You Can't Hide (35 page)

“We know,” Murphy said blandly. “Didn’t you guys do a background check?”

Gus flushed. “They’re expensive,” he mumbled and the picture was clearer.

“Your boss cut a corner and now he’s afraid his ass is on the line,” Aidan said. Gus gave him a dirty look. “Something like that.”

“So when did Bacon get fired?” Murphy asked.

“About a month ago.”

“His mother still has all his shirts,” Murphy said and Gus grimaced.

“She can keep ’em. Man always smelled like cat piss. We’d never get those shirts clean. My boss just wanted him gone. We didn’t want to get sued by any ladies.”

“He leave a forwarding address for his paycheck?” Aidan pressed.

“No. Sorry.” Gus frowned when they just looked at him. “I’m not lying. My boss said he wasn’t going to get his last paycheck and that if he ever set foot in this store again he’d call the cops for sure. Bacon got real pale and scooted faster than if we’d shocked him with a cattle prod. Which we real y wish we had.”

“I know the feeling,” Aidan told him. “Do you have any idea where he lives?”

Gus concentrated. “No. But he came in one day saying he’d had enough of living with his mother and was going to get a place of his own. Spent all morning looking at ads in the paper and making phone calls. Boss docked his pay when he found out.”

Aidan felt the hairs on his neck lift. “Do you remember exactly when that was?”

Gus concentrated again, then brightened. “Wait.” He rummaged under the counter, coming up with a col ege basketball schedule. “The second Monday in December.” He looked up. “There was a big game that night and some guy came in desperate for a new TV because he was having a party and his TV was broke. I had to help him because Bacon was on the damn phone. Does that help?”

Aidan’s smile was grimly relieved. “Tremendously.” He gave him a card. “Cal us if you remember anything else about Bacon.”

Gus looked at the card, then up again. “Now I remember where I seen you. You’re the detective from TV yesterday. You were coming out of Seward’s after he killed himself.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Can I have your autograph?”

131

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Murphy was still chuckling over it an hour later as they reviewed Wires-N-Widgets’ LUDs for the second Monday in December. Aidan failed to see the humor in his newfound celebrity.

“What is a capacitor, by the way?” Murphy asked. “Those things Gus was bagging.”

“It keeps the voltage from changing too fast.” Aidan looked at the list of apartments. They were all over the city. It would take hours to check each one. He looked up and Murphy’s head was tilted in question. “I took an electrical circuits class as-”

“Part of your degree.” Murphy shook his head, smiling. “I know.”

Spinnelli walked over and stood over them, a sober frown bending his mustache. “What’s so funny?”

Aidan rol ed his eyes. “Nothing. We’ve got a lead on where Bacon might be living.” He showed Spinnelli the list of twenty phone numbers Bacon had called looking for an apartment.

“We’ve called a dozen of them so far and none of them remember him.”

“He was probably using a different name,” Murphy said, totally serious now. “We’l have to show his picture. The places are all over town. This could take a while.”

“Split it up,” Spinnelli ordered tersely.

Aidan studied his face. “What’s happened, Marc?”

Spinnelli opened his mouth to answer just as Abe and his partner Mia Mitchell walked in. Both wore ominous expressions that matched Spinnelli’s.

Slowly Aidan stood up, his heart slowing to a hard thud. “Clayborn?”

Abe shook his head. “We fol owed leads all morning, but he’s gone under. We got another call and had to respond.”

Aidan’s slogging heart took a racing tumble. “Rachel?”

Mia’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with Rachel?” Abe shook his head harder.

“Nothing. She’s fine. Aidan, do you know a man named Hughes?”

Aidan thought, then his eyes slowly raised when his memory clicked. “He’s the doorman in Tess’s apartment building. Why?”

Mia unzipped her coat and tugged her scarf from her neck. “Because he’s dead. He was found in an alley not too far from his apartment, beaten to a pulp.”

Aidan lowered himself to sit on the edge of his desk. It was random. It had to be random. But in his heart he knew it was not. “Was he robbed?”

“His wallet was clean except for his license,” Abe said. “Somebody wanted him identified, but it would be impossible by his face. He was beaten badly, Aidan, really badly.” He drew a breath.

“He had two things pinned to his shirt. One was a note printed on a printer. It said ‘Be judged by the company you keep.’”

“The second was a newspaper article about Tess,” Mia added quietly. Aidan rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, the implications too overwhelming to absorb. “He was Tess’s friend. This is going to destroy her.”

There was quiet for a moment then Spinnelli sighed. “You were right, Aidan. He’s not finished yet. But at least we have a motive finally. It’s not to get an appeal and it’s not to stage suicides for profit.”

“It’s to destroy Tess,” Aidan said quietly. “However he can.”

Spinnelli was grim. “And our only leads are a cop who won’t talk to IA and Bacon.”

Abe’s brows came together and he exchanged a look with Mia. “A cop?”

“What was the time of death on the doorman?” Spinnelli asked.

“Ten hours ago,” Mia said. “Give or take thirty minutes. Which cop, Marc? Why?”

“A cop who’s been in with IA all day, so he couldn’t have killed Hughes,” Spinnelli answered, without real y answering. “So we’re down to Bacon.” He rapped on the list of apartments with his knuckles. “Go find him.”

“We have to go talk to Hughes’s wife,” Abe said. “She doesn’t know yet.”

“I need to tell Tess,” Aidan said. “I don’t want her to hear this on the news.”

“And we stil need to find Clayborn,” Mia added. “What’s the priority, Marc?”

132

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Spinnelli considered. “Mia, you take the widow. Abe, you take a few of the apartments, then the two of you get back to searching for Clayborn. I’ve had calls all day from Ernst’s children, demanding to know when their father’s killer would be caught.” He rubbed his temples.

“Apparently Harrison Ernst had friends in high places because the big guys upstairs have been calling, too. Murphy, you take half the list and Aidan, you take what’s left over. Tell Tess first, then start looking.” His lips tipped up without a shred of humor. “Last one in is a rotten egg.”

Wednesday, March 15, 5:10 P.M.

David Bacon slid the deadbolt closed on his apartment door with a grimace. The place would smell like cigarette smoke forever, he feared, shrugging out of his suit coat. It was the carpet. The fibers soaked up the smell like a sponge. Still, it was better than living with his mother. Cigarettes beat mothballs and cat piss any damn day of the week. And he wouldn’t have to worry about the carpet for long. Even without Pope’s money, Ciccotelli’s first blackmail payment would get him an apartment in a better neighborhood. Payments after that would put him on easy street for a long time because this was a horse he intended to ride around the track till it keeled over and died. He’d taken two steps into his living room when he stopped. Something was different. Dropping his coat, he ran to his computer, his heart was slamming in his throat. Everything. It had been disturbed, the monitor toppled to the floor. “Oh God,” he whispered. “Oh no.” He’d been robbed.

The laptop had been ripped from its docking station, its keyboard pried away. His hard drive was gone.
Gone.
He forced himself to breathe, to think. It was bad, but not the end of the world. He never left anything on his hard drive, not after the cops used it to put him away last time. Everything of value was on the CDs. His heart stopped.
My God, the CDs. If someone’s stolen my
CDs…

He ran back to his bathroom and skidded to a stop. His hiding place was still secure. He drew a deep breath, sighing in relief.

And realized the cigarette smell was stronger. Slowly he turned to see the reason why. The cigarette was still lit and held by a gloved hand he hadn’t seen in a long time. Bacon frowned, momentarily off balance. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, David.”

He froze, staring at the business end of a slim.22. With a silencer. “I don’t understand.”

“You cheated me. I hired you to do a job, to set up a camera network in Ciccotelli’s apartment. You installed a camera on the side. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

He shook his head, panic sending blood pounding in his brain. “You didn’t hire me.”

“Of course I did. I just didn’t do it in person. Get me the videos.”

“No,” he said, then gasped when pain streaked down his right arm. Clutching his right bicep with his left hand, he stared at his arm. His right hand had already grown numb, and his left was hot and slick with blood. In disbelief his eyes lifted. “You shot me.”

The amused smile sent an icy chill of horror down his back. “Planning to call the cops, David?

Somehow I don’t think so. They’d come in and search and what would they find? Videos galore. Tsk, tsk. Some are new, but most are the ones you had your mommy hide while you were in a cage. Get them. Now.”

“How did you know?” he asked, desperately trying to think of a way out.

“I knew once you saw the hard drive gone you’d run to check your stash. Sherlock Holmes used a similar ploy in
A Scandal in Bohemia.
You really should read more of the classics, David, instead of watching nudie flicks.”

He pul ed the wallpaper from the wall and cringed at the dry chuckle behind him. “Clever, David. But you always were. Just not clever enough unfortunately. Finish.”

With clumsy motions he pul ed at the drywall revealing… everything. Everything.

“My, my. Haven’t we been a busy boy? There have to be… How many?”

133

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Five hundred,” he said heavily. It was all over now.

“Five hundred CDs. Must have taken you years, David.”

Wednesday, March 15, 5:15 P.M.

Aidan had Tess meet him at his house, so he could tell her the news in a place where she could grieve in private. She waited for him on the passenger side of a car he hadn’t seen before, then he realized it was a rental and Vito was at the wheel. She got out of the car and walked up the driveway into the garage, her face numb with dread. Vito fol owed, his hands ful of shopping bags. She sat down at the kitchen table and Vito set her shopping bags on the floor. Dol y was at alert, her hair raised, a growl in her throat as she assessed Vito.

“Down, Dol y,” Aidan said quietly and the dog obeyed. There was no way to sugarcoat what he had to say, so he just said it. “Tess, Mr. Hughes is dead.”

The blood drained from her face. “What?”

Aidan crouched in front of her, taking her hands in his. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“He was in an accident?” But her voice trembled and he knew she knew.

“No.” He made his voice as gentle as he knew how. “He was beaten to death, Tess.” He looked up at Vito and by the horror on his face saw the man already understood. “There’s more. You’ll hear it sooner or later, so-”

“Just tel me, dammit,” she hissed. “Tel me.”

“There was a message… with the body. ‘Be judged by the company you keep.’” He let out a breath. “And a newspaper article about you.”

Her hands rose to cover her mouth as it sank in. Her eyes were dry, wide, and ful of shocked horror. “Oh my God,” she whispered, rocking infinitesimal y. “Oh my God.”

He drew her into his arms where she sat, unmoving. She didn’t fight him, but she didn’t accept him, either. She was like a marble statue, frozen. “Tess?” He slipped his hand beneath her hair, cupping her cheek. “Listen to me.” He increased the pressure of his fingers on the back of her head until she looked at him, her eyes glazed. “Listen to me,” he repeated. “You did not do this. You did not cause this.”

She just looked at him. Frustrated and helpless, he looked up at Vito. “I can’t stay. I didn’t want her to be out in public and hear the news from someone else.”

“I appreciate it,” Vito said unsteadily. “You catch Clayborn?”

“Not yet. But we do have a lead on the CD. I have to go.” But he didn’t move, unable to leave her. “Tess,” he murmured. “Dammit.”

She blinked. “Does Ethel know?”

“One of the detectives is going to tell her now. Mia Mitchel .”

Tess nodded. “I know Mia. She’ll…” She swallowed. “She’ll be kind.”

Aidan stood, urging her to her feet and she leaned into him. Not an embrace, but a silent gesture of need. Her arms stayed at her sides when his closed around her. He pressed a kiss to her jaw, just above the ribbed col ar of her turtleneck sweater. “I have to go.”

She nodded stiffly and stepped back. “Where should I go? Back to my apartment?”

“No, not yet. You can stay here, if you want.” He glanced over at Vito. “I can put Dol y in the backyard. She can still warn you if someone comes. Otherwise, if you decide to leave she won’t let you back in.”

“I understand.” Vito nodded, stil unsteady.

Aidan got to the door, then turned back for a final look. She sat with her eyes closed, her hand on Dolly’s neck. She looked fragile.

She opened her eyes and he knew she was not. There was a steely resolve mixed with the terrible grief. “Go,” she said sternly, tears in her voice. “Find him.” Her voice broke and the tears spilled from her eyes, streaking her cheeks. “Please.”

134

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Wednesday, March 15, 6:45 P.M.

It was done. Joanna Carmichael reread her story one last time before printing it out. She wanted Ciccotelli, but for now she’d make do with one of the flies she’d caught on the flypaper. Perhaps the woman’s closest friend would begin to put some pressure on her to give that exclusive. At any rate it was good copy and had already been cleared for approval by the features editor for the weekend edition.