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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