The Enemy Inside (31 page)

The nurses hadn’t remembered much, each being responsible for thousands of admissions each year.
 

Berg also checked if they recognized the sketch she had worked up on the mysterious Irene. While many nurses had recognized her as a volunteer at their various hospitals, unfortunately, none could produce any useful paperwork on her.
 

Cheney and Rodriguez were joined at the old cafeteria table by Con Abrams, Nate Connolly, Arena, Pete Smith, and Hamilton.
 

Abrams and Connolly were a perfect match, Berg often thought. Both in their early forties, they had been partnered up for the last few years, and both had become cops for the love of getting criminals off the street.

Smith, like Hamilton, was different. Veteran cops and stalwarts of the precinct, they were nearing retirement and were riding their last years out by staying under the radar as much as Consiglio’s all-seeing eye allowed. They had each seen a lot of action, but the recent switch to a more technological crime-solving focus left them scrambling to keep up. Both overweight, and Hamilton with his limp, each had over thirty years in the force and had been partners for nearly as long. Berg couldn’t imagine life at the precinct without their steady presence.

Arena looked around at the assembled detectives. “What is this, some kind of Women’s Murder Book Club without the tits?” he joked.
 

The group laughed, even Berg.
 

“Oh, sorry, Berg,” Arena mumbled, reddening. “Didn’t mean to imply you have no tits. I’m sure you have great . . .” His voice trailed off as he realized he was just making it worse.

“You’re a moron, Arena,” Jay said through gritted teeth.

Over the next hour, Berg and Jay brought them up to speed on what they had spent the last month uncovering, including their theory about the murder links, the hitchhikers, and the erroneous DNA evidence. They finished with their suspect, Uncle Ted, and his unknown accomplice.

Hamilton whistled as the pair finished their informal presentation of the evidence. “Wow, you guys have been busy.”
 

The others nodded their agreement.

“You guys are good, I’ll give you that,” Cheney said. “I’m in.”

They all agreed. They spent the next hour discussing strategy as they ingested enough caffeine to raise Stalin.

“So we’re agreed?” Jay asked at the end of the informal meeting. What had been evening had now progressed into night, and the detectives swigged the last of their beverages.
 

“We will follow our evidence pointing to Shipper and assume Dell, Melissa, and Winchester are linked, and we’ll keep that little detail from our illustrious leader until we have an airtight case?”

They all nodded. Smith, ever the pragmatist, frowned slightly. “You’re handing him your asses on a platter, guys,” he said. “Why not just tell him you have a suspect for all the murders? Why the secrecy? And what about Leigh? She’s done nothing to be cut out this way.”

“Fuck him,” Berg replied. “He set me up! Besides, the DNA from the panties is not admissible, as I was suspended at the time, and we’ve been taken off these cases. We tell him before we can legally prove it and he’ll put us on cold cases for sure. But I agree. I don’t feel so hot about keeping Leigh out of the loop.”

“She is less than useless,” Arena grumbled.

“Watch it, Arena,” Berg said. “You’re just sore about your stint in the Domestic Violence Response Team. She does her best and manages to hold her own. How would you like Consiglio breathing down your neck every five minutes? Trust me, it isn’t pleasant.”

Arena shrugged.

Jay pushed his hair off his forehead in a weary motion and got down to division of labor, which needed to include backdating of evidence.
 

“Cheney, Consiglio put you guys on the Taylor and Williams murders. See if you can find anything else linking them together, or to Shipper. We’ll give you the hospital files, and you can claim you discovered the box of panties. Berg’ll give you Taylor’s address.”
 

They nodded as Jay continued. “Smith and Hamilton, you’re on the Winchester murder. See if you can figure out why Shipper would want him dead and then officially claim the DNA testing of Amelia’s ashes.”

“Yep,” the pair said in unison.

“Connolly and Abrams, find Uncle Ted and see if you can find out who this woman is who’s feeding him info.”

“We sure will,” Abrams replied. “Looking forward to it.”

“Arena, we need you to run interference in case Consiglio gets suspicious, and chase down any stray leads.”
 

Arena shrugged again in agreement.

“Then we are agreed. We’ll keep working Dell, the hitchhikers, and Rogers. Let’s meet here again tomorrow to go over what we’ve got.”
 

Berg noticed Jay fell into the role of unofficial station leader naturally. The other detectives followed his suggestions without argument.
 

The planning over, they gathered outside in the cold.
 

“I don’t know about you guys, but I need a drink. Anyone care to join me?” Jay asked.

“Sure,” Arena said as the others also agreed.

“Sorry. Busy tonight,” Berg said.

She felt Jay’s eyes burning into her back as she walked away.

“You coming?” Cheney asked as the group moved off without Jay.

“Yeah, sure,” Jay replied, eyes still on Berg’s retreating figure. He watched her until she was out of his line of sight, then turned and followed his colleagues to a nearby bar.
 

They chatted about the new developments. The gathered detectives had been impressed at the amount of work Jay and Berg had done under the radar and were keen to get a potential psycho off the streets. And, of course, none balked too much at the request to keep Consiglio out of the loop until they had irrefutable proof of their theory.
 

 
“I don’t mind that Consiglio’s PR focused—everything seems to be nowadays. It’s his complete disregard for our experience and skills that gets me,” Connolly said to the group. “He won’t listen to reason because he’s so worried about what the mayor, FBI, and media think.”

Smith cleared his throat. “Now, let’s be fair guys. You know we have to keep the mayor on side to get our funding. It may be ridiculous, but that’s politics, right?”

“Jam it, Smith,” Rodriguez said. “You’re about ten seconds away from retirement and your pension, so what do you care?”

“Fuck you, Rodriguez.”

While each knew the consequences of their insubordination would be dire if discovered, they agreed that bringing in whoever was responsible for the murders was more important than jumping political hurdles.

Jay finished his bourbon as a pretty brunette in her mid-twenties sidled up to him at their booth and handed him a folded piece of paper before smiling and sauntering away, her hips swinging.

“Nice,” Cheney commented, checking out her ass.

Jay opened the paper. It was obviously the woman’s number, along with a name. He didn’t bother to read it, instead crumpling it up and throwing it on the floor.

“You’re not going to hit that?” Arena asked, jumping up and scrambling for the paper and tucking it away in his jeans.

“Couldn’t be bothered,” Jay said.

“You finally all fucked out?” Hamilton laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

Jay smiled wanly. “Hey, wonder what Berg’s doing tonight?”
 

“You jealous, big boy?” Arena asked.
 

Jay flushed.

“Hardly,” Cheney scoffed, tongue loosened by the beer. “Haven’t you heard the rumors around the station? Berg’s been fucking the entire population of Chi Town, including women. That’s how come she was cleared of that murder by the board.”

“Yeah,” Rodriguez agreed. “She’s a great cop, but who knew she’d turn out to be a carpet muncher? Although, I’m sure if she had a proper fuck she’d forget about doing women. I’m prepared to take one for the team, unless I’m stepping on toes? Anyone here got carnal knowledge?”
 

They all laughed and looked pointedly at Jay.
 

Jay slammed down his beer, slopping half of it over the table, and stood. “I’d appreciate if you’d show my partner some fucking respect,” he said through clenched teeth.

The men all stopped laughing, taken aback by Jay’s unexpected anger.
 

“She does her job, so who gives a shit what she does in her private time?” He threw a twenty down on the table and turned to leave, before stopping and whirling back around. “By the way, you talk shit about her one more time . . .” He pointed at Rodriguez. “I’ll personally ensure you never speak again.” Eyeing them all with disgust for a moment, he turned and strode out.

The next afternoon they reconvened at the deli, each enjoying the same bottomless cups of coffee as the previous night, each with an update on the case.

“Uncle Ted hasn’t turned up since you scared him off.” Abrams stretched in his chair and sounded disappointed. “We got the warrant, searched his home and seized the rifles this morning, but there’s no way of getting a match without the bullet that killed Winchester,” he said. “We also didn’t find the gun that killed Melissa, so that’s a blow. But that was her stuff you found, Berg, although none of it was new. No sign of any other woman in the house.”

Berg nodded, wondering why the air between Jay and the other detectives seemed tense.

“His house was real freaky, like you said.” The tall, heavyset Connolly tucked into what looked like a mountain of corned beef on the tray in front of him. “Unfortunately, there was nothing in there tying him to any of the crimes. But he obviously killed and stuffed those animals himself, and some of them have been off limits to hunters for years. For that alone we can hold him, if we can find him.” He brushed his thinning hair back with his fingers.

“But if he isn’t the killer, then why did he run?” Abrams asked.
 

The cops all agreed. Their vast collective experience all led to the assumption that no innocent person would jump out of a back room window and disappear into the woods as if the hounds of Satan themselves were in pursuit.

“Connolly,” Jay said sarcastically, causing the man to look up from his corned beef sandwich.

“What?” he mumbled, mouth full.

“You just had lunch.”

“So?”

“So, you’re eating an entire cow.”
 

Connolly looked down at his tray and grinned.

Jay laughed. “Your arteries must be so clogged it’s a wonder blood doesn’t come out your ears.”
 

Berg scoffed. “What about the ashes, anything yet?” she asked Smith, keen to get on with the case and knowing that Hamilton would defer to him anyway.

“Not yet. Dwight was cagey, kept saying he’d get back to us tomorrow.”

Berg and Jay nodded.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Berg thought Dr. Dwight definitely looked worried.
 

After ushering Jay, Berg, Smith, and Hamilton down to the morgue that morning, he asked them all to crowd around a computer screen.
 

“I apologize for the delay, but I had to ensure that these results were accurate,” Dwight stated. “As you know, I have been busy trying to extract mitochondrial DNA from the bone fragments contained in Amelia Smith’s ashes. Fortunately, after several attempts, I found some DNA that I was able to replicate. And as you know, I also analyzed samples from the mother.”