The Enemy Inside (9 page)

“If I’d had contact with her she wouldn’t have been missing, would she?” Ted retorted.

Jay sighed, already bored with Ted’s attitude. “Listen, you imbecile, we’re actually trying to help you here. I’m sure you want to know what happened to Melissa as much as we do. How about you stop being a dick and answer our questions? The sooner you do, the sooner you can crawl back to the Dumpster you obviously live in.”

Ted glowered at the pair for a few moments, mulling this over. “She didn’t send any letters, I don’t have a phone, and what the fuck is an e-mail? Okay?”

“What about her other family? Her friends? Any of them mention they’d seen or talked to her recently? She must have been somewhere close for the last eighteen months,” Jay asked. “She was found here.”

Ted snorted. “Her parents have been missing longer than she has. We haven’t seen them in years, and she hated them anyway. No way was she with them. I never met any friends.”

“What about her belongings at your place, like her clothes, cosmetics? Anything gone missing?”

“No. It’s all still there.”

Berg lifted a photograph out of her file and passed it across the desk to Ted. “These were the clothes she was found in. Recognize them?”

Ted stared at the photo of the clothes briefly—the actual items were still being processed for trace—and shook his head once. “Never seen them before.”

“How long did she live with you?” Berg asked.

“Since she was ten, on and off. Her parents are drunks. When it got too much, she used to come to me.”
 

Berg noticed a note of sadness creeping into his voice as he spoke about Melissa.
 

“She would sometimes disappear for a day or two when she got older, but she’d always come back.”

“Is that why you never reported her missing and we had to get a call from her boss?” Jay asked.

“My niece is none of you assholes’ business. If she had a problem, I fixed it.”

Berg studied his downcast expression. She had a pretty good bullshit meter, and Ted was in the green zone.
Whatever else he might be
, she thought,
he cared about Melissa
.

“You kill her?’ Jay suddenly asked.
 

Berg gave him a warning glance. If the interview turned into an interrogation, then Ted would need to be advised of his rights or anything he said would be inadmissible.

The downcast expression was once again replaced by anger. “Fuck. You.”

“That’s not an answer,” Jay replied.

Ted glowered at the detective like he wanted to rip Jay’s head off with his bare hands. “No! No, I did not kill my only niece. She was the one thing—”

“She ever mention a trucker by the name of Danny Taylor before she went missing? Maybe he was her boyfriend?” Jay asked, trying to establish some kind of link between the two victims apart from an errant hair.

“Nope. Never heard of him. I don’t think Melissa had boyfriends; she didn’t trust men,” Ted replied. “Don’t blame her.”

Berg and Jay looked at each other, communicating they were done for now.
 

“Fine. Get out of here,” Jay said.

They let Ted go and walked back to their desks. “You think he knows anything?” Jay asked before trying to stifle a huge yawn.
 

“Stay out late last night? You looked wrecked.” Berg smiled.

Jay stretched. “There might have been a little too much bourbon and too little sleep, I admit. Possibly one too many women.”

“One too many?” Berg asked, raising an eyebrow. “How many were there, exactly?”

Jay shrugged. “So, back to Ted?”

“I think he loved her in his own way.”

“Still, he’s got a temper on him . . .”

“So do you.”

“Point taken.”
 

They spent the rest of the morning chasing down leads and making phone calls. When they called the morgue to get the DNA evidence on Melissa and the latest trucker, Dwight warned them that Consiglio requested the results be revealed to him first, obviously looking for a media announcement.
 

An hour later, the elevator dinged and Consiglio stalked out, a small, smug smile playing on the sides of his mouth.

“Uh-oh,” Jay whispered to Berg, keeping his head down. “Satan is smiling. This is bad. Don’t look up.”

The chief breezed past their desks and barged into the captain’s office without knocking. A short conversation followed that looked to Berg like an argument. Leigh stood and shouted something at Consiglio, shaking her head. Consiglio shoved a manila folder in Leigh’s face and left the woman alone.
 

Jay and Berg studied their desks as if examining each individual dust mote on the surface. They knew Consiglio never made the trip down from the fifth floor for good news.

“Detectives,” Captain Leigh said, causing them both to jump in alarm and look up from their respective dust inspections. “I need to see you both in my office.”
 

Leigh walked off ahead of them quickly and held open her office door until Berg and Jay settled in front of her desk. Berg’s heart sank as Leigh closed the wooden door behind her and walked back to her desk. Closed-door discussions never ended well.
 

What did Consiglio say?
Berg’s heart pounded.
Does he somehow know?

The captain frowned and picked up a folder from her desk. “The chief’s just been down in the morgue with Dr. Dwight, analyzing the hair found on John Rogers. He got no hits from the regular DNA database. So Consiglio asked him to run the hair’s DNA through the law enforcement and military databases.” She paused, as if undecided on how to proceed before making up her mind. “He got a hit.”

“That’s great,” Berg replied. “Whose was it?”

Leigh pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Apparently it’s . . . yours.” She looked at Berg with guarded eyes, waiting for a response.

“What?” Jay and Berg both asked.

“There must be some mistake. It’s just evidence transfer or something,” Jay said.

“Of course it is,” Leigh said quickly, “but I have been
ordered
to ask you, Detective Raymond, where were you the night before last?”

Crap. Now I’m Detective Raymond
. “At home, asleep, of course,” Berg replied, hoping the lie was not obvious.

“By yourself?” Leigh asked, flicking a glance at Jay.
 

The look may have only lasted a fraction of a second, but the implication was heavy nonetheless. Berg nodded, clenching her jaw.
 

Leigh’s stiff body relaxed a fraction. “So, if Consiglio were to pull your CPD cell records—and make no mistake, he could—there wouldn’t be any calls or text messages on those records that would contradict that?”

Berg’s heart once again kicked into overdrive as she remembered the night in question. She realized her cell records would show a call to a local cab company in the early morning, a call that would have been routed through the nearest tower, a tower nowhere near her apartment.
 

Fuck.
Berg contemplated saying her cell had been stolen, but then dismissed the thought. Jay had seen her using it since then. Stuck, she wasn’t sure what to say. She frantically racked her brain.

“Raymond?” Leigh asked again, her voice rising.

“Of course she was where she said she was.” Jay leaned forward.
 

Berg looked at him gratefully. His response gave her a few more precious seconds to formulate an acceptable answer.
 

“Evidence transfer happens sometimes. You can’t possibly think Berg had anything to do with the murder?”
 

Leigh scowled. “Grow up, Jay. Of course I don’t think she did it. Consiglio doesn’t even think she did it. But he’s just been handed the ammunition to get rid of one of you!”

Jay scrubbed his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd ends. “I know he hates us, but there is no reason for this.”

“Isn’t there?” Leigh asked. “It would seem Consiglio got a call a few hours ago from one of the local TV stations asking him to comment on reports the detectives in his own district don’t think the missing hitchhikers’ case has been solved with Taylor’s death. Any idea where they got that from? What part of ‘under the radar’ was unclear, exactly?”

Stella. So much for integrity.
Berg resisted the urge to bow her head in her hands in defeat.
This was getting worse by the second.
Outwardly, she remained stoic.

“Well, Consiglio’s pretty sure where it came from and is looking for blood, detectives. Preferably yours. Possibly mine. And even if you can prove where you were that night, Detective Raymond, at the very least it looks like gross carelessness at a crime scene causing serious evidence contamination—the kind of carelessness that, if it got out, would give recently convicted felons grounds to appeal.” Leigh leaned back in her chair to let that sink in. “And if you can’t prove you weren’t involved? Well, all the better as far as he’s concerned. So, I ask again, will your cell records back up your assertion that you were at home the night John Rogers was killed?”

“No,” Berg said. There was nothing else she could say—there was no point lying now.
 

Jay stared at her, wide-eyed, clearly shocked.

“So tell me where you were,” Leigh replied tersely.

“No.”

“If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.”
 

Berg shrugged.
 

“Well, you’re not leaving me much of a choice, are you?” Leigh said angrily. “You’ve just gift wrapped your ass for him. I’m going to have to suspend you pending a full inquiry. Goddammit!”
 

“Oh, come on, Captain,” Jay replied. “Is suspension really necessary? I’m sure Berg . . .”

 
“She’s just lied to a police officer about her whereabouts during a murder, there’s DNA evidence linking her to the crime, and she won’t tell me where she was. We arrest suspects for less than that, and you know it. That combined with the media leak . . .”

“Fuck. The media leak was me, okay? Don’t hold Berg accountable for that.”

Berg, sitting deep in growing self-loathing, watched as Jay tried to throw away his career for her, knowing all the while she didn’t deserve his loyalty or respect. “Jay, no!” she said, grabbing his arm. “Captain, don’t listen to him.”

Leigh rolled her eyes. “Fantastic. Please tell me I didn’t just hear you admit you spoke to the media without authorization?”
 

Jay clenched his jaw and looked away.
 

“That’s just great. As well as Berg being suspended, you can cool your heels on patrol for a few weeks, O’Loughlin.”
 

Jay and Berg both opened their mouths to argue.
 

“Shut up, both of you, before you make it any worse! You, give me your shield.”
 

Jay unclipped his badge from his leather belt and threw it on the desk where it landed with a thunk.
 

“You! Give me your shield and gun!” she shouted at Berg, who complied, removing her badge from around her neck and her gun from her shoulder holster and gently placing both items on the wooden surface. “Detective Raymond, you are suspended with full pay, pending an internal inquiry into the death of John Rogers. And you should both consider yourselves lucky it’s not Consiglio who is dealing with you. I just barely got him to hold off announcing this to the media!”
 

Jay scowled while Berg sat still, lost in her thoughts.
 

“As it is, I’m going to have my ass handed to me for not controlling my detectives—again!” She took a deep breath and put her head in her hands. “For God’s sake, get out of my office,” Leigh muttered, her anger abating as quickly as it had come on.

Berg stood and slunk out of the office, guilt for putting both Jay and Leigh in danger of losing their jobs settling on her chest like a concrete block.
 

Jay, not so accepting of their fates, followed his partner out the door and slammed it so hard behind him a long crack appeared in one of the glass panels. “Fuck!” he yelled, causing all the officers in the level to look up and fall silent. He paced back and forth, running his hands through his dark hair as if trying to scrub his demotion out of it.