The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut

by John Rickards

  I shrugged. “If you were worried about me finding you through Perry, you'd just have killed him. You wouldn't have tried to frame me, and you wouldn't have known this had anything to do with Anderson.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that son of a bitch in years, until a few days ago I got a phone call. The voice at the other end told me that you’d been sticking your nose in business of his and how you should disappear and the whole thing should be forgotten. And if I didn’t there were photos of me that would reach the wrong hands. So I decided to deal with you. Get you put away for murder. Discredited and disgraced. Then I could go after Anderson to stop that shit happening ever again. No one blackmails me.”

  “You guys took photographs?” Kris had been right; they really had treated it like being golfing buddies. Christ.

  Heller shrugged, changed the subject. “So what’d you know, Rourke? Where’s Anderson?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  I shook my head. “I thought you might. All I know is he’s calling himself Richard Goddard, at least to some people, and he’s out there. Probably living in New York State, but I’m not sure.”

  “Why’re you looking for him?”

  “I’m putting something right I should have fixed when I busted Cody Williams.”

  Heller’s eyes bored into mine. “And that’s all you can tell me about him?”

  “Yeah.”

  He glanced past me, said, “Then we’re through here. Rutherford! I’m done with him.”

  I turned to see Rutherford and the twins walking towards the table while the other two gorillas watched on. Rutherford reached inside his jacket without any sign of emotion whatsoever and leveled a pistol at my head. The barrel was a deep black pit in front of me and I felt myself slipping inside right up until the point where Kris’s first bullet blew a hole in Rutherford’s skull the size of a squash ball.

  47.

  He came through the door running and killed Rutherford before anyone even knew he was there. A taut smoothness and efficiency in his movements. Face blank like a poker player.

  The two gorillas near the door dropped before they’d finished turning. Then time seemed to slam back up to full speed like a kick to the face and all hell broke loose. The twins grabbed for their weapons and dived for opposite sides of the room, firing, as the air filled with noise, dust, and the spack of brass hitting the floor.

  Heller slumped in his seat and I thought for a moment that he’d been hit, but then I realized it was just disbelief at what he was watching. I hit the boards and rolled for cover. Saw Lawrence collapse like a marionette with all its strings suddenly cut as a bullet punched out the back of his spine. I saw the other twin as a dark shape in the haze and dust, and then the firing cut out just as suddenly as it had begun.

  The thum thum thum bass from downstairs bled back in and something like calm came with it. The two gorillas by the door had almost matching bullet wounds punched up from the jawline to the peak of the skull. Lawrence’s spinal fluid was slowly seeping into the blood on the floor like condensed milk and the other twin’s face was a bloody mess. I could feel cold patches of wet on my face that used to be Rutherford’s brain.

  Kris seemed to be unscathed. He walked up to Heller, reloading, and brought the gun up to the big man’s temple. I saw his hand shaking and he seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Do you know me? Do you know me?” he said.

  Heller looked blank. Mouth twitched in what could be a ‘no’.

  “You know me. You must know me. You know me.” Like a mantra.

  Heller just said, “Sorry.”

  “Look at that cute little face, and that ass! Hey, I can’t wait for my turn! Damn, boy, you gonna scream for me!”

  His eyes widened as Heller recognized the words even behind his fear and confusion.

  “Scream for me,” Kris whispered, and pulled the trigger.

  Gabriel Heller expired all over the tacky ocean décor of his nightclub as his past sins finally caught up with the present. I couldn’t find any remorse for him.

  Kris didn’t look at me, just said, “Let’s go.”

  We left by the same back staircase I was brought up. The music was still pulsing away behind the wall, the club apparently oblivious to the shooting of its owner. I wondered how long it’d be until he was found.

  The silver Crown Vic was parked at the end of the alley. Kris handed me the keys and told me to drive, anywhere, then slumped into the passenger seat and began to sob uncontrollably.

  I took him to a late-night grill near Atlantic Avenue and he calmed down enough to drink coffee. I couldn’t tell if the place was one of those Fifties-themed ones, or if it just hadn’t been redecorated since that era. The staff looked old enough to have been working here back then, but I wasn't curious enough to ask, and they didn’t pay us any attention beyond taking my order. I plumped for burgers, coffee, just like regular people, and found a corner booth. I wasn't hungry, but the food wasn’t bad.

  Everything else was a mess. Between Heller, Rob, and the cops, my mind was all over the place. Even while I was watching Kris to see which way his mood would flip next, my eyes kept straying towards the counter in the hope there’d be a TV there and I could find out how Rob was doing and what had happened to him.

  There wasn’t one.

  Kris said, “I need to ditch the car.”

  “What?”

  “Heller’s guys might have seen it following you, or outside the club. I should ditch it.”

  “You think they’ll come after us?”

  He shrugged, went to pick up his cup and then thought better of it. “Might be too busy fighting over his cash. On the other hand, they might want a show of revenge or something. He tell you where Anderson was?”

  “He didn’t know. He told me where another guy who knew him and Cody was, and maybe he’ll be able to help. I’ll go see him tomorrow.”

  “Why’d he want you?”

  “He had a phone call,” I said. “He was blackmailed into getting me off Anderson’s — Goddard’s — trail. He hoped I knew where to find him so he could go kill him. Did any of his people see you on the way in?”

  “His people? In the club, maybe, yeah. I couldn’t get in the back way. I should ditch the car. Get some new clothes too. I can’t be seen like this.”

  I finished my coffee. “You do that. I’ve got some things to take care of.”

  “Things?”

  “I have a friend in hospital. Maybe I can get to see him.”

  Kris shook his head. “If he’s a friend, the cops will be watching him, waiting for you. And you’re outside visitor hours. You’ll be obvious.”

  I wanted to make sure Rob was okay. I wanted to comfort Teresa, to let her know things would be all right and he’d come through fine, just like before, after the fire. I wanted to be there for my oldest friend.

  But I couldn’t. He could die and I couldn’t even attend the funeral.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “But there are other things to do. You sort yourself out, ditch the car, do whatever you have to. I’ll call you in a day or two and let you know where we stand.” I didn’t say that I just didn’t want him around right now. From abuse victim to killer to emotional wreck; I couldn’t handle it on top of everything else.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be close, Alex. See you in a couple of days.”

  Outside, I tried calling Teresa from a payphone, but there was no answer and the voicemail cut in. I hung up without leaving a message. Caught a cab back to the vicinity of the hotel and walked the rest of the way. The streets were quiet still.

  In my roomed I turned on the local news, hoping for a story about Rob and what had happened to him. Instead, I found myself watching the second half of someone’s pet exposé on me. The pictures were the same stock footage from the Williams case and my prison visits, interspersed with segments from various talking heads.

  I collapsed on the be
d as a woman’s voice washed over me. “… Attention has begun to turn to the killing of Clinton Travers in Hartford and the conviction of Cody Williams for the murder.”

  A keen, hawkish guy in a suit identified by the caption as a civil rights lawyer said, “When you look carefully at the evidence against him and take into account the circumstances in which it was obtained, the case against Williams could be less solid than thought at the time. While I’m not saying there was any impropriety on the part of the investigators, the possibility that the physical evidence on which Williams was convicted could have been tampered with does make it harder to claim ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.”

  Someone off camera asked, “If you had been defending Cody Williams at the time, do you think you could have won the case?”

  “Yes, it’s possible,” the lawyer said, nodding with an air of informed gravitas. “The status of the evidence, the lack of a clear motive for the crime… it all adds up.”

  The interviewer said, “Of course, the motive they couldn’t give in court was that Williams had killed Travers because he was stealing media attention from the string of child murders Williams was committing.”

  “He was never charged with those murders, so it’s disingenuous to bring them up. Building the case for him as a criminal shouldn’t require something for which he was never charged. The same goes for anyone facing prosecution.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance his conviction could be posthumously quashed by the courts?”

  The lawyer gave one of those knowing little shrugs that said, ‘you and me both know what the answer to that is’. “If it did go to court, it might be possible. But that would be for the judge to decide.”

  Cut back to the stock footage, stills and the woman’s voiceover. “In the meantime, the FBI may be re-examining the conduct of their agents involved in the Williams and Travers cases, with attention focusing on ex-Special Agent Alex Rourke. Rourke’s former partner Jeff Agostini is now a senior agent with the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the arm of the Bureau responsible for monitoring the integrity of its agents.”

  This made me pay attention again. Agostini had changed since the days when I knew him. Older, obviously, but with age had come an air of seniority and authority he never possessed as an agent. His outward energy had gone, replaced with an apparent easy coolness. I didn’t find it entirely reassuring. But then I figured he’d say the same for me if he saw me now too.

  “If the Bureau decides it wants to look at those cases,” he said, “I’m sure they’ll be very thorough and I’m personally confident the investigating team will be exonerated. I certainly never saw anything untoward while working on the Williams case, and I’d be very surprised indeed if there had been anything going on in secret. These people were professionals with no reason to do the kind of things you’re suggesting.”

  The voiceover said that Agostini’s superiors seemed less sure, although they had yet to launch a formal investigation. I didn’t know how much of that was media bull and how much someone in the OPR really was considering a look at the Williams case.

  Cut to an old guy in a suit, sitting behind an artificially neat desk underneath some FBI memorabilia. He said, “Of course, we’re monitoring the situation, and if we see any reason to examine the prior conduct of any of our agents then we’ll take the appropriate steps.”

  The same interviewer as before said, “So you’re saying that if someone shows you any sign at all that the evidence against Cody Williams had been tampered with in any way, you’d launch an inquiry?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And this inquiry would also include former agents — particularly Special Agent Rourke?”

  The suit nodded. “Of course. Rourke was our lead investigator on this case.”

  “What kind of sanction would anyone found to have tampered or falsified any evidence face?”

  The suit said, “I couldn’t comment — that would be for our legal team and the justice system to decide.”

  Depending on what they found, prison for messing with evidence, or a murder charge, I thought to myself.

  Cut back to the voiceover, this time speaking over the most recent picture of me. “And what of Rourke himself? The man responsible more than any other for the conviction of Cody Williams is currently wanted for questioning by police in Worcester regarding the murder of local businessman Brian Tucker…”

  I fell asleep before whoever was speaking could reel off another list of my crimes, both real and imaginary. I didn’t hear the program finish or find out if Rob or Heller were on the news.

  48.

  Perry’s girlfriend lived in a small house on the south side of Roxbury, or so the phone book told me. Old brickwork, wooden fittings all starting to show the cracks of age. A small and desolate front yard covered in short yellow grass and windblown leaves. Smeared windows, keeping the interior fogged. Much like the rest of the neighborhood.

  A woman somewhere in her mid-twenties answered my knock. Short, blonde hair pinned up at the back of her head, old t-shirt and jeans. An air of boredom.

  “Yeah?” she said. She talked like she was chewing gum, even though she wasn’t.

  “Is Billy in?” I smiled like we were old friends and he’d be just dying to talk to me. Beneath, I was hoping none of Heller’s people who knew I’d been looking for Perry had come calling before I got here. Her manner suggested I was in the clear.

  “Who’re you?”

  “Al. Al Garrett.”

  “Are you a friend of Billy’s?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a friend of a friend, so I guess so.”

  “Wait here.” She disappeared inside the house for a moment. Then Perry came to the door. He was getting tubby, going to seed. Head shaved and chin grizzled, both not entirely unlike my own. Shirt untucked, barefoot.

  He said, “Who’re you, what do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about an old buddy of yours, Billy. Nothing serious — I just need to know the kind of things the two of you might have chatted about way back when.”

  “Who?”

  “Cody Williams.”

  He looked at me closer and said, “Fucking hell.”

  “Just a quick chat, Billy, that’s all.”

  “You’re the guy off the news. The guy that was talking to Cody.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You got any idea how much I don’t need this? I’m out of all that now.”

  “Just a few minutes of your time, and I’m gone.”

  He sighed and stepped aside to let me into the house and out of the rain. His girlfriend hovered down the hall by the stairs, looking nervy. The house was pretty neat inside. Nothing special, but she seemed to like it tidy and as comfortable as possible. It smelled of laundry detergent. The TV in the front room was showing last night’s ballgame highlights. Billy killed the sound and gestured to one of the chairs. His girlfriend closed the door behind us and left us to it.

  “Have a seat. What you want to know? Been years since I knew him, so I’m not making no promises.”

  “Sure. Did he ever talk about what he did?”

  Billy shrugged. “If you mean all them girls and stuff, no, never. Probably didn’t want word to get around. Or get overheard and end up on charges for it. He wouldn’t say nothing about that, even when this big bastard was going to kick the shit out of him in the showers.”

  “Not at all? How about people he knew on the outside?”

  “Friends?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Friends, family, anyone that he knew. He never struck me as a particularly social type, so there can’t have been many of them.”

  “He talked about you. He really hated you.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “Okay, okay.” Billy held up his hands in the way that half the criminals in the world did when they wanted to say ‘I’m co-operating. Really, I am.’ “He never said much about it, but there was something. It was like, how some people when
they’re inside will talk about their wives outside, or about where they want to live when they get out. Like moving to Florida, or buying a bar or something.”

  “So Cody had something like that in mind.”

  “No, this was all before, in the past. Happy memories, I guess,” Billy said. “He’d talk about some guy like he was his dad, or an older brother. Y’know, someone who’d taken care of him, who he’d looked up to.”

  “What did he say about this guy?”

  “Nothing very specific. He’d only really talk about it to himself, almost. Comforting, I suppose. Something about living in some place in the mountains. About doing stuff together. About teaching.”

  “The guy was a teacher?”

  Billy shook his head. “No, like, how your dad would teach you to ride a bike. That kind of thing. Not schools. And I remember Cody had these scars on his back. I asked them about them once and he said something about a mistake, doing something… or not doing something… or not doing it right… Shit, I don’t remember how he got them.”

  “You don’t know what it was he’d done, or he was supposed to have done?”

  “How the fuck should I know? They could’ve been going fishing or… raping a… a busload of nuns for all I know. He never said. That’s all I remember.”

  “He never said the guy’s name?”

  “No.”

  I frowned. “Didn’t that seem odd?”

  “Cody was a goddamn nutcase with a thing for little girls. How much fucking odder do you want?”

  “Did he say which mountains, or where he was when all this happened?”

  “He never said. Catskills, Green Mountains, White Mountains. Could’ve been any of them.”

  I waited for a moment, just in case Billy was going to add anything more that had floated up from the depth of memory, but he stayed quiet.

  “That’s everything?”

  “Cross my heart.” Billy stood and waved a hand at the door. “You should be going, Mr Rourke. I’m an honest citizen these days, and you’re trouble. Get going and leave me alone.”