The Enemy Inside (18 page)

The bedside table drawer contained small change and a dirty magazine. Holding her breath, Berg lifted the mattress, but apart from a variety of unidentifiable stains, it was clear.

In the confined space, places to hide anything were limited, and in a final effort, she got down on all fours and checked beneath the bed.

She was rewarded for the endeavor, as wedged under the bed, between the frame and the bedside table, was a shoebox. Berg slid under the bed and pulled it out. It was lightweight, worn, and covered in grime. Coughing and sneezing from the dust, she opened the box and tipped the contents onto the bed.

Women’s panties fell out over the orange cover. Numerous sizes, colors, and styles—Berg estimated the box contained at least twelve different pairs. Revolted, she picked one pair up with a pen she fished out of her jacket pocket, wrinkling her nose. They were not clean and looked like they contained smears of dried blood and other fluids.

She scraped the panties back into the box using the lid, bundled it under her arm, and locked the trailer behind her as she left. She was careful to wipe down any surfaces she had touched on her way out with the edge of her jacket. No need to give Consiglio more ammunition than he already had.

Chapter Seventeen

They reconvened at Berg’s place at three o’clock as agreed, Berg with her box of tainted panties and Jay with a
borrowed
autopsy report.
 

“So, what have you got?” Jay asked, sipping his brew.
 

“A few interesting things,” Berg replied. “I interviewed a trucker pal of both victims. Apparently it was well known among the drivers that Danny got off by beating up women.”

“Nice. Personally, I find you have a much better time in bed if the lady’s willing. But maybe that’s just me.”

His comment gave Berg an unexpected jolt of pleasure through her groin, which she did her best to ignore. “He apparently liked to beat them around the face.” Berg picked up the autopsy file from in front of Jay. She flipped through Dr. Dwight’s meticulous notes. “So, it seems Taylor loved to pick up women and rape them, and Melissa was a regular hitchhiker who didn’t come home one night. I think the simplest explanation is the right one, and I remembered something you said on my machine . . .”

“Huh?”

“Ah, yes. Here it is.” Berg showed the relevant file note to Jay before reading it.

“ ‘Evidence of recently healed facial fractures to the left eye socket and a broken nose. Estimated to have occurred within a year to eighteen months of death . . .’ ”

“Oh yeah. So you’re thinking he did rape Melissa, like we originally thought. But where’s she been for the last eighteen months, and why didn’t she contact anyone or report him?”

Berg frowned. “I don’t know. There was no evidence she was held against her will, and she was well-fed and dressed. I was thinking perhaps it was some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing, you know, where the kidnapped falls in love with the kidnapper? The only thing is, she wasn’t living with him.”

“You checked out his place? I’m impressed, Detective Raymond.”

Berg smiled. “Yeah, the helpful trucker again. The address we couldn’t find was a trailer park up in Rockford. I checked it out and found this,” she said with a grimace, placing the shoebox of panties in front of Jay.

“What’s this? Ewwwww,” he complained when he opened the box.

“Found it under the scumbag’s bed. I think they’re rape trophies. I’d be willing to bet one of them is Melissa’s. You think you could get Dwight to DNA test them?”

“Sure, no problem.” Jay closed the box and put it aside.

“So what did you get?” Berg asked.

Jay laughed. “Absolutely fucking nothing. I interviewed local patrol, nothing unusual going on out on the road. So, Stockholm syndrome? Really?”

Berg shrugged, drinking her now lukewarm coffee. “Maybe, but like I said, there were no signs of a female in his trailer. Apart from those.” She nodded toward the box.

“Maybe there’s another trailer? But even if she had been living with him for the last eighteen months, what happened to both of them?”

“I’m clueless. It can’t be a murder-suicide.”

Jay took the autopsy report from Berg and flicked through it. “No. No gunshot residue on her hands. She wasn’t holding the gun that killed her. Plus it’s hard to shoot yourself in the back of the head.”

“Maybe she just got caught up with him in something gone sour? Innocent witness? My informant did say Danny liked to live on the wrong side of the law, and pissed off more than his fair share of people over the years.”

Jay sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Maybe . . .”

“But then that wouldn’t explain the second trucker murder. Or the fact that she was killed several days after Danny.”

“No. Perhaps it’s just an amazing coincidence?”

“Ha! Because we believe in those. Anything else spring to mind?”

“Nope. Apparently I am a really crap detective.” He laughed. “So what else did you do today? Paint the Magnificent Mile? Solve world hunger?”
 

Berg hesitated and looked away.
 

“What?” he asked, concerned. He reached out for her hand before pulling back. He grabbed their empty coffee cups instead and took them to the sink. Sitting back down at the table, he looked at Berg. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing.” Berg got up.

This time Jay didn’t hesitate, grabbing her hand and fixing her with a steely glare before she could walk away.

Taking a deep breath as she sat back down, Berg pulled some papers out of her bag. “Well, I did get these today . . .” Embarrassed, she slipped the brochures across the table with a trembling hand.
 

Jay picked them up and flicked through them, eyes widening. “Sex Addicts Anonymous?”

“Yeah, just some info I picked up about the group and a list of meetings in the area.”

“You gonna go? There’s one in half an hour that’s close by.”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
 

Jay stood. “Come on, I’ll take you. Just for the first one.”

Jay and Berg stood at the back of a third-story room in a large community center, watching a group of twenty sex addicts participate in their daily meeting. It wasn’t as scary as Berg thought it would be. They arrived five minutes early and enjoyed a late afternoon snack of coffee and cookies before listening to the introduction by the group leader, a fifty-something man who looked like a college professor.
 

One by one, each participant got up to relay their stories and report on successes and setbacks for the week. Berg saw the meeting was full of men and women of various sizes, shapes, ages, and colors, all of whom looked just as normal and respectable as anyone else. As they each stood and their stories were told, Berg realized what she had been suffering from for most of her life was more common than she’d thought.
 

She listened as a forty-something woman stood and told the group how she had slept with all her husband’s friends, unable to stop herself even though she knew it would mean the end of her marriage and the loss of custody of her four children.

A young gay man spoke next of his increasingly dangerous and unprotected sexual encounters that resulted in him contracting HIV. Even knowing he could infect his partners, he still couldn’t stop his acting out.

Finally, a large black woman spoke of her father’s relentless rapes and how she had given birth to his stillborn child when she was just twelve years old. She now had six children from different fathers and couldn’t stop using sex as a way to manipulate men into loving her.
 

As the newbie of the group, Berg listened to the stories with avid interest, feeling Jay’s promised hope bloom in her heart. Listening to the stories made her realize her addiction was controlling her, when it should have been the other way around.
 

At the conclusion of the meeting, the group leader invited any new members to come forward and share. For a minute, Berg felt like making a bolt for the door, but Jay clasped her hand with his own and squeezed. She took a deep breath and stepped forward as the eyes of the group fell upon her.

Chapter Eighteen

A
week later, Berg strode into the station to a loud round of applause and heartfelt cheering from her fellow officers. After the Chicago Police Board had cleared her as a suspect in the death of Rogers, Consiglio begrudgingly allowed the captain to end her suspension.

Berg had reluctantly agreed to participate in a special Police Board hearing, thanks in no small part to Jay’s constant badgering.
 

As it turned out, Cindy had in fact been intimately familiar with Berg on the night Rogers was murdered—Jay did comment he wasn’t sure if that made him feel turned-on or jealous—and she jumped at the chance to help out.
 

Cindy had testified truthfully that she and Berg had a sexual relationship and acted as her alibi. Cindy was disappointed, though, when the evidence was heard privately with only the board, Berg, Malloy, Captain Leigh, and Consiglio’s attorney in attendance. Evidently she had hoped her latest escapade would see the light of day and her father could read about it in the
Tribune
.

It helped having a closed-door hearing so her private life would remain, in theory, just that—private. If anything, her reluctant admission of a homosexual relationship helped her, as Berg couldn’t be fired due to the state’s newly passed sexual tolerance laws in the workplace. But having to air her sexual forays even to so few people had nearly prompted Berg to call the whole thing off.
 

Reinhardt had dismissed Consiglio’s application to terminate and charge Berg, and reinstated Berg with a warning to all present that the closed-door proceedings were not to be leaked to the press or anyone else. Because of the private nature of the evidence, Reinhardt’s warning was punctuated with one of her deadly over-the-glasses glares. Berg had no doubt that if word leaked out to the media she was going to make good on her threat to fire anyone she could.
 

Berg heard Consiglio was apoplectic with fury at the loss. Not only did he lose face in his own precinct, but he lost the only lead he had into three violent murders. Berg was grateful to Captain Leigh, who must have pulled more than a few strings to keep Consiglio out.

Of course, gossip—most of it incorrect—was flying around the station anyway, as it always did. Jay had done his best to kill the rumors that were circulating, stopping just short of physical violence. Each officer was now aware that if they said anything inappropriate to Berg, they would have to answer to him.
 

Still, Berg was uneasy as she entered the station, even as she basked in the glow of her fellow officers’ pleasure in seeing her return to work. The captain, Malloy, and the Police Board were now privy to something she didn’t want exposed. Though they only knew she had same-sex tendencies, and not the whole truth, Berg still felt dread from the pit of her stomach to the tips of her toes. She knew somehow the
whole
truth would get out and ruin her. It was only a matter of when.

On the upside, Berg had been to a sex anon meeting every day and had not slipped in her resolve to learn how to control her damaging behavior. For the first time in her life, she felt proud of herself.
 

Too late
, the voice chimed, keen to ruin any gains in self-esteem.
They all know what you do now
 . . .

Berg ignored her fears and allowed herself to enjoy the cheers as she walked to her desk and powered up her laptop. Jay soon joined her; he had completed his punishment and been reinstated as a detective. They looked across to the captain’s office door, expecting Consiglio to be in there spouting fire and brimstone, but it was empty.

The captain had pulled the detectives aside following the successful hearing for congratulations and a warning. Consiglio, grasping at his only power play left, was pressuring her to take Jay and Berg off the truckers’ case, something she had so far resisted. But, she cautioned them, if Consiglio got any more dirt on either of them, they’d be reviewing cold cases permanently—the equivalent of being all but fired—and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
 

Jay and Berg brought her up to speed on their investigations, but as Berg was on suspension at the time, neither her interview with Colt nor the box of panties she discovered was legally admissible as yet.