The Enemy Inside (22 page)

“Yeah. I really fucking want to know why missing hitchhiker DNA keeps turning up on dead guys,” Jay said.

“Me, too,” Dwight replied, opening the woman’s file and reading its contents. “Says here she went missing for nearly a year. Decomposed remains were discovered out of state, and DNA was extracted for identification that came up as Amelia on the missing person’s index. The height and build of the skeleton matched, as did the color of the hair that remained attached. No dental records could be compared as the teeth had either been removed or fallen out. No cause of death. There were no personal effects with the body. Her parents claimed the body after the investigation and that was that.”

“Any link between Amelia and Melissa?” Jay asked Berg.

“No. When we realized both went missing around the same time and both were hitchhikers, we went through all possible leads, re-interviewed everyone we could. There’s nothing else to link these women with each other, trust me.”

Jay rubbed his face, whether in confusion or out of tiredness she wasn’t sure. “What about Winchester and the truckers?”

“No definite links there, either. There’s one way to be sure about the hair: exhume her and retest,” she suggested.

“Actually, that’s the first thing I thought of, but it’s going to be difficult. She was cremated,” Dwight replied.

“Well, shit,” Jay said. “We just can’t catch a break today.”

“I said difficult, not impossible,” Dwight said. “If her parents still have the cremains and there are bone fragments or teeth in it, there is a slight chance I can get extra mitochondrial DNA from them and run an ID. It’s a long shot, though. Cremains are often too degraded for any DNA to have survived, and it depends on how efficient the cremulator is.”

“Cremulator? Sounds like a coffee machine,” Jay said, smiling.

Dwight scowled at Jay. “Some respect for the dead, please. It’s the machine crematoriums use to grind up the remaining bones and teeth after cremation, detective. Newer ones are efficient and all that’s left are sand-like particles. Other, older ones may leave bone fragments or whole teeth. I need larger bone fragments or a tooth for DNA.”
 

“Why can’t we just take DNA from the parents again and compare it to the hair?” Berg asked.

“We are. But if you want to know who’s dead, we need both.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

While reluctant at first, Amelia’s soft-spoken parents relented and handed over a small brass urn that had been kept in pride of place on the family’s sparse living room mantel. The parents sat close together on the old couch during the meeting, Amelia’s mother occasionally dabbing her eyes with a tatty, used tissue as Jay and Berg explained what they needed: a DNA swab from Amelia’s mother, and her remains.
 

“Boy, am I glad they were not the scatter-the-ashes-in-the-lake kind of people,” Jay said on the drive back to the morgue.
 

“Me, too. But it was unlikely, given their place was a shrine to Amelia. Why would they want to part with even one piece of her?” she concluded sadly. “To lose your child . . . I just can’t imagine what that must feel like.”
 

Jay cleared his throat and looked away. Berg saw the concealed pain behind his eyes at the remark and wondered what
that
was all about.
 

“Did you ever want to get married and have kids?” Jay asked Berg softly a few miles later.

“What, become some kind of housewife?” Berg snorted. “Like that’s all women should aspire to be? Have a gourmet meal on the table for the man of the house to enjoy each night after work? Get my whites whiter than white for my daily sense of accomplishment, before having some perfunctory, run-of-the-mill sex before bed? Sounds like a slow, torturous death to me.” She smirked. “Having a white picket fence strikes fear into my soul. I could never be a housewife.” She shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think I’m mother material. All I could teach my kids is how to fuck up their lives.”

Jay laughed sardonically. “Ah, Berg, my little rain cloud. You know, some people might say that life experience makes for the best mothers.”

Berg rolled her eyes. “Whatever. How about you? Kids?”

“Yeah, I wanna have a bunch of kids in a big, noisy house with a dog and your dreaded white picket fence. Like the one I grew up in.” Jay smiled.
 

Berg smiled with him, tears prickling behind her eyes. She would have done anything to have that kind of happy upbringing, a normal family, normal parents, but life just wasn’t fucking fair sometimes. “It’s a miracle you don’t already have a bunch of kids, the way you get around,” she said to lighten the mood.

“Right back at ya,” he retorted before laughing.

They carried the ashes down to the morgue, handing them to Dwight, who immediately broke the seal on the urn and dumped the contents into a large sieve over a plastic tub.
 

“I’ll grind up these fragments of bone and see if I can extract any mitochondrial DNA—that’s the DNA passed down through the maternal line,” he explained. “If there’s enough and I can replicate it, I’ll compare it to the hair you found in Winchester’s car and the mother’s swab. I should get results in the next week or so.”

“Thanks, Dwight,” they said in unison as they went to leave. The last thing they felt like was another boring lecture on the origins and uses of DNA from Dwight.
 

“Since you’re already here,” Dwight called after them, causing them to stop just before they made it to the door. “Do you want my findings on your latest trucker victim?”
 

Jay and Berg grinned in apology and allowed Dwight to lead them over to a covered body that was still on an examination table in the autopsy room.
 

“I believe you surmised that the man had been beaten to death?” Dwight asked as he peeled back the white sheet covering the blue and black body.

Berg grimaced. “Yes, with a bat or the like.”

“Very astute. The victim was, indeed, beaten to death. I can’t say what exactly the implement was, but a wooden or metal baseball bat would also be my guess. It was a smooth surface, as it didn’t leave any patterns or indents on his skin, and slightly tapered. The beating went for several hours. Many of the bruises are diffuse and widespread, while some are more defined and compact, meaning they occurred perimortem. X-rays show almost every bone in his body was broken, including several vertebrae and the skull, and many of these were crush fractures. Along his femurs, I also found compression wedges in the fractures, indicating the blows came from many different directions.
 

“There were some blunt-force lacerations to the skull from the blows, but no cuts or stabbing wounds. Official cause of death was internal bleeding; his spleen and liver were ruptured.” Dwight covered the body and picked up his file. “But if he’d lived long enough, a bleed on the brain would have killed him eventually.”

“Anything linking him to Rogers and Taylor?” Jay asked.

“Only the stun gun. But again, it was different because there were no epithelials from any previous victims. He was also tied down for the torture, or at least tied down until his vertebrae were broken. Then he couldn’t have moved even if he wanted to. But the rope fibers are different from both Rogers and Taylor. And like most of our victims, there is no other trace evidence on him,” Dwight replied.

“Strange,” Berg said. “It’s almost like the killer wants us to know these men are linked, but is screwing with the evidence to mess with us.”
 

“I think we can safely say this is the third trucker victim. We’ve got a serial killer on our hands.” Jay sighed. “Consiglio’s going to go crazy. Check that,
crazier
.”

“Actually, I think it’s
killers
,” the ME replied. “The tapering of the blows indicates more than one person participated in the beating, and the blows were not consistent.”

“Any official ID yet?” Jay asked. “We presume this is Darryl Williams, aged forty-nine. Based out of Milwaukee. Married, two kids in their teens, no criminal record.”

“I am still waiting on DNA, as dental records are out of the question and his fingerprints aren’t on file. But I think it’s safe to say this unfortunate man is Darryl Williams,” he said, regret in his voice as he covered the body again.

“Any evidence this was sexual in nature, like the first two?” Berg asked.

“No. Not this time, detective. No evidence of rape or anything sexual.”

“He was naked, though, that’s new.” She thought for a minute. “The first victim had it coming. He raped at least five women that we know about, probably more, but the other two, they were just nice guys, from what we know.”

“Very few victims of violent crime actually deserve it,” the ME said sadly, handing over his report. “Anyway, if you want to send your counterparts down, I’ll be happy to give them the same report.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Back on the detectives’ level, Jay and Berg sought out Cheney and Rodriguez. The youngest of the detective partnerships at the station, Cheney and Rodriguez were both in their late twenties and had been working together for just under twelve months.
 

“Hey,” Jay said, getting Cheney’s attention. “ME’s ready for you.”

“Cool, thanks.” Cheney rubbed his shaved head and beckoned for the tall, skinny Rodriguez, who was sending a fax, to join him. “Anything new?”
 

“Nothing good,” Jay said.

“Any chance Dwight found some evidence not connecting this one to the others? ’Cause that would make our lives way easier,” Cheney said hopefully.
 

Rodriguez, who caught the last of his partner’s comment, nodded emphatically.

“Huh?” Jay asked.

“It’s the chief.” Rodriguez answered for his partner and rolled his eyes. “No offence, but it was much nicer around here when he just hated you two. The rest of us could at least get shit done.”

“Yeah,” Cheney said. “Consiglio’s so petrified we have a serial killer in the area, he’s making all our lives miserable. We’ve already got a full caseload; we don’t need this one, too. He’s hell-bent on proving the murders aren’t connected so the FBI doesn’t come around and snoop in on his precinct. He’s asking us to find more evidence to prove him right.”

Berg snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Sorry, guys,” Jay said with mock sympathy. “It’s only going to get worse. We think, thanks to a stun gun burn, the motorist case we’re on might also be linked.”
 

The young detectives groaned in defeat.
 

“And if you’re after good news, then I’d give the autopsy report on Williams a miss.”

“Fuck,” Cheney muttered as they walked down to the morgue.

Stealing a glance at the captain’s glass office to ensure it was Consiglio-free, they settled at their desks. Jay’s cell rang. He answered it, talking softly and writing in his notepad before hanging up and grabbing his keys.
 

“No rest for the wicked. Let’s go,” he said to Berg, who looked up incredulously, expecting another murder. “No murder this time. Just your average rape and attempted murder. Vic’s at Chicago Memorial Hospital.”

The teaching hospital was only a ten-minute drive east from the precinct. Unfortunately, they came to a standstill thanks to morning traffic.
 

They sat in silence as the sedan nosed forward toward the hospital. They could see the tall building in the distance as they moved a few inches at a time, and Berg resisted the urge to avoid the traffic and get out of the car and walk.
 

Twenty minutes later, the two arrived, flashing their badges to the harried-looking emergency nurse who seemed to be fighting a losing battle against being buried alive in paperwork. Documents in various sizes, shapes and colors spilled out all over her desk, chair, and even on the floor around her feet.

“You got a—” Jay asked, checking his notebook, “Karen Stapleton here somewhere?”

The receptionist shot them a resentful look that communicated she had about a thousand other more important things to do than help them.
 

Jay smiled widely, flashing his badge for her again and jiggling it up and down for emphasis. Berg stifled a smile.

With a look on her face like she smelled something bad, she cleared the clutter from her keyboard and clicked away at her computer, pulling up the name. “She’s out of emergency and in room 314,” she snapped, already turning away and moving on to her next task.