Broken (3 page)

“So how are you, Alicia?” the doctor asked.

It was the same greeting that kicked off every session. The repetitiveness was starting to annoy Berg and she ground her teeth together before answering. “Okay. Fine.”

“Are you sleeping?”

“Not really—just a few hours a night. But that’s normal for me.”

“Any relapses?”

“No,” she replied, proud.

“Any desire to relapse?”

Fuck yes
.

In one of the few Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings she had attended before finding Dr. Thompson, she remembered her fellow addicts describing the internal fight not to relapse as white knuckling. At the time she hadn’t understood, but over the past few weeks it had become only too plain. She sat on her couch at night, desperate for a distraction, grasping at the throw cushions so brutally that her skin stretched so tight over her knuckles it made them appear bloodless and white.

Every fiber of her being wanted to get up, grab her keys, and hurry out the door to find some random guy for some faceless bliss—at a bar, a sex club, anywhere. She grasped the couch until her hands ached instead, physically keeping herself in place night after endless night.

She realized she didn’t miss the euphoria of release that came with the pain-induced pleasure of her sexual masochism but the few blissful moments of silence in her head that had always followed; those peaceful seconds, or minutes when she’d been really lucky, when the storm calmed and the outside world ceased to exist and she could just float in dead air. Those moments that she felt safe from intrusive thoughts. Those precious moments spent concentrating on the physical instead of the emotional barrage. In those euphoric minutes, she found heaven as she listened to her heart rate slow and her breathing return to normal. No stress, no awareness, and no disparaging voice of her mother reminding her of what a disappointment she was.

She recalled the music playing on the drive through peak hour traffic to Dr. Thompson’s near west side office—Pink Floyd.

Yes, that’s it. That’s what I miss. Being
comfortably numb.

Without that regular calm, she felt as though she was climbing the walls. Everything was too edgy, too real; her feelings were stronger and there was never any respite.

“Alicia?” the doctor asked again as Berg gnawed on a fingernail.

“No, I don’t want to relapse,” she finally replied.

Liar.

“Are you hearing your mother’s voice?”

“No . . . not for a few weeks anyway. Only in person when I have to visit her at the hospice.”

Mary had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years and was in a home. Every now and then, Berg dragged herself up to Skokie to see the mother who abhorred her. She didn’t know why she bothered. All she and her mother shared were mutual hatred, good looks—although her mother was fair where Berg was dark—a propensity for addiction, and an uncanny ability to choose the wrong men.

“Anything happening with Jay?”

“Not really. I mean, I don’t even know if I’m ready for a relationship yet. Am I?”

“That’s up to you. It’s been a few months since you had any sexual contact, so your brain chemicals should be starting to regulate themselves. If you do decide to be with Jay, sexually, then we’ll just have to ensure none of the old urges return.”

“I guess. But what if they do? What if I can never be with a man that way again without losing myself? What if I hear the voice again?”

Dr. Thompson smiled. “I think you’ll be fine. My guess is that your acting out was more about escape than sex. And once we get the depression under control . . .”

Berg felt helpless. For the first time since she’d started therapy, she considered asking the doctor for some numbing antidepressants—the same drugs she had adamantly shunned two months ago.

“As for the voice, ignore it. There’s a deeper, wiser voice inside you. Listen to that instead.”

“There is?” Berg replied, skeptical.

“Yes,
your
voice. It’s the voice that got you this far. The same voice that helped you become a cop, to rise above your father’s abuse and your mother’s neglect, and to live with severe depression without suicide. That voice is much stronger. Trust it.”

Berg nodded as her cell beeped. “Sorry,” she said, secretly relieved. “I’ve got to go.”

Chapter Two

Why did you run, when I’m right here?

It’s all gonna be the same, when you get there.

–The Kin, “Together”

“J
esus! Took you long enough. Even the lab geeks beat you here. What the hell were you doing?” Arena asked as Berg arrived at the scene in the blue-collar neighborhood of Pullman. He ran his hands through his closely cropped black hair and pulled his winter coat close to block out the freezing February evening.

“I was in the Near West Side, and none of your freaking business,” she replied, also clutching her coat closer. “I got here as fast as I could. What’s the story?”

“Twenty-one-year-old woman found beaten, tied up in her parents’ garage, and doused in gas. She’s alive, barely. Paramedics are loading her up now.”

Berg quickly walked to the ambulance to see what looked like a mound of bloody bandages being loaded into the ambulance. “Can she talk?”

“See for yourself,” the paramedic replied, grimacing as he removed some of the soaked red gauze from the woman’s face.

Berg winced. “Jesus Christ! Half her head is missing.”

“Beaten to a pulp, detective. She’s a cadaver.” He shook his head and shut the doors.

Standing on the front lawn of the bland suburban home, Berg took in the scene as Arena joined her.

The flashing lights of at least six emergency vehicles, including the Chicago Fire Department, illuminated the simple cream house with its white trim, brick steps, and brick chimney, in erratic neon red and blue. None of the home’s lights were on, so she assumed no one else was home. There were no obvious signs of forced entry on the wooden front door or on the electric, aluminum garage door, left ajar where the paramedics had gained access.

“A boyfriend or an ex?” It was a guess, but one with extensive personal experience to back it up. “Someone with access.”

Arena nodded. “Looks like it. According to her neighbor, she catches Metra
after work at the same time every night. She gets off at the South Street Shore Line, walks east along East 95
^th
Street, then south down South University Avenue to home. Less than a mile walk or about ten minutes in this freezing weather if you’re hustling.”

“Let’s get surveillance tapes. See if she was followed or if he lay in wait for her here,” Berg suggested. “There’s a school on the corner of East 95
^th
; see if they have any cameras pointing toward the street.”

Berg stepped into the tiny single garage to examine the bloody ropes the paramedics had cut off the girl. “Has forensics finished photographing this scene?”

“Yep,” Arena said.

Slipping covers over her boots and snapping on gloves, she bent down to examine the cording closely. Berg noted that while the garage was empty of any cars, there was an almost inordinate amount of bright red, clotting blood mingled with the oil stains and gas that marred the otherwise bare floor. She hoped it would be cleaned up before the girl’s parents saw it. She made her notes and left forensics to bag and tag.

“Who was it, Emma or Elizabeth?” she asked, pointing to the storage boxes clearly labeled and placed just so on the high homemade aluminum shelving unit.

“The neighbor gave a preliminary ID of Emma Young, but she wasn’t sure, since the girl was so badly beaten. The license found inside a discarded purse in the house seems to confirm. The neighbor had to be treated for shock. She found the victim when she came over to investigate the smoke. She has a key,” Arena replied, reading from his notebook.

Berg knew they could get more from the neighbor later, if need be. Arena would have the woman’s personals in the interview recorded on his cell phone. It was standard procedure.

She nodded thoughtfully. The whole place reeked of gas and her eyes watered. Standing up, she walked through the adjoining garage door to the rest of the plain home. Reaching the front room, which was still dripping with water and foam, she found the firefighters packing up their equipment.

She flicked on her own cell’s recording feature. “The fire didn’t reach the garage, why?” she asked one of them.

“Amateur hour. The gas was splashed around pretty randomly and just didn’t lead to the garage effectively.”

“Okay, thanks.” Berg wandered around the room.

The carpet that wasn’t smoke or water damaged was deep beige and looked worn but clean. The furnishings were also clean and tidy but old. The cream couch was faux leather and melted like cheese in some places. It was covered with sodden blue throw cushions.

“Has forensics processed this room?” she asked Arena.

“Yeah. Not that there was much left to process thanks to the fire and water,” he said.

She nodded. “I suspected as much. Looks like he came in behind her through the front door, attacked her in this room, then threw her body into the garage, doused her, the garage, and this room in gas, then lit it on his way out the front door.”

“Yep. I’ve checked the rest of the house; nothing seems out of place. The front door’s being printed by the techs now, then they’ll move into the bedrooms.”

“He seemed confident he wouldn’t be disturbed. Where’s the family?”

“The neighbor said the parents take a salsa class on Wednesday nights until late, and the sister often works late—she’s a legal secretary or something.”

“She was lucky she wasn’t home, too, or we could have two victims,” she replied, fingering a family portrait on a low hutch against one wall.

They were a good-looking family—the father was tall, trim, and blond while the mother was shorter, rounder with thin, cropped mousy hair and hazel eyes. They posed with their two girls, smiling proudly. Both daughters had their father’s big blue eyes, but that was where the similarity ended. One daughter was tall and blond, like her father, and so slender and pretty she would not have been out of place on a runway. Her hair cascaded to her waist in loose waves, and she glowed as she hugged her father close, her arms around his waist. The other daughter was short and round like her mother, her thin, mousy brown hair carefully styled, and had crooked teeth.

They looked like a perfect, happy family in the snapshot.

“Which is which?” she asked Arena.

“Emma’s the hot one,” he said.

Berg bristled at the comment, put the picture back, and wandered down a long hallway to the left of the lounge, entering the parents’ neat double bedroom and moving into the small bathroom off to one side.

Arena followed.

The bathroom had the original fifties fittings, including small, rough brown square tiles on the floor and walls, and a dull, undersized steel showerhead over a worn bathtub.

Stepping out, she entered one of the sisters’ bedrooms. A plain white single bed stood against the back wall, the pink ruffled comforter thrown carelessly over the wooden footboard. Clothes were strewn about, overflowing out of the single-door built-in closet to the left.

To the right, on a white desk, sat an older model computer that was covered in dust. A porcelain dish containing worn-looking gold jewelry sat on the bedside table.

“Robbery was clearly not the motive,” Berg said to Arena, who nodded.

On the bedside table was a copy of the family picture Berg had seen in the living room.

The next bedroom was a carbon copy of the first, but in this room, the pink ruffled comforter covered the white bed neatly, the wardrobe was closed, and the same computer was shiny and clean. On a bedside table was an enlarged photo of just Elizabeth and her father. It looked like it had been taken at the same shoot as the other family picture.

Elizabeth’s room
.

Berg imagined the clothes in the closet were folded and hung neatly, and a quick check proved it.