by Vanessa Skye
Dr. Dwight carefully peeled back the skin and prepared to open the chest cavity. “I agree that there is a sense of déjà vu here.” All talking ceased when he fired up his bone saw, and in a few short moments, he was reaching for the chest spreader.
“What do you know so far, and what’s similar to Diggs?” Berg asked.
“The finger breaks are crush injuries, same as your case. I’m guessing pliers were used, but no fragments were found in the wounds. The eyes were removed by something sharp. I found gouges on the orbits, and I expect to find them again here. Your dealer’s tongue was removed with a very sharp knife, not serrated, and we’ll see if this matches up shortly.”
Arena winced.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away from my case, man.”
Arena and Berg turned toward the voice behind them.
Arena grinned, grasped the hand of a handsome black guy standing in the doorway, and tugged him close as they butted shoulders. “How’s it hanging?” Arena asked, slapping the man on the back.
“Like an anaconda. Are you going to introduce us?” The man chuckled, nodding toward Berg and eyeing her appreciatively.
“Detective Alicia Raymond, Detective Hal Short,” Arena said, gesturing at each of them. “And don’t even think about it. I’ve already tried my luck, to no avail.”
Short grinned at Arena. “I’ve always been better with the ladies than you.”
“You’re delusional. You couldn’t handle Berg.” Arena snorted. “Just last night, my older brother—the legend in his own mind—tried his luck. Kept making crude suggestions over the dinner table, until Berg set him straight in front of my whole family. She told him if he wanted to fuck, they should meet in the bathroom, but she hoped his beer belly wasn’t an indication of a lack of stamina because she’d hate to be disappointed and miss out on dessert. My brother goes pale and says nothing for the rest of the night. Not a single fucking word. It was awesome!”
Hal raised an eyebrow. “You were going to fuck his brother?”
“Hell no!” Arena answered for her before stopping with the frown. “You weren’t going to fuck him, were you?”
Berg laughed. “Your brother never expects anyone to actually say yes. The fastest way to shut him up was to call him on his bluff.” She shrugged. “Like most of you, he’s all talk.”
Short smiled and held out his large hand. “A pleasure to finally put a face to the name,” he said, shaking Berg’s hand. “There’s more chatter about you than any other detective in the CPD by my reckoning, but clearly it hasn’t done you justice.”
“Good or bad chatter?” Berg grinned.
“Both, but mostly good. And frankly, I hope the bad stuff is true. Seeing as I’m a grown-ass man, however, I’ll be sure to make up my own mind.” He winked and turned back to Arena. “So, you sniffing around my vic, man? Are we going to have a problem here?” He cracked his knuckles and smirked.
Arena shrugged, his hands in his pockets. “We came to get the results on our vic, Diggs. Can’t help it if the doc’s doing an autopsy on your vic at the same time.”
Berg saw Dr. Dwight smile as he worked, but he remained silent.
“Uh, didn’t your vic die about a month ago? And you’re just getting around to checking on the results now? Maybe I should come over here and help you with your cases because you’re clearly drowning,” he said with a wink at Berg. “Hey, I’m fine with you sniffing ’round my case, as long as you share your vic with us. I’m not buying all the bullshit precinct rivalry. I’m happy to get as much help as I can. This crime is nasty, and whatever we can do to stop whoever is doing this—”
“Sounds good to me.” Berg turned the focus back to the autopsy at hand rather than the pissing contest going on beside her. “Doc?”
“The autopsy report you’re after is on my desk,” he said, nodding toward the other room, his hands deep inside his newest victim. “I pulled it to compare with this one. Knock yourselves out. Give me a few hours here.”
The detectives walked into Dwight’s office where Berg found the file and the three of them shared the report.
“Doesn’t tell us much,” Berg said as she looked it over. “Was your vic dumped in a public location?”
Short nodded. “Hell yeah. Twitch Lopez was dumped on the street in prime color territory. No way it was an accident.”
“Was he a member of the gang?” Arena asked.
“Not that we know of. This guy was careful to stay out of gang territory, skirting the fringes and playing all sides. He was a lone operator, not so small-time that he slipped under our radar, but not so big that he pissed off the gangs and took their buyers,” Short replied, standing over Berg’s shoulder.
She turned to face him. “Are you . . . sniffing me?”
He grinned and winked. “Maybe a little bit.”
She shook her head. “Diggs dealt pharmaceuticals that he drove over the Mexican border himself. What was Lopez’s bread and butter?”
Short slid his hands in his pockets and leaned against the filing cabinet. “Smack and ice, we think. Some weed.”
“You think he caught the wrong somebody’s attention?” Arena asked.
Short shrugged. “Maybe. But if a member of the Disciples offed him, they wouldn’t have dumped him in their own territory. The cops are swarming all over it now, turning it upside down. That’s just a hassle they don’t need.”
“And there’s no indication as yet that Lopez and Diggs knew each other?”
“A dealer from the street in the South mixing with a dorm-room dealer from rich town? I doubt it. My guy did illegal only, no prescription stuff, and your guy was on a suspended sentence, right? We could never make the charges stick against Lopez since he never carried big on his person. He preferred to stash nearby. There was always just enough on him to be classified personal use.”
“So the only thing they have in common is that they were both lone dealers who were tortured, killed, and dumped out in the open at opposite ends of the city?” Berg asked, looking over her shoulder.
Short nodded. “Looks that way. Not much to go on. The key is in where Lopez was dumped. You’re risking a gang war pulling that kind of stunt. Whoever did that has some huge, hairy balls.”
Chapter Fifteen
Berg curled up on her couch, trying to sleep.
At first, she had slept on the white loveseat in hopes of catching Jay when he came home, and they could talk. She hadn’t wanted to miss him, so night after night she had kept a vigil. But it was apparent, even to her, that Jay was not coming home, and sleeping on the couch had become more about avoiding the beautiful white queen-sized bed that she and Jay had shared for an inadequate amount of time together. She couldn’t imagine sleeping in it again without him and had abandoned it to Jesse, much to the furry dog’s delight.
As she tossed and turned on the uncomfortable piece of furniture, she resolved to get rid of it and buy a new bed. One without all the memories.
Maybe I should redecorate while I’m at it.
Her cell rang and she lunged for it, reading the display and swearing. She punched the accept button. “I told you to stop calling me!”
“Darling Alicia.” Judge Oliver’s voice oozed across the line. “I just heard the news about you and O’Loughlin. Terribly sorry. Would you like some company tonight?”
God help her, but she nearly said yes. “No, I don’t want some fucking company. Stop fucking calling me!”
“Alicia. I know you well enough to know that old patterns will become familiar patterns now that O’Loughlin’s not in the picture. It’s inevitable.”
He’s right.
Berg shook her head trying to rid the sound of her mother’s whisper from the back of her mind.
Soon you won’t be able to stop yourself. You’re a whore.
“No!” Berg snapped, unsure which one she was answering.
“I admire your strength, I really do. It’s one of the many things I love about you. But when you change your mind, you
know where to find me. Oh, and I’ve ensured you’re on the guest list of a very exclusive new club. Check your e-mail,” he said before hanging up.
Berg turned her phone off and lay back down on the couch, pulling the blanket up to her chin and closing her eyes.
A few minutes later, her eyes flew open again as her heart started pounding in her chest. She had been holding it together, just barely, since Jay had gone, but she felt the threads unraveling.
I will not look at my e-mail. I will not look at my e-mail.
Ten minutes later, she fired up her laptop, opening her personal e-mail account.
Why didn’t I deactivate this stupid thing?
It was the e-mail address she had used for all the invitations to the best private, and not-so-private, BDSM and swingers’ clubs around Chicago. The clubs where she had first met the judge before he’d been cut off. His brand of brutality was what she had sought out when she’d felt like this, but his obsessive behavior lately left a bad taste in her mouth at the very thought.
She double-clicked on the newest e-mail and read about the latest invitation-only BDSM club.
Clearly no one there had heard about his reputation, or Oliver wouldn’t have been invited. It was only a matter of time before he was banned from this one, too. Once the clubs got wind that he preferred inflicting real pain and causing real fear, they blacklisted him before anyone sued.
She deleted the e-mail, along with several others, and slammed her laptop shut, still unable to answer why she hadn’t simply shut down the account. She took a deep breath and tried to still her hammering heart. If anything, the pounding only got worse, and she broke out in a cold sweat.
It’s just a panic attack. Calm down.
Taking a few deep breaths, Berg considered calling her therapist, Dr. Thompson, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. She hadn’t been to see the woman since Jay had left. In fact, Dr. Thompson didn’t even know that Jay was gone. If she did, she would have insisted Berg come and see her immediately to avoid a relapse.
But Berg couldn’t face it. She couldn’t sit there and deconstruct the details of Jay leaving her. Analyze what had gone wrong. Pick over it like a scab until it got infected.
She looked at the ring still in place on her shaking left hand.
No. There’s still hope.
Berg wandered into her small bathroom, looking for the sleeping pills she hadn’t needed for months. She opened a few drawers in the cabinet, rummaging around the perfectly ordered items. Her hand clasped around something hard and metallic. It wasn’t what she was looking for, but it would do.
It’s better than going to a club.
She knew she was rationalizing but didn’t care. Berg grabbed the nail scissors in her left hand and jabbed the point in her right arm, drawing up from wrist to elbow. Ignoring the blood dripping on the bathroom tile, she searched under the sink for the peroxide. She removed the lid and poured the liquid into the cut, enjoying the instant sting and the crackling, foaming bubbling in the wound. The pain hit a crescendo, and she felt her mind-numbing endorphins kick in.
Heading back to the couch, she lay down and concentrated on the throbbing of her arm instead of the pulsing pain in her heart.
Chapter Sixteen
Berg and Arena arrived late to Reverend Michael Robertson’s sermon the next Sunday and sat in the last pew at the back of the church watching as the minister banged his fist on his pulpit and bellowed about original sin.
“Didn’t you get enough of church last Sunday? Or the one before that? Et cetera?” Arena whispered, scowling.
“One sermon is one too many,” Berg muttered, her lips twisting into a sardonic smirk. “But that’s not going to catch us our gang rapists, is it? First Community was a bust, so maybe the Robertson church will give us something.”
“Just how many Sundays do I have to sacrifice? I moved out of my parents’ place so I could stop going to church, you know.”
“So you’ve mentioned every single fucking Sunday for the last month. You wanna catch these guys or not? If I can sit through this shit, surely you can.”
“Fucking whatever,” Arena grumbled as Father Robertson finally stopped yelling and a group of young men and women dressed in black and white filed on stage and lined up four rows deep.
A beautiful harmony filled the space, helped by the acoustics of the church, until the music resonated in the air so thickly Berg felt as though she could reach out and touch it. “Wow, that’s beautiful. What is that?”
Arena raised his eyebrows. “It’s ‘Agnus Dei.’ Just how big a heathen are you? You haven’t heard ‘Agnus Dei’ before?”
Berg elbowed him in the ribs.
The choir began singing something else Berg didn’t recognize, and she once again turned her attention to the congregation.
“There’s Maggie.” She discreetly gestured toward the young woman sitting with mother, her head bowed. “Back safely in the bosom of her family, obviously.”
“She still refusing to talk to you?”
“Yes. I don’t think our presence will be welcomed here today,” Berg said as Father Robertson made his way to the pulpit once again.
“Thank you to the Chicago Youth Choir. They will also be closing our service today,” Robertson said. “The choir has just returned from a very successful tour of churches in Illinois and will be asking for donations at the end of the service to help fund their ongoing tour . . .”
Berg jerked her head back to the front of the church. “Did he just say the Chicago Youth Choir?”
Arena shifted in the pew, looking at the choir members. “Yeah. So what?”
“Isn’t that the same choir Con Lampert told us sang at Victoria’s service?”
Arena sat back and nodded.
“If they’ve been touring around churches in Chicago . . .”
“The choir could be the link between the victims. The churches and parishioners might be different, but the choir is the same.”
Berg studied the twenty young men and women who made up the choral group—eight women, twelve men, all wearing black robes with white, scalloped collars, over black pants or black skirts, ranging from about fourteen to their late teens or early twenties. They sat quietly as Father Robertson preached the congregation within an inch of their lives.
Berg stood, trying to get a better view. She stood on her toes but still couldn’t get a good angle. “Can you see the shoes the guys are wearing?” she whispered to Arena.
Arena folded his arms, sighed, and craned his neck, the old, wooden bench creaking as he twisted and strained his large body. “Hard to tell for certain from here, but they look like the same boots. The yellow stitching is there. We need to get a look at those soles.”
Berg nodded.
They waited like two anxious teenagers, twitching and bouncing in their seats, as Father Robertson wrapped up the sermon with a rousing speech about Christmas being a time to celebrate the birth of God’s only son rather than consumerism.
The choir stood as his last words died out and began their final song.
Berg had to admit, the music was moving. She felt it in her chest, and it made tears gather behind her eyes.
The choir silently filed off the stage, and the congregation stood, making their way to the back where Father Robertson stood at the doors waiting to send everyone on their way with some depressing Bible quote.
Berg stood to the side, watching as he shook the adults’ hands, patted the children’s heads, and had a brief word for every parishioner before holding out a basket to collect for the choir. It filled rapidly thanks to his personal appeals.
Arena moved toward her and murmured, “The choir has gone out back.”
“Let’s go.”
When Robertson’s attention was diverted elsewhere, the detectives moved quickly around the side of the stage in search of the group. They found the diverse group of young men and women mingling near the open back door, half spilling out into the immaculate church grounds and cha
tting excitedly as the detectives moved among them.
“Fuck. All the guys are wearing the same shoes. Must be a requirement of their uniform,” Arena mumbled to Berg.
“How many rapists did Dr. D say there were?” Berg whispered, looking out into the garden.
“Four, and two are related.”
Berg nodded toward a group of four young men who had broken off from the main assembly and making their way toward a small shed at the rear of the garden.
The boys slipped behind it, and soon, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted its way back to Berg and Arena.
“Let’s go,” Arena said.
The detectives found the group leaning against the metal structure, chatting and laughing softly.
“I trust you boys are all eighteen,” Arena said, flashing his badge.
The group hurriedly threw their cigarettes on the ground and stomped them out with the shoes Berg was certain were the same as the ones worn by the rapists.
“Nice boots.” She smiled and crossed one foot in front of the other, sliding her hands in her pockets and looking casual and unconcerned. “Been looking for some for myself. Can I have a closer look?”
One of the boys politely held out his foot so Berg could examine his shoe.
She tried not to pounce in her excitement as she crouched to look at the sole. The hexagonal pattern was clear.
Bingo.
Berg looked at all their boots and bobbed her head once to Arena.
One of the boys shifted uneasily from one side to the other. “We’ve got to get—”
“Don’t go yet,” Arena said, holding out his hands in front of the boys. “We’ve got a couple of questions for you.”
Berg scrutinized each boy as Arena spoke, making eye contact. Three of the boys showed no outward sign of fear, but the fourth, a redheaded boy of about sixteen or seventeen, couldn’t meet her gaze as he shuffled from one foot to the other and folded his arms hard across his abdomen as if keeping his stomach inside. She noticed sweat beading on his upper lip despite the cold early-December air.
“You boys know Maggie Robertson?” Arena asked.
