The Enemy Inside (43 page)

Berg shrugged. “Or she was the leak that effectively killed Consiglio’s career and she couldn’t afford anyone finding out.”

“So really, the only things that don’t make sense are the DNA anomalies, Melissa’s killing, and Winchester’s death?”

“Yeah, I have no idea why she did that. Maybe she was planting hitchhiker DNA on the crimes to throw us off or to send some kind of a message?” Berg asked, before stopping and looking seriously at the men assembled in front of her. “We need to find Jay, guys. I have a really bad fucking feeling . . .”
 

By the looks on the guys’ faces, she wasn’t the only one.
 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Berg muttered as she was interrupted by the shrill of Cheney’s cell.
 

Cheney opened it, listened for a moment, and hung up. “Dispatch,” he said. “They’ve got the bodies of three women out in the woods.”

They all stood, finishing the dregs of their coffees and swiping the crumbs off their coats in preparation for heading outside into the freezing air.
 

It was only days until Christmas, and the detectives’ somber mood stood out in the general cheer of the diner.

“I’m going to put out an APB,” Cheney said, his face tense.

“I’m going to go and drive Jay’s route,” Smith said as they split up outside.

Berg’s heart fell further. Smith, who was known for his even temper and imperviousness to stress, was visibly concerned. “Good idea,” she said quietly, trying to control the fear in her voice, when all she wanted to do was scream. “You two, find the captain,” she said to Abrams and Connolly.

Four detectives stared down at the young bodies lying in dirt and leaves in the Poplar Creek Preserve.
 

Called in by an early-morning hiker, the scene was crawling with forensics and patrol, but the air was eerily quiet, as if even the breeze and the wildlife were mourning the combined loss of such young lives.

Lying on the side of a dirt road were three women, two white and one African-American. Each victim looked no older than twenty and all were fully clothed.
 

They had all been shot, execution style, in the back of their heads and placed in a shallow, uncovered ditch only a few feet off the road into the woods.

Halwood withdrew the liver temperature thermometer from the small blonde woman nearest him and studied the read-out. “According to this, they have been dead just a couple of hours. This was recent, hurried. As you can see, no effort has been made to dig a grave,” he said. “No ID, so I’ll have to run prints, dental, and DNA to find out who they are.”

“I know who they are,” Berg replied. “I’ve been looking at their faces for the last two years.”

The detectives and Halwood all turned to look at her curiously as she self-consciously wiped the freezing tears from her face.
 

I’ve failed them.
“They’re Amelia Smith, Anita Fuller, and Cyan Trevillian. Three of my missing hitchhikers,” she whispered. “Killed and dumped in precisely the same way as another hitchhiker, Melissa.”

Halwood nodded. “One close contact shot to the head each with around a nine millimeter.”

Suddenly everything became clear, and Berg put the final piece of the puzzle into place. “The bitch is cleaning house,” Berg muttered, lost in horror at her realization and disbelief that she hadn’t seen it before.

“Huh?” Cheney asked, his breath visible in the cold air.

“These women and Melissa.” Berg pointed to the bodies in front of her. “They are the accomplices we couldn’t find.”
 

They looked dubious, particularly Halwood, who had not yet been made privy to the captain’s dark past and had no idea who
she
was.
 

“This explains everything!” Berg shouted. “Think about it. The hitchhiker DNA found on Taylor and Winchester is because they were involved in the murders. The missing body of Amelia Smith and the wrong DNA on the system was to throw us off the trail so we would close her case.” Berg stopped for a moment, stunned. “Bitch! She must have got a hair off my hairbrush in my desk drawer to set me up!” She screamed in frustration before continuing. “The volunteer’s visit to Karen in the hospital, she was trying to recruit her, but couldn’t because of her broken leg. The young woman on the phone inquiring after Dell’s name. It even explains how they are doing it.”

“How?” Cheney said, frowning.

“No big, bad trucker is going to hesitate to pick up a young woman from the side of the road, is he? He’s not going to think twice about it.”

“But how do they subdue a guy twice their size?” he asked.

“Stun guns,” Halwood said. “The victims all had stun gun marks on them, and it’s pretty safe to assume McEnery did too before they were burnt off. The only one who didn’t was Dell.”

“Because he saw a pretty young woman at the door and just let her in,” Berg replied. “The women subdue the driver straight away, before he pulls out from the curb, and once that’s done, the others are waiting nearby with a vehicle. They take the trucker back to wherever they do this, and one of them removes the truck from the scene, hides it, and returns it later.”

“Okay,” Rodriguez said. “Say I’m buying this, but it doesn’t explain how sweet, young women become homicidal maniacs. Why would rape victims just leave the hospital with a virtual stranger and never contact anyone again? Why would they go with her?”

Berg stopped pacing and faced the men in front of her, wrestling with the answer.
Because being raped breaks you
. “Because they needed her,” she replied, her voice low with shame. Her secret was not something she wanted to share with the general population of the station. “They were desperate for someone, anyone, to make it all go away. Until you’ve had your power, your life, completely taken away from you, you don’t know what you would do. It leaves you in the most vulnerable place you’ve ever been. You second-guess yourself, your actions, your thoughts. You start to think it’s your fault, that you did something wrong, that you asked for it.”
 

The men stayed very still and quiet, just listening.
 

“You are so deep in shame you are perfect prey for someone to take advantage of you, particularly a sympathetic, manipulative person in a position of power,” Berg said. “Why do you think so many victims fall in love with their attackers or kidnappers? Patty Hearst is not an isolated case. Why do you think abused women hardly ever leave their abusers?”
 

They shrugged.
 

“Because they think no one else will love them. These women were vulnerable and looking for help and understanding, but they ended up being nothing but pawns in Leigh’s sick game, and now she doesn’t need them anymore. She’s carried out her revenge. She’s done. If we don’t catch her soon, she’s gone. She’s got at least four aliases that we know about. We’ll never find her if she gets away again. She’s had thirty years to plan her escape.”

Berg looked at the women once more with regret before turning and heading back to the car. She couldn’t save them. Two years of work and the woman in the next office outsmarted her.
What kind of detective was she? What justice did she get for them?
 

Suddenly she remembered the conversation she had with Leigh weeks ago, where the woman admitted failure in the justice system and wished for a better way.

It looked like she found it.

PART FIVE

Rosario Gonzalez sat in the bottom of the old-fashioned armoire in the second bedroom of the small house, pressing her hands hard over her ears. She was the last one left, the final soldier, and she knew it. The Leader had taken the remaining girls out into the woods.

She knew what that meant. She didn’t need to check to know they never came back.
 

The armoire smelled musty, like mold and mildew. But it was dark and safe and had become a quiet refuge for her over the never-ending months.

Rosario reassured herself that the other ones had been careless. The blonde girl left something behind, same as the curly-headed girl before her, who had also gone into the woods and never came back.

And the others . . . well, needless to say the Leader was very upset when they brought back
la
policía
to the house.

She drew her legs tighter to her chest, screwed up her eyes, and pressed her hands harder over her ears in an effort to drown out the guttural screams coming from below her.
 

It wasn’t working. She still imagined she could hear his every shuddering breath.

For the last nine months, Rosario had been living in the old house, essentially alone. The other women had been there, sure, but they were not allowed to speak without being spoken to directly by the Leader—they didn’t even know each other’s names.
 

A few times Rosario thought she was starting to forget her own name, too—it had been such a long time since she last heard it spoken. Once, she traced it in the dirt outside the house with her finger, just to see if she remembered it. She’d been punished severely for that.
 

There had been many punishments, especially in the beginning. If the Leader heard them talking or if they tried to run away, there was no food for days or no water for all of them. Other times they would be locked, alone, in e
l quarto de los muertos
for a few days, so they could smell the old blood and excrement of the ones who had died there.
 

One time, she had been made to sit and watch the large hairy one die. Eventually, driven mad by hunger, thirst, and the terrible things they’d seen, they had stopped doing bad things, even when the Leader wasn’t there.
 

The punishments stopped, and occasionally the Leader had even been kind, bringing them fresh food or a blanket to share as the nights got colder.

They weren’t badly treated. After all, they were fed, clothed, and allowed out sometimes, even if it was to pick up selected targets for the room. And, she remembered, she had been given the chance to cleanse herself of her disgrace.

Rosario removed a hand from an ear and fingered the crucifix still hanging around her neck. The Leader had explained to Rosario, back then in the hospital as she fingered the very same necklace, that her father wouldn’t want her now as she was no longer pure.
 

The Leader had instead taken her in and given her a place to repent her sin. When she went home, her family would never know what the horrible man had done.

Rosario hoped that would be soon as she again tried to muffle the screams coming from the nice-looking man in the room below.

Abruptly, the screaming stopped and Rosario heard the heavy metal door open, then close, the lock click. Heavy footsteps walked up the stairs toward her.
 

She whimpered.

Chapter Forty-Six

Berg sat in her warm, dry car, trying to figure out what to do next. It was late afternoon, and she had spent all day looking for leads into Leigh and Jay’s whereabouts, fervently hoping the latter was far, far away from the former, but knowing in her heart it wasn’t the case.
 

She sat in the near dark, listening to the rain thunder onto her car’s roof. It was loud enough to drown out the engine, which she left on to keep the heat going. But the white noise was soothing and helped to quell the increasingly angry noise in her head.
 

Smith had found Colt’s rig out on the tollway at a remote truck stop, but no sign of Jay. They’d also found no sign of the captain.
 

Not thirty minutes earlier, Dwight had found a preliminary match between Leigh and the DNA on a pair of panties and the bloody blouse, as she had known he would.

Berg’s mind spun. All she could think about was Jay.
Is he all right? Am I too late? Will I ever see his face again?

She knew the captain wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in her way—she’d shown no mercy so far.
 

Berg stepped on the gas and hurtled back to the station.