The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut

by John Rickards

  Dreary apartment building that smelled like old coffee.

  “So am I suspect or something? Shouldn’t my lawyer be here?” Stick-thin guy well into his fifties. He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. It’s not like I’ve done anything. Come on in.”

  A scruffy little office above a thrift store.

  “No, I was at my sister’s place in New Hampshire. But I’ve seen this case on the news, and I’ve got a theory you might be interested in…”

  An anonymous small house in Fall River.

  “Yeah?” said Cody Williams. “What do you want?”

  His home was a narrow two-story house with a square patch of slightly ragged greenery that passed for a front yard. A few shrubs, some flowers, all starting to grow rampant. An unmarked white van sat on the driveway. When Williams — a pale, wiry guy with long curly hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a grey T-shirt and jogging pants — opened the door, a wash of warm stale air, moist and acrid, flowed past him. The slick skin reek of old sweat. Older scents embedded in the fabric of the house itself. My nostrils recoiled, but I tried not to show it.

  “Mr Williams, I’m Special Agent Alex Rourke and this is Agent Jeff Agostini.” We held up our badges. “We need to ask you a few routine questions if you have a few minutes.”

  One side of Williams mouth twitched into a smile. “This is about that kiddie thing, right?” His choice of words jarred. “I’ve seen it on the news. Then someone from the cops called about the van, asked where I was.”

  “That’s right, Mr Williams. All we’re doing is asking people a few standard questions, just to eliminate them from our lists.”

  “You guys the only two they got working on that? I’d kinda figured there’d be more of you. I mean, where’re we at now, four of them girls gone? Five?”

  “There’s a lot of cops working on this too, Mr Williams.”

  “A lot, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And all they’ve got for you two to do is ask ‘routine questions’, Agent Rourke? With all them pretty young things still missing?” Another twitch of the mouth. A thin strand of spittle stretched between his lips.

  “That’s not all we’ve got.” I shook my head slightly, but kept my eyes fixed on his. I had the cold sweat adrenal feel that came when you got close to the jackpot. If this guy couldn’t give us any answers, I told myself, if he was still a potential suspect by the end of today, I’d make him for the abductions. “This is just what we’re doing today. Just talking to people.”

  Williams shrugged. “How long’s this going to take?”

  “A few minutes, nothing more. Can we come in?”

  “We’re best talking here, Agent Rourke. I’ve been doing some work on the house. Place is a mess and there’s dust all over.” I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.

  I looked at Agostini and he took out a notebook. To Williams I said, “How long have you owned your van, Mr Williams?”

  “A couple of years.” He sniffed. “I use it for work mostly.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I deliver parts for Drill Hall Collectors’ Autos.” A defiant tone in his voice. Like we were kids playing ‘twenty questions’ and he wanted us to hit the limit without guessing right.

  “Is that here in Fall River?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Where do you deliver to?”

  “All over. Wherever the customers live. Everywhere from New Haven to Manchester.”

  “You do these deliveries every day?” I said.

  “Not every day, no. Sometimes I have time off, or I work at the auto shop. But most days I have to take something somewhere. Sometimes I help with installation as well.”

  “Been doing it long?”

  Williams shrugged. “About a year.”

  “Nice job?”

  “It has its good points.” He smiled faintly. Knowingly.

  “Did you have deliveries to do on May twenty-first?”

  He looked like he was thinking for a moment. “What day was that?”

  “A Tuesday.”

  “Lessee… that was the same day as the first of them, wasn’t it? No, I can’t remember. Should do; the last guy asked as well. I’ll have to check my work book.”

  “You do that,” Agostini said.

  Williams ducked back into the house, leaving the two of us alone for a moment. I glanced at Agostini and raised my eyebrows, flicked my eyes at the place Williams had been standing. He looked back and shrugged almost imperceptibly. Then our suspect returned.

  “Yeah, I had a delivery that day, Agent Rourke. Lunchtime I had to run some engine spares out to a customer out past Pittsfield on Route 7.”

  “And you left there at what time?”

  “Dunno. Got home early evening, at a guess.”

  “Could we have this customer’s name and address?” Agostini asked from behind me.

  “Sure.” Williams handed over a scruffy notebook open to a page full of spidery writing. “It’s right there.”

  “You live here alone, right?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there anyone who might be able to confirm when you arrived home?”

  Williams shrugged. “I doubt it. I hardly know my neighbors. No reason they’d remember.”

  “Okay. How about June twentieth?”

  “I dunno. What does it say in there?” He gestured at the notebook.

  Agostini flicked through until he found the right page, squinting to read Williams’ scrawl. “Empty. There’s no entry for it.”

  “Then I guess I was doing nothing. Maybe I was working at the auto shop. You’d have to ask my boss there.”

  “Okay, we will. July seventeenth?”

  Williams looked at Agostini, who skimmed forward a few pages. “Nothing again,” he said to me.

  “There you go, Agent Rourke. Nothing again.”

  “August twenty-third?”

  “Some place called West Boylston,” Agostini said. “Two in the afternoon.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember anything more about it, do you?” I asked Williams. “Since it’s so recent and everything.”

  “Off the top of my head, Agent Rourke, I don’t think I remember a thing about it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I do a lot of these jobs, you know. Must’ve been just the same as all the others. I don’t think about them much.”

  Agostini glanced at me and then handed the notebook to Williams. The suspect nodded to my partner but didn’t said anything.

  “Thank you, Mr Williams,” I told him. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything more.”

  “Before we go, I don’t suppose I could ask a favor?” Agostini said, matter-of-factly. “I couldn’t use your bathroom, could I? We’ve been doing this all day. All that coffee, you know?”

  Williams smiled again, lines of spittle stretching out once more at the corners of his mouth, white against his teeth. “I’m sorry, Agent Agostini. Afraid my bathroom’s full of junk at the moment where I’ve been working on the house. Until I put everything back it can’t be used.”

  “No? Well, thanks anyway.” We turned to leave.

  “You be sure to tell me if you find anything out about them girls,” Williams called after us. It sounded like he was smirking and he couldn’t keep it out of his voice. “It’s such a shame to see something bad happening to such pretty kids.”

  As we walked down the driveway and the door to the house closed behind us, I said to Agostini, “What did you see in that notebook?”

  “Just what he said – a list of jobs he’s had to do.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Did you get a look at any of the ones on the days around the abductions?”

  Agostini grinned. “Yeah, but I need a map. I don’t know where they are. You think it could have been him?”

  I looked back at the house before climbing into the car. There was no sign of movement inside, bu
t I imagined Williams standing in the musty interior, watching us. Staring through the windows, smiling crookedly. “Yeah, I do. I sure do.”

  The disappearance of Abbie Galina two days later only confirmed my suspicions.

  08.

  Boston, MA. 2004.

  “The FBI began last-ditch efforts to persuade ‘Fall River Killer’ Cody Williams to reveal the locations of four of his victims today, calling in the former federal agent who handled the original case in a bid to make him talk. Although he was never formally charged, Williams is alleged to have killed seven girls in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Only three have ever been found.”

  Cut to footage taken by one of the news crews at the prison that morning. Camerawork at distance, showing me and Downes walking into the jail. Someone at the station must have recognized my face and done their research.

  “Former FBI agent Alex Rourke, seen here entering MCI-Ashworth prison earlier today, led the investigation into the crimes, interviewing Williams several times and testifying at his trial.” Cut back to the studio. Up came a pair of still photos. “Mr Rourke retired from the FBI not long after Williams’ conviction for the murder of suspected serial rapist Clinton Travers and the attempted abduction of thirteen-year-old Nicole Ballard, and now works as a private detective in Boston. Mr Rourke was brought in by the FBI’s local field office thanks to pressure from relatives of the missing victims who want the chance to give their loved ones a proper burial.”

  Cut again, this time to a man just into his fifties. Dark sweater contrasting iron-grey hair. Square glasses. He was standing in front of his yard, a neatly kept square of green lined with shrubs. Joe Morgan, Brooke’s father. I still recognized him.

  “We just want to give our daughter the peace she deserves,” he said. “I can't ever forgive Cody Williams for what he did, but it’d at least mean he was showing some repentance for it before he died. By keeping silent for so long, all he’s done is kept our grief fresh. It’s time we all got to move on.”

  Back to the studio. A brief ‘no comment so far’ from the Bureau wrapped everything up and the anchor moved on to another story.

  “They didn’t waste any time, did they?” I said to Rob as I leaned back in my seat, feeling a headache coming on.

  “Do you think the exposure is going to give you any problems?”

  “I doubt it. I’d guess a couple of calls from journalists – I’m in the phone book, easy enough to find. Maybe a few through to the office as well. But that should be it. And as I’m not saying anything except through the Bureau, and only when I’ve got something from Williams, they shouldn’t be too much hassle. I hope.”

  “If you say so. I’ll field anything that comes into the office. Are you going to be in at all over the next couple of days?”

  “Yeah, almost certainly. It depends how talkative Williams is tomorrow and what he says. If it’s anything like today, he won’t use up too much of my time.” And I was just fine with that, I figured.

  “In that case, I’ll see you soon. Take care.”

  I hung up and left the TV on. Made a cup of coffee, surfed channels, the remaining papers and photos in the Williams file abandoned for the time being. I’d made something bearing a passing resemblance to dinner when the phone rang again. I picked up, half expecting some journalist who’d just caught the news.

  “You’re a sick asshole who’s going to burn in hell.”

  I thought about hanging up, but didn’t. Said, “What?”

  “You heard me,” the unidentified woman said. “Harassing an innocent man while he’s dying. Keeping him locked away without any genuine evidence. You’re nothing but scum.”

  I sighed. “Lady, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Cody Williams is the most unpleasant human being I have ever met and the thought of him rotting in hell for what he’s done keeps me warm and happy at night. Goodbye.”

  I hit ‘end’ and dropped the phone in its cradle.

  The same thing happened twice more before I unplugged it, coming to the inevitable conclusion that people were idiots.

  “Leave the poor man alone! Just like the government – can’t even let a man die in peace!” Click.

  “You framed him, you and the FBI.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t kill Clinton Travers. Why would he? And he was trying to protect that poor little girl, probably from someone like you! So you fixed things to send him to jail. But God knows what you did, Mr Rourke, and you’ll get what you deserve.” Click.

  Next day I drove back out to MCI-Ashworth, once more under gray skies. The crowd outside the prison gates was larger than before; the newcomers probably saw the protest on TV and showed up to get their faces on the news. In addition, a second smaller gathering had clustered a little closer to the main highway. This group of a dozen or so had a couple of placards with them, one of which read ‘CHILD KILLER ROT IN JAIL’ in bright red letters. Williams’ supporters further along shouted and jeered from the roadside, some moving closer to my car to vent their spleen in full voice while I waited for the gate to open. I couldn’t make out any of their words; I’d cranked up on the stereo for just this occasion. None of them looked happy, and neither was I. A couple of TV crews filmed the one-way exchange of views. I let them slide past me as I entered the comparative tranquillity of the prison complex.

  That was how it went for the next two days. The news cameras didn’t bother turning up again, but the protesters maintained their vigil with dwindling numbers. Every time I visited the jail we endured the same pointless face-off with the same lack of results. By the second day, I’d lost my anger towards them and felt only a sour sort of pity.

  Inside, Williams kept talking, the two of us alone in the empty, hollow visiting room. He recounted the abduction and murder of Abbie Galina and, in turn, Joanne Tilley, broken here and there by wet, hacking coughing and other signs of his obviously weakening condition. Very little was different to what had happened to Kerry Abblit. I’d have preferred he talked about something helpful, but he’d only tell me what had happened to the victims who’d never been found after he’d relived what happened to the ones we already knew about. I let his eager ramblings about the girls run their course with minimal interruption and buried my disgust.

  Abbie Galina played Titania in her last school production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. She had a rapidly growing collection of music and wanted to be a DJ when she grew up. She was throttled and buried in straggly woodland.

  In the evenings I left the phone off the hook. My dreams were plagued by flashes of dead children.

  Joanne Tilley was on the under-13s swim team and also enjoyed gymnastics. She'd spend her Saturdays shopping at the local mall with her friends. She used to enjoy skateboarding, but a badly broken arm had seriously dented her confidence. Cody broke it again, before strangling her with electrical cable.

  Then, on the fourth day, there was a letter waiting for me in the mailbox when I left for the prison. Handwritten address, Rhode Island postmark.

  Dear Agent Rourke,

  The FBI told us they were hoping to persuade Cody Williams to tell them where we might find Holly’s remains before he dies, but they never said they would be asking you to speak to that man again. After the work you did to catch him and the evidence you gave at his trial we wouldn’t have asked you anything more. We had thought we’d managed to put the whole thing behind us, knowing she’d never be coming back to us and that we had to move on. Strange how we still cling to any hope of news after all this time. Now we are both praying that you can learn what we need from him.

  We’ve seen those people protesting on the news. We can’t believe it or understand it. Please don’t let them get to you, Agent Rourke. You were always good to us while you were looking for Holly and the man who killed her. Please keep trying, for us.

  Good luck and God bless,

  John and Martha Tynon

  I read the letter through, then dropped it on the coffee table. Headed for t
he jail under the cold sunshine of the Massachusetts fall. I swallowed the emotions, tried not to get caught up in the old hurt of the Tynon family.

  Williams greeted me with a long, ragged clearing of his throat. This time he didn’t manage to hawk up any phlegm, just made dry gasping noises, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, before he got himself under control. Once he was finished, he said, “So who do you want to talk about today, Agent Rourke?”

  I grabbed a coffee from the machine and sat down opposite him. “Well, we’re done with the kids we already know about. So how about we start with Katelyn Sellars? She was the first of your victims we still haven’t found.”

  “Well, it ain't necessarily so that we’re out of people we know about. There’s at least one other we both know.” He smiled faintly, wolfish. “But sure, let’s talk about that Sellars girl.”

  “You picked her up on her way to school, right?”

  Williams smirked. “Yeah. I had to leave early that day, driving all the way to Albany. You got a photo of her? For old times’ sake.”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. She looked real fine that morning. Good enough to eat. Black school trousers. Them little white socks. Just lovely.”

  I sighed, tried to hurry him up, get him to the point. “You snatched her in the usual way? The lost delivery driver routine. Bundle her into the van.”

  “Yeah. Her mind must’ve been elsewhere ‘cos she hardly knew it was happening. Hadn’t even started trying to scream by the time I had her in the van and the door shut again.” He ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. “I took her away, had to stash her before we got to Albany.”

  “Where did you stash her?”

  “That doesn’t matter, Agent Rourke. She wasn’t there long. Some place off the highway.”

  “You moved her again afterwards?”