The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  Other than the uncomfortable questioning from Briggs the night of the Elaine Connors interview, the five days since the show aired had been pretty good to Jason. Since his escape from Wallace Barton’s stable, Sophie had allowed him to visit the house every day. And instead of waiting in the next room for Jason to leave as she used to do, she joined Max and him as they read books together and worked on puzzles. And, remarkably—given all they’d been through the last couple of years—they were even able to laugh now and then.

  Things were progressing on the professional front, too. Two days ago, Harold had traveled from Los Angeles to New York to hold an auction for the rights to publish Jason’s book about his Crackerjack experience. And just that morning he’d called to say that things had gone very, very well. The publishers loved the idea that Jason, a published mystery and crime novelist, had escaped from—and killed—a notorious serial killer who had murdered sixteen men after painting their faces like kids at a carnival. The winning bid was $500,000.

  “They’ll announce it once the contracts are finalized and the ink is dry on the signatures,” Howard said. “Should be no more than a week, two at the most. Have you gotten started on an outline yet?”

  “Yup. Making good progress.” Other than visiting with Sophie and Max, he’d done little else but work on it. There was a lot at stake. He wanted to do it right.

  “Written any chapters yet?”

  “I’ll probably start this weekend.”

  “Attaboy. Congratulations, Jason. This is a great deal.”

  “I know it is. And thanks, Howard.”

  “Thank me by writing a killer book so we can get you an even better deal next time.”

  “I don’t plan on getting abducted by any more serial killers.”

  “Yeah, but if this book sells, they’ll line up to bid on your next mystery.”

  He added that two studios were duking it out to option the film rights to the book. “We could get another couple hundred thousand for the option alone.”

  Before returning to his writing, Jason spent an hour pricing specialized vans loaded with adaptive equipment designed to allow people who used wheelchairs to operate the vehicle using only hand controls. For the first time since the accident, Sophie would be able to drive again. It was something he knew she’d dreamed about but had never hoped could become a reality. The price range of $50,000 to $100,000 didn’t faze him.

  That night, she invited him over for dinner—at Max’s urging, she said, though he wanted to believe it was her idea—informing him that her mother had plans that evening and wouldn’t be home. While Max watched TV, they did the dishes together. Other than the fact that Sophie was in a wheelchair, it felt a little like it did years ago, when they were together and happy. When the kitchen was clean, they sat at the table and he told her he was looking into buying her a customized van. He’d also looked into installing a stair lift that would take her up and down the stairs, giving her full access to her own home again. Finally, he said he wanted to buy her a state-of-the art, top-of-the-line motorized wheelchair.

  “You don’t have to do any of that, Jason. I could understand your wanting to give Max whatever you can, but you and I aren’t . . .”

  She trailed off.

  “It’s the least I can do, Soph.”

  She looked away and he knew what she was thinking. That it was the least he could do because the accident had been his fault. It wasn’t what he meant, but it’s what she was no doubt thinking. And he was the one behind the wheel that night, so she was probably right about that much . . . but not about Jason. She couldn’t be. He was able to remember a lot of that night but, because of his head injury, very little of the accident itself . . . but still, he refused to believe that.

  It had been raining, though the rain didn’t have much to do with what had happened. The producer who had optioned the film rights to The Drifter’s Knife was throwing a lavish party at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Famous Hollywood people with Boston connections were there. Jason and Sophie were there, too, rubbing elbows with the beautiful and famous while Janice babysat Max. And they drank and laughed and had a wonderful time . . . until the producer pulled Jason into a quiet corner and told him that he had decided not to make The Drifter’s Knife after all. Another project had just become available, one he’d had his eye on for a while, and time was a factor. It was possible, the producer said, that someone else would become interested in Jason’s book in time. He hoped Jason understood.

  And he did. All too well. The Drifter’s Knife wouldn’t make it to the big screen.

  He didn’t talk on the drive home. He’d told Sophie the bad news before they left the hotel, and she evidently sensed that he wasn’t yet ready to talk more about it. As he drove, his mood darkened and festered, his mind a nest of snakes. That much he remembered.

  It was late, nearly one in the morning. The rain was light but steady. There were no other cars in sight. No one around at all . . . no one but the man up ahead on the gravel shoulder, walking a bit erratically, probably drunk. Jason couldn’t remember turning the wheel, or giving the car a little more gas . . .

  That was what roused Sophie, she’d told him later. Her eyes had been closed, her head resting against the passenger window. The car started to swerve; the engine growled louder. She looked up, out through the windshield, and screamed Jason’s name—he was glad he couldn’t remember that part.

  According to Sophie, she’d reached over and jerked the wheel, and the car swerved violently away from the man on the side of the road. Metal shrieked—somehow, Jason could recall the sound, though he remembered nothing else from those final moments—and the world slammed to a stop. He would learn that their car had missed the man but torn through a rusted guardrail and rolled down a small hill, coming to rest on its roof.

  It was almost a week before they’d talked about exactly what happened, with Sophie lying in her hospital bed, her back broken, her legs useless. And when they finally talked about it, they argued.

  “But I saw your eyes, Jason.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You can’t even remember.”

  “I must have been speeding up to pass him in case he stumbled into the road. I think I remember that he looked drunk or something, and I probably just wanted to get past him.”

  “You were heading right for him.”

  “It was late. I was tired. Maybe I was starting to doze off and—”

  “You were wide awake and heading right for him.”

  “God, Sophie, how could you even say that?”

  “Because I saw your eyes, Jason.”

  He looked away. Unconsciously, his hand ran to the bandage on his head. He was lucky, they told him. He’d suffered only a concussion and a wound requiring fourteen stitches to close. And, of course, the loss of his memory of those final, crucial seconds before the crash, up until the world came back to him in the ambulance later. But, he told himself, he didn’t have to remember to know that he would never have hit that man on purpose.

  “I saw your eyes,” she repeated. After a brief pause, she added, “And it wasn’t the first time I’ve wondered.”

  She might as well have slapped him. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. “What does that mean?”

  “Every now and then . . . when you’d get angry about something. Really angry. When our car broke down in Maine and that service guy gouged us for the repair. When you thought that couple on the beach looked funny at Max.”

  “Those times . . . I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t have . . .”

  “Jason . . . I even wondered sometimes when I read your stories.”

  “What? You always said I’m a good writer.”

  “You are. But your ideas are so . . . dark. Where do they come from? What kind of mind comes up with such things?”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong, Soph. Last week . . . on the road . . . You have to believe me. I never would have . . .” He trailed off. “Please believe me.”

  The wa
y she’d looked at him at that moment—a way she’d never looked at him before . . . a way no man would want the woman he loved to look at him—shattered him into jagged pieces.

  “I saw your face,” she’d said simply. And because she couldn’t walk away, she’d turned her face to the wall.

  When she came home from rehab two months later and asked him to move out, he’d tried to convince her that things weren’t what she thought . . . that he wasn’t what she thought. She conceded that the night was dark and she’d gotten only a glimpse of his face before grabbing the wheel, so . . . who knows? But she still wanted him to move out. So he did.

  “Jason?” Sophie said, snapping him forward two years, back into the present. “Are you listening? I said you really don’t have to do all that for me. Special van, fancy wheelchair.”

  “I want to. And like I said. It’s the least I can do.”

  She smiled ruefully. “I don’t know what to say. Of course, we shouldn’t buy anything like that until—”

  “I agree. Not until Max starts on the Solizen. His appointment’s in a few days, right?”

  She nodded, and they struggled a bit to hold back their tears as they discussed a future with their son . . . a future that, only two weeks ago, they weren’t sure they would have.

  It was shortly before 8:00 p.m. when he left Sophie’s house, less than five minutes after Janice got home, which was far from coincidental. As he was driving home, his cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Jason, it’s me. Ian. Am I calling too late?”

  Jason sighed. He didn’t feel like talking to Cobb.

  “No, it’s fine. What’s up?”

  Cobb said nothing for a moment, and Jason wondered if they’d lost their connection. Finally, he heard, “Not much, I guess. Just wondering if . . . maybe we could . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know . . . maybe we could grab a beer or something.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know . . . I wouldn’t mind having someone to talk to right now.”

  Jason’s inclination was to politely decline, but he remembered that Cobb wasn’t married, that his mother and brothers had died in car accidents, and that his father was in a vegetative state. Perhaps he didn’t have many people in his life to whom he could turn when he needed to talk. There was no doubt he’d been through something horrific; they both had. Maybe Cobb was really struggling with it. He’d certainly suffered physically far more than Jason had. And if he needed someone to talk to about it all, who better than the person with whom he had walked through the fire?

  Jason sighed. He didn’t want to talk to Cobb. Forget the fact that he sounded like a serial killer when he whistled, the guy was . . . well, he was just off. But like it or not, they were bound by their shared experience. They literally owed each other their lives. And after Cobb gave Jason his hundred thousand bucks, didn’t Jason at least owe the man a beer? And if being a good person wasn’t incentive enough, there was the fact that he wanted Cobb’s cooperation when it came time to interview him for his book.

  He glanced at the dashboard clock. Ben was working late tonight down in Boston and Jason had promised to meet him for a drink. He’d been so busy lately plugging away on the book and, when possible, spending time with Sophie and Max that he had declined every invitation to get together that Ben had extended, a fact Ben had used to imply, in mostly joking fashion, that Jason had grown too famous for his closest friend.

  “Jason?”

  He didn’t have to meet Ben until 10:00 p.m., more than an hour and a half from now.

  “I guess I have time for a quick drink.”

  They met at a hole in the wall in Salem called the Shark’s Tooth, which had been providing beer and very little in the way of atmosphere to folks—mostly locals—for decades. No one seemed to like it much but they drank there enough to keep it in business. Rumor said it was little more than a front for some midlevel criminal’s money-laundering and bookmaking activities, but Jason didn’t know much about that, nor did he care. It wasn’t like guys with bent noses sat around in fedoras and had you whacked if you looked at them wrong.

  Cobb was already seated at the bar when Jason arrived, so he took a stool next to him. The bartender—a beefy guy well suited for slinging drinks in a place like the Shark’s Tooth—slid a beer in front of Cobb, which he’d already ordered, and Jason ordered one for himself and threw a twenty-dollar bill onto the bar.

  “For both,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Cobb said, nodding to the beer.

  “Least I could do. How you been?”

  Cobb mumbled something under his breath. If Jason had to guess, it was probably “Okay.”

  “Long day?”

  Cobb shrugged. “Long enough.”

  “Still on that job in . . . where was it? Tewksbury? What’s that, an hour with traffic?”

  Cobb nodded, and Jason wondered why the hell the man had said he felt like talking if he didn’t plan on actually saying anything. He looked at Cobb’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He was looking down into his beer. Then he glanced up and met Jason’s gaze in the reflection, but he appeared to be looking through Jason rather than at him. His eyes were flat, almost lifeless. It seemed that the days since their interview hadn’t been as kind to him as they had to Jason. Maybe he was just really tired, but he didn’t look good at all. He probably should have been at home instead of at the Shark’s Tooth.

  “You okay, Ian?”

  Cobb shrugged again. “Like I said, long day.”

  Jason decided he was done pulling teeth. If Cobb wanted to talk, he’d talk. If not, Jason was more than happy to finish his beer in silence, then hit the road. When Jason’s glass was three-quarters empty and he could almost glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel, Cobb finally spoke.

  “Disappointing day today.”

  “Yeah? Want to talk about it?”

  Cobb shrugged again. “Just . . . not what I was hoping for.”

  “The job you’re on not going well?”

  “Job’s fine. It’s not that. It’s . . . personal, I guess.”

  Jason waited for more, but that was all there was. “Listen, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. No problem.” He drained the last of his beer. “I have to meet a friend in Boston in a little while anyway. Just let me know if—”

  Cobb turned on his stool and looked at him directly for the first time tonight. “I want to, Jason. I want to talk to you about it. Nobody else would understand.”

  Jason nodded. “Okay, so talk. I’m listening.”

  Cobb looked back down into his beer, which he hadn’t touched. “I’m not sure . . . I’m ready.”

  The man needed help, probably more than Jason could give. “Have you thought about seeing someone?”

  “Like who?”

  “Like a therapist.”

  Cobb looked at him directly again, and the previously lifeless eyes were alive now . . . alive and angry. “I don’t need a therapist. That’s not what I need at all. You think I asked you to meet me to hear that from you?” He took a long pull of beer, then brought his glass down hard on the bar. A few feet away, the bartender frowned.

  “Ian, I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you want from me. I wish I did, but I don’t. So if I’m not saying what you need to hear, maybe you can find someone who can.”

  “Nah, it has to be you,” Cobb said. “Nobody else—at least nobody still in my life, and certainly no damned therapist—would understand. There’s just . . . you and me . . . we have so much in common, and . . .”

  Again with how much Cobb thought they had in common. Jason waited to see if he would finally be forthcoming about whatever the hell was bothering him, finally say something of substance, but he said no more. Jason was done. He hoped Cobb would still help him with the book when the time came, but if he refused, Jason could rely on the statements Cobb had made in The Real Scoop interview, along
with his own patchy memory. He got up from his stool.

  “You seem reluctant to talk about whatever’s on your mind. And that’s okay. I understand. I have to leave anyway. If you get to the point where you feel like talking about whatever’s going on with you, actually talking, you have my number. Good night, Ian. Hope tomorrow’s a better day.”

  He headed for the door, leaving Cobb at the bar hunched over his beer. He was halfway across the room when he thought he heard Cobb speak. It was low and mumbled, but it sounded a little like, “You spending the money yet?” But he wasn’t sure. He stopped and looked back. Cobb hadn’t turned around. Maybe he hadn’t said anything after all. Jason looked for his eyes in the mirror, but they were gazing down into the depths of his beer.

  He almost walked back to the bar. He almost said something he probably would have regretted. Instead, he pretended not to have heard—if indeed Cobb had spoken—and left the man to finish his drink alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “I thought I saw a light on in here,” Lieutenant McCuller said from the doorway of the conference room that, for nearly a year, had served as the nerve center of the Crackerjack task force.

  Lamar Briggs was sitting at the table in the center of the room. Around him were several whiteboards on wheels with photographs taped to them—pictures of each of Crackerjack’s victims and the locations where their bodies had been found; close-ups of wounds; shots of faces painted with garish colors and silly designs; pictures of people who had been persons of interest before Wallace Barton, who had never even been on the authorities’ radar, was revealed as their perp. Beside the various photos were notes written in dry-erase marker or on note cards taped to the board. One entire whiteboard was now dedicated to Barton while another held photographs and notes about each of the six victims found buried behind his stable.

  “The rest of the task force went home hours ago,” McCuller said. He looked at his watch. “It’s after nine thirty.”

  “Do we still even have a task force?”