The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut

by John Rickards

  I wasn't keen on staying long in a place where my identity was known anyway. Anonymity was almost the only protection I had, and the urge to crawl back into hiding was a powerful one. I wedged my hands in my pockets and stepped back out into the rain. Billy’s door slammed shut behind me.

  Two blocks away and closing, I saw blue flashing lights.

  For a second, I stood and watched the cars approach. Streamers of rain streaked the air, like looking through a field of grey grass stalks. Three vehicles, one unmarked, scythed through them.

  I sprinted across the street and into a narrow alleyway between houses while they were still too far off to see me. Some way inside this cramped shelter, I hunkered down behind a trashcan and watched as the cars screeched to a halt outside Billy’s home.

  The girlfriend had the door open before the two guys in trench coats had even finished crossing the front yard from the unmarked car. She must’ve been the one that called them; I saw that their arrival wasn’t coming as a surprise to her, and they weren’t treating her like someone potentially harboring a fugitive.

  The two detectives formed a little and large pairing. One was taller and blond, maybe in his early thirties. Pointed jaw, face to match. A serious scowl. The second was shorter and fat, with a nose that looked like it had been broken at least once and probably more than that. He had maybe five years on his partner.

  Detectives Perigo and Morton, I presumed.

  They talked with the girlfriend for a moment, and I saw the tall one swearing. Billy came to join them in the doorway. They spoke to him, and he shrugged, shook his head.

  I was about to leave my hiding place when the tall cop turned to look in my direction while his partner asked a final couple of questions. He ran his gaze over the street, the houses either side of me, and the alley itself. For a second I could almost believe our eyes locked, and suddenly the shadow of the buildings and the cover offered by the trash was stripped away and I was helpless, trapped in his stare. Certain I’d been spotted. That it was all over.

  Then he looked back and called to his partner, and the feeling passed. As they walked towards the cars to pass orders to the uniforms to search the area, I retreated further into the alleyway until I judged it safe to turn and run.

  I didn’t stop for two blocks, then did my best to vanish into a shopping mall for an hour or so, grabbed a coffee and a bagel like a normal citizen, then took a cab back to a spot a few blocks from the hotel. I was wondering whether or not I should switch places. Wondering how long it’d be before someone identified me.

  Then I wondered if I moved, would the manager at the next place identify me straight away? I might be better off staying put. Hunkering down. Doing nothing. And, in the end, I knew the impulse was just a panic reaction. Twice now I’d nearly been caught. It was just the adrenaline wearing off.

  On the bed was a copy of the newspaper I’d bought that morning. No mention of Heller’s death at all, but it was open to the brief story inside about Rob. Apparently, unidentified intruders had attacked him when he’d come home from work the day before. Teresa found him in a pool of blood. They’d beaten him badly enough that he’d needed six hours in an operating theatre last night, and according to the paper he was still in a critical condition. Normally, they’d have said, “critical but stable” and I wish they were now. I also wished there was something I could do about it.

  The cops were looking for two men, no descriptions given. Taken the number from forensics, maybe, or the vague recollections of a neighbor who’d seen them leave. Nothing had been taken from the house, and they didn’t have a motive as yet. At least, not one they were talking about. It had to be the two guys who came to the office, ‘Harvey’ and ‘Andrew’. Again I considered calling Teresa or Sophie to find out how Rob was doing, but I didn’t dare.

  Out there were cops and psychos and Goddard or Anderson or whatever the fuck his name was and Holly and I wanted all of it, all of them, to stop.

  I wanted to find her and be done, just so I could rest. Once she was safe and sound and no longer out there, in danger, none of the rest mattered. It would be over. I was just afraid it’d never happen.

  Then, the next morning, they came for me at the hotel.

  49.

  Multiple car engines, running fast, in the street outside. I looked through the window to see the blue and red flashes of the strobes, saw the cars screaming to a stop in front of the hotel, Perigo and Morton in the lead. The manager had seen me on the news and squealed. Some eagle-eyed beat cop spotted the company car. It didn’t matter how they’d come to be calling on me.

  I had to get the hell out of there.

  Grabbed my bag, left packed for just this eventuality, and ran down the corridor to the stairs. From the bottom of the stairwell I could already hear pounding footsteps and cop voices.

  I ran up, taking the steps two at a time. My only hope of getting away relied on not being seen. You couldn’t outrun the radio, or the cruisers below. Anyone spotted me while I was running and the trap would close ahead of me. It always did.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  At the top of the stairs, my prayers were answered. As I’d hoped, there was a door marked ‘Roof — Maintenance ONLY’. Given the state of the hotel, I doubt it saw much use. I tried it first — locked — then leaned back ready to kick it in. Waited for a second until I heard the crash as the cops plowed out of the stairwell five floors below and rushed towards my room. Hoping the echoes would mask my own noise, I kicked the door to the roof with all my strength.

  The wood around the lock splintered and snapped, and it flew open.

  I wasn't a Catholic — wasn’t a believer of any stripe — but I still felt the urge to cross myself.

  The roof was a flat expanse of galvanized metal sheeting, slippery in the continued rain, peppered here and there by odd protuberances. Bumps and vents for air conditioning, drains and aerials. I sprinted down to the far end, trying to use these lumps to break line of sight to the door behind me. A couple of times I came close to losing my footing entirely.

  There was a gap of about ten feet over a narrow alleyway to the adjacent building, and a drop of about the same from the hotel roof to the that. It was doable, but it’d hurt on landing. I had no choice, and no time to mess around. I threw my bag over, gave myself a decent run up, and hurled myself out over thin air. Gravity tugged me downwards and I had a sudden moment of panic.

  I wasn't going to make it.

  I was going to fall eighty feet onto solid concrete.

  Then my feet hit the rooftop, all the air was knocked from my lungs and I rolled to a halt with every joint aching and my head spinning.

  I expected at any moment to hear someone shout my name, running feet behind me, a gunshot, anything. I picked myself up and ran along to the far end of the building and looked for a fire escape.

  It took forever to reach street level, and I dropped the last ten feet onto a dumpster, but there was still no pursuit. Trying to look as normal as possible, I headed out onto the street beyond and did my best to lose myself in the city, to burrow in like a worm into an apple, vanishing into the anonymous mass of humanity.

  50.

  The boardwalk looking out over Fort Point Channel was almost deserted in the constant rain. I risked buying hot dogs and a Coke from a street vendor and ate them looking across the water at the airport.

  I was running out of options. I had no idea where Goddard was, and no obvious way of finding him unless I could somehow tempt him out of hiding. I’d left the agency’s car near Perry’s address and I had to assume that, since the cops had found where I was staying, there was a reasonable chance they knew to watch for the vehicle too. My cash wouldn’t last forever, and I was exhausted and battered from jumping around on the roof.

  And there was nothing else I could do but keep trying for Holly’s sake.

  I still wasn’t at all sure about him, but I called Kris from a payphone. Said, “The cops raided the hotel. I need a place to stay.�
�

  “Sure. I’ll pick you up.”

  Kris was driving a blue Acura. I didn’t ask him where he got it; I didn’t want to know. Judging by the minimal amount of trash on the floor and back seats compared to his old ride, he hadn’t had it long or done much with it yet.

  The trip was calm and he hardly said a word. There was no trace of whatever emotion had overtaken him after killing Heller.

  He was living in an apartment in Brookline. A low, cramped beige limbo that even the city’s rats were ignoring, figuring they deserved something better. It wasn’t as bad as Frank’s alcoholic hovel, but the pair of them had obviously both gone to the same school of housekeeping.

  But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I thanked him when he pointed me in the direction of the couch.

  “You need anything?” he said. “There’s a store down the block. How much did you leave for the cops?”

  “Some soap, dirty socks, and a load of trash. I kept everything else in the bag.”

  “Nothing that could tie you to anything?” The flash from his eyes made it clear he meant ‘tie you to me’.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. They didn’t track you from the hotel?”

  “If they went up to the roof it was long after I was gone.”

  Kris nodded and some mental gear shifted deep inside. “I’ll get food, smokes. I’m going to the store.”

  “Sure.”

  He let himself out, leaving me alone. From the state of the apartment, I could almost believe he was using it for a stakeout rather than living in it. Don’t worry about clearing out the trash, don’t make it your space any more than you need to. You were just inhabiting the place while you worked.

  Here until you left.

  On the windowsill were a couple of oily rags and some boxes of ammunition. A small toolbox on the floor beneath. A pair of greasy pizza boxes wedged behind the sole armchair. Muddy shoe prints everywhere.

  There were a good three or four empty quart bottles of orange juice waiting next to a refuse sack in the kitchen. A fridge with the remains of a dozen different types of snack food and candy.

  And on top of it, a plastic baggy containing pure white pills.

  I wasn't certain what they were, but at best guess my only ally was wired on amphetamines, maybe something worse.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  How much of what he’d told me was magnified by speed paranoia? Was this what lay behind his weird moods, or were they something else entirely?

  I heard the key turn in the apartment door. Put the baggy back on top of the fridge.

  “Hey,” Kris said, coming into the kitchen with a brown grocery bag. “Looking for something?”

  “Coffee,” I said. “I could use a pick-me-up.”

  “Cupboard above the kettle. I don’t have any milk.”

  When evening came, I told him I was going out for a while to check some things, and went to find myself an internet connection. First I looked up Lieutenant Craig Warren, NYPD. I got a slew of old news stories.

  Police hero slain in own home.

  Hero cop murder.

  One of NYPD’s finest brutally beaten and shot in his own home. No apparent motive. Police suspected a revenge slaying.

  No mention of anything to do with abusing children. As far as the NYPD was concerned, he’d been a senior officer and a good cop. His murder hadn’t been solved, but that just confirmed what I knew.

  What I didn’t know is who Kris Lane was.

  But I could find out. I doubted the cops would keep tabs on the accounts the agency held with various background check services and records databases. If they were, I’d trip every alarm they had.

  I started tracing the lines of Kris’s past. Following the little strands left by his passing. The stray records, the notations, names, dates, places. The where and when of it all. There was very little from his childhood.

  Nothing in the news about a child by that name going missing.

  Nothing about an abduction.

  By itself, maybe not surprising. Old story, so it was less likely to be in the available archives. No cause for doubting his story by itself.

  The reasons he’d taken his time going after the Gang of Six were more worrying. For a period of nine years, right up until the summer before last, Kris had been in and out of asylums. I didn’t know what he’d been in for, but it must have been something serious to require such regular treatment.

  For most of this time, he seemed to have had no permanent address and no employment either. Wandering here and there, either as part of whatever work he’d had — I guessed petty crime from the way he acted — or else tracing the other members of the Gang.

  So I was relying on a revenge-obsessed killer with a history of mental health problems and an amphetamine habit for help. Relying on him for information and to understand who Goddard was, or had been. I didn’t know how much trouble any lies he’d told me would get me into, and I didn’t know whether or not I could trust him not to turn on me once his private vendetta was over.

  I returned to his apartment, watching my back every step of the way.

  “You look like shit,” he said when I got in. “No luck with whatever it was?”

  “Not really.” I noticed that the baggy on top of the fridge had gone.

  “It happens. We’ll get him tomorrow.”

  I sat down and tried to hide the fact that I was feeling less than keen on getting Goddard at all with him around. That I might have to find a way of ditching him in order to strike out on my own again.

  An email I received in the morning blew all my plans to tatters.

  51.

  “Did it say who they were?”

  I shook my head, lit a cigarette. “No. Heller’s guys, maybe, or the ones who beat up Rob. Shit. From the time it was sent, I guess they grabbed her yesterday evening.”

  WE HAVE YOUR GIRL SOPHIE, the message said.

  YOU WANT HER TO LIVE, COME TO TRENT CHEMICALS, KING’S ROW.

  ANY SIGN OF THE COPS, SHE DIES.

  YOU’VE GOT THREE DAYS.

  The apartment was wreathed in cigarette smoke and stale air. Kris was perched on the edge of the couch, fingers nervously playing with each other. I glared through the window, as though a solution would appear on the glass if I concentrated on it hard enough.

  So far all I knew was that if these sons of bitches had hurt Sophie in any way, I’d kill them.

  “They’re going to be waiting for us,” Kris said.

  “No shit. Wait.” I held up a hand to cut him off before he could object to me snapping at him. “They’re going to be waiting for me. They probably don’t know about you.”

  “You sure?”

  “If they’re playing it this way, they don’t know where I am now and they weren’t able to find me before, otherwise they’d have done the same to me as they did to Rob. They’d have dealt with me days ago.”

  “If they’re the ones who attacked him,” Kris said. “If they’re Heller’s guys out for revenge, they’ll know you had help.”

  “We’ll have to hope they’re not.”

  He shrugged. “Even if they’re not, the surprise won’t last long. You got a gun?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Kris looked like he was ready to dive out the door and go to war with these guys without a second thought. “But let’s see if we can get a look at this place first, find out what we’re up against.”

  Trent Chemicals was a derelict refining plant that had only been half-finished when its owner went bankrupt. The site was in the middle of dead industrial wasteland overlooking the Atlantic south of Boston, an elephants’ graveyard for steel dreams turned to rust. The area was flat and deserted; Sophie’s captors would be able to hear any approaching vehicle well before it reached the factory. We left the car a half mile away and finished the journey on foot.

  We found a good view of Trent from the collapsing canning plant next door. Most of whatever processing machinery was originally on the site seemed to ha
ve been stripped away, probably to pay its creditors, but a couple of huge concrete factory buildings, dark and blocky, remained. The nearest of them had a raised sub-section at one end lined with broken windows. The old plant offices, I guessed.

  “That’s where they’ll be,” Kris said.

  “Yeah.”

  “High view, watch the road coming in. About as good as they’re going to get on that site.”

  He handed me a pair of binoculars bought on the way out here and I scanned the shattered building for signs of life. Most of the windows were empty and much of the place appeared to be open plan, but on the top floor, far northern end, I saw a drift of pale white smoke. A cigarette. Just visible beyond, a man sitting a few feet inside the window, looking out over the approach to the plant. I couldn’t see what he was wearing or what he was carrying, but he was slouched, trying to get comfortable.

  I pointed him out to Kris.

  “Can’t see anyone else.”

  “Any lights would show up for miles here; these places don’t have electricity. If they’re holed up inside for the nights, they must have to stay somewhere out of sight of the windows.”

  “Keep watching. They must change shifts at some point.”

  For nearly three hours we waited, staring across a couple of hundred yards of dead ground in the rain. Then, at long last, Kris said, “We’ve got movement.”

  “Where?”

  “A second guy’s come to take over the watch. I didn’t see where from, but I guess the first guy’s going to go back that way.”

  He passed me the binoculars in time for me to catch a glimpse of the two men together in the gloom. The newcomer was a foot taller than the first, and much heavier set.

  Little and large. The guys who’d attacked Rob.

  The conversation finished, and the short one walked out of the room and vanished from view. He eventually reappeared in a stairwell two floors down by one of the open plan offices and made his way through a door into a back room. He didn’t come back out.