Broken (41 page)

Jesus, if Berg’s been harassing the woman again it’ll be her job.
He silently cursed her.

“How can I help you?” he said aloud.

“She can’t get hold of Berg,” Cheney answered. “She wants to make a statement, and apparently, Berg told her if she couldn’t be found to only talk to you.”

Jay frowned, thanked Cheney, and gestured toward a chair. He smiled at her and noticed, with more than a touch of relief, that she didn’t appear angry. In fact, she looked positively sick with worry.

“What can I help you with?” he asked.

Marilyn immediately burst into tears. “I think m-m-my d-daughter killed my other daughter, a-a-and now she’s trying to kill my granddaughter!” she cried between choking sobs.

Cheney and Jay stared at the hysterical woman, both audibly slamming their jaws shut when they looked at each other.

“Ah . . . okay. Wow.” Jay placed his palms flat on his desk and cleared his throat, not quite sure how to proceed. “Can you please try and locate Berg or Arena?” he asked Cheney.

Cheney nodded, grateful relief written on his face as he closed the door behind him.

“Do you need a moment?” Jay asked the weeping woman in front of him. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water? Do you want me to call legal counsel or a female officer?”

Marilyn, dabbing at her tears, shook her head.

“Can I ask what makes you think Elizabeth killed Emma? I mean, you’re aware that her killer did make a full confession?”

Marilyn tried to talk but it took a few moments before her sobbing calmed enough for her to get words in between the hiccups. “My daughter may not have done it herself, but I think she was involved.” Marilyn was careful to avoid using Elizabeth’s name.

“What makes you think that?” He wasn’t sure if Marilyn was genuinely fearful or if this was Berg’s doing. He hoped for Berg’s sake it wasn’t the latter, and she hadn’t manipulated the woman into seeing things that weren’t there.

“She . . .
hated
Emma. Not normal sisterly rivalry, but real, evil loathing from the moment Em was born. I lost count of the number of times I caught her trying to hurt Emma when they were young. When she was six, and thought I wasn’t watching, she pushed Emma down the stairs in the backyard. Concrete stairs. Emma was only four and ended up with twenty-eight stitches and a concussion. It wasn’t harmless play like my husband always claimed it was. She was really trying to hurt her sister. Maybe even . . .” She shut her eyes and held the tissue over her mouth as though finishing the thought was too much. “So I would watch them. I had to. It got to the point where I couldn’t leave them alone together. It became my full-time job. We always had money troubles because I didn’t feel I could leave them unsupervised and go back to work. Alex would just laugh and say I was overprotective.”

“And the behavior continued, even when they got older?” Jay asked.

“Yes. If anything, it got worse because my first daughter got better at hiding it. She became more manipulative, stole every boyfriend, every friend . . . anything Emma had, she tried to take it. She would ruin Emma’s clothes by cutting holes into them or unpicking the seams, but my husband would just laugh at Emma’s carelessness and buy her more. Once, Emma got blisters all over her body after using a cream that my husband had given her as a gift. She had to be hospitalized—if she had gotten any in her eyes . . . we still don’t know what had been put in it because my husband immediately threw it out.

“He refused to see what was going on, wouldn’t even talk about it, and would get terribly angry at me if I did.” Marilyn barely took a breath, as if she had been holding in the words for a very long time, and she had to get them out before she lost her nerve.

“So you think Elizabeth finally hatched a plan?”

“I think so. But I have no real evidence. I can say that I saw her playing that strange online game that you said the murderer played. I found her asleep at her computer late one night, and that game was on the screen. I thought nothing of it at the time, but after the attack happened and I heard the details, it became clear. About a week before, she’d started being really kind to Emma, after twenty years of hate. It was eerie.”

Jay nodded, hoping Cheney had found Berg. She would know all the right questions to ask to get the evidence they needed to bring Elizabeth in—the woman was confirming everything Berg had suspected.

“You need to see this,” Cheney said as he barged in. He flicked on the small television located in the corner of Jay’s office.

A blond woman was talking.

“Who’s that?” Jay asked, irritated.

This is not the time . . .

“My daughter,” Marilyn said softly.

Jay raised his eyebrows in shock but choked down the expletive that threatened to erupt from between his teeth. It had been a while since Jay had seen her, and the difference was startling.

Gone was the slightly pudgy, mousy, snaggletoothed, brown haired girl, and in her place was a thin, blond, perfect Emma clone. The resemblance to her dead sister was uncanny, not to mention creepy. The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention as he watched her speak.

It wasn’t just her appearance, however; it was the way she worked the cameras, almost flirting with them, as they clicked away. It was the way she callously parlayed her sister’s rape and murder into a television career for herself.

She was shameless.

All three watched as the highlights of Elizabeth Young’s press conference earlier that day played out on the evening news. She spoke easily to the cameras—as if she had been born to do so. Jay knew she had become a victims’ advocate since Emma’s attack, but today she was announcing that she would also be hosting a true crime show on one of Chicago’s various cable channels, and that her own sister’s rape and murder would be the subject of the first episode.

“Did you find Berg or Arena?” Jay asked Cheney after he flicked off the television.

“No. I’ll keep trying,” Cheney said as he headed for the door, leaving them alone once more.

Jay tried to be objective. He thought of Berg’s insistence that Elizabeth Young was a sociopath who hated her sister and had her killed out of jealousy, and now, that hatred was directed at her sister’s only child. He suddenly remembered the child’s close call at the hospital, the horrifying SIDS scare at her grandparents’ home just last week, and the strange respiratory arrest that Emma Young experienced while she was pregnant and on life support.

“Please,” Marilyn whispered, her voice increasingly desperate. “She’s going to hurt the baby. You have to do something. Surely someone here can do something!”

“Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit,” Jay whispered as he looked out at Berg’s desk—still empty.

I know what I have to do.

Quickly dialing Berg’s number, he groaned when it bumped immediately to voice mail, signaling it was switched off. He left a desperate message and then tried Arena. As much as he didn’t want to talk to the man, at least he would know where Berg was.

His phone was off, too.

He looked at Marilyn again, and his heart sank. He didn’t need to be a psychic to know that Marilyn Young thought the baby was in deep, deep trouble or that Berg had no intention of sitting idly by and letting it happen.

Jay tried her phone again. “Where are you?” he muttered. He had a bad feeling. A very, very bad feeling.

His cell rang, piercing the acute silence in his office.

Hoping it was Berg, Jay flipped the phone over to check the display. No such luck. “Where is Berg, Arena? I need her here!”

“I’ve done something stupid,” Arena said.

Jay scoffed, any remaining drops of patience draining out of him. “And that makes today different from any other day how, exactly? Where the fuck is—”

“I think Berg’s—wow, I don’t even know how to say this out loud. I think she might be considering suicide by cop. I dunno, I hope I’m off ba—”

Jay jerked ramrod straight in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“Look, I don’t have time to go into it, but I’ve been working with Consiglio to get you both fired—”

“
What?
You fucking son of a—”

“Yeah, save the ass chewing for later! Unless you want Berg to be arrested, or worse, shut up and listen!”

Jay clenched his jaw, the only sound his grinding teeth.

“Berg’s been doing recon down at Evergreen Park Community High School, the one near Elizabeth Young’s new place. I know because I’ve been following her. For the last few days, she’s been breaking in, and she just did it again. The thing is, Elizabeth Young runs right by the school every night at six thirty exactly—thirty minutes from now. Berg’s there, and I think she has a rifle. I tipped off Consiglio before I really thought about it. I know it was stupid, but it was that will of hers. The will makes no sense unless she’s . . .”

He was muttering incoherently, and Jay slammed his hand on his desk.

Whether it was the sound that jarred him back into focus or his own conscience, Arena cleared his throat and finished his confession. “Anyway, Consiglio’s going in with a CPD team. If he gets there before she does what I think she’s doing, she’ll just get arrested and do some time, but if they get there after . . . she won’t go down until she’s sure she’s taken Elizabeth with her. I think that was her plan all along. She was onto me, man.” Arena’s voice was becoming desperate. “She was counting on me to tip off Consiglio.”

Jay’s lips tingled he was so angry, and he worried he might pass out. He took a few deep breaths in an effort to calm down. “Why?” he asked, almost strangling on the word. “Why? Why would you do this to her?”

“Consiglio promised me your job if I gave him enough dirt to take you two down and help him get reinstated. At first, it seemed like a great career move, but then Berg and I got closer, and there was the baby, so I told him it was off. When she broke up with me, I got pissed and told Consiglio I was back in . . . after that, I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of it.”

Jay tried to take in several important pieces of information while simultaneously working out a rescue plan, but Arena’s last point floored him. “Wait, she ended it? I thought you two were—what about the baby?”

“The baby’s not mine. I was so desperate to be with her I would’ve been that baby’s daddy, but she didn’t want me. She loves you. She always has.”

“Why now? Why am I supposed to believe you’ve had some eleventh hour change of heart?”

“If this was part of the plan, would I be telling you? C’mon, man! I’d just tell you that Berg wants to meet you, set you both up, and leave it at that. Seriously, you’ve got, like, twenty-six minutes to get there before Consiglio does. You have to leave now! I’m going to try and head off Consiglio.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you helping her now?” Jay asked as he ran out of his office, leaving an open-mouthed Marilyn Young staring after him.

“I still love her,” Arena said simply. “She doesn’t deserve this. I mean, being fired is one thing, but if she’s planning on something more permanent . . . I don’t want to be the reason she checks out.”

Jay didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

“Do you love her?” Arena asked bitterly, after a few moments of silence while Jay pounded down the stairs.

“Yes,” Jay said. No hesitation, no doubt, and he saw no point in lying about it.

“Then fucking get down there now. Sure, this might be a trick, and God knows you can’t trust me, but can you really take the chance that I’m not lying?”

Jay sighed. “If you’re lying, you’re a dead man.”

Arena swore in relief. “I’m going to try and stall Consiglio. Please, if there’s any chance that baby could be yo—”

Jay hung up before Arena could finish and dialed Cheney. “I left Mrs. Young in my office. Get her official statement,” Jay ordered as he sped out of the parking garage.

Jesus, Berg! What the hell are you doing?

Knowing the police cars could be tracked, Jay rushed to the school in his own car with Berg’s voice echoing in his head.

I know what I have to do
.

Jay broke out in a cold sweat.

He’d stupidly thought she’d meant she was going to let the vendetta for Elizabeth Young go. He’d had no idea.