You Can't Hide (4 page)

“How long did you know Miss Adams?” Aidan asked him and winced at the stench of the man’s sigh. It was a good thing there were no open flames around. McNulty was completely pissed. “Three years. She moved in three years ago.” He pushed the door open and Aidan was immediately struck by two things. First, the apartment was ice cold, which he’d expected. The patio door had been open for over an hour. But the second, the overpowering scent of flowers, made him blink. Cynthia Adams’s living room floor was covered with more flowers than he’d ever seen outside a flower shop.

Murphy was frowning. “What the hell?”

“Lilies.” Aidan stepped inside Adams’s apartment and tentatively plucked one of the flowers from the floor. “Death flowers.”

“My God,” Murphy murmured, his eyes searching the living room. “She must have a hundred dollars worth of flowers here.”

Aidan raised a brow. “Try three times that.” When Murphy gave him an inquisitive stare, Aidan shrugged. “I took a horticulture class when I was getting my degree.” He picked up the top envelope of a three-inch pile of mail that littered the foyer table. “She’s got a stack of mail.” He turned to the super. “Has she been out of town?”

The super shook his head. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his upper lip and his eyes darted from side to side. “No, but she was a month behind on her rent. First time she’d gotten behind in the three years she lived here. The manager had me watching her place to make sure she didn’t try to move out on the sly.”

Aidan careful y stepped around the flowers as best he could, walking out to the balcony.

“Step stool,” he called back to Murphy. “The teenagers said she glided up. She walked up a step stool.”

“Convenient.”

The super stumbled to the glass door. “That wasn’t there before. I was up here a week ago to fix a leaky faucet and this step stool wasn’t here.”

“If you were fixing the faucet, how did you notice the balcony?” Murphy asked mildly. The super’s face paled. “I came out for a smoke.”

“She put it there especially for the main event,” Murphy murmured, then his voice abruptly sharpened. “Aidan.”

Aidan’s head whipped around. Murphy was holding a printed paper between two gloved fingers, his mouth gone grim. It was a photo, printed on glossy paper. It was of a woman, hanging from a rope, her toes a good foot off the ground. The woman’s face was grotesque, her eyes bulging, mouth open as if gasping for air.

15

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Who is this?” Murphy asked the super.

The super took a step backward, his face gone even paler. “I don’t know. I never seen that woman before. I need to go.”

“In a minute, Mr. McNulty.” Aidan stepped in McNulty’s path, stopping him. “Please. You say you’ve been watching the place for the manager. Did you see who brought in all these flowers?

Was it Miss Adams?”

“I don’t know. Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It doesn’t matter. We can get the tapes from the security cameras.” He’d noticed the camera eye pointed at the elevator exit as soon as the doors had opened. McNulty shook his head. “No, you can’t. Camera’s broken.”

“Convenient,” Murphy muttered. “For how long?”

McNulty shuffled his feet. “A few weeks.”

Aidan looked him in the eye. “Weeks?”

McNulty looked away, his pale cheeks now mottled with color. “Okay, months.”

Aidan was sure McNulty knew a great deal more than he was saying. “Has anyone been here to visit Miss Adams recently?”

McNulty looked miserable. “She gets a lot of visitors.”

Aidan’s ears perked up. From the corner of his eye he could see Murphy had picked up on it, too. “What kind of visitors, sir?”

McNulty’s attempt at nonchalance fell flat. “Lots of people liked Cynthia.”

“You mean lots of men?” Aidan asked sharply.

McNulty closed his eyes, guilt clear on his face. Had he been sober, Aidan didn’t think he’d have been nearly so transparent. Or cooperative. Go Bul s. “Some. Yeah.”

“Some or yeah?”

He opened his eyes, panicked. “Listen, if my wife finds out… She’l kill me.”

Murphy blinked. “You mean you were having an affair with Miss Adams?”

“No.” McNulty shook his head hard. “Not an affair. Just once.”

Aidan raised a brow. “Once.”

McNulty took another step back. “Twice. Three times, tops.”

“Did she… charge you, Mr. McNulty?” Murphy asked quietly.

Aidan doubted the look of sheer horror on the man’s face could have been faked. “No! God, no. She was… appreciative. That’s al .”

This was getting interesting, Aidan thought. “Appreciative. For?”

“I turned off the camera on this floor, okay? Some of her friends didn’t want to be seen. I don’t know any names. Didn’t want to know any names. She did her own thing and I looked the other way, I swear to God. Please, just let me go.”

Aidan shot a look at Murphy. “We done with him?”

“For now,” Murphy said mildly and they watched as McNulty clumsily picked his way across the strewn flowers, anxious to be as far away as possible. “We’l be in touch, Mr. McNulty,” he added. McNulty gave one last shaky nod and was gone.

Aidan pushed the door closed. “Now I wonder what kind of friends those could be.”

“And I wonder if any of them could have given her this.” Murphy held up the photo of the dead woman dangling from the noose. “Autoerotic asphyxiation?”

Aidan grimaced. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never come across it.”

“I have,” Murphy said, moving into the bedroom. “When something goes wrong, it’s not pretty. See if you can find a picture of Adams’s face so we’l at least know what she looked like while I search in here.”

Aidan listened to Murphy opening drawers in Adams’s bedroom while he went through her purse, pul ing her driver’s license from her wallet. He felt an unwelcome tug of pity for the somber face that stared back from the license picture. This woman looked put together. Very proper. Very restrained.

16

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Now she was lying on the sidewalk, twenty-two stories down. Very dead. Why had she done it? What had happened in the last month to make her late on her rent and ultimately so depressed she thought taking her own life was the only solution? But then, that was ultimately the problem with suicides, he thought bitterly. They didn’t stick around long enough for the people that loved them to get answers to those questions. “She was thirty-four, Murphy. She wore corrective lenses and she was an organ donor.”

Murphy appeared in the bedroom doorway, furry handcuffs in one hand, a small leather whip in the other. “She was also into some pretty kinky shit. There’s a pul ey rigged in the corner. Looks like she’s hoisted herself a time or two.”

Aidan blinked at the paraphernalia in Murphy’s hands then looked again at the solemn woman on the driver’s license. “You wouldn’t guess it by looking at her.”

“You can’t always. What does she have in her purse?”

Quickly Aidan sorted through the small bag. “Four credit cards, a cell phone, various and sundry lipsticks, and a key ring.” He held it up. “One Honda key, one key to the apartment door, and one very little key.”

“Safe-deposit box?”

Aidan bagged the keys while Murphy bagged the whip and cuffs. “Maybe. Was there a bank statement in all that mail?”

Murphy went back to the table, sorted through the pile. “Doesn’t look like she’s opened any of this mail. Here’s her bank statement. We can check it… Hell.” Murphy frowned at the envelope in his hand. “She opened this one. No stamp, no return address.” He pul ed a picture from the envelope, his expression grim. “Another dead woman. This one’s in a casket.” He passed it to Aidan. “Check out her hands.”

A small tingle raced down Aidan’s back. “She’s holding a lily. She looks like the same lady that’s dangling from the noose.” He took half the pile of mail and began sorting. Within minutes they’d found ten such pictures, equally grisly. All the same woman. Al disturbing. Not one signed with a name or return address. “Somebody was playing with Cynthia’s head.”

Murphy picked up a framed picture from Adams’s desk. A young girl with hair in her eyes skulked behind the glass. “This is the woman. Adams obviously knew her.” He slipped the picture from the frame. “But there’s no name written on the back.”

“She’s younger there than in these pictures. Maybe sixteen? Looks like a school picture to me. My sister Rachel’s pictures have that same gray background.” He stooped and picked up a long thin box that lay under the table. It was the right size for a dozen roses. Somehow that’s not what he thought he’d find inside.

“Open it,” Murphy said tersely.

Careful y Aidan lifted the lid. “Shit.” A rope twisted into a noose lay nestled on a bed of bright white tissue paper. A small gold gift tag dangled from the looped end. “‘Come to me. Find your peace,’” he read, then looked up to meet Murphy’s grim stare. “Let’s get CSU up here.”

Murphy called them, then sighed as he slipped his cell phone back in his pocket. “I think Tess has a lot of questions to answer tomorrow.”

Aidan’s jaw tightened at the thought. “I think you’re right.”

Chapter 2

Sunday, March 12, 10:30 A.M.

Joanna Carmichael watched as her photographs were methodically studied, the text she’d spent the wee hours of the morning refining, careful y read. After what seemed like an eternity, the managing editor of the Chicago
Bulletin
lifted his head.

“How did you get these?” Reese Schmidt asked, gesturing to the pictures.

17

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Right place, right time.” Joanna shrugged.
Karma,
she thought, but didn’t think Schmidt would appreciate the sentiment. “The victim lives in my apartment building. I walked around the corner toward my building just after she jumped. I heard a scream and started running, along with about three other people. Two teenagers had seen her fall.” She laid a finger on the corner of the first picture, a stark study of a woman gutted and bleeding with two teenagers standing to one side, their shock completely captured in black and white. “I started snapping away.”

He looked skeptical. “In front of the cops?”

“They weren’t there yet,” she said calmly. “When they got there, I kept snapping, but less obtrusively.”

“You didn’t use a flash?”

“I have a good camera. Didn’t need one.” She lifted a brow. “I like to be able to keep my pictures.”

His mouth bent in a wry smile. “I understand. What about the story?”

“I wrote it.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. How did you get this information? ‘An unnamed source confirms that police found evidence indicating the victim had been coerced into jumping twenty-two stories.’ Who is your unnamed source?”

When she said nothing, Schmidt’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have a source. You either made the whole murder angle up or you overheard the cops. Which is it?”

Joanna sucked in one cheek in frustration. “The second one.”

“I thought so.” He sat down in his chair, his fingers lightly steepled. “You get me corroboration inside CPD, someone I can contact for verification, and I’ll run your story.”

Yes.
The words she’d been waiting to hear for two long years. “Where?”

His grin was quick and slightly mocking. “Don’t be greedy, Miss… Carmichael, wasn’t it? You get me a statement I can verify and we’l talk.”

It was fair, she decided. Not ideal, but fair. For a split second she considered using the other trump card she carried. Her father. But that would not be fair, to Schmidt or to herself. She gathered her pictures, frowning when he put his hand on the first one, the one with the teenagers and the body taken just moments after impact.

“I don’t want to get sued for false information,” he said smoothly, “but I still can use the pictures. They don’t lie.”

Joanna gritted her teeth. “Neither do I. I’l be back.” She hit the street at a brisk walk, headed for the police station. She had no idea how she’d get corroboration. But she would. Fate had tossed a story into her front yard, so to speak. Now she had to make good on the gift.
Sunday, March 12, 12:30 P.M.

Aidan hated the ME’s office. Even on a good day the smell was enough to turn his stomach. This was proving not to be a good day. For anyone involved. He stopped just inside the door, his gaze resting on the body on the exam table. Least of all for Cynthia Adams. If she had committed suicide, it was assisted. They knew that now. Someone had systematically tortured this woman with pictures and gifts. Anything bearing a signature was signed “Melanie.” Murphy thought she was probably the woman in the casket picture and Aidan was inclined to agree with him.

The ME hadn’t heard him come in, so engrossed was she in her study of Cynthia Adams’s hands. Merciful y she’d covered Adams’s torso with a sheet. He cleared his throat and Julia VanderBeck looked up, her eyes covered by plastic glasses. He didn’t see how she could stand the smell, especially being so obviously pregnant. His regard for Julia climbed a notch or two. “You rang?” he asked and her lips quirked up.

“I did. Where’s Murphy?”

18

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Listening to the victim’s voice mail and watching security video of the victim’s apartment lobby.” Apparently building super McNulty’s appreciation hadn’t extended to disabling every video in the building. “He’s trying to find who carried up all those lilies.”

Julia nodded briskly. “Remind me of the lilies before you leave,” she said, “but first you’l want the tox screen.”

“Which one was it?” Aidan asked, reaching for the clipboard she passed over Adams’s body. They’d found seventeen different prescription bottles in the woman’s apartment. Four were prescribed by Dr. Tess Ciccotelli. The other thirteen bottles bore the names of other doctors, the dates going back more than five years.

Julia stretched, supporting her lower back. “You’re lucky I owe Murphy a favor. I wouldn’t come in in the middle of the night for just anybody.” She blew out a breath and lowered herself onto a stool next to the exam table. “Her urine tox screen didn’t show any of them. The most recent prescription was through Ciccotelli for Xanax. It’s used to treat anxiety and depression. It’s what I should have found in her urine tox. What I actually found was high levels of PCP.”