The Enemy Inside (42 page)

Berg showed up at the police lockup facility at the crack of dawn the next morning, waiting impatiently until a bleary-eyed sergeant opened it for the day and let her in.

He yawned. “You’re keen.”

Berg didn’t answer, instead flashing her ID and signing in.
 

Bored, the sergeant turned on his computer monitor as Berg watched him. “What’re you after?” he asked, poised to type.

“Local rape cases from 1979, and missing persons’ reports for the same year.”

The attendant sighed and noted down the archive numbers before walking her through the large, mesh doors that led to the archive room.

Room was a misnomer. The archives were housed in a huge aluminum-lined warehouse. Brown boxes showing varying levels of decay were stacked twelve feet high on industrial metal racks as far as the eye could see in almost every direction. Every serious crime in living memory in the local area was represented in some way.

The attendant led her two aisles to the left. They walked what felt like a quarter of a mile before he stopped.
 

“Anything we have of that age would be in here,” the sergeant said, indicating several battered boxes on a few metal shelves.
 

“Thanks,” Berg said as he walked away. She dragged a few of the boxes down off the shelves, arranging them on the floor and then sitting down on the hard concrete next to them. She opened the first box, pulling out the old folder with the case detail in it. Next to it was old, dusty smelling evidence bundled in brown paper. Flicking through the file, she immediately saw it was not relevant. Putting the folder back, she pushed the box away and started on the next one.

Half an hour later, her ass numb from the hard, cold floor, she hit pay dirt, finding the rape case Helen must have been talking about.
 

“Kathleen Kimpton,” she read to herself. “Age, twenty-one. Walked into County Hospital, September 23, 1979. Suspected rape, beaten, stabbed, burnt. No known family, no charges laid. No rape kit.”
 

Berg searched through the file, looking for a photo of the victim, eventually finding a blurry, aged photocopy of a young brunette with livid facial bruises and swelling, injuries that had rendered her unidentifiable. Laying the file aside, she searched through the case box, finding old labeled evidence: a skirt, blouse, and bra. The brown paper evidence bag disintegrated in her hands, revealing the fabric it contained.
 

Goose bumps rose on her arms as she fingered the yellowed fabric, the fragile material still stiff with many old, brown blood stains and encrusted with mud. The sight made her feel sick. She knew the fear this poor woman would have gone through. The pain. The humiliation. The shame.
 

Opening the small blouse out, she saw it had been torn, the buttons ripped off and the seams shredded as if by a wild animal. Wild animals, more like it. Young, stupid, drunken boys who thought justice would never find them.

Berg fingered the burn holes in the fabric thoughtfully, then gingerly placed the blouse back down in the box. She was unwilling to stir the horrendous memories out of the fabric by handling it, and carried on searching through the last two boxes.
 

She discounted the next box. Opening up the final, battered box she pulled out a file and realized with relief it was the ancient missing person’s report she had been looking for. Flicking though the old paper, she read the details of the report.
 

“Janet Jacobi, eighteen. Reported missing by her employer, September, 1979. No sign of her ever located, no charges laid.”
 

She searched through the file—no photo, she realized with disappointment. Picking up the rape file, she compared details of the two women.
 

“Both brunettes, both blue-eyed, Janet estimated at five foot three, Kathleen five foot two, same approximate weight range.”
 

She was as certain as she could be, without a photo of Janet, that they were the same woman. The height and weight were close enough, the three-year age gap could be explained if Kathleen lied about her age to make herself older so she could discharge herself.
But why would she lie? Why not say who she was and that she was raped and put the offenders away?
 

Berg searched through the box. Unlike the rape box, this one contained little in the way of evidence. Just a small diary and a few meager items from Janet’s rented room the investigators thought might yield some clues to her whereabouts.
 

She lifted them out and looked through them on the cold concrete floor. Gathering the pitiful items together again, she began to place them back in the box, but noticed the small, brownish corner of an old photograph poking out from between the bottom cardboard flaps. Realizing it must have fallen out of the file, she slid it out from its hiding place.

Dropping Janet’s things on the ground with a clatter, she stared at the black and white picture, open-mouthed.
 

She was sure she was staring at a photograph of a young Captain Louise Leigh.

Chapter Forty-Four

Berg laughed aloud in shock before hurriedly covering her mouth with her hand. Still staring at the photo of a young, carefree captain, she scarcely believed her own eyes.

And yet it all fit so perfectly, she realized.
 

She fumbled around in her purse for the photocopy of the sketch of the hospital volunteer. Smoothing it out, she compared all three photographs, but the sketch didn’t match, thanks to the volunteer’s heavy bangs and glasses.
 

The hospital pictures showed a mud-smeared, badly beaten woman with a broken nose and two fractured eye sockets, so it was impossible to compare. Add that to thirty years of aging and dyed blond hair.

But the inside job on the database, how she got to Dell, Stella’s source, the murders of the men who raped her all those years ago. Even Berg’s own setup. The only things that didn’t fit were Winchester and Melissa.
 

“Fuck me . . .” Berg breathed to herself. “Janet Jacobi, Kathleen Kimpton, and Louise Leigh . . . J, K, L . . .” Plus the strange hospital volunteer, Irene Ivanovitch.
 

She remembered a profiler once mentioning that those who used many aliases often stuck to patterns or similar themes when selecting names.
 

“It’s too fucking perfect,” she muttered to herself. “Wait ’til Jay hears this.”

Springing up off the floor, she picked up the two files and the bloody blouse, cramming them into her purse. She quickly placed the boxes back on the shelves and rushed to the front of the warehouse and the exit.

Berg arrived at the station before seven that morning and sat heavily in her chair, unsure of her next move. She picked up her phone and tried Jay again. Nothing.
 

“Switch on your damn cell!” she yelled at his voice mail message.

Okay. Let’s just calm down. It could all be a huge misunderstanding. After all, the captain has been here, in plain sight, when some of the bodies have been dumped.
But that confirms our multiple killers theory. Someone else could have easily disposed of the bodies.
 

“Yeah, but who?” Realizing she’d been muttering to herself, she stopped abruptly before anyone saw and thought her even more insane than they already did. She looked over at the captain’s office; it was cold and dark. She looked around before deciding to check it out.

Chapter Forty-Five

Berg was sitting in the usual booth at the diner waiting for her fellow officers. Before she had run out of the office, she had made a few hurried phone calls. She then visited the morgue, asking Dwight to run the captain’s DNA against any unknown DNA from the box of panties found in Taylor’s trailer, as well as against the old blood stains on the rape victim’s shirt. The results would take a while, but she was already sure of the outcome.
 

One by one, Detectives Abrams, Connolly, Cheney, Rodriguez, and Smith walked in, settling in to the big booth with selected snacks and beverages bought from the counter.

“What’s up?” Abrams asked when they were all seated.
 

“Thanks for coming, guys,” Berg said. “First and most importantly, have any of you heard from Jay, in person?”
 

Her heart surged in hope and then disappointment as they all indicated the negative. Berg stood and passed around copies of the old rape and missing person’s report to each, launching into everything she knew so far, including the DNA requests. “It’s now pretty obvious who is carrying out these murders. We had the right motive all along—revenge—just the wrong suspect.”

“We did?” Cheney asked. “ ’Cause this chick’s dead and the old trucker confessed—”

“Shut up and listen, okay?” Berg was resolute about getting her say in before she was cut down. “Look through those two files. I believe they pertain to the same person, the woman missing and presumed dead thirty years ago. Only she’s not dead. Look at the pictures and tell me if she reminds you of anyone.” She added the sketch of Irene to the table, too.

The men studied the files, flicking back and forth between them in between sips of coffee and bites of bagels.

“Well . . . yeah, she kinda looks like . . .” Arena said.

Berg smiled as she watched their initial recognition, then confusion. “Add thirty years to her face, a surgically altered nose, and then imagine her with blond hair.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Arena whispered as the others, clearly shocked, became silent.

“And I just found trucking timetables, an anatomy book, and shooting commendations in Leigh’s desk,” she said.

The detectives flipped through the rape report, faces falling as they read the particulars.
 

“The details aren’t pretty, but the links are there. Over a twelve-hour period thirty years ago, Captain Leigh was repeatedly raped and sodomized. When they were done with her, she was beaten, burnt with cigarettes, spat on, urinated on, stabbed, and left for dead by her attackers—attackers I believe were our four trucker victims. Her injuries were so bad she had to have a hysterectomy,” Berg said.
 

They all shook their heads in disgust as Berg plowed on.
 

“This story of the rape, minus her name, was confirmed by Colt, who also acted as an alibi for these animals when she went missing. He said they thought they killed her, burying her body in the woods. But she survived, somehow getting to the hospital despite being horribly injured. There she assumed a different name and age, recovered from her physical wounds, then disappeared. Thirty years later, these same four motherfuckers turn up stabbed, beaten, raped, and burnt to death.”
 

Her audience nodded soberly, finally understanding.
 

“Anyone seen the captain lately?”
 

They again indicated the negative.
 

“And no one has heard from Jay, in person?”

Cheney frowned. “You think he’s in trouble?”

“Yes, I fucking think he’s in trouble, you asshole!” she yelled. “Unfortunately, Colt, whose truck Jay is driving, was instrumental in her missing person’s case going cold. He was the only one linked with the crime left to deal with. I think she paid him a visit, found him dead, and planted the evidence,” Berg said. “Revenge and fall guy in one neat package.”

Rodriguez sighed. “Fuck. How long has Jay been out of contact? Days?”
 

Everyone nodded bleakly, Cheney looking particularly contrite.

“GPS?” he asked Berg.

“His cell’s off.”

Cheney cleared his throat. “So she’s getting help. She was in the office for some of the killings.”

“Yes, but I still don’t know who,” Berg said. “I think she’s the hospital volunteer, and I’m sure she killed Dell, too. She’s exacting her revenge on rapists, thirty years later.”

“To the day actually,” Cheney said, flipping open the old report. “September 23 is when she was attacked, exactly thirty years to the day when Danny Taylor was killed,” he said. “Gotta hand it to her, the woman is patient.”

“And you’re thinking she killed that journalist because she was asking too many questions?” Cheney asked.