The Enemy Inside (40 page)

Colt stared, shaken, at the spot she had just left, and listened to her screech away, tires spinning. Slowly, he rose from the couch and walked into his stark bedroom, taking it in one last time.
 

There were no niceties in the room, no rug on the floor or pictures on the walls. He had been living in a purgatory of his own design for more than half his life.
 

Guilt had eaten away his insides. The doctor called it cancer, but Colt knew what it really was. Picking up his kit bag from the worn, bare floorboards, he placed it on the threadbare single bed and unzipped the old leather.

Reaching into its depths, he pulled out four Polaroid photos he’d been sent, one of each of his murdered men. He stared at them, unblinking, for a moment before he again reached into the bag and pulled out his beloved Colt. He rubbed the cold metal absentmindedly, running his fingers over its familiar contours as he thought about that young woman all those years ago.
 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the cold, bare room, his eyes glistening.

Taking the gun, he shuffled back out to the living room, scratched a quick note, shut off all the lights, and sat back down on his stained floral couch.
 

Unflinching, he lifted the gun to his head and sank into the night.

Chapter Forty-One

“Hey,” Cheney said, walking up to Berg’s desk and interrupting her furious typing. “I got a message from Jay this morning.”

“Oh?” Berg asked. To outsiders, she knew she sounded cool, while inside she collapsed with relief.

“Yeah, he said he’s going to keep looking for Shipper out of cell range and in a few days he’d check in. You seemed concerned, so I thought I’d let you know.”

“Thanks.” Berg was keeping up the front of being nonchalant for as long as she could. “How did he sound?”
Fuck. That just sounded desperate.

“I didn’t speak to him, just got a text message,” Cheney replied, a tiny smile playing on the sides of his mouth.

Berg felt a sting of disappointment.
He could send a message to Cheney but not to his partner?
 

Her mother started cackling.
You actually thought he gave a fuck about you? You are only good for one thing, and he didn’t even want that
.
 

Noticing Cheney studying her face, she quickly composed herself. “Hey, I got a new lead last night. Get the guys.”

In no time, Cheney, Rodriguez, Abrams, Connolly, Smith, and Arena all pulled up chairs and sat around Berg’s desk. In a few short minutes, she explained the previous night’s conversation with Colt.
 

“So the gang rape and killing of the victim is the extra link between the four truckers,” she said. “Taylor was left outside the woods where the woman was murdered. But Colt seemed to think she had no family or friends, which is why the investigation into her disappearance stalled. I don’t know how Shipper knew her, or how it fits in with Dell, Winchester, his niece, Hamilton, the other hitchhikers, or anything else. Any ideas?”
 

The detectives indicated the negative.
 

“I searched the online files and came up with some possible missing persons’ reports around that time for young women around the right age, but I’m going to have to go to archives and search through old paperwork to find out the details.”

“That’s some great work, Berg,” Arena said as the other guys agreed. Even Smith looked impressed, despite his grief.

Connolly nodded. “I’ll keep going on Uncle Ted. Maybe he found out about the old rape when he did Taylor. God knows the torture would have had him singing like a canary. Or maybe he was seeing the young woman at the time of her disappearance? I’m sure it won’t be long now until we catch up with him; we have twenty patrol bodies searching the woods by grid.”

“Great,” Berg said, distracted, as she settled back into her thoughts. She barely noticed as they melted away from her desk. Her mind was already racing back to Jay.
Why would he not call me back?
 

Sinking, Berg felt the blackness draw nearer.

Mired in work at her desk, Berg’s phone rang. Distracted, she picked it up, still concentrating on her case files.

“We got him!” Abrams said, before Berg even had a chance to utter a greeting. “Bringing him in. Be there in five.”

It was six and a half minutes later, Berg noticed, by the time she heard the defiant screams of an enraged suspect being dragged down to holding echoing up the building’s stairwell.
 

Jumping down the stairs two at a time, she arrived, breathless, just as Ted Shipper was being placed in a cell by a frustrated and soaking wet Abrams and Connolly.
 

It must have been raining, Berg realized, as she watched them wipe the moisture from their faces with sleeves and sodden jackets.

“Philistines!” Ted shrieked through the bars. His face was beet red and spittle came flying out of his mouth, punctuating each word. “I have a right to earn a living! I fought for that right! How many of you can say the same? Free enterprise is my right! My right!”

“Shut up!” Connolly roared, slamming the cell door shut with a clang. “Jesus Christ, give it a fucking rest.”

“He was like this the entire way back from the Spring Creek Valley Forest Preserve,” Abrams commented to Berg. “I think I’m deaf now.”

“What’s his problem? Surely he’s not so insane he thinks he can murder people and not go to jail?” Berg asked.

“Actually,” Abrams said, “it might not be him.”

“What?”

“We found Ted deep in the woods, miles away from any discernible trails or hiking routes. Turns out he went to ground because he and Hamilton had a marijuana crop hidden in the woods that makes any Columbian drug lord look like a school yard dealer. Rainwater irrigation, frost and snow protection, camouflage cloth to hide it from satellite imagery, the works. Guess Hamilton didn’t have much faith in the size of his pension, because Ted’s been growing enough to supply the entire tri-state area. Called it their
retirement plan
when we finally caught up to him.”

“Yeah,” Connolly said. “He even built a lovely little wood cabin out there so he could live in the woods and protect the crop. That’s where he’s been.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do the murders,” Berg replied. “Or that Melissa wasn’t with him before he killed her.”

“Sorry, no signs that Melissa was out there at all. He also kept detailed logs and dates of planting and irrigation. He even had a few vets working for him, several of whom have alibied him for the murder dates. Also, they never saw Melissa there,” Abrams replied.

“Fuck.”

“Indeed,” Connolly said. “It’s back to the drawing board. Where do we even start?”

“With that rape thirty years ago,” Berg said.

“Yeah, but Dell, Winchester, and Melissa?” Abrams asked.
 

“Don’t forget Stella,” Berg added.

“You think that’s connected, too?” Connolly asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Until I hear otherwise. She was fixated on Melissa and these killings. Maybe she found out something. Maybe that’s why she wanted to meet with me. She must have had some kind of well-placed source to get the info she was broadcasting, because it wasn’t coming from me or Jay.”

Abrams nodded. “You better call Jay in. He’s no good to us on the road now. We don’t even know who we’re looking for anymore.”

“I will,” Berg replied. “And I am going to get Colt and bring that lying bastard in, too.”

The rain beat down onto the windshield of Berg’s car, the wipers working overtime to clear the torrents of water as she drove through the cold night.
 

She had just hung up from leaving yet another message on Jay’s voice mail, a call she was sure he would not return. She was sinking, fast.
 

You’re not worth the trouble
.
You never were.
 

She weaved through Sleepy Hollow’s meandering, circular streets and past a number of outlying homes, some decorated with Christmas lights, others shrouded in darkness. She pulled up out front of the isolated, weathered shack and flicked off the car lights. The action plunged the street into darkness, and her sandy eyes ached as they struggled to adjust.
 

She climbed out of the car and sprinted to the front door, the freezing rain stinging the exposed skin on her hands and face.
 

“Colt?” she called, banging on the door. The house was dark and silent. She banged again.

Nothing.

She rolled her eyes in frustration. Stepping back, she kicked open the rusty hinged door with one powerful, practiced movement. She was in no mood for fucking around with stupid old men or warrants. It flung open and crashed into the wall behind with a loud bang. She stepped up into the living room, weapon cocked and ready in her outstretched arms in case Colt retaliated.

The familiar floral sofa was shrouded in darkness, but she caught sight of the prone body on the dusty floor. The world tilted crazily as adrenaline kicked in, and her heart pounded against her ribs. She spun around the room, pointing her weapon at shadows, feeling for a moment that she was not alone.

The gun in her right hand and aimed at the door, she reached down and felt for a pulse in Colt’s outstretched wrist with her left. Nothing. She noticed the gun was still loosely held in Colt’s withered right hand. There was a small spray of blood and gray matter on the wall to her left.

Clearly a suicide, she holstered her weapon and turned on the light, gazing down at the frail body. He was tiny in death, she saw, as if his soul had been the only thing giving his body any substance, and now he was deflated.
 

Lying in a pool of blood, the infamous trucker had no more miles left in him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw four squares of paper, photos, on the floor near Colt’s crumpled legs. She picked them up and flicked through them. They were pictures of the dead bodies of Danny Taylor, John Rogers, Darryl Williams, and Andrew McEnery.
 

Studying the shots, they all appeared to be lying on the same gray, concrete floor, but the pictures yielded no extra clues as to location. She stared at them for a moment before throwing them down on the old sofa, next to a folded piece of paper, a stun gun, a blowtorch, and a bloody hunting knife.
 

Opening the note written in a shaky hand, she read it.
 

They deserved to die, and so do I. May God forgive me.
 

-Colt.

“I guess you were right, Colt,” she whispered. “People do get what’s coming to them.”

She called in the suicide before switching off the light and leaving the room.
 

She didn’t look back.

Chapter Forty-Two

Jay slowly stirred into consciousness, his mouth dry and head pounding like he had sunk a bottle of cheap tequila and followed it up with some shag carpeting. He swallowed the vomit rising in his throat.

Peeling open his dry eyes, he shook his head, hoping it would stop spinning so he could see where he was. Unable to see much other than blurry gray, he tried to rub his eyes, only to find himself tied in a sitting position to a metal chair. Looking down, he also noticed his legs were secured to each of the chair legs.