spinnelli shook his head. “I’ve known Tess Ciccotelli for years. She’s a good person. A good doctor. She may not always diagnose the way we’d like, but she’s not capable of driving that woman to the brink of sanity.”

22

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“And shoving her over,” Murphy muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”

Aidan watched Murphy go in the interview room, take the seat farthest from Ciccotelli. Her gaze snapped to Murphy briefly, then returned to the glass, no longer cool. Now her dark brown eyes flashed with anger. Good. Angry was better than cool and col ected any damn day. “He’s involved,” Aidan murmured, his hand on the doorknob, his eyes on Murphy’s expressionless face.

“We all are,” Spinnelli shot back, frustration in his tone. “Any cop in the city would be. There aren’t many that don’t know about Harold Green but most of them don’t know Tess. Go in there and do your job, Aidan. So will Murphy.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Spinnelli huffed a sigh. “Then I’l step in.”

With that promise, Aidan walked into the interview room. Her eyes fol owed him, narrowed and… dangerous.

“I’m here, Detective Reagan, just as you wanted me to be. You’ve watched me for fifteen minutes. When are you going to tell me what the hell is going on here?”

He sat down next to her, at the end of the table. “Tell me about Cynthia Adams.”

She blinked and drew a breath, visibly fighting for control. And degree by degree achieved it, while he watched, totally fascinated. “Cynthia Adams was a complicated woman,” she finally answered, looking at Aidan directly, ignoring Murphy completely. “But you know that if you’ve been in her apartment.”

“Have you?” Aidan asked. “Been in her apartment, that is.”

“No. I’ve never been inside her apartment.”

The woman could lie without blinking. From the corner of his eye he could see the muscle in Murphy’s jaw twitch as his partner clenched his teeth. Aidan felt pity for Murphy, and for Spinnelli, too. They obviously cared for Ciccotelli. This was going to be difficult for them, he knew.
So I’ll do it for them,
he thought. “But you have been to her apartment, Doctor?” he pressed.

“Outside?”

She regarded him warily. “Once. She’d missed an appointment. I was concerned. I called and only got voice mail, so my partner, Dr. Ernst, and I went to check on her.”

She’d been in practice with Dr. Harrison Ernst for five years. Nearing retirement age, Ernst was highly respected. This Aidan knew from his quick search on Ciccotelli before picking her up for questioning. “You normally do that? Make house calls?”

“No, I don’t. Cynthia was a bit of a special case.”

“Why?”

Her jaw cocked slightly to one side, she laced her fingers together tightly in her lap. Her expression was unreadable now. “I cared about her.”

“When was this? The visit,” he clarified and watched her jaw clench reflexively. His presentation of a question fol owed by a clarification annoyed her. Good.

“About three weeks ago.”

“Did she cal you back?”

“Eventually.”

“And?”

“And she set up another appointment with me.” She was playing the game now. Admirably so. Answer only what was asked, revealing nothing more.

“Did she show up? To the new appointment.”

“No.” Any caginess disappeared, replaced for a fraction of a second with a look of such acute sadness, he found himself mentally circling back around. If she was innocent, she really cared. If she was guilty, she was damn good. “No she didn’t,” she murmured. “I called her again, left her another message, but she never cal ed me back. I never talked to her again.”

Aidan took his pad from his pocket. “Why was Miss Adams seeing you, Doctor?”

The wary look was back. “She was depressed.”

“About?”

23

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Ciccotelli closed her eyes. “Were she alive I couldn’t tell you any of this. You understand that. It would be privileged.”

“But she’s not alive,” Aidan said silkily. “She’s lying on a slab in the morgue, eviscerated, by her own hand.” Her eyes flew open and in them he saw shocked outrage. But she careful y banked it.

“I began treating Cynthia about a year ago. She’d been to perhaps a dozen doctors before she came to me.”

Aidan thought about all the prescription bottles they’d found in her medicine cabinet. So many doctors. And yet Cynthia Adams was still dead. “You obviously helped her so much she killed herself,” he said sharply. Her eyes flashed then calmed while Murphy shot him a warning glare.

She pulled a folder from her briefcase and set it on the table between them. “Cynthia suffered from severe depression stemming from abuse she suffered as a young girl. Her father molested her from the time she was ten until she ran away from home at seventeen.” She leveled him a steady look. “I imagine you found evidence of… extreme sexual behavior in her apartment, Detective.”

“We found cuffs and whips, yes. A few pictures.”

She continued looking at him steadily. “Cynthia hated herself, hated her father for his abuse. Sometimes victims of abuse turn to the thing they hate the most. They become defined by that one hated thing. Sometimes victims of sexual abuse become addicted to sex. Cynthia was. She would have sex with as many men as she could in one night, then despise herself the next day. She’d promise to stop but it got worse.”

“So you were treating her for her sex addiction,” Aidan said, but she shook her head.

“No, I was treating her for depression. I met Cynthia almost one year ago. She was in the hospital recuperating from a suicide attempt. She’d slit her wrists, the way a person does when they really want to die. You’l find deep scars on the inside of her wrists if you haven’t already.”

He thought about the jagged scars he’d seen, ironically one of the only identifying marks to survive Adams’s jump. “What made her try suicide a year ago, Doctor?”

“I told you. Self-loathing.”

“But she’d hated herself for some time. Why did she pick then to slit her wrists?”

“She underwent another trauma at that same time.”

He was starting to get annoyed now. “Which was?”

“Her sister hanged herself and Cynthia found her.”

He control ed his sudden flare of interest. “Why did she hang herself? The sister.”

“The sister was younger. When Cynthia ran away from home, her father started on the younger sister. When she’d grown up, the sister couldn’t take the memories and hanged herself. Cynthia felt an enormous guilt for leaving her sister alone with their father. Her sister’s suicide sent her over the edge.”

“What was her sister’s name, Doctor?”

She opened the folder, searched its contents. Most of the pages were typed, but a few were written in a neat, confident hand. She pul ed out one such handwritten page and scanned it. Upside down, he read an April date from the year before on the top of the page. “Her sister’s name was Melanie. She killed herself…” She stopped, her wide eyes fixed on the page. “A year ago today. Oh, God. I should have seen this coming.” Her throat worked as she tried to swallow and for that moment Aidan was ready to believe Murphy was right. Murphy rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “We found medication in her apartment. A lot of medication.”

She lifted her eyes to Murphy, stark and stripped of any belligerence or anger. “I prescribed Xanax.”

“The ME found PCP in her tox screen, Tess.”

Taken aback, Ciccotelli shook her head hard, eyes narrowed. “She was using PCP? I never saw signs of illegal drug use.”

24

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Only of the drugs
you
gave her,” Aidan said, his tone a few shades too agreeable. Her head whipped around to stare at him, twin flags of color riding high on her cheekbones.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Aidan didn’t answer. Instead he began laying out the pictures they’d found in Adams’s apartment the night before.

And watched as all the color drained from her face. “Oh my God,” she whispered, hands trembling as she picked up each one and stared, horrified. When she reached the last one, the one of Melanie hanging from a noose, dead, a muffled whimper broke through her lips, now an unnatural red against her pale face. “Where did you find these?” she asked in a strangled whisper.

Murphy met his eyes, his look clearly saying,
I told you so
. He tapped the corner of the noose picture. “This one I found near the sliding glass door to her balcony last night. Some of the ones of her sister in the casket came in the mail, no return address.”

Her attention was still focused on the pictures, her voice still a haunted whisper. “Who would do such a thing?”

Aidan raised a brow. Once again he thought if she was innocent, she really did care. If she was guilty, she was one of the best liars he’d ever met. As long as Murphy was sold on the former, he’d have to protect the possibility of the latter. “Some came as e-mail attachments. Do you know Cynthia’s e-mail address, Doctor?”

She turned to him, slowly, her dark eyes wary now. “I have it somewhere. It’s one of the questions on my new patient form.” She turned back to Murphy. “Why?”

Murphy pursed his lips. “Play it.”

Aidan ducked from the room long enough to grab the cassette player he’d left on the floor outside. He set the machine next to Ciccotelli, waited for her eyes to lift to his before he hit the PLAY button.

“Cyn-thia.” It was a childlike wail, oddly haunting. Ciccotelli flinched as the message continued. “You didn’t come again. You promised you wouldn’t leave me. Check your e-mail, Cynthia.”

Aidan stopped the tape and pul ed a casket picture from the pile on the table. “That was on her voice mail. This was the attachment to the e-mail. Last night the floor of Cynthia’s living room was covered in flowers like the one the corpse is holding.”

“Someone was forcing her to relive Melanie’s death,” Ciccotelli said slowly, closing her eyes.

“The PCP in her system would have made her believe it was true, that she was hearing ghosts. Who would do such a thing?” she repeated.

Who indeed?
Aidan started the tape again, watching every nuance of her expression. He didn’t have to wait long. At the first words her eyes flew open. She was… truly shocked. Horror had her eyes glazing over as she listened.

“Cynthia, this is Dr. Ciccotelli. I’ve missed you. Melanie’s missed you, too. It’s one year today. It’s her birthday, Cynthia. Melanie’s left you presents. Isn’t it time to give her what she wants?

Isn’t it time to keep your promise? Keep your promise, Cynthia.”

Aidan stopped the tape and the interview room was suddenly silent. She said nothing, just sat looking at the tape recorder as if it were a cobra, poised to strike. He put two more pictures on the table in front of her, the noose and the gun. “These were Melanie’s gifts to Cynthia,” he said flatly.

He watched her eyes drop to the pictures.

And began to believe Murphy was indeed correct. Her total and complete shock was utterly convincing. But then again, this woman knew the human mind. She’d know exactly how to play a scene like this. Wouldn’t she?

“Tess,” Murphy said, his voice gone rough. “The security tapes of Adams’s apartment lobby show a woman with black hair and a tan coat carrying a large bag onto the elevator.” He hesitated, then blurted the rest. “We found fingerprints on the boxes that held the rope and the gun. On the bottle of Xanax, too.”

25

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Slowly she pulled her gaze up to Murphy’s face. “Whose?” But the look of dread in her eyes said she knew, even before she heard the answer.

Murphy swallowed hard. “Yours, Tess. Your fingerprints were on the medicine and the rope and the gun. They matched your prints we lifted from the card you gave me.”

She leaned back in her chair, careful y. Then she looked up at Aidan with the same calm he’d seen the night before, after she’d turned from viewing Adams’s mangled body on the street.

“I think I’m going to call my lawyer now, Detective. This interview is over.”

Chapter 3

Sunday, March 12, 2:43 P.M.

It was simply unbelievable. But it was real.
And it’s happening to me
. Cynthia was dead.
And I am sitting on the wrong side of the glass, needing a defense attorney
for the first time in my life.
There had been only one choice, one lawyer Tess trusted enough to call. Her best friend Amy was a civil defense attorney, but Tess knew Amy did pro bono work in the criminal courts from time to time. So where the hell was she? The Blue Lemon was less than twenty minutes from the police station, but Tess was certain she’d been sitting here alone twice that amount of time. Waiting, as the minutes ticked by. Still, she fought the urge to look at her watch, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

They were watching her. Behind the glass. She knew it as well as she knew her own face staring back at her from the mirror. Todd Murphy and his arrogant asshole of a new partner with his stony face and cold blue eyes. She didn’t break her gaze, didn’t look away.
Let the bastard
watch me. Let him wonder.

They thought she’d done it. Driven Cynthia Adams to take her own life. They actually thought she’d done it. The notion left her coldly furious.

Even Murphy. Her heart hitched while her eyes stayed locked on her own reflection, connected to the cops behind the glass. Reagan she would have expected to be aggressive with this kind of evidence. But Todd Murphy? That he could even imagine her doing such a thing left her… hurt.

They’d been friends. A breach of trust like this… It could never be fixed. This she knew from personal experience. Trust was a fragile commodity and only idiots gave it blindly. Only bigger idiots tried to humpty-dumpty it back together when it was crushed and shattered. And Tess Ciccotelli was no idiot.