You Can't Hide (41 page)

“Aidan, I want to be sure this feeling of yours is coming from your gut and not someplace else. I need you thinking with the right head.”

Aidan snapped up straight, offended. “That’s uncalled for, Marc.”

“No, that’s my job. You’re involved with Tess. She’s staying at your house. She’s not a suspect, so that’s your business. And hers. But I won’t have all my resources spent chasing shadows because you’re too involved to let this die.”

Aidan held back his temper. “The others see the open ends, too.”

“Which is why I agreed to give this one more day. You have other cases on your plate, Aidan. Make sure you remember that.”

Aidan’s nod was curt. “Yes, sir.”

Thursday, March 16, 8:15 A.M.

Tess closed the adjoining door to her father’s hotel room. “He’s asleep now.”

He was, but not the robust snoring sleep she remembered from her youth. His sleep was frail, his massive chest taking shallow breaths. During her internship she’d done a round in cardiology. She remembered the gray skin, the struggle to breathe. The hopelessness of the patients as their hearts gave out and left them waiting to die. Her father would be one of those patients, very soon. Sorrow surged like a mighty wave, bringing with it a hopelessness of her own. “I had no idea it was this bad,” she whispered, then turned to where her mother and Vito sat by the window, sipping coffee. Her mother’s face was calm, but the torment in her eyes told the bitter truth.

“He wouldn’t let me tell you. God knows you come by your stubbornness honestly.”

Tess sat on Vito’s bed, drained. “He says he’s on the list for a transplant.”

“He is.” Gina shrugged. “But at his age…” She looked away, blinking hard. Vito squeezed her hand. “Mom, don’t. Please don’t cry.”

Gina aimed a look a Tess. “When he saw you on the news… It caused him pain.”

“I’m sorry.”

Gina shook her head. “It’s done. He’s been doing a lot of brooding lately, thinking about the two of you. Sometimes, when he thinks no one is around, he cries.”

Tess’s eyes filled, her throat burned. “Stop,” she whispered hoarsely.

“I’m sorry.” Quietly her mother sipped her coffee. “I don’t mean to make you feel worse. I just want you to know how things are. The doctors say he could live a year or six months. His doctor would be very angry to know that he’s here right now.”

“He shouldn’t have come,” Tess whispered.

“Nothing on earth could have kept him from getting on that plane, Tess. He needed to fix things. He’d allowed it to go on long enough.” With a deep breath, her mother put her cup aside and stood up. “What he told you today was the absolute truth.”

Tess nodded. “I know. But you believed him right away and I didn’t.”

Gina’s laugh was harsh. “No, I didn’t.”

Tess frowned up at her mother. “I don’t understand. You…”

“I know what I said. And I know what I did. I’ve had to live with it for the last five years. I knew something terrible had happened that day. You came back to the store to get me and your face was whiter than a bleached sheet. But you didn’t tell me then.”

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I know. What you don’t know is that I knew about the woman before I finally pried it out of you a month later.”

“I don’t understand,” she said again.

154

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Her mother walked to the window. “Did you know that high-priced hookers carry business cards? Later I found her card in the pocket of your father’s pants. I told myself it was nothing, that she was probably just a new client and that you’d been feeling sick like you’d claimed. When I finally got you to tell me what you’d seen… I don’t know what came over me. I did a terrible thing and I’ve regretted it since that day.

“I struck you and called you a liar, then confronted your father with the lies you’d told. He confirmed them, though. He told me some cock-and-bull story about a woman who showed up in our hotel room and took off all her clothes. That he’d never touched her. And like a good wife, I told him I believed him.”

“But you didn’t,” Tess murmured.

Gina threw a look over her shoulder. “What self-respecting woman would?”

“Mom?” Vito’s face was shocked.

She sighed. “I know. After I’d confronted your father, Tess, he confronted you.”

“I remember.” Her mother had asked her to come home, said they needed to talk. That request now made sense. “He had his first heart attack that day.”

Her face tightened. “I took care of him, hating him every minute. Hating myself for hating him and for what I’d done to you. Finally when he was well enough, I told him I was going to my sister’s house for a break. I came here instead.”

Tess’s eyes widened. “Here, to Chicago? You never told me.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know. I still had the business card and I found the woman.” Gina turned from the window. “She remembered your father and confirmed every word he said. After he threw her out of our hotel room that day she called her agency. They called the original client who apologized and said her gift was for a man in the same room one floor up. I went to the agency and they showed me the receipt from the client.”

Tess let out a breath, relieved and at the same time struck by a horrible sadness. “It was a mistake. I lost five years because of a mistake.” She narrowed her stinging eyes at her mother.

“For God’s sake, why didn’t you
tell
me?”

For a minute Gina said nothing. Then very quietly, “Because then I’d have to admit that I hadn’t believed him, either. And every time I looked in his eyes, I knew I could never do that. It meant too much for him to believe I had.”

“So why tell her now?” Vito asked unsteadily.

“Because she’d beat herself up because she should have believed him, like I did,” she answered as if Tess weren’t sitting right there. “That she’d been wrong and sent your father to his grave with her stubbornness.” She smiled at Tess sadly. “Right?”

Tess nodded, the lump still clogging her throat. “Yes.”

“You were always your father’s girl, Tess, more than mine. These last five years, being at odds with you… it’s nearly killed him and that’s no exaggeration. But just because you’re Michael’s doesn’t mean I understand or love you any less. When he made his peace with you, I knew I needed to, too. My apology is harder to make, because unlike your father who did nothing wrong, I was very wrong. I’m sorry, Tess.”

There was a long period of quiet in which Vito hung his head and Gina and Tess just looked at each other.

“You know, Mom, I’m not sure if I should feel gratitude to you for trying to make me feel better or fury for keeping this secret for so long,” Tess murmured and Vito lifted his head, giving her a silent, weary look of sorrow.

“I suppose both are in order,” her mother said evenly.

“Truth of the matter is, before today, I might not have believed you anyway. After today, I didn’t need you to believe it. So somewhere, it all evens out.”

Her eyes were drawn to her father’s door. “I feel like I should stay here… watch him breathe… Something.”

“He wouldn’t want you to do that. He’l be awake when you come back.”

155

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Tess looked at Vito. “I have an office to clean and a license to fight for. Bacon is dead and Clayborn is in custody, so you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You’ve been away from your job for too long already, Vito.”

Vito shook his head. “Reagan didn’t believe Bacon is responsible for the killings. He didn’t say so, but I could tell.”

Tess’s chest grew heavy. “No, he didn’t believe it. There’s something you should know. The man they found dead yesterday put cameras in my office and apartment.”

Gina nodded. “Which was how they knew about your patients. You told us that.”

Tess raised her eyes to the ceiling. “What I didn’t tell you is that he put a camera in my bathroom. In… in my shower.”

Gina’s coffee cup clattered to the table. “Oh my God.” It was barely a whisper.

“Yeah. Well. Yesterday he threatened to sell… video of me to the media.”

“Then I’m glad he’s dead,” her mother said viciously.

“But the police never found his files. The original video files.”

Vito frowned. “Reagan said Bacon destroyed his own hard drive.”

“He did. But they expected to find a col ection, and didn’t. These pictures of me might get out. We need to prepare Dad in case they do. It won’t be good for his heart.”

“Hold off, Tess,” Vito advised. “They might find them.”

Tess stood up. “All right, I will. Now I’m going to clean my office and go buy the groceries to make tonight’s dinner. Will you help me cook it, Mom?”

Gina nodded graciously, aware of the extended olive branch and accepting it. “I don’t think you need my help, Tess, but I will just the same.”

Thursday, March 16, 8:45 A.M.

“You guys sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Julia VanderBeck remarked when Aidan and Murphy walked into the morgue. “Never a dul moment.”

“Did Bacon’s autopsy tel you anything?” Aidan asked, impatient. Julia smiled wryly. “Mr. Bacon told me a great many things. If you hadn’t come down I would have called you. Come, take a look.”

She flipped the sheet from Bacon’s body and Aidan felt another jolt of rage at the man himself, and at the fact that he’d escaped justice in death. But he pushed it back and made himself listen to Murphy’s placid voice.

“Cause of death?”

“Let’s just say your Bacon could be nicknamed ‘Rasputin.’” She manipulated Bacon’s arms, positioning them so that the long red lacerations up his inner arm were visible. “He was cut, probably by the boxcutter you found on the corner of the tub.”

Aidan tilted his head. “Was cut?”

She nodded. “Was cut. He didn’t do this to himself, even though you’re supposed to think he did. Look at his arms. The cuts are straight up and down. Now, normally this means the victim really wants a successful suicide, if there is such a thing.”

“But?” Murphy asked and Julia smiled.

“Your boy is left-handed.” She lifted his left hand. “Calluses on his middle finger from writing. So I’d expect to see the slice on his right arm to be deeper and straighter. He’d use his dominant hand first, left hand to right arm, to get the biggest impact. Normally the slice on the other arm isn’t so straight, isn’t ful y connected because he’s in pain and his right hand will already be feeling numb and it’s not his dominant hand anyway. It’l start and stop. And it isn’t as deep.”

“But Bacon’s don’t fol ow pattern,” Aidan said.

“Nope. The slices are exactly the same depth, and I’ve never seen that before. I wondered how could somebody slice a full-grown man that neatly without him fighting back, but I didn’t see any defensive wounds.”

“He was unconscious when he was cut,” Murphy mused.

156

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“I don’t think so. Do you remember the tox report on Cynthia Adams?”

“Magic mushrooms,” Aidan answered. “Psylo…”

“Psylocybins,” Julia supplied. “Bacon’s blood doesn’t have any, but I did find something from a different plant. Ingested, it causes paralysis, localized to certain joints. Inhaling speeds and spreads the effect. I think he was conscious the whole time he was being sliced up-and I think he felt everything.”

“Good,” Aidan said grimly and Julia half smiled.

“I agree with you on that one, Aidan. At some point he lost enough blood that he lost consciousness and he slid down into the water. Based on the amount of water in the tub and Bacon’s size and weight, I wouldn’t have expected him to sink so that his head was submerged. But his lungs were filled with water and blood.”

“Somebody held him down,” Aidan said slowly.

“I’d say so. But his injuries don’t stop there. Look.” She adjusted Bacon’s right arm to show his shoulder. “At some point during the day he was grazed by a bul et.”

“Shot, cut, poisoned, and drowned.” Murphy shook his head. “You’re right. Rasputin he is. So which one killed him?”

“Officially? The drowning most likely. But boys, this guy did not kill himself.”

Chapter 17

Thursday, March 16, 9:35 A.M.

Jack met Aidan and Murphy at Bacon’s apartment. “Rick says we need to keep looking for his video stash, that he’s got to have one here somewhere.”

“We will. But first let’s figure out what the hell happened here.” Aidan walked back to the bathroom and stood in the doorway. “Shot, cut, poisoned, and drowned. How?”

“We know the drowning was last,” Murphy said. “The poisoning was before the cutting or the knife strokes wouldn’t have been so neat. That leaves the shooting.”

Aidan considered the scenario. “I think the shooting happened first.”

“Why?” Murphy asked.

“Remember when we found his clothes yesterday?”

“Right here.” Murphy pointed to his feet. “Shirt, tie, pants, boxers, and socks. His suit coat was in the living room.”

“His coat smelled like mothballs and cigarette smoke.”

“Like his mother’s house.”

“But not cat piss. I hadn’t thought of that. I can’t imagine a suit being stored in that house without picking up some of the cat odor. His Wires-N-Widgets shirts sure did.”

“We found boxes of clothes in the living room yesterday,” Jack said. “Heavy mothball odor. Didn’t smell anything like cat pee.”

“He’s got a storage unit,” Murphy said, nodding. “But why the shooting first?”

“Because his suit also smelled like sweat, but his shirt smelled like a combination of cigarette smoke and fabric softener.”

Murphy’s brows went up. “It was a clean shirt.”

“Man’s got a nose,” Jack chuckled. “I, on the other hand, have an eye. Look there.”

Aidan fol owed the line of Jack’s pointing finger, over to the far bathroom wall. “A hole.” They hadn’t seen it the day before, sidetracked with the planted evidence. Jack pushed past them and inspected the small hole. “Could have been a bul et. If it was, somebody’s dug it out. Nothing there now but crumbled drywall.” He turned back and looked at Murphy. “Step into the hall.” Murphy did and Jack stood in the doorway, his back to the door hinges. “I’m Bacon and you’ve got the gun,” he said to Murphy and traced an imaginary trajectory