The Enemy Inside (34 page)

“So we’ll have to let him go, tell him to go home, and stay put.” Jay noticed her indecision. “Unofficial house arrest.”

“Okay. I’ll check out his phones and computer before you cut him loose. I hope this is the right decision.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

That evening, all the detectives, except Hamilton, once again reconvened at the new unofficial station house at the deli.
 

Berg had checked out Hamilton’s phones and computer, and Hamilton filed for immediate leave, citing a family emergency. The captain signed off on his leave none the wiser, and Jay had already put in a few surprise calls to ensure he was at home.
 

“Still no Uncle Ted?” Jay asked Abrams and Connolly as they sat down.
 

“No, nothing,” Abrams replied. The pair was being relieved from their stakeout by a couple of patrol officers for the night.
 

Connolly once again dug into a pile of corned beef.
 

The other detectives stared at him.
 

“What?” Connolly asked before he took a huge bite. “I’m going to go home later where my wife will fucking make me eat a salad.” His mouth was so full the words were almost unintelligible, but they got the gist.

Berg’s cell shrilled. She looked at the screen and rolled her eyes, showing it to Jay. “Stella. Again.” She rejected the call.
 

A second later, Jay’s cell lit up. He switched it off.
 

Berg sighed. “The woman is persistent. She must have called at least twenty times in the last forty-eight hours alone.”

“Did the latest murder give us anything we can work with?” Cheney asked Jay and Berg.

“Nothing useful,” Jay replied. “What does Consiglio think?”

“He was delighted with the evidence showing Taylor raped—and mostly likely killed—three hitchhikers, as it justified him closing the case originally. But he used the lack of stun gun marks and different rope to suggest McEnery is not only unrelated to the murders of Winchester and Dell but also the other truckers.” Cheney shook his head.
 

The detectives all looked on in disbelief.
 

“But I also hear the deputy super, McClymont, is considering intervening. You heard anything, Jay?”
 

Jay shook his head.

“Consiglio’s talked himself into a corner,” Berg said. “After all his denials to the public, he can’t say all seven murders are the result of a serial killer now, can he?”
 

The guys all nodded.
 

“You just know he’s gonna blame all the negative press on us and Leigh, and come out smelling like a rose.”

“What about you guys? Are you having any luck?” Cheney asked.

“We are following up Shipper’s military history,” Berg replied. “Nothing firm as yet. But the guy is definitely a class-one psycho, and we’ve got a few leads.”
 

“You still think an insider is helping this guy out?” Cheney asked.

“Yeah. Otherwise, the database anomalies can’t be explained, and Shipper didn’t even know what an e-mail was. Also, the killer knew things before we did. He must have someone in law enforcement feeding him info.”

Not for the first time, Berg wondered if they did the right thing letting Hamilton go.

The guys all grumbled and looked away, unwilling to believe one of their own could be involved in such heinous crimes.

“It doesn’t explain a few things, though.” Jay said. “Like the tampering of Amelia’s DNA results, the missing DNA profiles on the database, Winchester, and the murder of Melissa. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know how any of that helped Shipper.”

“Maybe the database was a mistake?” Smith asked. “Maybe we’re linking it prematurely?”

“And Melissa?”

“Not linked? I mean, why would Shipper kill his own niece he was supposedly avenging?”

“Why do psychos do anything?” Jay asked. “Maybe she got a conscience and was going to turn him in. Whatever happened, this whole thing is fucking weird.”
 

“We were talking about sending someone undercover, off the books,” Connolly said in between picking corned beef out of his teeth. “We can’t find Ted. Meanwhile, he’s still killing people, and Consiglio’s tying our hands.”

“You’re thinking of sending someone undercover as a trucker as bait? Who?” Jay asked.
 

The detectives all looked at him.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jay said.
 

“C’mon, Jay. You know Consiglio won’t sanction undercover for these cases, because it would be as good as admitting he was wrong,” Connolly said.
 

Jay shook his head.

“But you’re perfect for the job. You’re the only one of us who’s got previous driving experience from that trucking case a few years back. You could just say you’re going on leave . . .” Connolly said.

Jay rolled his eyes.
 

Berg had to admit they were right. Jay would need a refresher on how to drive the big rigs, but he could do it. And his disappearance would likely go unnoticed and may even make Consiglio’s day. Also, Jay had no family responsibilities to speak of.

“Equal opportunity aside, an undercover female trucker would be troublesome,” Cheney explained to Berg, who nodded.

Jay sighed. “Fine. But how do we infiltrate their unit?”

“I think I can help with that.” Berg remembered a grizzly old trucker who had a soft spot for a free lunch.

It was arranged early the next day. Berg tracked down Colt between routes at the same truck stop she’d previously met him at and floated the idea of a sting.
 

At first, he was reluctant. “We’re handling it,” he muttered when he realized Berg was, in fact, a cop.

Berg snorted. “If by handling it you mean standing by and making idle threats while more of your guys get killed, then yeah, you’re doing an
awesome
job. We’re the professionals. Help us do our job before haulers become an endangered species. The union’s got to be getting antsy.”

Eventually, over a huge free breakfast, Colt agreed to introduce Jay to the local truckers. But Berg nearly fell off her vinyl diner seat when he offered his precious eighteen-wheeler and personal lessons on how to drive it.
 

The operation organized, the detectives and Colt decided Jay would be introduced to the crew that afternoon as Colt’s nephew, who was picking up his route while Colt had some surgery.
 

Berg thought the old man was so gaunt and sick-looking maybe he should go and get a medical check. Colt even appeared to have visibly withered in the weeks since she had last seen him.

Berg watched, heart in her throat, as Jay collected a few items from his desk. She did her best to squash her dread and look nonchalant as he gathered his things.
 

“Contact me every day,” she whispered as he left.
And, please, please be careful
 . . .

Jay’s smiled. “Does that mean you care?”
 

While his tone was joking, Berg saw a tightness around his eyes. “Just . . . be careful, okay?”

“Thanks. And while I’m away, why don’t you do yourself a favor and get some sleep? A few hours every week or so is good for you, I hear.”

“Sleep? I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m familiar with that term. Can you elaborate?” Berg forced a smile.

“I’m serious, Berg. You’re okay, right? Going to meetings and stuff?”

“I’m fine.”
Liar.
She hadn’t slept in days, having fallen back on old habits all too easily. “You better get going.”

Jay studied her face and frowned at her. “Well, when I get back we need to talk, okay? There are some important things that need to be said, things I can’t go into right now.”

Berg nodded shakily.
 

Giving her a devastatingly sexy smile, Jay left.

PART FOUR

The fierce voice shouted. “Are we clear?”

“Yes,” they replied.

“And the target?”

“It’s in the eighteen-wheeler blue Mack,” they chanted, on rote. They looked up eagerly for approval.

“Take it down quickly. It’s old, but it’s armed. Call me when it’s done.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Sitting behind the wheel of her car, Berg reflected that she had been lying to Jay lately. A lot. And after she’d promised not to. She felt a twinge of guilt.

Not only was she not sleeping—in fact, her bed had become a place where she lay at night, rigid, heart pounding over some unknown doom—but she had also quit going to meetings altogether.
 

But one particular lie she preferred to think of as a lie of omission rather than an outright falsehood. After all, she rationalized, it didn’t affect him.

Her mother was not, technically, dead as she led him to believe in one of the rare moments she discussed her personal life. She pushed the memory aside.
It’s better this way. He would never love me once he saw what was inside.

Her various stepfathers were long dead, something she thanked God for every day, but her mother was alive, at least in body.
 

For the last ten years, Mary Raymond had been living in a special care hospice in the suburb of Skokie, under the care of nurses trained in dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. The degenerative and cruel brain disease struck her mother quite young, six years prior, when she was in her late forties.

Without the benefit of a close relationship or regular communication, Berg had at first put her mother’s increased confusion and anger down to her ongoing battle with alcohol. She often slipped in and out of reality when she had been on a binge. But after a year of increasing problems, it became clear that it was something more than bad hangovers and dead brain cells. Another year later, and after thousands of dollars spent on doctors and tests, Berg made the decision to put her mother in a home.

It had been an easy decision, Berg recalled, based on their acrimonious relationship and a lifetime of blame and anger on both sides. There was never any question that her mother might come and live with her. She felt no guilt over the decision at the time and still didn’t. She often wondered if that was normal, or if it was yet another indication of her glaring emotional inadequacies.

Now their relationship was limited to a few short visits a month as Berg sat with the mother she never knew and her mother stared blankly at the daughter she never loved.

Berg drove up to the hospice for the latest torturous visit, with Jay on her mind. She was worried and had been since Jay’s unsanctioned undercover operation started five days earlier.
 

She scratched the cuts on her forearms that were still oozing blood. Dreading the visit she was about to endure, and without the time to properly attend to her demons, she had fallen back on old habits. The cuts, which she had unflinchingly inflicted on herself earlier that evening with a kitchen knife, still hurt, but no longer enough to drown out her destructive thoughts.

Berg took a deep breath and forced her demons back, trying to focus instead on how the investigation was going.
 

Her background check on Hamilton had yielded nothing so far. He seemed clean, and he was being good about staying put. The last thing the CPD needed was another scandal, and a serial killer would complicate things for everyone.
 

Progress on their various victims had been frustratingly slow. Her discussions with the warden at Cook County about Dell had yielded nothing. Even the wood splinters found in Rogers had been generic, and the only fingerprints in Winchester’s car had been his.
 

Background checks into the latest victim, McEnery, also led nowhere. McEnery had spent his life drifting in and out of Chicago, when he wasn’t incarcerated.
 

Further checks into Ted’s military service had shown no links with any others in current law enforcement. Most of his fellow officers retired from army life long ago and dropped off the radar. Berg put in a number of calls to local veterans’ groups, trying to talk to anyone who served with Shipper and Hamilton, but thus far had come up blank.