The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  “I’d just like to see someone try to get into the house when I’m home,” she said.

  Jason almost wished for the same thing . . . almost.

  “Just be home at nine, okay?”

  He hung up, then began the next phase of his plan, such as it was. If he couldn’t risk trying to kill Ian Cobb himself—if he didn’t want to be the one to kill him, which he needed to believe—then it was time to find someone else to do it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Not everyone knew how to hire a hit man. And, Jason figured, the world was almost certainly a better place that way. But he knew.

  A few years ago, before his career as an author dried up, he had toyed around with a contract-killer story. His research had led him down some dark and disturbing avenues. He ultimately learned that there are, on the web, decentralized networks of data relay points used by people who crave anonymity—professional assassins among them—to interact and advertise their services and wares. People communicate through encrypted e-mail, never meeting or talking with one another. The information bounces from relay point to relay point, many times over, until the trail is nearly impossible to follow. Found an assassin who seems to suit your needs? Use an encryption key to send the details, a picture of the target; the make and model and, if possible, the license plate of his or her car; anything you know about the target’s daily routines; and whatever else is asked for. Payment is made in bitcoin, and most of the hit men offer to complete the job within a few weeks, possibly a few months, depending on the target.

  Months wouldn’t work for Jason. Every day Cobb was walking free was a day he might kill somebody else. Still, he had to try. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe he’d find a killer with a sudden hole in his schedule, or one who liked a challenge.

  To find someone, he had to trust the encryption technology employed by the bad guys. And he had to hope that none of them was an undercover cop posing as a contract killer.

  After perusing the advertisements of several people claiming to be professional killers, he settled on the three that seemed, based on nothing more than gut instinct, least likely to be cops and most likely to be able to do the job quickly. Two of them offered to kill an “average citizen” for $20,000 while the third charged $25,000. The killers each had premiums for murdering famous people, which Jason supposed Ian Cobb might be considered now. If one of them was interested in the job, Jason would let him decide to which category Cobb belonged. After Leonard Sanderson’s generosity, he could afford it either way.

  He drafted e-mail queries to each of the self-proclaimed assassins, with particular emphasis on the need for speed. Then, hoping that he wasn’t making a huge mistake, and that the encryption keys would shield him from prosecution if things went sideways, he put his finger on the “Send” button and . . .

  He paused. He stared at the screen for several minutes, thinking about the moral implications of what he was about to do, and about what Sophie would think of it. What he would think of himself.

  He sent the first e-mail, then the other two.

  Then he waited. He told himself that he’d had no choice, that he would actually be saving lives. He tried to believe himself. And for the most part, he did, but he couldn’t completely silence the whispers of doubt that echoed through the most remote corners of his mind. If Ian Cobb, wherever he was, knew what Jason had just done, would a small part of him have approved? Would he have smiled in triumph?

  All three responses came within four hours, forcing Jason to give the hit men points for promptness. The first had arrived in ninety minutes and read, “Six weeks minimum. If interested, let me know.” The second had come forty minutes later and was nearly identical but had shaved the time estimate to three weeks. A little more than an hour later, the third e-mail arrived. It read, Can’t guarantee success in less than a month. Respond if I can be of service.

  Jason needed to find a different way to rid the world of Ian Cobb. It was either Cobb or God only knew how many innocent people . . . men unlucky enough to cross Cobb’s path . . . and even perhaps Sophie and Max.

  So if he couldn’t hire a hit man online, and he still didn’t want to consider the possibility of going after Cobb himself—which not only would be dangerous as hell but would force Jason to do something he had sworn he’d never want to do—then he had to find a hit man another way. In the movies, one of the characters always seems to know a shady guy who knows someone willing to kill someone for money. But Jason didn’t know anyone like that. He was on his own.

  He sat down at his computer, barely able to fathom that he had come to be in this situation. He nudged the mouse, bringing the computer screen back to life, and opened his Internet browser. He was a little concerned about the search history he would be creating, but he hoped that, if he ever had need to explain it, the fact that he was a crime writer would help.

  After a minute of staring at the blank search box, an idea came to him. He looked for stories about suspected contract killers and murderers for hire in Massachusetts, as well as Connecticut and New Hampshire, which weren’t far away. Even limiting his search to the past five years, there were quite a few. Various people had tried to hire someone to kill their spouses, their spouses’ lovers, their bosses, law-enforcement officials, and witnesses in legal proceedings. Jason ignored the stories about the convictions of defendants; he wasn’t interested in someone behind bars. Instead, he looked for acquittals.

  After half an hour he had found only two relatively recent stories about defendants who were acquitted after having been charged with the murder or attempted murder of someone in exchange for money. From the articles, it looked to Jason like one of the defendants might actually have been innocent. The other guy, though, Ronald Wheeler—whose two trials had ended in hung juries before the government decided not to risk swinging and missing a third time—seemed guilty as hell to Jason. Without going into detail, the story implied that Wheeler had walked on legal technicalities. The unsuccessful prosecutor seemed to agree with Jason about the defendant’s guilt, as he was quoted as calling the result “a travesty of justice.” Then again, they all said that when they lost.

  Jason looked at Wheeler’s picture on the screen. He didn’t look like a hit man—at least not what Jason imagined a hit man would look like. No steely gaze or emotionless eyes. He looked like a real-estate agent, or maybe an accountant. It turned out, according to the article, that Wheeler was a loan officer at a local bank. He was alleged to have agreed to kill the cheating wife of a man who, in reality, was an unmarried undercover cop. They had settled on a price of $12,000.

  Jason decided he would try to find Ronald Wheeler. He knew the man had lived in Lowell at the time of his arrest, and in no time he found an address for him there. He looked online for more about Wheeler, but found only his Facebook page, which was sparse. A couple of photos of him, alone in each one. A few innocuous posts. Nothing about him being a contract killer, but Jason hadn’t expected that. Nothing he had seen, either on Facebook or in any of the articles about Wheeler’s arrest or his trial, indicated that the man was married, which would probably make things easier for Jason. A computer search gave him the phone number of the bank where he had worked. He called and asked for Wheeler, intending to hang up before the man could come on the line, but was told that no one by that name worked there, which wasn’t surprising. Being charged with attempted murder for hire probably didn’t make for good job security at a bank, or many other places, for that matter. It was quite possible that Mr. Wheeler had fallen on hard times after his acquittal, which might also make things a little easier for Jason.

  He glanced at his watch. Nearly 2:00 p.m. In a little while, he’d leave his apartment, unsure when—or if—he would return. Before he could leave, though, there was something he needed to do. Because he preferred to write at his desk, he used his desktop computer most of the time and his laptop only when he needed to work elsewhere for some reason. He transferred his entire catalog of digital family photos, a few t
housand in all, as well as his entire file of documents—completed manuscripts, partial manuscripts, barely begun manuscripts, files of research notes, letters to and from agents and editors—from the desktop to his laptop. The files didn’t take long; he wasn’t terribly prolific. When that was complete, he downloaded a destructive reformatting program that would make hundreds of passes across his desktop’s hard drive, scrubbing it cleaner and cleaner with every pass. In a few hours, no digital trace of Jason’s recent interest in hit men should exist on it.

  While his computer was getting its lobotomy, he packed a bag with clothing, toiletries, his laptop, his phone charger, and anything he thought he might need for the next week. He didn’t feel safe in his apartment. He would have arranged for a security system to be installed there, too, but he didn’t plan on living there in the long term, nor did he plan on being there in the short term, in case Ian Cobb came knocking. He’d stay in a motel until everything had been taken care of.

  And to begin getting everything taken care of, he would seek out Ronald Wheeler, killer for hire.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Outside his apartment, Jason looked for Ian Cobb’s van. He didn’t see it, but a few cars were parked on the street and Cobb could have been in any one of them. He decided to drive close to each and look inside. He walked half a block to where he’d parked his Camry, popped the trunk, and tossed in the bag of evidence Cobb had planted in his apartment, at least what he could find. He was about to get behind the wheel when a thought struck him: Could Cobb have planted a GPS tracker on his car? Research for books he never ended up writing had told Jason that such things weren’t hard to get these days. Would Cobb even think to do so? Jason had no idea what was going on in that psycho’s head. Because he couldn’t afford not to be a little paranoid, he decided to check the places he knew to be the most common spots to hide a tracker on a vehicle.

  As he was examining the car, his cell phone rang. It was Sophie.

  “It’s me,” she said. “Everything okay?”

  “So far. How are you?”

  “Worried. About you.”

  Despite the terrible circumstances, that was nice to hear.

  “How’s Max?”

  “He’s fine. There’s not a puzzle undone in the whole house.” She paused. “Have you heard from Ian Cobb again?”

  “No.”

  “Have you decided how to handle things there?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “I’ve been thinking . . . could you frame him for a crime? Don’t hurt anybody or anything, but maybe a burglary or something. If you do it right, and don’t get caught, he could go to jail and be out of our lives for a few years, at least. And he won’t be able to do . . . what he likes to do to other people.”

  He said nothing, not wanting to tell her that he’d already rejected that idea for a variety of reasons.

  “I know it would only be a temporary fix,” she said, “but a lot of things can happen in a few years. I almost hate to say this, but maybe something would happen to him in prison and we wouldn’t have to worry about him. I’ve read about more than one serial killer being killed in prison by another inmate.”

  “That’s a really good idea, Soph. That might work.”

  He didn’t like lying to her, but he liked it better than telling her the truth at the moment.

  As they spoke, he continued his examination of the area under the Camry’s hood. So far he’d seen nothing that looked suspicious to his admittedly untrained eye.

  “It wouldn’t be easy,” she said. “You’d have to come up with a really good plan. But I figured, like you said, you being a crime writer, you’d be able to think of something.”

  “I bet I can. I’ll start thinking as soon as we hang up.”

  Sophie said nothing for a moment. He wondered if she wasn’t buying into his act.

  “Can I talk to Max?” he asked.

  For the next few minutes, he checked the rest of the car for a tracker while he listened to Max talk about every one of the puzzles he had assembled, some with Sophie’s help, some with Geri’s, some with help from them both, and one, he proudly proclaimed, without anyone else’s help at all.

  “I love you, Max. Can you put Mommy back on?”

  “Love you, too. Here she is.”

  When Sophie was back on the line, he said, “I’ll call in a day or two.”

  “Be careful, Jason. What you’re doing is dangerous. That man is . . . he’s . . .”

  “I know what he is. And I’ll be careful.”

  They ended the call and Jason closed the hood. He was opening his driver’s door when he heard a voice behind him.

  “I caught you.”

  He turned and saw a dark sedan pulling up behind him, Detective Briggs’s head leaning out the open window.

  “Caught me?”

  “Looks like you’re heading out somewhere,” Briggs said. “I’ve got a few questions. It would have been annoying if I didn’t catch you.”

  Jason thought he heard something in the way he said that. A message? Was Briggs trying to be clever? Or was Jason being paranoid?

  “Got a second?” Briggs asked.

  “Sure.”

  I’m just on my way to try to hire a hit man, but it can wait a few minutes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  To Briggs, Swike looked guilty. Of something. He wasn’t sure what it was, but Swike had the look that Briggs had seen a thousand times. Something in his expression. Like he’d been caught doing . . . something.

  He climbed out of his sedan and walked up to Swike, who was standing next to his car. He took his little notepad from his pocket, clicked a ballpoint pen, and leaned casually against the Camry.

  “Sorry to slow you down,” he said. “Hope you weren’t on your way to do something important.”

  Swike was clearly trying to look just as casual as he leaned against the front quarter panel and folded his arms.

  “Nothing that won’t keep.”

  Briggs had really grown to dislike Jason Swike. Both Dusty Owens and Bonnie believed it was because Briggs had put so much time into the case without being able to make a dent in it while Swike had lucked into escaping and killing Wallace Barton, which left Briggs without any credit and Swike draped in glory. It didn’t help, they said, that Swike seemed to be cashing in pretty big while Briggs was nearing retirement with modest savings and what could only be considered, at best, a decent pension.

  And they weren’t wrong. Briggs had been a fairly honest cop over his long career. He could almost—but not quite—count on his fingers the number of times he had taken a bribe or skimmed money recovered at a crime scene. What was the most he’d ever gotten illicitly at any one time? Ten thousand bucks? What did it all add up to over the course of thirty-six years? Less than seventy thousand? Eighty at the most? For all the hours he’d put in? The bad guys he’d put away? That was nothing.

  Did he resent Jason Swike? Hell, yes.

  But that didn’t mean there wasn’t something off about the guy, something wrong with his story. Did Briggs actually suspect that Swike was a killer? He wasn’t sure. Was it conceivable, though? Sure. He had thumbed through Swike’s novel, The Drifter’s Knife, which he’d found in a library. Some pretty twisted stuff in there. Did it require the mind of a psychopath to dream up those ideas? Unlikely, but it probably couldn’t hurt. And maybe worse than the idea that Swike might have killed because he was psychotic was a thought that had been teasing Briggs for a few days now: maybe Swike was completely sane but killed anyway . . . to sell books, to resuscitate a drowning career as a crime writer.

  “I’ve been thinking about this case,” Briggs said.

  “I keep assuming, with Barton dead, that there isn’t much of a case anymore.”

  “Oh, sure, the bad guy’s done, no doubt. But we still have to make sure everything wraps up neatly. Make sure our questions are answered. You write crime stories. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Swike nodded and Brig
gs saw that look again.

  “I was thinking about the timing of everything,” Briggs said.

  “Timing?”

  “Yeah. See, our profile of Crackerjack told us that something probably set him off not long before the first murders. Something traumatic. It’s like that with a lot of serial killers.”

  “A trigger.”

  “Bingo,” he said. “See, I knew you understood these things. A trigger. And we just couldn’t find anything in Barton’s recent past that might have acted as a trigger. I was surprised about that. You look hard enough, you could probably find something like that for almost anyone. You get fired, your wife cheats on you, whatever. For instance,” he added, “take you.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. If I wanted to look for a trigger in your life—just as an example—something that happened a couple of years ago, shortly before Crackerjack killed his first victims, the ones we found buried behind Barton’s stable, I’d say that maybe it was the trauma of the car accident that left your wife paralyzed from the waist down. You know, then you guys separated and everything. That happened right around then, didn’t it? A little over two years ago?”

  Swike kept his eyes straight ahead. “It did.”

  “I thought so. See, that’s the kind of thing that could make a man snap. That kind of thing could make a man do evil, you know?”

  “Almost anything could make a man snap, I suppose.”

  “Sure, sure. I’ve seen it plenty of times over the years, believe me. Our profile also says Crackerjack was probably a loner.”

  “Like Wallace Barton.”

  “Like Barton, yeah,” Briggs said. “Definite loner there. Like you, too, right? I mean, after you and your wife split and you moved out, you spent a lot of time by yourself, didn’t you? Especially in that first year? Alone in your little apartment, writing books nobody was buying. At least that’s what your agent said. And a few of your neighbors. Your friend Ben Britton said you guys saw a lot less of each other for almost a year after the accident and your separation. He even said that, for a while there, you were something of a loner. His word, if you can believe it, not mine. And that’s what everyone seems to be telling me, including your ex-wife.”