Broken (10 page)

Flashes of the last twenty-four hours played in her mind: Arena, Jay, the Youngs, every upsetting scene melded together, replaying until she felt her head couldn’t contain the disturbing images anymore and might explode.

You’re losing it, Alicia,
Leigh whispered,
just like I told you you would while you continue to deny who you are.

Finally reaching the respite her apartment provided, Berg slammed the door and quickly headed to the bathroom.

Stripping naked and sitting on the cold tile, she grabbed her knees, hugging them tightly in an attempt to smother the unidentifiable and unwanted emotions by sheer force.

Only one thing was clear in her muddled mind—the blackness was back. And because she had felt better over the previous two months, she had lost her tolerance for it. It now seemed even more oppressive. Thicker. She didn’t have the strength, or the inclination, to fight it again.

“Stop!” she screamed to no one in the clean, white room.

Leigh cackled in her head.

Dr. Thompson had called her blackness
depression
. All she knew was it was deep and dark and tinged everything she saw. She could actually feel herself dropping into it—sinking slowly, feet first, as if into a tar pit. And like the tar, it was sticky and she didn’t know how to stop herself from drowning. When she looked at life through its filter, colors faded, the sun was less warm, and the very edges of her vision seemed shady, like an old-fashioned photo.

She was so stupid to have thought a little therapy would fix her! What had she thought would happen? She’d talk about her fucked-up feelings for a few hours a week to some total stranger and everything would be okay?

Just like Leigh had told her, people like her, people who were broken in childhood, never grew up to be normal. It was pathetic to even try.

Did she think should would marry a man with a roving eye? Have his children? Trade the one thing that made her feel like she was worth something for spit-up and lullabies? What kind of mother could she ever be anyway?

She and Jay might have been happy in the beginning, but eventually the cracks would show. She would sabotage their happiness with her problems.

He would pay for loving her.

You’re broken and you know it . . .

I love you so much, Alicia.

You’rebrokenandyouknowit . . .

IloveyousomuchAlicia.

She rocked back and forth on the cold floor, suppressing the urge to scream again.

She wiped her face and her shaking hand came away wet. Taking a deep breath, she stood up to splash cold water on her reddened cheeks, but found herself starting at her reflection instead. She loathed that woman who stared back at her—detested her inability to function in even the most basic way.

Picking up the heavy stainless steel cup that held her toothbrush and toothpaste, she stepped back and hurled it with every ounce of her strength at the reflection she abhorred. The projectile flew into the mirror, smashing the glass into jagged pieces that fell off the wall and shattered onto the porcelain basin and floor.

Tears streaming, she picked up a long, jagged piece of cold glass and dragged the razor-sharp point up the inside of her right forearm, relishing the instant pain and relief it brought with it.

She hadn’t gone deep enough to reach a vein—quite deliberately—but a trickle of blood dripped down her arm.

But it wasn’t quite enough—she could still feel, still think.

Grasping the glass in her left hand so tightly she felt it piercing into her palm, she sat down on the edge of the tub and dragged her right hand along the soft skin of her right inner thigh, the razor leaving a thin, shaky line behind marking its path. Both cuts stung intensely and immediately began throbbing in time with her pulse. She sat back against the bathroom wall to relish the wave of endorphins and concentrated on the physical instead of her emotions. Blissfully, all was quiet.

Chapter Eight

All you ever wanted

was someone to treat you nice and kind.

–The Black Keys, “All You Ever Wanted”

“H
ey, Berg,” Detective Pete Smith greeted her at the station the next morning.

His words were light, but they carried a heavy aura of sadness that now shrouded him like a cloak. The aura had become a mainstay following the death of his CPD partner of more than twenty years, Detective Tony Hamilton, during the course of the Leigh investigation.

Every time Berg saw the unashamed sadness on Smith’s face she felt a deep twinge of culpability. A mistake had led to Hamilton becoming a suspect in the killings of the truckers. A mistake that had been based in fact—someone from inside the CPD had indeed been involved, as they had suspected, but it certainly hadn’t been the heavyset detective and Vietnam vet with the pronounced limp. But the mistake had caused Hamilton to become a fugitive, and he eventually plowed his car into a tree on the way to his and his partner’s marijuana plantation in the middle of an Illinois forest.

A mistake that belonged to her and Jay.

“Hey, Smith. How’s things?” Berg asked, flashing him a smile that didn’t even touch her insides.

She never stopped hoping he might snap out of his funk, but if anything, the opposite happened. Rather than break in a new partner and start again after Hamilton’s death, Smith had elected to man a desk during the hours of nine to five, taking tip line calls, shuffling paperwork, and completing other trivial tasks that were insulting to his many years of experience.

“Oh, you know, dull,” Smith replied with a wan smile. “But there’s a bright side, only four hundred and eighty-seven working days to retirement.”

“Wow, that all?” Berg asked dryly, wondering if he had a calendar on his wall at home that he marked with a big red
X
at the end of each day.

Smith snorted softly. “Anyway, been manning the phones since your victim’s family put up the reward, and I might have something.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It’s an odd one. The tip actually came from an out-of-state lawyer. Said he has a client who forwarded him some information about the potential offender—real specific information it is, too. But the tip was only supplied with a guarantee of anonymity. Apparently, he fears reprisals.”

“Well, anonymity is often a caveat for information. What’s the info?”

“The informant says a guy named Jon Buchanan matches the CTA footage. Here’s an address,” he said, handing a slip of paper to Berg. “He’s a gamer freak and violent as hell. Apparently, we should search dumpsters near his home for the evidence we need.” Smith raised his eyebrows and looked at Berg, curious about her response.

“Interesting . . . we’ll follow the lead and see if it pans out,” Berg replied. “Thanks, Smith.”

Smith replied to Berg’s efforts to be nice with a sour look of sarcasm. “Sure. If there’re any other hunches you’d care to disregard, don’t hesitate to let me know.” He shuffled off as Berg sighed in defeat.

“We’ve got a possible lead into the Young attack,” Berg said to Arena’s back as she sat down at her desk quickly.

Arena turned and Berg waved an apology as she saw that he was on the phone. “We’ll be right there,” he said and hung up. “Sorry, it’ll have to wait. There’s been a shooting at the golf club.”

“Fuck,” Berg spat, grabbing her purse out of her bottom drawer.

* * * *

Five minutes later, as Arena guided the speeding police sedan toward the scene, Berg spoke over the blaring siren, “Let me guess, Lauren Wesley’s dead.”

“The paramedics are at the scene, but it doesn’t sound good.” The veins on Arena’s hands bulged as he grabbed the steering wheel hard.

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

“We should have insisted on protective custody! She deserved our help,” Berg yelled.

“Yep. But she didn’t want it, so—”

“We totally underestimated Feeny! I thought killing his wife would be where it ended. I had no idea the guy was capable of going serial,” Berg said.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, both clearly contemplating how they could have avoided what looked to be the loss of yet another innocent life.

Twenty-five miles later, they turned off the quiet outlying suburban road lined with spindly, bare trees and onto the pristine dark charcoal asphalt of the golf club’s drive. The sprawling white, two-story homestead that served as the clubhouse was crowded as groups of early-morning golfers mingled around the front chatting softly, unable to tear their eyes away from the scene in front of them.

Berg turned left and parked on the edge of the parking lot. She and Arena leapt out of the sedan just as paramedics were loading Lauren into the rear of an ambulance.

One uniformed medic administered chest compressions while the other stood at her head squeezing a handheld oxygen bag periodically. He stopped breathing for her long enough to drop the gurney, get it loaded with a third paramedic’s help into the back of the bus, and resumed both chest compressions and puffing air to her lungs. His partner slammed the rear doors and ran for the driver’s seat, already alerting the nearest hospital that they were coming in hot.

Berg heard the siren start to wail as they hit the road.

“She going to live?” she asked the remaining paramedic as he packed the medical gear into a second ambulance.

“I doubt it,” he said, shaking his head quickly. “We’ve been working on her for more than thirty minutes.”

“What were the injuries?”

“She was riddled with bullet wounds—hits to the neck, chest, abdomen—she’s Swiss cheese,” he said.

“Anyone else injured?”

“Nope. We’re treating a few for shock, though. She was shot in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.”

“Thanks.”

Arena was already interviewing mingling groups of golfers, and he nodded occasionally as he made notes.

Berg avoided the rapidly congealing pools of blood on the asphalt and walked over to a middle-aged woman, who was sitting on the curb of the parking lot with her head between her knees. A medic hovered protectively over her.

“She okay to talk to us?” Berg asked the man softly.

“Should be,” he replied. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder and knelt close to her. “You okay to have a quick chat with the police?”

She looked up and nodded, tears streaking her heavy mascara down her rouged cheeks.

“I’ll be at the bus if you need me,” he said calmly and nodded quickly at Berg.

The middle-aged woman took a big, shaky breath and looked at Berg. Obviously trying to make an effort, she pushed her hands through her coiffed, blond hair and wiped her cheeks only to smear the black streaks down her pristine beige golf pants.

“I’m Detective Raymond,” Berg said.

“I suppose you want to know what happened?” the woman asked, looking at Berg.

“Yes, please,” Berg replied.

“I was standing right next to her, not two feet away—”

“Next to Lauren Wesley, you mean?”

“Yes. I parked near her, and we were walking to the golf house together, just chatting about our weekends, that kind of thing. We’re friends . . .”

“Can you tell me anything about the assailant?”

“It was just a gun sticking out the window of an SUV.”

“Any idea of the SUV’s color, make, model?”

The witness shook her head. “It all happened so fast. We were talking, I heard a loud engine and squealing tires, then a black SUV roars past and a hand sticks out holding some kind of black gun. There were too many gunshots to count and then it was gone. Just like that. I wasn’t two feet from her,” she repeated.

“Did you see anyone in the car?”

“The windows were too tinted. It all happened so fast I didn’t even think to get a license plate. Nothing. I was right next to her, I should be dead . . .”

Berg decided not to press the obviously distressed woman, instead taking her name, address, and number and promising to contact her later.

She called Arena over. “Professional hit. They were only interested in one target.”

“A professional hit at a golf club? Wow, someone’s ticked over their tee-off time,” he replied, raising his eyebrows.

Berg walked over to the group of forensic technicians processing the scene. One was photographing shell casings on the ground, while another was waiting to bag and tag them. She bent down to examine a shell, careful not to disturb it, and then left them to it.

Walking up the driveway of the parking lot, she called over the head of forensics, Nick Halwood.

He nodded and wandered over to Berg, removing his latex gloves so he could take an old-fashioned silk handkerchief out of his pocket and blow his cold, red nose heartily.

“The SUV left some rubber here. See if you can get a sample and some pictures of the tread,” Berg said in greeting.

“Will do, Detective Raymond,” he replied in a friendly fashion, tucking his hanky away and running his hands through his thinning, light brown hair. “I’ve got the team taking photos and collecting shells—thirteen so far.”