You Can't Hide (29 page)

“You didn’t have any choice. Seward had a gun to her head, Aidan. You did the right thing.”

“But dead girls don’t confess to impersonating Tess.”

Murphy shrugged philosophically. “Hopeful y the bag and the receipts will be enough here to make Patrick happy. I’ll call Spinnelli. You call Jack.”

108

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Tuesday, March 14, 10:55 P.M.

Aidan had known how many cameras Jack’s team had found in Tess’s apartment, but somehow seeing them lined up on Spinnelli’s conference room table was a blow he hadn’t expected. After a rol er-coaster day of adrenaline surges, both personal and professional, his hold on his own self-control was now shaky at best. He’d known better than to take Rick aside and ask where they’d found each camera in Tess’s apartment and office and car and clothes, for God’s sake, but something in him had to know.

Besides, not asking would make him look too involved, something he’d been cautioning himself about all evening. If Spinnelli thought he was too involved, Spinnelli would assign someone else to take care of Tess.

I
am
too involved,
he thought. Because that’s what it had come down to. Taking care of Tess Ciccotelli. And because it did, he couldn’t take his eyes off the pile of cameras in the middle of the table, especially the one model that stood out from the rest. Waterproof, it bore the signs of slight mildew around the edges. The bastard had installed it in the fan vent in the bathroom ceiling, pointed straight into her shower. The audio would have been destroyed by the fan, but the video had been dead on.

Disgust clenched his gut as thoughts of
him
watching her wound through his mind like a slithering snake. How many other drooling wankers had watched her? He couldn’t control his thoughts any more than he could control the slamming of his heart. She’d been violated and for that alone the bastard should die. Spinnelli stood over the conference room table, fists on his hips, shaking his head. “My God. We’ve got more inventory than RadioShack.”

It was true. Aidan focused, bringing his simmering rage under control. Jack and Rick had arranged all the cameras and microphones they’d found over the last two days into seven piles. The first three were from the apartments of the three victims-Adams, Winslow, and Seward. The fourth was the biggest pile, taken from Tess’s apartment. The fifth was half the size, taken from her office. The sixth was smaller still, microphones taken from her car in Rick’s first five-minute search. There might be more and probably were. The seventh was the smallest-microphones the size of sewing needles Rick had found in the lining of every jacket she owned. Even the red leather jacket she’d worn on Sunday.
When I accused her of murder.

“So talk to me, Rick,” Spinnelli said. “What do you know about all this shit?”

Rick stood up. “Not as much as you want me to know, but here it is. First, I’ve had no success tracking transmissions or the e-mails in Adams’s apartment. I left a single camera in each apartment in case they start transmitting again, but they’re all dead now. Whoever put them there must know we found them.”

“So we’re giving up?” Spinnelli bristled.

“It was a long shot to start with.” Rick brightened. “But I do have some information on these little babies.” He pointed to the first two piles. “The devices I found in Adams’s and Winslow’s apartments are the same model, consecutive serial numbers.”

Spinnelli nodded. “Then they were bought at the same time.”

“Probably. Up until two weeks ago, this model was this company’s best seller. Two weeks ago they introduced this model.” Rick pointed to the Seward pile of circuitry. “Now this one’s the best seller. It doesn’t mean the camera I found in Seward’s place was bought later, but it could be true.”

“So Seward wasn’t part of the original plan,” Aidan thought out loud.
Stay focused, Reagan
. The sight of all those cameras was eating at him. “Adams’s boss said she’d been erratic for weeks and Tess said she’d missed an appointment three weeks ago. The camera from Seward’s place wasn’t available when al this started.”

“Maybe.” Spinnelli sat down, arms locked across his chest. “But I want to know did our guy get cameras into all these places? Apartments, offices, cars?” He picked up the bag of needlesized microphones. “Coats? Who had access to all these places?”

109

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“Our best bet is to examine the security disks from Seward’s building in the last two days and compare them to Winslow’s the day before yesterday,” Jack said. “Assuming the same person did both. We have a time frame on Winslow at least. That dol hadn’t been in his oven for more than three hours based on the amount of melting that occurred, so we need to check eleven to one.” “How could someone have put a dol in his oven without his knowing about it?” Spinnelli wanted to know. “God, of all of this, that might be the sickest thing.”

Aidan vehemently, viciously disagreed. The sickest thing was that waterproof camera, but he wouldn’t even think about that right now. He couldn’t, and still keep his cool. “If Winslow was asleep, drugged, he might not have heard someone in his kitchen, but now that we have a time frame we’l recanvass the tenants. What about the cameras from Tess’s apartment?”

“Older models,” Rick answered. “Three different manufacturers.”

“How old?” Aidan asked tightly.

“It doesn’t mean they’ve been there that long,” Rick cautioned, then shrugged. “They were the best sel ers six months ago.” He hesitated. “Except for that one.” He pointed at the one waterproof model. “This one’s about four years old. But it didn’t look like it had been in there any longer than the others,” he added hastily. “I’d say you’re looking at six months, tops.”

Aidan’s stomach rol ed. “Six months? Some pervert’s been watching her for six fucking months?”

Spinnelli’s brows went up. “How do we know he’s a pervert?”

Seething, on the verge of exploding, Aidan reached over and picked up the one waterproof model. “Because this one was in her shower, dammit,” he bit out through clenched teeth. He was furious enough to do damage, so he careful y set the camera down, his hand trembling. Jack frowned at Rick. “You told him that?”

Rick shrugged again, uneasily. “He asked. I didn’t… Never mind.”

Spinnelli looked worried. “Aidan?”

Aidan shook his head to clear his mind. “I’m sorry. You didn’t see her face when I had to tell her. I’m sorry.” He pulled his palms down his face. “It’s been a long day.”

“Not for Nicole Rivera,” Murphy said quietly. “We searched the whole place, Marc, but we couldn’t find anything pointing to anybody who paid her to do this.”

“Did you find the coat and wig?” Spinnelli asked.

Murphy shook his head. “No, but we did find tapes of Tess’s voice hidden behind some boxes of Hamburger Helper in the pantry. They were recordings of Tess’s sessions with her patients.”

“So she could practice.” Spinnelli rubbed his forehead. “That should be enough for Patrick to push back the appeals. Maybe ballistics will turn up something on the bul et. So what about her office tonight? What happened?”

“Her partner said it was one of their patients,” Aidan said. “Tess thought she knew who it was, but wouldn’t say.” And damned if he didn’t admire her for her principles even as he wanted to shake her for them.

Murphy turned to Jack, his face grim. “Did you identify the asshole?”

“I’ve got one of my guys running prints through AFIS right now,” Jack said. “We should have something in the next hour.”

“I want to go when you get a name.” Murphy’s voice was low, control ed, but beneath it lurked something raw. Aidan knew just how he felt.

“I’m sending somebody else,” Spinnelli said giving them both a warning look. “The two of you focus on Spy-guy. Am I clear?”

Aidan nodded briskly. “Crystal. Patrick is going to be unhappy,” he said, diverting the subject to give both himself and Murphy time to cool down. “He can subpoena records all he wants, but it’l take days to put all those papers back in the right folders. They must have had twenty years worth of files in that vault and every piece of paper was on the floor. The best he’l do is a patient list but that won’t tell him who’s most vulnerable for a suicide setup.” A thought struck him.

“Unless…”

110

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Spinnelli leaned forward. “Unless what? Tell me, Aidan.”

Aidan drew Tess’s keys from his pocket. He’d had them since they’d entered her office and had forgotten to give them back. On her key ring was a small memory stick, no bigger than a man’s thumb. “She’s got all her files backed up on this.”

Murphy narrowed his eyes. “What the hell is it?”

“A thumb drive,” Aidan said. “It’s like a disk, but it can hold more than… what… fifty disks? I used one in my graphics class. It plugs right into the computer’s USB port.”

Murphy shook his head. “Fifty disks on that little thing?”

Rick eyed it. “That one? Try a thousand disks.”

“Wow.” Spinnelli reached for it, but Aidan shook his head.

“No. This isn’t any different from going into her office and taking files. You can’t.”

Spinnelli’s face darkened. “I have five people in the morgue that says I can.”

“I want the list, too. I also want it to stick when we catch him. And I want her to have a license to practice once we do. If we look at this, she’ll lose her license for sure. It will look like she gave these to us. Just wait until tomorrow. Patrick will have his court order and we’l have our information.”

“Tomorrow might be too late,” Spinnelli grumbled, then sighed. “Dammit, Reagan. You’re right. When did you get to be the calm one?” Not waiting for an answer, he passed Aidan a folded sheet of paper. “Ful tox report on Adams.”

Aidan read it, then passed it on to Murphy. “Psylocybin? What is that?”

“I called Julia,” Spinnelli said. “She said it’s one of the magic mushrooms. Very hal ucinogenic. The levels in Adams’s blood were only about ten percent that of a tripper, but it looked like she’d been taking it for a long time. She also found it in capsule form in one of the prescription bottles you took from Adams’s bathroom medicine cabinet.”

“Then why the PCP?” Aidan asked, then exhaled, the answer clear. “It was the anniversary of her sister’s death. Spy-guy must have been impatient when the mushrooms didn’t work. Pushing Adams’s sanity on the anniversary was perfect timing.”

“And Winslow was riding close to the edge anyway,” Spinnelli agreed. “Julia’s going to look for the same stuff in Winslow’s tox screen.”

Aidan thought about Seward, the crazed look in his eye. “What about Seward?”

Spinnelli shook his head. “Julia said they didn’t find anything in the initial screen. She put a rush on it, but we’l still need to wait until tomorrow.” He hesitated, then turned to Rick. “Rick, I need to talk to these three alone.”

Rick stood up. “I don’t have to be told twice. Good night.”

When the door was closed, Spinnelli closed his eyes wearily. “IA’s in.”

The very letters made Aidan twitch. Internal Affairs. “Why?”

Spinnelli blinked hard. “Because we got five sets of prints off those threatening letters Tess received after Green. Three were cops. All friends of Preston Tyler.”

“What about the Records clerk?” Murphy asked. “Has she identified any of them?”

“No. She insists she can’t remember, but IA thinks she’s holding back.”

“She’s young,” Murphy mused. “She’s afraid to talk.”

“If one of them’s involved in shit like this, she’s got a right to be,” Aidan said grimly.

“So who are they, Marc?” Jack asked.

“Tom Voight, James Mason, and Blaine Connell.” Spinnelli leaned his head back until his neck cracked. “All perfect records. Not a blemish on ’em.”

Aidan shook his head, unable to believe his ears. “No way. I know Blaine Connell.”

“He couldn’t?” Spinnelli grimaced. “I know.” He sighed, heavily. “I know.”

Murphy tapped his lighter on his palm methodically. “If one of them is behind this, it means they’ve done more than set up suicides. Somebody executed Nicole Rivera in cold blood. It’s hard to believe it could be a cop, but if it is…”

“A cop would know how to set someone up for murder,” Jack said. Aidan gave Spinnelli a hard look. “Now that we have names, what do we do?”

111

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

A knock had all four turning toward the door. Rick stuck his head in. “I’m sorry, but Dr. Ciccotelli’s out here. She’s asking to see you, Aidan. She doesn’t look so good.”

Aidan came to his feet, worry instantly pushing everything to the side of his mind. “She was supposed to call me when she wanted to leave the hospital. Where is she?”

“Here.” Tess pushed past Rick, then froze as her gaze swept the cameras on the table. Her face had been pale, but now every drop of color drained away leaving her ashen. “All those?” she whispered. “Looking at my patients? At me?”

Aidan took her arm and guided her into a chair. He crouched down next to her and tilted her face so that she looked at him, not the cameras. “What happened, Tess?”

She pul ed from his grasp, her lips trembling. She looked back at the table, her eyes stopping at her key ring. She turned to Aidan, an immense hurt in her eyes and his heart dropped to his gut. “You gave them my files?” Barely audible, wisps of words.

“I wanted them, Tess,” Spinnelli said before Aidan could say a word. “He wouldn’t let me have them.”

She nodded and the hurt eased away leaving behind a horrible grief, and he knew. Still he asked, hoping he was wrong.

“What happened, Tess?” Aidan asked her again, very gently. She drew in a shuddering breath. “Harrison died.”

Her grief cut at his own heart and he wanted to drag her in his arms and hold her, but he couldn’t. Not here. Not in front of his lieutenant who already thought he and Murphy were too involved. If they only knew. So he took her hand only. “When?”

She shook her head numbly. “Thirty minutes ago. He was in surgery, but there was too much internal bleeding. His children came to be with Flo. So I left.” She lifted her eyes, dark and haunted. “I finished listening to my voice mail while I was waiting,” she went on with a hol ow, toneless quality that made his heart start beating faster. “My license has been suspended. And three more of my patients have threatened me if I tell their secrets.”