The Enemy Inside (32 page)

“And?” Berg said, crossing her arms.

“The bone fragments yielded a DNA match in the system as Amelia, much like the hair did.”

“Great. So if her hair was in Winchester’s car, do we think Winchester had something to do with her death?” Jay asked the crowd. “That would explain why Shipper killed him.”

“No,” Dwight said bluntly.

“What do you mean, no?” Jay asked. “The hair and the body match. Amelia must have been in the car sometime before she died.”

“No, they don’t. They are, in fact, different DNA profiles entirely.” Dwight turned the computer screen around, displaying two columns with black and white bars, or alleles, both labeled Amelia Jane Smith. The black and white bars did not match. The room went silent. “It’s simple. Two different DNA profiles have each been labeled as belonging to Amelia in our DNA database,” he explained.

Berg was the first to cotton on. “So, you’ve got the mother’s DNA. Which sample is Amelia’s?”

“The hair is hers, the cremated body is not.”
 

The detectives fell silent for a moment.

Berg sighed. “So they’ve cremated the wrong body.”

“Yes.”

“How the fuck did this disaster happen?”

“Someone has mislabeled the profile on the system,” Dwight said. “I’m not going to go into all the implications this could have on the crime lab and recent DNA results. Suffice it to say the staff are all being given a refresher course in lab procedure and retesting any recent results to be sure. So far, though, this is the only anomaly on the system.”

“Thank Christ. But now what?” Berg asked.

“We continue checking our lab results and pray this doesn’t get out and put our completed cases in jeopardy of retrial.” Dwight pointed to the detectives. “And one of you four gets to break it to Amelia’s parents that the long search for her body needs to resume.”

“Or that she could still be alive, given that a hair of hers has just turned up at a crime scene,” Jay said, taking the report from Dwight.
 

“Exactly.”

“Fuck, I wouldn’t want to be Leigh right now,” Jay whispered to Berg as Consiglio’s voice filtered through Leigh’s closed office door.

Smith, Hamilton, Berg, and Jay had taken the mistake straight to the captain’s office following Dwight’s revelations. The captain listened, then reluctantly called Consiglio in to hear the development.
 

Red in the face, the man was now screaming at Leigh, who sat at her desk calmly and appeared to be checking her e-mails.

“Wanna get lunch?” Jay asked.

“I’m going to finish off a few things here. You go on ahead,” Berg said.

Jay sighed. “Okay.”

Captain Louise Leigh watched as her various detectives left the station to follow up cases and find food.
 

Tuning out Consiglio’s ongoing tantrum, she wondered about Jay’s request just days earlier for a transfer to another precinct. He wouldn’t elaborate on why, so she had given him a few days to think about it. He hadn’t changed his mind as yet. She wondered how Raymond would take it. Not well, was her guess.

Suddenly tired of her so-called superior’s continuing outburst, she sat up straight. “Be quiet, Tony,” she said.

Consiglio fell silent. “But what are we going to do?” he whined. “The database—”

“Let me worry about that. I’m sure it’s just human error. It happens, and it looks to be isolated.”

“What about O’Loughlin and Raymond? What if they’re right about all six murders being linked? I’ve already gone on the record to assure the community they’re not. There’s no way I can recant. It’s bad enough that three of the murders look to be linked.”

“You just worry about your campaign and let me worry about the detectives,” she said.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“We’ve got another one. Consiglio’s put us on it,” Cheney whispered to Jay as he and Berg walked back into the station.
 

Like clandestine lovers, they all ducked behind a peeling concrete pillar to continue their covert conversation.
 

“Dispatch just called it in,” Cheney said.

“A trucker? Where?” Jay murmured.

“About half a mile northwest from where Taylor’s body was found. It’s on the tollway on the edge of Poplar Creek Forest Preserve.”

“We’ll meet you there,” Jay replied. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

Cheney nodded, and he and Rodriguez left the station.

Jay and Berg waited a decent length of time at their desks and then, under the guise of following up their own cases, left the station to attend the crime scene.
 

The captain watched them from her glass office as they left, a knowing look on her face. Berg smirked at her. She felt confident Leigh would not tell Consiglio where they were going. At least somebody had their backs.

They arrived a few minutes behind the other detectives to find forensics photographing the area. The body, like the other truckers, was on the shoulder between the eastbound lane and the guardrail. It was already covered with a white sheet.

“It’s been weeks since the last one. I thought we were done,” Jay said, turning on his recording app.

Berg nodded. “Me, too.”
 

“The trucker victims have all been left outside woods for us to find. Curious,” Jay said as they walked to the scene.

“And the woods are all within the same twelve-mile stretch of the tollway.”

“And all just south of Shipper’s place. What smells like barbequed squirrel?” Jay asked as they approached the body, wrinkling his straight nose in disgust.

“Our victim.” Nick Halwood peeled back the sheet.

The four detectives drew a collective breath of horror.
 

Naked and on his back with eyes closed, the man in front of them was badly burnt, parts of his skin charred and blackened between patches of pink skin, yellow fat and raw, red muscle. He was naked, his hair burnt away, leaving his shiny, oozing scalp exposed.
 

Berg wondered inanely why cooking meat could smell so good while charred human flesh, essentially the same thing, smelled so bad. She resisted the urge to vomit, pushing her lunch back down where it belonged.

“Some of these burns are full thickness, which is why you can see the subcutaneous fat and exposed muscle in some places,” Halwood said.

“Please tell me he was dead or unconscious when this happened,” Berg murmured.

“I doubt it,” Jay replied. “Won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but the trauma to the skin indicates he was, at the very least, still alive when this happened. As you can see, the skin left was weeping prior to death.” He gestured to the pink patches of the body that were crusted with clear fluid.

“Very good, detective,” Halwood said.

The four detectives stared at the body without a sound.

“A fire?” Jay eventually asked Halwood. “His body hair is singed, so it can’t be steam or boiling water. But I don’t see any soot in his nostrils or the usual muscular contortions due to fire.”
 

Halwood sighed sadly. “No fire. A blowtorch, possibly.”
 

The fact that Halwood, the usually stoic forensics head, was affected by this particular death sent a shiver down Berg’s back. “Jesus,” she breathed.

“Held directly onto the skin, it’s very effective. The skin would blister and burn in a matter of seconds. You see here how the pattern is random?” Halstead pointed at the corpse, showing the full thickness burns next to stretches of untouched skin. The detectives nodded. “No fire would have burned him this unevenly, not even with accelerant.”

“We’ve gotta find Shipper,” Cheney said, a note of desperation in his voice as he turned away from the body and walked a few paces away. “He’s just going to keep on going.”

“I’m no profiler, but once again there’s a lot of rage here,” Berg said.

The assembled detectives nodded.
 

Berg was glad they agreed. “Anyone who can deliberately do this to another human being, and listen to them scream while doing it, is completely psychopathic and devoid of any compassion whatsoever. He won’t stop.”
 

Halwood covered the body back over.

“You guys find his truck?” Berg asked the responding patrol officer still in attendance.

“Yes. About a mile down,” he said, pointing south.
 

“Wallet gives an ID of Andrew McEnery, but we’ll have to use DNA or dental records for identification. His fingerprints are gone and facial features badly burnt in some places,” Halwood said.

“Okay, thanks,” Jay said as the detectives walked toward their respective vehicles. “You gonna check out the truck?” he asked Cheney.

“Yeah, we better do it. Consiglio will expect a full report.” Cheney climbed into the passenger seat of the marked police car.

Later that evening, Dwight had completed his preliminary autopsy findings on McEnery, which he delivered to Berg, Jay, Cheney, and Rodriguez.

“Nothing out of the ordinary to report. Sorry, detectives,” Dr. Dwight said in his usual brusque way. “No DNA in the system, but dental records confirm this is Andrew McEnery, fifty-one, not married, no kids, habitual heroin user.”

Berg nodded her agreement. “He’s been in federal prison a few times for dealing.”

“Eventual cause of death was shock, as you can imagine, and I estimate time of death around midnight last night. He fractured his own wrists, he was trying so violently to escape his restraints.”

“So he was tied up like the others?” Jay asked.

“Yes, but once again, the method was different. He was tied up fully standing, arms stretched over his head and feet anchored to the ground in some way. The killer could reach more of him that way. He was naked. The wrist fracture was a stress fracture from trying to yank his arms down.”

“Anything to say he was killed by more than one person?” Jay asked.

“Too hard to tell with burns. It was a blow torch, though, as Halwood suspected.”

“Stun gun burns?” Jay asked.

“No. Sorry, detective. Apart from being a trucker and the torture, we’ve got nothing linking him to the other murders. Different cause of death, too.”

“Fuck,” Jay muttered. “Consiglio’s going to insist this one’s not linked either, I know it.”