You Can't Hide (2 page)

“It’s not true. I loved you,” she whispered, desperately. “So much.”

“You never loved me.” Melanie was a child again. An innocent child. “He hurt me, Cyn. You let him. You let him hurt me… again and again. Why?”

Cynthia yanked the doorknob and tumbled backward into the hall where a single light burned. And stopped short. More lilies. Everywhere. She turned slowly and could only stare. They mocked her. Mocked her sanity.

“Come to me, Cyn.” Melanie coaxed now. “Come. It’s not so bad. We’l be together. You can take care of me. Like you promised you would.”

“No.” She covered her ears and ran for the door.
“No.”

7

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“You can’t hide, Cyn. Come to me. You know you want to.” She was sweet now, so sweet. Melanie had been so sweet. Then. Now she was dead.
It’s my fault.
Cynthia jerked open the front door. And stifled a scream. Then slowly leaned over and picked up the picture at her feet. She stared in horror at the lifeless figure hanging from the rope, and remembered the day she’d found her. Melanie had just been… dangling there. Swinging…

“You made me do that,” Melanie said coldly. “You don’t deserve to live.”

Her hands shook as she stared. “I don’t,” she whispered.

“Then come to me, Cyn. Please.”

Cynthia backed up again, groped for the phone. “Call Dr. Chick. Call,” she muttered.
She’ll tell
me I’m not crazy.
But the phone rang and startled, she dropped it. Stared at it as if it were alive. Waited for it to sprout fangs and hiss. But it just rang.

“Answer it, Cynthia,” Melanie said coldly. “Now.”

Hands shaking, Cynthia bent over and picked up the phone. “H-hel-hel o?”

“Cynthia, it’s Dr. Ciccotelli.”

Gasping in relief at the solid, familiar,
live
voice, Cynthia’s shoulders sagged. “I hear her, Dr. Chick. Melanie. She’s here. I hear her.”

“Of course you do. She’s calling you, Cynthia. It’s what you deserve. Go to her. End it. End it now.”

“But…” Tears welled, spilled. “But…” she whispered.

“Do it, Cynthia. She’s dead and it’s your fault. Go to her. Do what you should have done years ago. Take care of her.”

“Come,” Melanie ordered, her voice again adult and ful of authority. “Come.”

Cynthia dropped the phone, backed away, wearily now.
I’m tired. So tired
. “Let me sleep,” she whispered. “Please let me sleep.”

“Come to me,” Melanie whispered back. “Then I’l let you sleep.”

Melanie had promised it so many times. So many nights. Cynthia turned and stared at the window. Dark night was outside the glass. But what else? Sleep. Peace.
Peace.

The living room was empty. Cynthia Adams was no longer in view of the camera. The feed to the laptop no longer showed the pacing, frantic woman. She was going to do it. The excitement was building with each moment. After four weeks, Cynthia Adams was finally going to do it. After four weeks of intense effort, she’d been driven to the brink of sanity. Just a little nudge would send her flying. Hopeful y quite literally.

“She’s at the window.” The woman seated in the passenger seat was pale as she murmured the words. Her hands trembled as she careful y set the microphone in her lap. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“You’l do it until I say otherwise.”

She flinched. “She’s going to jump. Let me tell her to stop.”

Stop? The girl was as crazy as Cynthia Adams. “Tell her to come.” She did nothing. Temper bubbled. “Tell her to come or your brother dies. You should know by now I’m not bluffing. Tell her to come. Tell her you need her, you miss her, she owes you. Tell her it will all be better when you’re together. Tell her now. And do it with feeling.” Still she sat, unmoving.
“Now.”

She picked up the microphone, her hands shaking. “Cyn,” she whispered, “I need you. I’m scared.” She was. Nothing like reality to fuel great drama. “Please, come.” Her voice broke. “It will be better this way. Please.” She ended on a pleading whisper. The view of Adams’s window from the driver’s seat was superb. The plate-glass door slowly slid open and Cynthia Adams appeared, her sheer nightgown whipping in the cold March wind. She’d make an attractive corpse. Very Gloria Swanson. What a great movie that was,
Sunset
Boulevard
. Hol ywood just didn’t make them like that anymore. It would be a great way to celebrate. Popcorn and an old movie. But the celebration would never happen if Adams just stood on her balcony.
Just jump, dammit.

8

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Tell her to come. Make her jump. Show me your stuff, sweetheart.”

She swallowed hard at the sarcastic endearment, but nevertheless complied. “Cynthia, just another step. One more. I’m waiting.”

“Do it like a child now. Like a little kid.”

“Please, Cynthia. I’m scared.” The girl’s command of voices was good. She could go from adult to child, from dead Melanie to psychiatrist Ciccotelli in a blink. “Please come.” She drew a deep breath, shuddered it out. “I need you.”

And then… success. A horrified cry rasped from the girl’s throat as Adams came plunging down. Twenty-two floors. They could hear the thud of her body striking pavement even through the closed car windows. Maybe her corpse wouldn’t be so attractive after all. But beauty was in the eye of the beholder and the sight of Adams sprawled dead on the pavement was…

breathtaking. The girl in the passenger seat was crying hysterically.

“Pul yourself together. You need to make another call.”

“Oh, God, oh God.” She turned her face away from the window as the car passed within feet of Adams’s body. “I can’t believe… God, I’m going to be sick.”

“Not in my car you’re not. Take the phone. Take it.”

Shuddering, she took the phone. “I can’t.”

“You will. Hit speed dial number one. It’s Ciccotelli’s home phone. When she answers, tell her that you’re a concerned neighbor of Cynthia Adams and she is standing on the ledge, threatening to jump. Do it.”

She dialed and waited. “She’s not answering. She’s asleep.”

“Then call again. Keep it ringing until the princess answers her phone. And put it on speaker. I want to hear.”

The third try yielded results. “Hello?”

She’d been asleep. Home alone on a Saturday night. It was satisfying, knowing that aspect of Ciccotelli’s life was also well under control. A nudge to the girl had her stuttering her lines. “Dr. Ciccotelli? Dr. Tess Ciccotelli?”

“Who is this?”

“A… a neighbor of one of your patients. Cynthia Adams. Something’s wrong. She’s on the ledge. She’s threatening to jump.” With her eyes closed the girl ended the call and let the cell phone drop to her lap. “I’m finished.”

“For tonight.”

“But-” She jerked around, her mouth open. “You said…”

“I said I’d keep your brother alive if you assisted me. I still need your assistance. Keep practicing Ciccotelli’s voice. I’l need you to do her again in a few days. For tonight, we’re done. Say one word and you and your brother die.”

Ciccotelli was coming.
Let the games commence.

Chapter 1

Sunday, March 12, 12:30 A.M.

Normally a suicide drew a bigger crowd, even in a high-priced neighborhood like this one, Detective Aidan Reagan thought grimly as he slammed his car door and flinched at the bite of the cold air blowing in from the lake. But most people with any sense were inside on a night like this. Aidan couldn’t afford the luxury. Dispatch called and he and his partner were next in the barrel. For a damn suicide.

This was a distraction from the child homicide he’d spent the last two days working. He hated child homicides but he thought he might hate suicides just a little bit more. He could only

9

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

hope he could get this jumper off his desk quickly so he could focus on finding who’d broken a six-year-old’s neck like a dry twig.

The people who watched from the curb appeared to be twenty-somethings coming home from a night on the town. They waited silently, eyes fastened to the scene with a morbid mixture of horror, fascination, and sympathy. The horror Aidan understood. No body was a pretty sight, but a plunge twenty-two stories was a step beyond generic gruesomeness. As for the sympathy…

Aidan would save his for the real victims. Whoever said suicide was a victimless crime had obviously never notified a family.

He had.

He wished the morbid curiosity-seekers could see that part of it. They might not find such a scene so damn fascinating after all. But they were well-behaved at least, standing silently behind the yellow tape strung between two light posts by the officers first on the scene. An occasional stamp of cold feet broke the unnatural silence. One of the two uniforms stood by the yellow tape at the curb, the other on the sidewalk, facing away from the body. Aidan approached, his shield in his hand. After four months it still felt strange, approaching the uniform, not wearing one. “Reagan, Homicide,” he said crisply, then stopped short, first at the stench, then at the sight. The stomach he’d have sworn was seasoned after twelve years on the force took a nasty lurch. “My God.”

The uniform nodded, his jaw tight. “That’s what we said.”

Aidan’s eyes took a quick trip up the wall of identical balconies and back down to focus on the iron spike protruding from what had been a woman’s chest. Now her chest was ripped open, revealing shattered bone and… insides. For just a moment he stared, remembering the other time he’d seen such a sight. He steeled his spine. This was nothing like the other. That other victim had been an innocent. This woman lying here… she was dead by her own hand.
No
sympathy,
he told himself.

This woman had thrown herself twenty-two stories to concrete-and onto a decorative wrought-iron fence. The fence was only about a foot high, mostly inverted “u”s, but every four feet or so a spike jutted upward. The force of her impact on the spike had literal y split her wide open, geysering blood to splatter a dirty pile of snow three feet away. “She hit it dead on,” he murmured.

The uniform winced. “So to speak.”

Aidan dragged his gaze back to the cop’s drawn face. “You are?”

“I’m Forbes and that’s my partner, DiBello, over there doing crowd control.” Forbes grimaced. “I lost the toss.”

Aidan scanned the faces of the silent crowd that needed no control, but hell, a toss was a toss. He’d lost his fair share during his years in uniform. “Anybody see anything?”

“Two seventeen-year-olds say she jumped from the twenty-second floor at about midnight.”

Forbes pointed a black gloved finger upward. “It’s that balcony up there, the one with the curtains blowing in the wind, third from the left.”

“Nobody pushed her?”

“Kids didn’t see anybody. They said she kind of glided up to the railing.”

Aidan frowned. “Glided up? Like a ghost?”

Forbes shrugged. “That’s what they said. Kept repeating it, again and again. I put ’em in the back of the squad car until you could talk to them. They’re pretty shook up.”

“Poor kids.” They deserved the sympathy. This sight would haunt them for a long time. They were only seventeen, just a year older than his own sister. He shuddered at the thought of Rachel seeing such a grisly sight, then jerked a nod toward the crowd. “Any of them know her?”

“DiBel o asked, but nobody did.”

Aidan looked at the woman’s face, her features now loose and spongy. Blood seeped from her ears, nose, and her open mouth. The iron fence had taken the brunt of the force of her fall, but any fall from that height smashed the skul , the scalp basically containing the mess. The features kind of liquefied, giving the face a macabre, melted wax look. “Nobody would recognize

10

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

her now, even if they did know her. We’l need to get into the apartment she jumped from. Is the super around?”

“I knocked but he’s not home. A neighbor says he’s at a Bul s game.”

“The game was over two hours ago. Where is he now?”

“I paged him once. I’l see if I can find out where he hangs.”

“Thanks, man. Also, can we move this crowd to the other side of the street? And make sure nobody in the crowd takes any pictures. Have your partner keep his eyes open for camera cell phones.” Aidan pul ed out his own cell and called in for a warrant and a medical examiner, then crouched down to take a closer look at the body. She was wrapped in black lace and silk and he wondered if she’d dressed especial y for the occasion. If she had, the effect was ruined by the spike. And the guts oozing onto the concrete. He swallowed hard. It was a hell of a mess for someone to clean up. That was the problem with suicides, he thought bitterly. They wanted to go out with dramatic flair but they never thought about the consequences to anybody else. To the people they left behind. To the people who had to clean up. Selfish. So damn avoidable.
Goddammit.

He realized he’d clenched his fists and deliberately loosened them.
Get a grip, Reagan.
The deep breath he drew filled his senses with the metallic scent of warm blood and foul stench of busted bowel, but underneath he caught a hint of cinnamon as footsteps crunched the snow behind him. His partner was here.

“Hell of a way to go,” Murphy stated in his quiet way.

Aidan shot a harsh glance over his shoulder. “Hell of a thing to do to her family. Can’t wait to make that visit.”

“One thing at a time, Aidan,” Murphy said evenly, but his eyes were kind and understanding and made Aidan feel small. “So what do we know?”

“Only that she jumped from the twenty-second floor. Two witnesses say she ‘glided’ up, whatever the hell that means. I haven’t talked to them yet. As for her, she was young. Her arms look well-toned.” He focused in on her limbs, the only body parts that remained reasonably unscathed. “Maybe in her late twenties or early thirties.” He pointed at one hand that draped over the inverted “u”s of the decorative fence. “Big rock on her right hand, no sign of any rings on her left, so she’s probably unmarried. Somebody has some money. That ring costs a hell of a lot of green. Her arms and hands don’t appear to have any defensive wounds.”