The Enemy Inside (20 page)

“I can’t promise anything,” Jay said.
 

Jay and Berg smirked at each other.
 

Halwood watched as they shared the private joke before clearing his throat loudly to get their attention. “So, if you two are done, I’ll examine and collect trace, then the ME can authorize removal of the body so I can sift the dirt under and around him. If you’re lucky, he may have something for you early tomorrow.”

Very early the next morning, Dr. Dwight presented his preliminary findings to a bleary-eyed Berg and Jay after dragging them out of their respective beds.

Dwight opened the file. “Dental records confirm the identity as Alan Winchester. Time of death is hard to pinpoint exactly, but judging from the insect activity, the stage of decomposition, and recent average ambient temperatures, I would put it in the twenty-four hours between Tuesday and Wednesday almost two weeks ago. The cause of death was as you thought: a long range shot with some kind of point thirty-two or larger mushrooming hunting round. An excellent shot. He died instantly.”

“What are the chances of recovering the bullet?” Berg asked.

“Minimal. Officers are out in the woods now with metal detectors, but we are talking many square miles of dense woods, grassland, and marshland to cover. I would prefer a needle in a haystack,” Dwight replied. “Wherever he was killed, the bullet would have traveled several hundred more feet if it didn’t hit anything else.”

“Hunter? Military?” Jay asked.

“Could be either. Here’s something interesting. There was a stun gun burn on his arm, but there’s only one. I would hazard a guess that one of the elements failed to make contact.”

“Could only one element still knock out a man?” Berg asked.

“Depends. A small man? Yes. But I don’t think it would have knocked out this victim. He’s over six feet, weighs about one-ninety. At most it would have knocked him out momentarily and given him a super headache. He was also covered in small scratches and abrasions on his exposed skin, most likely from running through the woods.”

“The stun gun is a game-changer,” Berg said. “This now possibly links him with the truckers. When will we find out if it’s the same one used in any of the other murders?”

“Not until DNA is run during autopsy.”

“Anything else to link him with the other crimes?” Jay asked.

“No torture. Cause of death is different, and no one attempted to bury the others,” Dwight replied handing the file over. “The stun gun by itself isn’t a conclusive link. It’s been in the news, so there could be copycats, which would explain why it was wielded ineffectually.”

Chapter Twenty

Exhausted, Berg hauled herself up the station stairwell after interviewing Alan Winchester’s grief-stricken parents. They’d just had the onerous job of identifying their son’s personal effects and clothing, and their distress was palpable.
 

Walking back to her desk with her heart dragging like a lead weight, Berg wondered why she found it difficult to be next to such raw emotion.
Psychos, serial killers, and nut jobs? Fine. Real people in pain? Too hard.

“Anything?” Jay asked as she slumped into her chair.

“No, nothing useful.” She sighed. “He was a nice guy, from a nice family. No red flags and no connections to any other recent murder victims.”

“Next stop, the impound lot?” Jay stood and tucked his gun into the back of the waistband of his jeans and covered it with his untucked, collared shirt.
 

Berg noticed he looked good, despite being a little more casual than usual.
 

Jay caught her appraisal and returned her gaze steadily. “We seem to be trekking through the woods a lot lately. My suits are getting ruined.”

Berg nodded, embarrassed to have had the tables turned and been caught staring at him for a change.

Arena walked into the office, chatting with detectives Hamilton and Mick Cheney. “She was resisting, not to mention high as a kite, so I said to the crazy bitch, ‘Stop your yabbering, or I’ll slap you into next week. Put your goddamned hands behind your back. I won’t tell you again.’ ”
 

The detectives gathered around Arena all chuckled appreciatively.

“And then, you won’t believe what she does, she puts her hand—”

“Arena!” Leigh barked from the door of her office.

Arena gulped. “Yes, Captain?”

“Did I just hear you say you threatened to hit a suspect, a
female
suspect?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t—”

“The Domestic Violence Response Team needs an extra pair of hands at the moment. You can spend a week with them. See how amusing you find hitting women after that.”

“Aw, Captain, I didn’t—”
 

“No arguments! Go!” she yelled, pointing to the door.

Arena grumbled as he fished his badge and gun out of his desk and stalked from the room.

“Anyone else here think hitting women is funny?” Leigh asked, folding her arms and glaring at her subordinates.

Unable to make eye contact, the remaining huddled detectives all shook their heads and quickly moved away.

Leigh smiled at Berg slightly before wandering back into her office.

It was only four miles to the impound lot, and Berg stared out at the familiar Macy’s building as they slowly traveled up the street, watching as shoppers swarmed in front of it in preparation for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. It was at this time of year she often felt fortunate she had no family or friends to celebrate the holidays with, so she didn’t have to negotiate her way through the determined bargain-hunters.

“You doing anything for turkey day?” Jay asked.

“No. You?”

“Yeah, my family usually gets together at my mom’s since my dad died. Want to come? It’s fun. Lots of food, kids, my sisters bickering . . .”

“No. Thanks anyway.”

“One day you’re going to say yes to one of my invitations, I can feel it,” Jay replied.
 

Berg laughed. The pair finally arrived at the police impound lot, where Winchester’s car had been for two weeks following its discovery, abandoned and stripped, on the side of the highway. The blue Honda Civic was still parked in the open lot, not that it could have moved as the wheels were missing and it was sitting up on blocks.

“Any evidence is likely long gone, but let’s check anyway,” Jay said, turning on his recording app.

He walked around the vehicle, and noticed the front right axle was slightly bent, sending the front right wheel off center. “Looks like the thieves took what they could get.”
 

He went around to the driver’s side and Berg to the passenger seat, and they snapped on their latex gloves before opening the doors.
 

“The impact wasn’t enough to set off the air bags,” Berg said.
 

“The car was still on the shoulder when it was found, according to the tow report. There were no skid marks.”
 

The pair searched the car thoroughly with their handheld torches, combing every cranny for some insight into the unexplained crime before dusting the hard surfaces with fingerprint powder and tweezing visible fibers into evidence packets. Once again, Berg found the passenger side of the vehicle wiped clean of prints.
 

Jay, having revealed a few good-quality prints on the driver’s side, took a few adhesive lifters from his kit and preserved them.
 

Berg opened the glove compartment. “The usual in here, license, registration, street directories.” She sifted through the contents before opening the ashtray that was devoid of the usual coins and gum. She lifted the floor mats before shifting around and searching behind the passenger seat. “Hey, check this out.” She picked up a long, blond hair from behind the seat between her gloved fingers before depositing it in a yellow paper evidence bag and labeling it.

“Girlfriend?”

“Not that the parents knew about. I’ll send it off to Dwight for analysis.” She slipped the packet into her kit. “What about this?” She fingered a burn mark on the right side of the driver’s seat.

Jay moved to get a clearer look. “The other stun gun element?”
 

“Could be, or maybe a cigarette burn.” She cut it free with a box cutter and placed it in another yellow evidence packet. “The car doesn’t smell like smoke, though, and there’s nothing in the ashtray.”

Jay popped the trunk as the pair climbed out. The trunk was clean, housing a standard jack and some reusable fabric shopping bags. Any suitcase or bag the man may have had was long gone, Berg saw. They lifted the panel, exposing the temporary tire. It looked flat and unused.

Jay’s cell rang as they closed the trunk. Pulling it out of his jacket pocket, he flipped it open. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay, thanks. I think we can swing it.”
 

Berg looked at him quizzically. “There’s another body on the tollway, possibly another trucker. The body’s outside the Paul Douglas Forest Preserve, about four miles west of Busse Woods. You finished here so we can check it out?”
 

Berg nodded.
 

“Excellent, let’s go.”

They piled back into the police car and, with Berg driving, sped out to the scene.

Even with Berg trying to break the land speed record, it was almost forty minutes later when they reached the stretch of woods.
 

“Perfect timing,” Halwood said as they approached on foot after parking the sedan on the tollway shoulder. “I just got here myself.”

No effort had been made to hide the body, and he lay on his back on the edge of the tollway. Unlike the other victims, the man was completely naked. His face was almost unrecognizable, and his body lay with both the left arm and leg folded under him, as if they were made of rubber. He was so livid with blue, purple, and red marks, it looked as though he’d been spray-painted.
 

The forensic photographers fired their cameras rapidly, flashes illuminating the scene like a strobe light in a nightclub. The trio examined the body without touching it while they worked.

“Is that decomp?” Berg asked, confused about the bloated, purple appearance of the corpse. The color was so deep, she couldn’t even discern his original skin tone.

“No,” Halwood said, wrinkling his brow. “That looks like bruising.”
 

The corpse flopped like a rag doll as Jay helped Halwood roll the man over to access his liver. “Liver temp says this guy has been dead for just six hours,” Halwood explained. “No rigor yet, either. Definitely not discoloration due to decomposition.”

“My God, so much bruising,” Berg whispered.

“It’s unbelievable.” Jay lifted two exposed limbs that sagged grotesquely where they should have been rigid with solid bone. “I doubt there’s a single unbroken bone in his body. This guy was, for lack of a better word, pulverized. If I didn’t suspect otherwise, I’d say he was run over by a steamroller.”
 

Berg and Jay leaned down for a closer look. The victim’s eyes were swollen shut over a nose that was now no more than a pulpy mess.
 

Halwood gently probed where the cheekbone should have been, eliciting the sickening crunching noise of bones grinding together.