The Enemy Inside (5 page)

Jay winked at Berg.
 

“Interestingly, the UV light also showed some bruising that hadn’t developed yet, so the beating continued right up until time of death. There are no defensive wounds on the hands or arms, and this is why.” Dwight pointed at six sets of twin burn marks on the victim’s chest and neck.
 

Berg and Jay leaned in for a closer look.
 

“Standard stun gun burns. I’d say he was subdued with up to one million volts to the throat, moved to a secure location, tied up, and tortured when he woke up, before being zapped again. I found traces of ammonium carbonate, or smelling salts, in his nostrils. I’m thinking when the perp wanted to torture this guy, the perp woke him up so he didn’t miss the show, and when he was done, put him back out.”
 

Jay and Berg raised their eyebrows at each other. Premature death was never pleasant, and they’d seen many horrific crimes over the years, but this method of torture was innovative, even to them.
 

Dwight thumbed through a few more pages. “Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to inflict maximum pain on this guy. It was very personal, and not one action was wasted. None of these wounds was inflicted post mortem, including the penis removal. From that wound, I would say it was removed with a simple serrated kitchen knife just before death. The knife wasn’t that sharp.”
 

“Jesus,” Berg whispered. “We suspect he wasn’t a nice guy, but no one deserves all that.”
 

“Fuck no.” Jay looked ill. “So what was the eventual cause of death?”

“Eventually, through his smaller and larger wounds, the guy died from exsanguination, or loss of blood,” Dwight said. “And I haven’t even told you the grisliest part yet. His last meal was himself.”
 

Jay looked confused. “Huh?”

“Oh, fucking gross.” Berg covered her mouth.

“He was made to eat his penis. It was in his stomach.” Dwight looked grim.

A look of horror crossed Jay’s face. “Jesus Christ!”
 

“I don’t think
He
had anything to do with it.” Dwight didn’t look up from his report. “I’d be looking further south if I were you.”

“Was this a sex crime, do you think?” Berg asked. “After all, he was essentially made to suck his own dick. Any semen on the body?”

“No semen or evidence of sodomy. But that’s an interesting idea, Detective Raymond. You could be right . . .”
 

Jay said nothing, his face pale.

“DNA?” Berg asked, impatient for something she could work with.

“You were right in assuming the hair was Miss Shipper’s; it was.” Dwight turned to face Jay. “You were also on the money about the hooker who was killed. The DNA deposits left under her fingernails and in her body cavities belonged to this guy. In fact, his DNA turned up on a number of unsolved rapes and assaults. I’ve made you a file.”

Jay took the thick folder. “Anything else?”

“No. No other DNA or trace was found on him at all, even though it was a messy murder. That’s it.” Dwight closed his report with a snap.

“Fantastic work, Dwight,” Jay said on their way out as he loosened his tie and took a few deep breaths. “Thanks for being so quick.”
 

Chapter Six

Jay flicked through the rape file Dwight compiled as he and Berg rode the elevator back up to the station room. “So the killing was very personal, possibly sexual, and designed to inflict maximum pain. The question is why? Did Mr. Trucker piss off the wrong person and hand us a gift in the process? Was it some random psycho murder, or something else?”
 

The elevator dinged and let them out on the second floor.
 

“I’ll start looking into friends and family. Do you wanna take his fellow truckers?” Berg asked, sitting back down at her desk and refusing to look at him. “You may want to speak to Hamilton. In the past, he had some success in breaking their ranks.”

“Yeah, good idea.” Jay grabbed his keys.

A few hours later, a dejected-looking Jay walked back into the room before slumping into his chair with a thud. “Hey,” he said to Berg. “Had any luck?”

Berg shrugged, studying her computer screen. “Nope. I can’t find any family or friends. I can’t even find an address. I’m beginning to think this guy was hatched in a field. You?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t get a straight answer from the truckers or transport companies. I did find out Taylor was not with any particular dispatch company and did contract work around Illinois and Wisconsin. He was paid cash, so no paper trail. Convenient. But I got the distinct impression he was not a super-popular guy, but no one said that in so many words.”

“That’s interesting, because I got the same impression from the warden up at Cook County. Taylor did a couple of short stints for assault and drug dealing over the last ten years, so I was looking into interviewing potential cellmates. But it turns out he spent most of the time in solitary for his own protection. Even hardcore criminals hated him.”

“So our suspect list includes everyone who ever met him? Awesome—”

A uniformed sergeant strode up to Jay, a deep scowl on his face. He slammed down a pile of messages on Jay’s desk. “O’Loughlin!” the sergeant shouted. “Do you think you could tell your various conquests to stop calling the fucking front desk? We are not your fucking answering service. Don’t they have your cell number?”

Jay laughed, picked up the pile and sifted through them. “Fuck no. Why would I want to give them that?”

“So, they can reach you without jamming up my phones with personal calls?”

“I think that’s the point, Sergeant,” Berg said, raising an eyebrow.

The sergeant scowled and stalked out, muttering under his breath.

Jay threw the messages into his wastepaper basket. “So, Cook County?”

Berg rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah. Warden Brown’s going to throw some feelers out to his general population, see if anyone remembers anything and is willing to talk. Can’t help but feel we are missing something, though—”
 

The sound of a muffled ring tone rang on Jay’s desk.

Jay looked away and began patting down the mounds of paper on his desk until he found his cell. He looked at the caller ID and shook his head before answering. “Yeah?” he asked. “No comment.” He glanced at Berg for support and put the call on speaker.
 

“I know you can’t officially make a statement,” a woman said in a pleading tone.
 

Berg recognized the voice as belonging to up-and-coming television reporter Stella Kyrkos from the local news. Stella was a young anchor with more than her fair share of intelligence and the tenacity of a bulldog. Since being fed information by Berg two years ago, she had made finding Melissa Shipper her personal business and, having spent a lot of time on the case, knew Jay and Berg professionally.
 

Over the months, they developed an uneasy but mutually beneficial camaraderie, as Berg and Jay released just enough information to keep Melissa’s case in the media spotlight, and Stella got her career-boosting exclusives.
 

Stella knew, as Jay and Berg did, that if an unsolved case remained in the media spotlight, the chief’s office was unwilling to close it. But it was a fine line; too many open, unsolved cases looked bad for everyone.
 

“Hello? Detective O’Loughlin?” Stella asked. “You there?”

Berg and Jay were both thinking the same thing. Consiglio had clamped down on unauthorized media leaks in favor of his “good news only” policy, and he would skin them alive if they made a comment to the media. He had still not forgiven them for an accidental press conference trumping a couple of years back.
 

“Look, I just need to know if it’s the general opinion of the station that Melissa’s and the other victims’ disappearances are now solved with the death of that trucker,” Stella said.

“What?” Berg leaned over her desk to Jay’s, took the cell from Jay, and turned down the volume.

“Detective Raymond? Chief ‘Chicago’s in safe hands’ Consiglio just held a press conference announcing it,” Stella said.

“No comment,” Jay said again through gritted teeth.

Stella was undeterred. “Look, off the record, okay? Just for my own personal information? I’ve helped you both out over the years—”

“You know we can’t comment, on or off the record,” Berg replied.

“Come on guys!”

“Hanging up now, Stella. Sorry.” Jay ended the call. Moments later, his desk phone rang. Sighing, Jay took it off the hook. “Pity we can’t comment anymore. I’ve got a few choice comments I’d like to make.”
 

“Hmm.” Berg went back to her work.

“You going to talk to me at some stage, Berg? It’s going to be pretty hard to continue to be crime-fighting partners and all with me trying to decipher your monosyllables or imperceptible head movements. I’m a good detective, but frankly, the girl stuff is beyond me.”

“I’m fine.”
 

Jay raised an eyebrow and snorted. “ ‘I’m
fine
,’ ” he mimicked. “The universal girl saying for ‘I’m totally not fine.’ Whatever, Berg. Anyway, the PR hound strikes again. He’ll say anything just to get some good publicity. I can’t believe he held a press conference already. And on what planet does DNA evidence linking the suspect to one missing woman and the rape of a hooker constitute case closed for four other women?”

Berg took a sip of her coffee.

“Okay, so the guy raped and beat the hooker, but one hair on him does not make for adequate forensics to say he killed Melissa Shipper. And who can say she and the other four missing woman are even dead? Maybe they don’t want to be found. Maybe a guy who knows what happened to Melissa killed this guy. Maybe he knew about it and was going to report the crime in a belated act of conscience. There are just too many unanswered questions!” Jay knocked down a pile of papers.

“Agreed,” Berg said. “And maybe if you’d said any of that to the captain this morning instead of standing there like a ball-less mute, she might have been able to get Consiglio to hold off!”
 

Jay went red in the face and took a deep breath as he picked up the papers and plopped them back on his desk. “Jesus Christ, Berg, gimme a break. I could’ve said all that and more to Leigh, but it wouldn’t have made one tiny bit of difference and you fucking know it. Consiglio runs the precinct, not Leigh!”
 

He turned around to ensure Leigh couldn’t hear him, and was relieved when he saw her engrossed in a phone call. “Okay, so I should have stuck by you this morning and backed you up. I’m sorry,” Jay muttered. “But if doing the job I love means lying down and taking it from my superiors sometimes, well, I’m going to spread my legs and go to my happy place!”
 

Berg looked away.
 

“Fuck you, Berg. Do you think maybe you could just get over it? You’ve been acting like a whiny two-year-old kid all day. You can’t shut me out every time I do something wrong. I’m a person and people fuck up. It won’t be the last time. We are supposed to be partners, but how can we be when you won’t let me in? If you keep on pushing people away like you do, not only will no one want to work with you, me included, but you’ll be an even lonelier, more bitter woman, if that’s even fucking possible!”
 

Berg stared at him, shocked.

Jay pounded his desk before standing. “I’ve got news for you. I may not be perfect, but neither are you. No one can live up to the standards you set.”
 

Turning his back, he stalked out of the room, leaving Berg sitting in her seat looking after him.

PART TWO

“Explanation?” the cold voice said to the figure cringing on the ground like a beaten dog.

The response was a terrified, indiscernible whimper.

“What did we discuss?”

The answer was muffled, afraid. “Nothing left behind . . .”

“After all I’ve done for you. After all my lessons. Should I be happy with your efforts?”
 

Shaking in primal fear, the head slowly moved from side to side. Urine trickled down one leg, making a small pool on the floor.