The Enemy Inside (39 page)

Berg hung up, concerned. Shipper was still at large and Jay was God knew where. Fear once again churned in her stomach as she went back to reading the case files.
 

She separated the truckers from Dell, Melissa, and Winchester, hoping the segregation would yield some new insight or link between them.
 

She opened her laptop and waited for it to boot up. She logged in to the secure website responsible for all Illinois commercial driver’s licenses and ran a records check on each of her truckers. Searching for their CDLs, she brought up their profiles.
 

Danny Taylor was straightforward. She read he had received his license over thirty years ago in Chicago and hadn’t set down any other permanent roots since.
 

Williams’s license had been renewed in Milwaukee a couple of times over the last decade, as that was where he’d been based.
 

McEnery’s trucker’s license had been renewed all over the place over the last decade.
 

Pulling up Rogers’s details, she frowned. Rogers had moved to Chicago a few years ago, but instead of turning in an out-of-state CDL or regular driver’s license, he had applied for a totally new license. She thought it was strange he had started long-haul trucking as an independent operator so late in life with no driving history.
 

Berg tapped on the keyboard, searching again, but there was nothing for John Rogers prior to 2006 on the system. No CDL, regular license, address, anything. It was as if he hadn’t existed before. Viewing his license, she noticed it had a hazardous materials endorsement. The endorsement allowed Rogers to haul lucrative hazardous materials, but also required fingerprinting for certification.
 

Smiling, she logged into IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
,
and brought up Rogers’s prints. Clicking her mouse a few times, she ran a search to find a match. While it was running, she walked off into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. By the time she returned with her brew, IAFIS had done its work, returning any partial or entire matches.
 

Only one was a match: fingerprints for a Roger Johns.
 

She remembered the interviews she had conducted into Rogers’s background. He appeared to be a good, born-again Christian and family man, who apparently had also changed his name.
 

Who does that if they have nothing to hide?
 

Berg typed the name and date of birth into the website and waited while it crunched the numbers. Clicking her mouse, she waited as it brought up the old license photo. It was a much younger John Rogers.
 

“Found you,” she muttered.
 

She checked his records. While John Rogers was new to the trucking world, Roger Johns had first received his CDL in 1979, in Chicago.
The same year and place as Taylor.
 

Feeling the beginnings of excitement tingle through her limbs, she checked the other two truckers’ records again. Bringing up Williams’s entire driving history, she scrolled through thirty years of renewals, all of which were in Milwaukee, except for the first year he received his license in 1979 in Chicago.
 

She checked McEnery again, but she knew the link would be there before she found it. Delighted with the break, she picked up her cell to call Jay and tell him. She dialed the number before remembering he hadn’t been returning her calls.
 

As she hung up, the words spoken by Colt about Rogers in his first interview echoed in her ears.
“Turned born-again about thirty years back . . .”
 

How would Colt have known that?

“You lied to me,” Berg said to the withered old man sitting across from her in his home. “You told me Danny Taylor and John Rogers barely knew each other. Now I find out that they, along with Williams and McEnery, all started trucking in this area within a year of each other, thirty years ago. Do you honestly expect me to believe they didn’t know each other?” she yelled. “Do you want to tell me what they were hiding and save me the hassle, or will I charge you with obstruction, keep digging, and find out anyway?”

Colt sat across from Berg on a floral sofa, seemingly impassive to her temper. If anything, he looked even sicker than when Berg first met him all those weeks ago at the truck stop. The lines on his face were etched even deeper, she saw, like they had been rubbed with dirt. His eyes were hooded, with bruise-like dark smudges underneath them.

Despite his frail state, Berg was livid. That, mixed with concern for Jay, had driven her to Colt’s home at nearly ten in the evening. She barged in just as he was settling in to bed for the night.
 

Colt was peeved at the late intrusion. “Don’t know anything about anything that happened thirty years ago,” he said in a low voice.

“Don’t fucking give me that shit, Colt. It’s well known you know everything about everyone. Come on! John Rogers was running from something, obviously with good reason considering his murder. Taylor was a scumbag, McEnery was trying to kill his brain with drugs, and Williams fled to Milwaukee thirty years ago. Now my partner’s fucking missing in your truck somewhere, you motherfucker, so cut the crap and tell me what you’re hiding!” she yelled.

“You cuss worse than a cut sailor,” Colt said with a small smile. “You love this man, this partner?”
 

Berg took a breath in order to tell him where to shove it.
 

“Don’t lie to me. You tell me the truth, and I’ll reciprocate.”

Berg bit her tongue and acquiesced with a slight nod.

Colt snorted. “Love. Never found it myself. Didn’t deserve to.” He seemed to age even more in front of her, defeat and guilt heavily weighing on his face and body.
 

Berg was reminded of Atlas with the world perched on his shoulders.
 

He leaned toward her, wincing in pain at the movement. “It was a bad business,” Colt said after a while, grimacing. “They were young, stupid, and drunk.”

“Go on.”

“They . . . raped and killed a young woman . . .”

Berg stumbled back like she had been slapped. “Who was she?”

“Dunno. Some local,” he said, regret and shame in his voice. “Can’t remember a name, but she used to thumb rides with us all the time.”
 

“Tell me what happened.” Berg’s patience was now eroded, and fear for her partner was reaching a head.

“I wasn’t there,” Colt retorted.
 

Berg felt set to explode before he continued.
 

“But I’ll tell you what they said happened . . .” Colt looked off into the distance, eyes unfocussed and lost in memories before continuing. “It was thirty years ago at the local tavern off the tollway. Don’t bother looking for it now; it’s been torn down. It’s all swanky new housing now. Back then it was a dive where we all went after a long haul to blow off some steam and enjoy some company of the female kind. Local women looking for some fun would frequent the place and often found themselves in over their heads.”
 

Colt seemed relieved to be talking about it, and the words tumbled out of him.
 

“She was well-known for a good time by their reports, known among the men for being . . . friendly.”

Unwilling to interrupt his monologue, Berg bit her tongue so hard to prevent herself from arguing that she tasted blood.
 

“Danny picked her up on the highway one night and brought her to the tavern for a few beers before they went off into what is now the Poplar Creek Woods for some ‘special alone time’—his words not mine,” he said, as he saw Berg’s face redden. “The others followed just as a joke. They were all drunk as skunks.”

“If you imply one more time that she was asking for it, I’m going to break your legs,” Berg said. “Which others? I want to hear names.”

“Danny, John or Roger, Darryl, and Andy.”
 

Berg nodded, all four trucker victims.
 

“Anyway, it got out of hand. The others went to watch the show, but she saw them and freaked out. She tried to get away, said she was going to the cops, and they panicked. It all went to hell very fast. I heard about it because they said they needed my help.” Colt paused, his heavily lined, gray face betraying his guilt. “They were young, stupid, and they did a terrible thing . . .”

“What did they do?” Berg asked, already sickened.

“They all . . . took their turns. Then beat her until she promised not to talk. John once broke down and confessed to me; he’d been holding it in for such a long time. Taylor . . . John said he was the worst. He cut on her, stubbed his butts on her skin. He enjoyed it. Then she was dead.”

“So you helped them get away with it.” It wasn’t a question.

Colt sighed and ran his scarred hands through what was left of his thin gray hair. “Yes. I had a few cop friends, so I said she had never even been at the stop that night. No one who wanted to keep trucking dared say otherwise. But the investigation into her disappearance never even got started. She had no family. Without a body or any witnesses, it was assumed she was a runaway, and it all went away. Life went on.”

“No body?”

“They left her out in the woods, buried under dirt and scrub. No one ever found her.”

Berg sat back in shock. “How could you? They killed her!”

“Like I said, they asked me for help, said it was an accident, and by the time I found out what really happened . . .” He swallowed, looking sick. “What they had done to her like a pack of animals, she must have died a tortuous death.” He paused again for a moment, having difficulty with the memory.
 

Berg looked at the old man, disgust on her face.

“Well, it was too late to recant and the investigation into her disappearance was over anyway. Their lives were never the same, if that helps,” he said. “Danny, well, he never lost the taste for the violence and sex. John became a born-again almost immediately after, spent his life trying to get God’s forgiveness for what he did. Darryl left the city, became an upright citizen. Andy, well, he just tried to forget with drugs.”

“Now they’ve all been tortured to death.”

“Yep.”

“Except you.”

“Yep.” Colt sighed again, the sound communicating that he regretted this more than he could express.

“Who’s doing this, Colt?” Berg asked.

The man sat back on the couch, resting against the cushions as he thought about Berg’s question. He stared her in the eye. “God sent an avenging angel. And who can blame Him?”
 

She ignored his religious ramblings. “Why didn’t you tell me this weeks ago?” She stood and paced the small room. “You could have stopped this after the first two murders. You could have at least warned them.”

He shook his head regretfully. “Couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Berg asked.

“Both.”

“To save your own skin? To protect your bony ass from a thirty-year-old lie, you just let them die?” She looked at him, incredulous.

“I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about my skin.”

“Why then?”

Colt paused again, seeming to weigh each word before continuing. “Because they deserved it,” he muttered. “Don’t tell me you think any different. I know you don’t. That little lady deserved her justice, and those animals got what was coming to them. We all do, eventually. What’s coming to you, pretty officer?”

Disgusted, Berg stood and stalked to the front door, slamming it behind her.