The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut (2 page)

I thought of all the good reasons I had for refusing. I thought of Cody's smug satisfaction. I thought of the way it had felt to stand helplessly by while he’d committed his crimes. While he’d killed those kids.

I thought of all the lies.
 

“I don’t know about all this, Agent Downes.”

“You don’t know if you can succeed?”

“I don’t know if I want to share the same air as Williams.”

“It’ll be good publicity for your company, especially if you pull it off. A media spotlight can only be good for business.”

“You mean this whole thing will be good publicity for the FBI,” I said. “You can have the local SAC or some spokesperson handing out soundbites about helping the community, victim support. The caring, sharing face of today’s Bureau. And you can’t afford to let this slip away from you.”

“Conversely,” she said as if I hadn’t spoken, “if it became known that you refused to help, I imagine the bad publicity would seriously damage the reputation of both yourself and your company.”

“Is that so, Agent Downes?”

“I doubt the families would think very highly of you either.”

“You forget that I was the one who got the guy that killed their kids. Of all people, they’d be the ones most likely to understand why I wouldn’t want to set eyes on a son of a bitch like Cody Williams again.” I tried to keep my temper in check. “Let’s face it, Agent Downes, the Bureau needs this far more than I do, so don’t try threatening me with talk about public opinion. You’re the ones who can’t afford to get crucified in the media if you don’t come up with the goods.”

The line went quiet for a moment before Downes said anything further. From her shift in tone, I guessed she’d decided to abandon that line of argument. “I’m sorry, Mr Rourke,” she said.
 

“Alex. Calling me Mr Rourke makes you sound like my dentist.”

“I wasn’t trying to coerce you, Alex, just pointing out the facts. I do understand why you might not want to speak to Williams. Really, I do. I know that it wasn’t long after his case that you had your, uh…”

“Breakdown. A couple of months after his conviction, that’s right.”

“And having spent a short while in the company of Williams, I’m inclined to agree with you that he is a son of a bitch and the sooner he checks out the better. But the families of his victims deserve one more chance to find out what happened to them, and time is running out. If there’s any chance we can persuade him to speak to us, we’ve got to try, for their sake. We’ll pay you well for your time and don’t forget the benefits – or otherwise – of that media spotlight.”

I rubbed my eyes, thinking long and hard. Rob was watching me across the room, although he was trying real hard to make it look like he was reading something on his screen. My head was swamped by memories long locked away.
 

I could smell the rancid sweat on Williams’ skin the first time we met, see the hunger and the mocking light dancing in his eyes. I could hear his easy denial of his crimes, the undertone that said he was lying and that he knew I was aware of it and was enjoying that knowledge immensely.

“Okay,” I said, much to my instant regret. “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Alex.”

“Here are my conditions. Firstly, I’ll work on this until I exhaust all the possibilities I can think of for as long as I can stand it. When I say I’m all out of ideas, or I’m fed up with the whole thing, my job is over. I go in there and Williams tells me to go fuck myself, I can walk away.”

“That’s no problem.”

“Secondly, you’re going to have to clarify the legal position here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Williams was never convicted of anything apart from the murders of Clinton Travers and the attempted kidnapping of Nicole Ballard. We had to drop the charge of murdering Kerry Abblit for lack of evidence, and we could never make cases against him for the others.”

“But we know it was him,” she pointed out.

“You, me and everyone else knows, but that’s
opinion
, not legal fact. Williams isn’t going to incriminate himself by revealing the locations of four murder victims if he thinks he could end up in court. And I don’t want to go through the process of testifying again. If there’s going to be any kind of legal proceedings arising out of these interviews, I’m not going to be involved.”

“That’s fair enough. We’re still working out the details, but we already had those concerns in mind. No one’s bothered about trying to get him into court – he’ll have died in jail before any case comes to trial. It’s likely that the interviews will be arranged in such a way that nothing you learn in them would be admissible, so trying to bring murder charges would be a moot point. Good enough?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“When are you available to start?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Excellent. I’ll arrange the details and then call you with a time when we can meet to go over everything beforehand. See you then.”

I put the phone down and pinched the bridge of my nose. Rob waited a few seconds for nicety’s sake and then said, “So, what’s the deal with Williams?”

02.

Providence, RI. 1997.

Purple-white lightning sheared through the thick bank of black cloud overhead as rain pounded against the windshield of our Lincoln Town Car. The oppressive, cloying heat that had surrounded Providence on my arrival from Quantico had given way to an explosive summer thunderstorm. Agent Jeff Agostini from Boston Field Office swore under his breath as he eased off the gas to account for the slick highway surface and cranked the wipers up to full speed by way of return. Winds buffeted the window beside me.

“Blazing sunshine back in Virginia, huh?” he said, half-shouting over the storm. He was a young guy, younger than me. Looked like a fresh OTC graduate. Well-built, eager and sharp-eyed. Close-cut blond hair and a sharp, aquiline nose. I hadn't known him long enough to judge his qualities as an agent, but he’d hardly shut up since we left the airport.

“That’s right. This’ll blow itself out before the afternoon, though, I reckon.”

“Maybe so, maybe so.” He tapped his index finger on the wheel in time to some unheard music running through his head. “First time in New England?”

I shook my head. “I was born in Maine.”

“Heh. Northerner, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You come back here much?”

“Last time I was in this part of the country was a series of rapes in Hartford a few months ago. Before then, I dunno. Not much.”

“Rapes, sure, I heard about those. You get the son of a bitch?”

I glanced at him. He was driving one-handed, freeing the other to gesticulate for emphasis on just about everything he said. Must just have been his way, I guessed. “Not yet.”

“Yeah, but I heard you had a suspect.”

“That’s right.”

“Some guy you brought in for questioning, I heard. I think someone was talking about that at the office.”

“Yeah, we had a guy,” I said.

“Was it at the office? No, no. Saw it on TV.”

“He wouldn’t talk and the cops haven’t nailed him on the evidence. Not yet.”

He nodded vigorously. “Some of them are real hardasses like that, yeah. Had one guy we brought in on one of the first cases I worked after the Academy. He was running guns and all sorts of shit in through Boston Harbor. Two years ago? Eighteen months ago?” He paused, fingers drumming still on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. “When did the Steelers take the Cowboys to the cleaners? Broke their quarterback’s leg, beat them by nearly fifty clear points.”

“No idea.”

“Anyway, whenever. So we have this guy with a warehouse – not just, like, a truck or something, but a fucking warehouse – full of serious military hardware. We have half a dozen people who claim they work for him. And, ha, we’ve even got a dozen Haitians he’d shipped in for some side deal with someone. They’re happy to testify that he was the one giving orders to the men who took them out of the container they were kept in on the way up from Florida. We’re still getting the forensics, but we’ve got the guy by the balls, right?”

“Sounds like it.”

“By the
balls
. And would he talk? Not a bit of it.”

“Not even to cut a deal?”

“You got it. He kept claiming he was just renting out this warehouse to some people he’d never met and the whole thing was nothing to do with him. Even after the forensics came in. He was just a landlord to the mob, or some shit. He was as innocent as anything.”

I nodded. “And he was dead in the water when the case came to court.”

“Jury took less than an hour to decide. Sent down for a whole lotta years. And the look on his face, like he couldn’t believe it. I’m telling you, man, I laughed for days at that.”
 

As the strip malls on the outskirts of Providence began to thicken and intensify, Agostini took his eyes off the road long enough to look down at the case wedged between my feet. “Is there anything you want to know that wasn’t in the reports?”

“I don’t think so,” I yelled back as another sheet of lightning wracked the sky. “You’ve got three missing kids so far, all between the ages of twelve and thirteen. The last one, Holly Tynon, went missing, believed abducted, some time late yesterday.”

“From right here in Providence. The first two, Kerry Abblit and Katelyn Sellars were from Fall River and Springfield, across the state line in Massachusetts.”

“Yeah. And there’s been no sign of them since, and no suggestion they were running away from home.”

“Right, right. No way were these runaways,” he said. “Good girls, from good families.”

“It’s been two months since Abblit went missing and around four weeks for Sellars. Information on what happened to both of them is sketchy.”

“Sketchy. Yeah, you could say that.”

“No one saw it happen, and there’s nothing in the way of physical evidence to work on.”

“Yeah, and both city police forces were seriously thorough in canvassing for information, did a shitload of door-to-door, but there’s been nothing much of any use so far.”

“Nothing helpful on suspicious vehicles at the first two disappearances?”

“Uh-huh,” Agostini said. Tap, tap, tap from his fingers. “That is, we have a bunch of
possibles
, but both happened in urban areas, so there were a lot of vehicles around. We could try tracking every car and truck and shit that were around at the time and still be working on it by the time we retire, you know?”

Into houses now, residential areas, as the highway blended into the town’s road network. A news van passed us, heading in the other direction. Above, the storm continued to pound away.

“Okay,” I said, running through the facts more for my own benefit than for extra input from Agostini. “So Holly was last seen at around 9:00 PM yesterday, leaving a friend’s house to walk home, a journey of just under a quarter mile. A couple of people living on the same street as her friend remember seeing her pass by.”

“Yeah, they were the last ones we know that saw her.”

“For the moment. We might get lucky when this thing hits the evening news. Jog a few memories. At around 9:45 PM, Holly’s parents called her friend but found out she’d left well before then. They then phoned other friends to see if she was with any of them, gone somewhere else on her way home. When those calls drew a blank, her father John went out to check the route between the two houses to see if he could find any sign of her.”

“And he found jack shit.”

“Right, nothing. At around 10:15, they called the police.”

Agostini nodded. “And forty-five minutes later, the cops contacted us, and as this is a child abduction we contacted you NCAVC guys. Speaking of which, isn’t there, like, supposed to be another agent here with you?”

“Bert Drury. Went down with serious food poisoning this morning. Hospitalized and out of action for the time being.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. They didn’t tell you?”

“No, but I’ve been kinda busy, so I might have missed it.”

“Well, you’re working with me on this case. For now, at least. Have you had anything from Behavioral Analysis yet?”

“Not so far as I know. Last I heard they were still working on it.” Tap, tap, tap. “I’m partnering you on this?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Cool. Because I really hope we get this asshole before he snatches any more kids.”

“You got kids of your own?” I asked.

“No, this kind of thing just gets to me, you know? I guess you work on these cases a lot though.”

“I guess so. But you never get used to it. Not when it’s children.”

Agostini swung the car into a street of pleasant identikit suburban housing. Upper-end blue collar or non-management white collar family homes. Tidy, compact front yards. Boxy, but reasonably attractive buildings. There was a block of small stores and a gas station down one of the side streets we passed. And up ahead, two more news vans and a couple of patrol cars belonging to Providence PD. No TV crews were out filming; they were probably sheltering from the rain.