The Enemy Inside (6 page)

“Outside. Now.”

The others knew what was coming. She wasn’t coming back. No one who made a mistake ever did.
 

Chapter Seven

At four in the morning, Berg sat on the floor of her dark shower recess as the water beat down on her back, her salty tears mingling with the scalding water. She didn’t even feel the sponge on her raw skin as she scrubbed at her body, further distressing the fresh, scarlet welts.
 

She only felt a deep shame.
 

Jay was right
.
I am no good. Beyond hope, worthless
 . . .
filth. How can anyone stand to be near me?

She had come home fuming from her day, angry at Consiglio’s premature conclusions and devastated by Jay’s attack. She would never let him know, but Jay had been the most constant man in her life and his words hurt. She tried to run away the hurt and had gone out with Jesse. She would have kept running as long as she could, but Jesse had started limping.
 

Sitting on her couch in her running gear, she felt nothing but empty. The more she sat, the more she ached until her whole body felt like one vast, empty void. It was a hole she was all too familiar with. She had felt it her whole life—as if despite everything she was doing, despite her very best efforts, she was still only one step away from falling into a deep abyss. She knew once she stumbled over the edge, she would never stop falling.
 

After grabbing a quick shower, she had tried to get some sleep, only to toss and turn for hours, her heart pounding. At midnight, she had given up.

She grabbed her keys and went to escape the pain.
 

Sitting in the pounding, blistering water in the early hours of the morning, she relived the previous few hours in flashes. The worst part of town . . . thudding bass . . . racing heartbeats . . . whispers . . . unknown hands . . . tearing clothing . . . a blindfold . . . screaming.
 

Was it me?
 

Warm pleasure . . . hot pain . . . a rush of release . . . humiliation.

“No!” She sobbed, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth on the floor of the shower, not noticing when the hot water ran cold, the freezing needles stabbing at her back. “Please stop.”
 

You can’t stop
, the shadowy voice in her head whispered.

Chapter Eight

Berg was already at her desk when Jay arrived the next morning.
 

“How ya doin’?” he asked, testing the water after their fight by leaving a caffeinated peace offering on her desk.
 

“Fine, and you?” She smiled, looking up from her paperwork to grab the coffee.
 

Jay frowned, contemplating his partner. She always looked stunning, but today she had dark circles under her eyes, and what little skin was showing under her long-sleeved shirt looked raw. He forced a smile.

The tension between them almost forgotten, Jay sat at his desk and took a gulp of coffee. “You’re in early. You had any luck on our dead guy?” He smoothly assumed his usual position: feet on desk, greasy pastry in hand.

“Not yet. Warden Brown said an old cellmate of Taylor’s has taken the special privileges bait and is willing to talk to me, so I’ll go out there later today. Now I’m just going through the old hitchhiker files in the hopes we missed some kind of link.” Berg gestured to the files spread out before her.

“That’s not possible. We did everything short of calling a psychic. We interviewed family and friends, organized mail covers and pen registers, and flagged bank accounts.”

Berg shrugged. “I know.”

“And that was before you started testing their DNA and found a match with Amelia Smith. You’ve gone above and beyond, Berg. You know missing persons’ cases go cold in a few weeks. We just don’t have the resources. The priority has to be violent crimes. Besides, the situation isn’t helped by a recent increase in hitchhiking caused by the current financial climate and adventure traveling and hitchhiking blogs. Even the safety precautions promoted by the websites, such as text messaging a car’s registration or the driver’s license number to a trusted friend, are not enough to stop many hitchhikers from becoming the victims of petty or more serious crime.”

Berg nodded. “I know, but how about we go through the hitchhiker evidence again? I’m not convinced dead trucker dude is our prom date.”
 

“Sure,” Jay replied, before sitting on the edge of her desk.

“Let’s review.” She held up her hand and counted off the facts on her fingers. “One, the missing women, all aged under twenty-one, were known by friends and family to hitchhike. Only one body has ever shown up, Amelia Smith, no cause of death was determined. Two, they were not suspected sex workers. Three, a hooker, who also used hitchhiking as a means of transportation, not to mention as a way to get johns, turns up raped and beaten to death on the expressway, something we now know our trucker was responsible for.”
 

 
“Right.” Jay continued her train of thought. “Four, the missing women were reasonable citizens with jobs and no criminal records.”

“Yep.”
 

“Five, nothing to link them apart from hitchhiking. Not a scrap of evidence anywhere, except a random hair belonging to Melissa that turns up on the dead trucker over a year later. A trucker responsible not only for the murder of the hooker, but also the rapes and assaults of other women. Weird.”

“The hair linking Melissa to Taylor is circumstantial, at best,” Berg argued. “And while Taylor killed that hooker, there’s nothing to link him to the four other missing victims.”

Their review was interrupted by one of the female officers from the front desk striding toward them.
 

“Hey, Summer.” Jay straightened up and smiled.
 

Summer ignored him. “Sorry to interrupt,” the pretty young cadet said to Berg. “A motorist found a body up on the tollway near Busse Woods.”

“Okay, we’re on it. Are the responding officers still on location?” Berg asked.
 

Summer nodded.

“Have you sent out forensics yet?” Jay asked.

“Yes, they’re on their way.” Summer directed her answer to Berg before scurrying back to the front office, still avoiding Jay’s intimate but amused gaze.

Berg smirked. “I’m feeling a comment coming on, something about not messing where you nest? How you haven’t been forced to attend a sexual harassment workshop is utterly beyond me.”

Jay grinned. “Let’s go.”

They were briefly stopped on their way out by Leigh, who stuck her head out of her office door.

“You on your way to the latest crime scene?” she asked the detectives.

“Yep,” Jay answered for both of them.

“Good. Since this looks like another trucker case, I’m pulling you two off your other cases so you can concentrate on Shipper, Taylor, and this latest killing. This is now top priority. Keep me informed,” she said before ducking back into her office.

Berg was still thinking about the hitchhikers as Jay drove toward Busse Woods. Pulling over onto the shoulder, they saw forensics had only just arrived. After grabbing their crime scene kits from the trunk, they debriefed the first responding officers on location. The detectives rushed over to the scene as soon as they were done.

“Hey, Halwood,” Jay said to the head of forensics.
 

“Hey.” Nick Halwood, a long-standing and well-respected member of the squad, ducked under the crime scene tape, holding it up with a gloved hand for Jay and Berg to pass under. Halwood waited, playing with his digital camera while Jay switched on the voice recorder on his cell.

“He’s another trucker. The vic’s name is John Rogers, according to his ID in the truck. Body was left on the side of the road. No drag marks, and no tire marks leading to the body. Considering this is a major highway, tire marks wouldn’t help us anyway,” Jay said.
 

Jay had to raise his voice to be heard over the continuous thunder of both the east- and westbound traffic. “No traffic cameras way out here. No footprints were left with his truck, which was found farther down the road. The truck’s LoJack wasn’t activated, but it hasn’t been on the side of the road for more than a few hours at most.”
 

The detectives bent down, taking fresh latex gloves out of their kits and snapping them on to conduct their initial investigation.
 

“Some superficial injuries,” Jay said, careful not to touch the body until Halwood had taken photographs of its position. Gently lifting the victim’s stiff arm, he examined the hands and wrists before Berg did the same.

“Ligature marks on wrists.” Berg held up the shirt sleeves so the marks could be photographed. Moving on to the victim’s torso, Berg moved his shirt to view the neck and chest. “Stun gun burns, but no evidence of blunt-force trauma or gunshot wounds, so no obvious cause of death at this stage. No evidence of the torture the last guy had to endure.” She felt relief as Halwood snapped hundreds of photographs of the body and its injuries.
 

The trucker lay on his side on the shoulder of the tollway between the eastbound lane and the metal guardrail. His eyes were open and staring, and he appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He was fully clothed in blue jeans, a checked blue, white and black flannel shirt, and black denim jacket.
 

“Another decent-sized guy. Despite his age, he would have been hard to subdue. I can’t see any blood on his clothes or body.” Jay stood back up. “Halwood, do you want to get liver temp?”
 

Halwood nodded, handing off the camera to one of his assistants. He pulled out the long thermometer and a scalpel from his kit.

In a few short moments, Halwood was done. “Liver temp puts time of death about six to ten hours ago, which fits with the evident signs of rigor mortis. He was dumped here recently, I think. I won’t be able to tell you much more until Dwight takes a look at him and we finish collecting trace and checking the woods.”

“All right, Halwood. Talk to you later.” Berg turned to Jay. “Let’s go check the rig.”
 

Jay nodded as they headed back to the undercover sedan, removing and discarding their gloves. “What do you think?”
 

“Another trucker victim.” Berg settled into the passenger seat as Jay started the ignition. “But cause of death looks like it will be different. Although the way the body was dumped is the same, as are the stun gun burns on his chest. Must be linked.”