by Vanessa Skye
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this . . .” She seemed to be arguing with herself before she made up her mind. “I’ve been hearing rumors around the courts. Your girl’s a great cop and all, and she’s got an excellent clearance rate, but her personal life is . . . well, let’s just say she’s clearly got a few problems that anyone could see even without the benefit of office gossip.” Carla lowered her voice. At the end of the day, she was nothing if not discreet. “But the way she handled Feeny . . .” She subtly glanced around the room. “I may be the newest Chi-Town ASA, but I’ve been a criminal lawyer for a long time, and I know someone in trouble when I see it. She’s obviously headed for a fall, Jay, a big one, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. If you don’t disentangle yourself from this situation, she’ll take you with her. Is that what you want?”
Jay shook his head automatically because it was expected. It was what a sane, reasonable person’s response would be. Sadly, he felt as if he was neither of those things anymore.
“Are the whispers I’ve heard about you and Alicia having problems with the previous chief true?”
Jay just nodded.
“Well, my sources tell me he’s far from finished with either of you. He may be down, but don’t assume he’s out. He’s looking for a way to get his old job back, and if your detective keeps going the way she is, he won’t have to look that hard.”
Jay nodded again, but her words barely registered.
Carla stood up. “I’m not so hard up that I need to have dinner with a man who doesn’t really want to be here. I could have just about any man in this city, and I chose you.”
She wasn’t boasting; Jay knew it was fact.
“So you have a decision to make. When you’ve made it, you know where I am,” she said, sauntering out of the restaurant the same way she came in—with all eyes on her.
Chapter Eighteen
The scars of your love, remind me of us,
they keep me thinking that we almost had it all.
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless.
I can’t help feeling, we could have had it all.
–Adele, “Rolling in the Deep”
As much as Jay had tried to stick to a full week’s suspension, he had been forced to call his detectives back within five days. Their caseload couldn’t afford to have them off for a full week—the station’s clearance rate depended on them, and so did he.
“Here’s the situation,” he said as the pair settled into the chairs in front of his desk. “Tests showed Emma Young’s baby is remarkably healthy, despite everything Emma’s been through over the last few months, so her parents allowed the ob-gyn to take some DN—”
“And?” Berg said, impatient. The days forced away from her job had been the longest of her life, and she felt desperately out of the loop.
Life as a cop usually afforded her no downtime. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were eaten at her desk or in the car on the way out to a crime scene or to interview a witness. There were never any slow periods, and Berg preferred it that way—with zero time to think.
She had worked, cracked, and solved what was arguably the biggest CPD case of the decade last year, but she’d received no thanks or special commendations. Two days after she had shot Leigh, and high on exhaustion after keeping a vigil at Jay’s bedside for forty hours straight, she had walked into the station, business as usual.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a vacation, and she didn’t want another one, forced or otherwise.
“Buchanan was not that baby’s father. And we have no leads into who is,” Jay said. “Find out who the father of the baby is. The case is all but closed with Buchanan’s death, but I want to tie up any loose ends that could unravel.”
“We’ll look into it,” Arena said.
Jay glanced at him in frustration then tilted his head. “Hey, what happened to your face?” he asked, as if he just now noticed the deep black eye and bruised jaw. “And where do I send the thank-you note?”
“It’s nothing,” Arena said. “Just a difference of opinion.”
“A difference of—what kind of opinion? With a fellow cop? A civilian? Your differences of opinion could get us sued, you know!”
Arena snorted. “And your transformation into paper pusher is complete. Twelve months ago it was you wandering into the captain’s office with a black eye, if I recall correctly?”
Jay’s face went red as he stood up.
“It’s nothing, Jay.” Berg stood as well and held a hand out as if she could push his anger down with the gesture alone. “You don’t need to be concerned. It won’t come back on the station. I can vouch for it.”
Jay opened his mouth, about to ask her how she could be so sure, when his attention focused and he narrowed his eyes. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Are those bruises? On your face?”
“No. Let’s go, Arena,” Berg said and pulled the detective out of the office.
Jay felt as if his legs had lost all ability to hold him, and he practically dropped into his seat after they left, his head in his hands.
Berg had done her best to cover it up with makeup, but Jay had been able to make out the faint bruise on her cheek—a bruise his experience told him was made by an open-handed slap of a right-handed person.
Arena was right-handed.
He cursed himself out silently for not seeing it sooner. Berg not wanting anything to do with him made perfect sense if she was fucking Arena.
Jay knew that, on her bad days, she liked it rough—the picture of her strung up and beaten at that sex club had been permanently branded onto his brain. And Arena . . . that asshole, would be only too happy to help her work out her demons, Jay had no doubt. The spoken and unspoken rules about fucking your partner wouldn’t stop him in the slightest. Neither would the fact that she had been trying her best to recover from her darker needs.
Fuck.
He’d been so naïve, mooning over Berg and she had already moved on.
He looked down at his pile of paperwork, ignored it, picking up his phone instead, and dialed quickly. “Carla?” he said. “I’m ready. Let’s do this thing.”
By the end of the week, it felt as if Berg hadn’t left her desk at all.
There had to be something they’d missed in the Young case. Something, anything, that pointed to a more obvious motive. Logically, Berg knew, that all the evidence they had should be enough, but now, with Emma’s unknown lover floating around out there . . .
She heard a throat clear behind her.
“Oh, hi . . .” Berg said awkwardly, swiveling around. She wasn’t really sure what she should call the glamorous woman in the fine pinstriped suit and sexy platform pumps who had appeared out of nowhere.
Carla?
Ms. Maroney?
What she really wanted to call her—ThatfuckingbitchdoingJay?
“Detective Raymond. I was wondering if we might have a word?”
“Sure, of course. Need clarification on one of my cases?”
“No. Can we go somewhere a little more private?”
“All right.” Berg scanned the area and saw that Jay wasn’t in his office. She led the way. “Is in here okay?”
“Mmm. Appropriate, really.”
Berg ushered the woman inside and shut the door.
Carla made herself at home in Jay’s chair, leaving Berg standing awkwardly in front of her. “I’m going to cut to the chase. You and Jay, is it really over?”
Berg was stunned. For several long seconds, she could do little more than blink. “Ah, it’s not so much over as it never even got started,” she said.
“Good. He said much the same. I wanted to check because I think I can give him the life he wants, the life he deserves . . . the kind of life that you aren’t capable of giving him, despite how much you might want to. Am I right?”
Berg stared at the woman in front on her—this woman in all of her never a strand out of place, wouldn’t dream of needing braces, I look like I walk runwa
ys glory, and wanted to kill her. With every fiber of her being, she wanted the wench dead and bleeding at her feet.
She shook off the impulse and simply nodded.
Carla was right. Jay deserved the kind of life this woman could provide. A perfect life. After the debacle with his late wife, Renee, then the back and forth with Berg . . . he deserved a little peace. He deserved a loving wife who would give him the rug rats he wanted, the white picket fence—the whole thing.
“Good. Then we’ve reached an understanding.” Carla rose, straightened her suit, and clasped her hands in front of her. “It would be in Jay’s best interests, don’t you think, if he’s under no illusions about the two of you? Let him go, and let him move on. I’ll make him happy, I promise.” Carla didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and swooped out of the office with the self-assurance of a woman who knew her place in the world and was confident that she deserved to be there.
Berg wished she could experience a little of that feeling.
Just once.
Arena’s phone rang on the way back to his desk. He swore softly as he read the display and ducked into the stairwell for some privacy.
“What?” he snapped without preamble. He started shaking his head before the caller was done talking. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
The voice rose on the other end.
“I know I promised, but I can’t do this. No, I told you I’m not fucking her, and I don’t think he is either. But there’s something—” Arena pursed his lips when the voice on the other end took a threatening tone. “Fine, but when this is over, we are done, you hear me? You leave me, and my station, alone!” He hung up in disgust—with the caller and himself.
“Hey,” Berg said from behind him.
He nearly dropped his phone as he whipped around in surprise.
“I saw you head in here. I’m going to visit the Youngs and see if I can get permission to search Emma’s bedroom again for clues into the baby’s father. You coming?”
“No! Can’t. I, uh, I mean . . . I need to get on top of some reports,” Arena replied lamely as he checked her out in her simple pantsuit.
That’s all he seemed to be doing lately, checking her out. What had started as a challenge to get her into the sack had turned into something more, something he didn’t want to admit even to himself, let alone her.
I do not love her! Stop it!
Berg didn’t appear to notice his discomfort. “Of course you do. You always leave them to the last minute.”
His laugh sounded more like a strangled choke, even to him. “Yep, that’s me . . .”
Chapter Nineteen
Running from the streetlights,
shining on her grave.
Once you’ve had the good stuff,
never gonna fill you up.
–Kings of Leon, “The End”
Using the key kindly supplied by the Youngs, Berg let herself into the small home.
The big red foreclosure sign in the front was not a surprise, even though the Youngs had said nothing about losing their home. Neither of them appeared to be working, choosing instead to stay at the hospital and monitor the progress of the baby. She figured they must not have been able to keep up the mortgage payments, particularly after the second mortgage they had taken out to offer the reward. It had been duly paid to the anonymous tipster after Buchanan’s arrest.
The couple was more unwilling than ever to leave Emma’s bedside. Ever since the doctors had told them that a successful pregnancy was far more likely if they interacted with the fetus as much as possible, every spare second the desperate couple had was spent talking to the growing baby in their brain-dead daughter’s womb.
Since the DNA test had revealed the baby’s father was not Buchanan, the Youngs were happy to help Berg as much as possible in finding out who the father of their greatly anticipated grandchild was.
They had given her a key to their deserted house without hesitation so she could go through Emma’s things for potential clues. Berg didn’t hold out much hope. She had been through Emma’s room thoroughly twice already.
Berg was uneasy over the revelation that the father of the baby hadn’t been identified. With the involvement of an unknown man in Emma’s life, Berg was back to the uncomfortable feeling that the crime was more than it seemed.
To Berg, solving a crime was nothing without the why of it all—the motive. Often, the motive became apparent before any evidence or DNA was even collected. The motive usually led the police to their suspect and then the evidence. Not the other way around. She would get a satisfying click in her head, and everything became clear.
She hadn’t had the click. And until she got it, she couldn’t let it go.
She looked around Emma’s room, which was in almost exactly the same state it had been in the night of the crime. Clothes were still strewn around on the bed and floor and even more dust covered her computer and personal effects, some of it fingerprint dust applied by the crime scene techs and left untouched four months later.
Berg quickly checked in the closet and drawers for any kind of diary or journal. She flicked on the computer and checked Emma’s e-mail, but nothing stood out as she sifted through the hundreds of greetings and invitations—clearly, she had been a very popular and much-loved young woman.
Berg checked the trash folders to ensure no e-mails from a boyfriend had been deleted. Nothing. She made a note to get the tech department to check the hard drive, make sure it hadn’t been scrubbed, but she doubted Emma would have gone to such lengths or had the know-how.
She checked under Emma’s mattress—nothing. She picked up the photo of Emma with her family from the bedside table, staring at the pretty woman for a moment. While Emma’s swelling and bruising had healed and her hair was growing back following the brain surgery, she was still nothing like the vibrant woman who stared out from the photo.
In the hospital, she was nothing more than a shell, a shell being kept alive by machines and medications so her baby could hopefully be born safely in a couple of months. Given that a full-term pregnancy was unlikely, the doctor was prepared to deliver the baby any time after thirty weeks. That was the collective goal now—get Emma over that line.
Emma wore an array of hospital gowns instead of the flattering, long-sleeved, navy blue, wraparound dress she wore in the picture as she stood next to her beaming father. Happiness glowed out of her every pore, and Berg regretted never knowing Emma while she was alive.
Berg carefully placed the photo back on the table before a sudden spark of inspiration struck. She picked the photo back up, turned it over, and opened the back of the frame. Instead of finding a note or a photo conveniently leading to the baby’s father, she simply found the stamp of the photographic studio that had printed the portrait. Closing everything back up, she sighed and placed it back on the table.
Berg wandered next door into Elizabeth’s room. This immaculate room had also gained a fine film of dust since the last visit.
Elizabeth, like her parents, had not been back to the house to stay. She preferred to live at a small hotel down the road from the hospital instead, even though the family could ill afford it. Elizabeth had continued to work hard as a victims’ advocate, but Berg knew most of that was unpaid volunteer work.
Berg absentmindedly opened the closet and nightstand drawers, not really searching for anything but going through the motions while she thought.
She picked up the framed photograph on the bedside table—an enlargement of just Elizabeth and her father. Elizabeth, who was much thinner in the photo, smiled her crooked-toothed grin and clutched at her father’s arm, which was wrapped snugly around the waist of her long-sleeved, navy blue, wraparound dress.
Berg realized what she was looking at and frowned. Carrying Elizabeth’s photo with her, she rushed back into Emma’s room and compared the two prints. Elizabeth and Emma wore the same dress, struck the same pose, and had the same jewelry. Elizabeth was also much thinner in her picture than in the fa
mily portrait obviously taken the same day and still in place, albeit fire damaged, in the living room.
Why is Elizabeth’s head on Emma’s body?
“What are you doing in here?”
Heart pounding, Berg whirled around. “Elizabeth! You scared me.” It unnerved her that she hadn’t heard anyone else moving around the house.
Elizabeth smiled, displaying a new set of white, perfectly straight teeth.
Are those veneers?
“Sorry. I just got a shock. I didn’t realize you’d be here,” she said.
“Yes, your parents gave me the key. They were hoping I could find something that might indicate who the baby’s father is, but I haven’t been able to find anything at all.”
Elizabeth’s eyes rested on the photos still held in Berg’s hands. “Yes.” She slowly walked forward and took the photo that belonged in her room from Berg and tucked it close to her chest, hugging it tightly. “I think they don’t want any custody surprises. They are determined to raise Emma’s baby as their own.”
“That’s understandable. I’m sorry, is that . . . your head on Emma’s body?” Berg asked, nodding at the picture Elizabeth had just taken from her.
Elizabeth looked down at the photo for a few seconds. “Yes!” She laughed awkwardly. “The studio made a huge mistake and accidently included this in our final selection. We all had a good laugh over it, and it became a running family joke, so I kept it.”
“Oh, okay. I thought it was weird.” Berg tried to smile.
“Yes, very weird. Anyway, I’m going to make some coffee. I need some fake energy to get packed. You want some?” Elizabeth said as she walked out of Emma’s room and back into her own to replace the photograph.
“Sure. You’re going somewhere?” Berg asked. This was the first she’d heard of it.
“Yes, I bought myself a little cottage over in Evergreen Park with some money I had saved from my job. Between my work and all the media interviews I’m doing for Enough is Enough, I couldn’t live in a hotel room with my parents anymore. And I’m sure you understand why I can’t . . . live here.”