The Enemy Inside (11 page)

True to his word, Jay headed over to Berg’s apartment at eleven o’clock following his shift. He was so exhausted, he had to drag himself up the stairs. Because he was now doing patrol, any investigation into the murders had to be done after hours, when Consiglio was less likely to be hovering.
 

“Hey Berg, it’s me. Let me in,” he called when there was no response. Leaning heavily on the door, he pounded on it again with his clenched fist, his patience running out fast. “I know you’re in there and I doubt you’re asleep, so let me in! I’m not going away!”
 

Getting annoyed that his efforts to be supportive were being ignored, not to mention being too tired to enjoy being dicked around, Jay put his ear to the door to gauge any movement inside. He heard a light clicking noise on the tiled floor before a snuffling came from under the door.
 

“Hey, Jess, is that you? Your recalcitrant owner in there?” he asked, crouching down. More snuffling.
 

Straightening back up, he continued pounding on the door again, determined to raise Berg from her stubborn solitude. She may be able to ignore his phone calls, but in person he was infinitely harder to disregard.
 

“Answer the damn door, or I’ll wake up every neighbor you have!”

“Too late, bozo,” a voice said from behind him.
 

Jay turned to see a little old lady, complete with a cold cream face mask and a floral, ruffled nightdress straight from the fifties, poke her head around her door. She looked slightly taken aback at the sight of a uniformed police officer at her neighbor’s door and possibly at the thought she had just called him a bozo.
 

“I’m Vi. She’s not home, you know,” Vi said after she collected herself. “All that hammering isn’t going to help.”

“I apologize, ma’am. It’s very important I speak to Alicia; she’s a friend of mine. Do you know where she is? Or when she left?” Jay asked with a cute smile, piling on the little old lady charm he knew he had in spades.

“She left just thirty minutes ago, when I turned off my TV. I heard her come home with Jesse, drop him off, and then leave again. Nothing wrong with my hearing.” She stepped out her door and beckoned with a withered hand for him to come closer. “She’s gone out a few times lately. You know,
at night
.” Vi leaned in and lowered her voice. “Doesn’t get home until the wee hours. She says it’s for her work, but I don’t know what she does. I ordinarily wouldn’t mention it—there’s a lot of gossiping around here—but seeing as how you know her . . .”
 

Jay instantly knew who was responsible for all the building gossip, but many of his cases were broken thanks to gossip, so he couldn’t judge.
 

“Thank you, ma’am. You wouldn’t happen to know if she went out last Thursday night, do you?” he asked, referring to the night Rogers was murdered.
 

“She did. I remember very well, as I was watching a
Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman
marathon. She left very late, after midnight, and didn’t come back in until I’d gone to sleep, which was after three in the morning,” she replied before giving him a proud smile.

Jay was perplexed. He knew Berg wasn’t working. His curiosity raged and, he admitted to himself, so did a little jealousy. Obviously she had a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, she didn’t want to talk about. Where else would she have been on a weeknight until after midnight? The thought made him uncomfortable, and he frowned. He had never minded before that she wasn’t interested in him, because he thought she wasn’t interested in anyone. But now?
 

Things didn’t sit well with him.
If Berg was at a boyfriend’s house
, and that thought still made him feel strangely uncomfortable,
then why did she come home at all? Why
didn’t
she stay over and go straight to work in the morning?

“You’ve been very helpful,” Jay said, before guiding the old lady back into her apartment politely. “You lock up tight now, ya hear?” He stood against the doorjamb and smiled to show his dimples to best advantage.
 

Vi gathered her nightdress around her throat and scurried behind the door, closing it and throwing what sounded like about fifty locks behind her.

Hands in pockets, Jay walked down the hall to the stairwell pondering what the neighbor said about Berg coming and going at all hours.
 

If she had a boyfriend, why not just tell Leigh? Even if she had a girlfriend, it’s better to be outed than charged with murder, surely? Why all the secrecy?

PART THREE

The man raced, heart pounding, through the pitch-black woods. The exposed twigs and branches scratched his flesh as he whipped past, drawing blood. He could no longer hear anything behind him, but he knew they were there.
 

At least two, maybe more.
He crashed through the thick foliage and ducked and weaved around tall maples and oaks. He searched for a hiding place as he ran, but the woods just weren’t dense enough to provide decent cover. The undergrowth was too low to the ground, and the good leaf cover was too high. He was trapped, exposed in a gap of clear night air, running in what he suspected were large circles.
 

This is ridiculous.
He knew Chicago had a number of forests, but how could they be this big? He felt like he could have run all the way to the state line by now. His pant legs were cold and soggy. He had run into a few shallow marshes in the darkness, only to splash back out of them in search of dry land. Once, he had stumbled across what looked like a bike trail, but had abandoned it as it was too open and he would be seen.
 

Now he had no idea where he was, how far he’d run, or where he was headed. This was unfamiliar territory for him. He was just passing through on his way to his family’s home in Minnesota. He was from the city and didn’t enjoy woods or nature, preferring traffic and muggers any day. Rubbing at the various grazes and bleeding scratches covering his exposed skin, he tried in vain to control his raging fear.
 

He’d been on the road since morning, heading east into Chicago to find a place to spend the night, when he saw a pretty woman on the side of the road and offered her a ride. She was small and shouldn’t have been out on the tollway so late at night on her own. Lord knows what could have happened to her.
 

So against his better judgment, he stopped and offered her a ride into the city. Her reaction had been confusing to say the least. She seemed almost displeased he had stopped and tried to turn him down, saying she wanted to go farther than the city. But eventually, after an argument he couldn’t believe he was having, she relented when he said he wasn’t leaving her out there on her own. He hoped, as he had been insisting, that were he ever to have a daughter who foolishly decided to hitchhike, some nice stranger would also do the right thing by her.
 

Then all hell broke loose.

He wasn’t sure how it happened, but he had woken up behind the wheel, the car having run off the highway into the metal guardrail only a few yards from where he picked up the woman, his right arm aching and his body twitching.
 

Did I have a heart attack and black out or something?
 

The woman, trapped in the passenger seat of his car by her jammed seatbelt, was struggling to get something that had fallen down behind her seat. He was running around the side of the car to help her out when something solid hit him from behind on the small of his back. The sharp blow made his heart leap in fear and he fell to one knee. It was so unexpected, he wondered if it was some kind of bear.
 

Did they have bears in Illinois?
 

Then, before he had a chance to turn around, it struck again, this time aiming for the back of his head. Somehow, his sixth sense kicked in and he ducked at the last minute, the blow glancing off his left shoulder and falling just short of being hard enough to knock him out. Ears ringing nonetheless, he had vaulted the guardrail like a champion high jumper and half run, half tripped into the thick woods on the side of the road, his only thought to reach cover and safety.

He guessed that made him a coward—he’d just left the poor defenseless woman in the car—but the instinct for self-preservation is a strong one and every fiber in his being just told him to run.
 

So he did, and for the first few hundred yards he had heard what sounded like two heavy
somethings
crashing through the brush after him.
 

All was silent now, and he stopped, ducking low and hiding, to catch his breath and calm his hysteria. Hearing nothing for a few minutes, he stood cautiously and looked around. Heading off downhill, he hoped to find a road or at least some kind of path that might lead him to people or the authorities, as his cell was still in the car. He tried to be as quiet as possible, but heard nothing coming after him. After a few more minutes, he decided whatever had chased him had given up.

He noticed the night air was getting cold and smelt like fallen maple leaves. On any other night he would have appreciated the beauty of the woods—the stars were shining brightly in the foliage gaps overhead as he stumbled over the rough ground, the blood still rushing through his body. He estimated it had been about an hour since he crashed his car. He hoped it hadn’t been towed.

As he relaxed, he almost laughed to himself as he rubbed his smarting head, shoulder and arm, convincing himself the drama had all been in his head.

What a story this will make.
Big bad city boy has faux heart attack, crashes his car and is attacked by wild animal in urban woods.
He’d never hear the end of it.

A slight rustling in the tree behind him kicked his heart rate into overdrive once more and he dove for cover like a World Series baseballer sliding for home. More silence. Acutely embarrassed at his overreaction, he stood and started walking again. He wasn’t sure what time it was or how long he’d been running, but he hoped the woman was still okay in the car or, even better, had managed to get free and run for help.

His heart lurched in hope as he saw a flash of red light ahead.
At last. Civilization.
He hurried toward it, stopping short in confusion when the red flash turned into a tiny red dot on his clothing that slowly traced its way up his groin, across his stomach, and came to rest to the left of the center of his chest, unwavering.
 

The city boy realized too late what it was. He was dead before he heard the shot.

“What’s this?” the Leader asked the two cowering figures as they stood over the body. “This wasn’t what we discussed. That wasn’t the target.”

“There were complications. It got in the way.” The voice trembled.

“Yeah, wrong place, wrong time,” the other said, the timid voice contorted unnaturally in false bravado.
 

Silence. The fear was palpable in the silence of the woods. Even the animals felt it.

“We’re sorry. We needed help, but it’s taken care of now, isn’t it? They’ll never find the body out here. It’s fine,” said the first voice, in a vain effort to fill the stony silence.

The pair looked up at the Leader hopefully, but the hope was misplaced.
 

“I do not enjoy being called upon to fix your fuck-ups. What about the target?”
 

“It got away . . .”