The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  Using his phone, he called 911. Weakly, he said, “Please . . . help me. He’s down but I don’t know if he’s dead. He may still kill me . . . hurry . . .”

  He decided not to leave Cobb’s address as he dropped the phone to the floor without disconnecting the call. It felt more realistic that way. The cops would probably triangulate the signal or something. If not, he’d call 911 again when he woke up in a little while.

  He knelt beside Cobb, stuck the syringe into the side of his own bicep, and injected himself with the tranquilizer. He yanked the needle from his arm and closed his fist around the syringe. When the drug kicked in a few seconds later, he fell over sideways, imagining that it would look very natural when the cops eventually found him.

  His last conscious thought was that it was over. It was finally over.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  A little after 5:00 a.m., the police found Jason lying barely conscious across Ian Cobb’s dead body, an empty syringe clutched in one hand. His cell phone was on the floor beside his other hand, where a loose, twisted loop of duct tape encircled the wrist. An EMT checked him over thoroughly and declared him uninjured. A half hour later, when State Police Detective Lamar Briggs arrived, looking—in Jason’s opinion—tired and cranky, Jason was wide awake.

  Later, the two men sat at the table in Cobb’s kitchen, Briggs looking even crankier than when he’d arrived. He also looked skeptical as he flipped through his little notebook, scanning the pages he had filled with notes for the past hour while Jason had answered his questions.

  “That’s a hell of a story,” Briggs said, sitting back.

  Jason nodded.

  “Tell it to me again.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it. Start with the motel.”

  Jason sighed and recounted the story he had already spun about being asleep at the motel where he’d been staying while doing some writing, and getting a call from Cobb, who sounded desperate and maybe a little crazy. He’d had enough of his father, couldn’t take the old man anymore, and frankly, Cobb admitted, his mind hadn’t been right ever since he’d been taken by Crackerjack two weeks ago. He kept having nightmares—God, the nightmares. He really wanted to talk.

  “So I told him to come to the motel.”

  “Remind me why you were staying there.”

  “I told you, I’m kicking around a story that takes place in a motel. I wanted to really get the feel for it. Soak it in.”

  “I thought you were writing a book about Crackerjack.”

  “The motel book will be after that one, but I wanted to get some thoughts down while the idea is fresh.” He shrugged. “A writer has to follow his muse, you know? Strike while the iron is hot.”

  Briggs frowned. Actually, he hadn’t stopped frowning since he’d gotten there.

  “And what did Cobb want to talk about when he showed up?”

  “It was hard to tell. He wasn’t very coherent.”

  “Was he drunk? High?”

  “Like I told you already, I don’t know. He just seemed . . . off.”

  “And he attacked you.”

  “Not really. I feel like you’re not listening at all. I stepped out onto the landing with him and he got a bit belligerent, and when I put my hand on his shoulder and asked if he was okay, he pushed me back.”

  “Into another room’s window,” Briggs said, consulting his notes.

  “Right.”

  “What about the knife?”

  “The knife?”

  “We found a knife at the motel.”

  Briggs had left that out the first time they’d gone through this.

  “Yeah, he showed me a knife. I talked him into giving it to me, which he did peacefully. I don’t remember where I left it.”

  Briggs looked dubious. “Then he peacefully pushed you into a window?”

  “Well, no, that wasn’t very peaceful. It was just a knee-jerk reaction, I think, after I touched his shoulder.”

  “And you pushed him back and he fell over the balcony.”

  Jason nodded. “I didn’t mean to push him that hard. Just a knee-jerk reaction of my own, I guess. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt.”

  “Yeah, you were both lucky, I guess . . . until he tried to kill you later, of course. Tell me that part again.”

  Jason sighed, shook his head wearily, just for show, and began. “After he left, I got in my car and drove away. So when he called—”

  “Why’d you leave the motel?”

  “In case he came back. Things hadn’t gone so well the first time he was there.”

  “So when he called later and said, ‘Hey, pal, sorry I attacked you. Wanna come over for a beer and some Cheetos?’ you said, ‘Sure,’ and headed right over?”

  “He seemed to have calmed down. But he also seemed . . . depressed.”

  “So off you went. In the middle of the night. After he’d already attacked you.”

  “I didn’t think of it as him having attacked me. It was just . . . a misunderstanding. I thought maybe he really needed someone to talk to. I thought I could help him.”

  “Why’d he call you? Had you two become bosom buddies in the two weeks you’d known each other?”

  “Not really. We met at a bar for a drink one time. Talked on the phone a few times. He had me over for a beer one night,” he added, in case his fingerprints or DNA showed up somewhere else in the house.

  “Yet you’re the one he called in his moment of crisis.”

  Jason shrugged. “I don’t think he had many friends. And given what we’d been through together—or what I believed we’d been through—I figured maybe he thought I was the only one who might understand whatever was bothering him tonight.”

  Briggs nodded and flipped forward a couple of pages in his notebook. “So when he asked you to come over, sounding all depressed, and after attacking you earlier, it didn’t occur to you to call the police?”

  “I honestly didn’t think he was dangerous—to me or to anyone else, including himself. I thought he was just feeling really down. He’d been through a lot, or so I thought. I didn’t yet know that he was . . .”

  “Crackerjack?” Briggs said.

  “Right. How could I possibly have known that?”

  “Good question.”

  At Briggs’s prompting, Jason continued his fiction—about Cobb subduing him with a stun gun, binding him with tape, and admitting he had been Crackerjack all along.

  “Why would he do all of that?”

  “I already told you all this, Detective.”

  “You’re a spellbinding storyteller, Jason. I want to hear it again.”

  Jason sighed. “He said he was tired of it all. Tired of pretending. Tired of taking care of his father. Apparently, his old man had abused Ian’s brother when they were younger, so he decided it was time to kill him.”

  “After all those years of keeping him at home, paying a fortune in medical care, he finally just up and decides to kill Daddy?”

  “I can’t explain it. But remember, by that time, I was taped in a chair and he was threatening to kill us all—first his father, then me, then himself—so it’s obvious he wasn’t thinking rationally.”

  “Why kill you?”

  “Like I already told you, he said I was ‘the one that got away.’”

  “From Crackerjack. Because Ian Cobb confessed to you that he and Wallace Barton were working together, and you were the one that got away.”

  “I assume that’s what he meant.”

  Briggs leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on the table. “See? Right there is where you lose me, Jason. Because you’ve been saying all along that he helped you escape in the first place, two weeks ago. So why would he want to kill you tonight?”

  Jason told that part of the story again, about their escape from Wallace Barton’s stable, adding that Cobb had revealed just tonight that he had decided not to kill him back then—decided to help him escape, in fact—because he reminded Cobb so much of his younger brother, Johnn
y.

  “I haven’t seen any pictures of his brother yet,” Jason lied, “but he said we looked a lot alike.” He knew that Briggs would eventually see photos of Johnny Cobb, if he hadn’t already, and wouldn’t fail to see the strong resemblance between them.

  “I still don’t understand, though, Jason. Why would he want to kill you tonight? If he saved you because you looked so much like his brother, why decide to kill you? What changed?”

  Jason shrugged. “All I can say is that he clearly wasn’t well. He was obviously . . .”

  “Crazy?” Briggs finished for him.

  “I’d say that’s about right, wouldn’t you?”

  The rest of the story, which Jason had concocted a few hours ago, was easy. While Cobb was watching his father die, Jason was busy trying to get his hands free of the tape. He succeeded just as Cobb was approaching, and they fought. Somehow, even though he was groggy from the drug, Jason got his hands on the syringe of horse tranquilizer, which was on the nightstand, and managed to stick Cobb with it.

  “The next thing I remember, a policeman was asking if I was okay. I think I managed to make a recording of some of this, by the way. On my phone.”

  Briggs regarded him in silence for a moment. “Yeah, I listened to it.”

  “So you heard how it all happened then.”

  “I’m not sure what I heard.”

  Jason knew the recording supported his version of events. He also knew that must have pissed off Briggs.

  “And how the hell did you manage to make a recording anyway?” Briggs asked. “Your hands were taped. And how did you even still have a phone? He didn’t take it from you?”

  “Like I keep saying, he wasn’t in his right mind. He was sloppy, I guess. Didn’t even ask if I had a phone. Didn’t tape my hands well enough. He was in pretty rough shape.”

  “Why didn’t you dial 911?”

  “I was trying to work the phone without him seeing, keeping it hidden. I could barely see what I was doing. I was lucky just to get the audio-recording app open. Hey, when do I get my phone back?”

  Briggs shook his head in disbelief as he closed his notebook and sat back in his chair. “I’ve gotta tell you, this whole thing stinks.”

  “I know,” Jason said, nodding sadly. “It’s a shame. Two men dead.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that this stinks. It smells all wrong.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that I think you’re lying.”

  Jason tried to look shocked. “About what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe everything.”

  Overconfidence is dangerous for a criminal, Jason knew. And there are a thousand ways to screw up. The smallest detail overlooked could send a murderer to prison for life. He did a lightning-quick rundown in his mind and couldn’t see where Briggs would be able to bring him down.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective. I’ve been as helpful as I can be. I’ve told you everything I can remember. So if you don’t have any more questions for me tonight, can I go home? It’s been a long night. Don’t forget, I was almost killed a little while ago.”

  Briggs eyed him for a moment. Jason figured that he wanted to say something like, I’ll figure it out eventually. And when I do, your ass is mine. Instead, in a voice dripping with contempt, he said, “I bet this will make a great ending for your book. A second escape, this time from the second half of a serial-killing team. Very exciting finish. Probably help you sell a lot more copies.”

  “You might be right,” Jason said. Then, in what was a complete and utter lie, he added, “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Jason Swike’s book—The End of Broken Bones—came out eleven months later. Briggs had already read it from cover to cover. He even annotated numerous passages in the margins with thoughts of his own, various questions that occurred to him and suspicions he had. And now he stood in line at a Boston bookstore that specialized in mystery and crime books, waiting for the celebrated author to sign his copy of the bestseller.

  After twenty minutes, hardcover in hand, he reached the table where Jason Swike sat, pen at the ready. On the wall behind him hung a banner depicting the image of the book’s cover, along with a question printed in bold red script: What Drives a Person to Kill?

  “So tell me,” Briggs said, “what does drive a person to kill?”

  Swike, who was checking his watch, looked up. “Detective,” he said with mild surprise. “It’s been a while.”

  It had been nearly six months, in fact, since they had seen each other, ever since the day Lieutenant McCuller told Briggs to stop obsessing over the Crackerjack case trying to find something that wasn’t there. Briggs’s protests that something wasn’t right about Jason Swike fell repeatedly on deaf ears. His attempt to obtain a warrant for Swike’s and Cobb’s cell-phone records that final night were unsuccessful. They had Cobb’s phone itself, of course, but nothing on it seemed suspicious. Besides, men were no longer turning up around Massachusetts with broken bodies and painted faces. The bad guy, Wallace Barton—against whom the evidence was both overwhelming and incontrovertible—was deep in the dirt. The district attorney was happy. The public was happy. Case closed. As for Ian Cobb’s death, nothing contradicted Swike’s story about that. “Leave it all alone and work the cases that actually need working,” the lieutenant had ordered.

  “Want me to sign this?” Swike asked, reaching across the table and taking the book from Briggs’s hand. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

  “Not sure I’d call myself that, but I definitely think you’re someone to keep my eye on.”

  Swike seemed to consider that a moment, then opened the book and poised his pen above one of the first pages. “So, to whom should I make it out?”

  “Just sign your name.”

  He did, then stuck a custom bookmark between the pages, closed the cover, and handed the book back to Briggs.

  Ignoring the long line of people behind him, Briggs said, “New York Times Bestseller List, huh? Where is it at the moment? Number nine?”

  “Down to twelve. Peaked at sixth on the list, which was fine with me.”

  “I hear they’re shooting the movie right now.”

  Briggs had read in the Globe that Hollywood had cast an A-list star—he couldn’t remember which one—to play Swike in the film.

  “Should be in theaters early next year,” Jason said.

  “And did I read something about another movie, based on an old novel of yours?”

  Swike smiled. “Well, it’s not definite yet, but my agent thinks Paramount will give it the green light any day now.”

  Briggs nodded. Someone behind him coughed impatiently. “The Globe article also said you got a big deal for two more books.”

  “Novels, not true crime like this one. I’m probably three-quarters of the way through the first one.”

  “Congratulations. Looks like this whole Crackerjack thing worked out well for you.”

  “It was a nightmare,” Swike said. “But I guess I’ve been pretty lucky since.”

  “Lucky. Sure.”

  The murmurs and grumbling behind Briggs were getting louder.

  “I’m retiring in four months,” he said. “Gonna have a lot of free time on my hands.”

  “You should find a hobby. Write a book, maybe.”

  “I already have a hobby all planned. You’re going to be my hobby, Jason. I made a copy of the entire Crackerjack case file—which could get me in trouble if they ever found out, but what the hell? I’ve got a recording of your television interview, too. And I have this book you wrote, of course. I’m going to go over it all, again and again, for as long as I have to, until I find whatever it is you’re hiding.”

  “I’m not hiding anything, Detective, but . . . whatever fills your day.” He could not have failed to notice the growing unhappiness in the line behind Briggs, yet he refused to look impatient, to rush Briggs in any way. He simpl
y sat and waited.

  Finally, Briggs said, “Thanks for the autograph.”

  “Thanks for the twenty-two bucks you paid for the book. Take care, Detective.”

  Briggs walked away, ignoring the dirty looks as he passed dozens of people who, like him, had shelled out for Swike’s book. They would probably all pay to see the movie, too . . . and read his other books, and see the movies based on those . . .

  And Swike would get a cut of every one of those dollars.

  As he promised, Briggs was going to keep at it. He would comb through the entire case file again, as often as needed. He would watch the TV interview over and over. He would read the book from cover to cover as many times as he needed. Lieutenant McCuller may have ordered Detective Lamar Briggs to close the case and walk away, but he couldn’t make private citizen Briggs do so.

  In fact, maybe Briggs would move his retirement up a month or two. He couldn’t wait to get started.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Jason watched Briggs disappear in the crowd and wondered exactly what the detective suspected him of and whether he’d ever find evidence of it. He didn’t think so. Still, he might not sleep as well knowing that Briggs might never stop chewing on the case, like an ornery dog with an old shoe. And maybe that was what Briggs wanted. Maybe it was the best he could hope for. A small victory.

  He signed a book for another fan—a real one, this time—as Sophie zoomed up in her “hot rod,” as she called it. A top-of-the-line electric wheelchair. All it was missing, she said, was a rocket launcher. At her side was Max. Sophie had driven the two of them herself to Jason’s book signing in her customized van, also woefully lacking in rocket launchers, she’d noted, but not much else.

  “Was that Detective Briggs?” she asked as Jason took a copy of his book from another reader, signed it, and returned it with a smile.

  “It was.”

  “Big fan?”

  “Big might not be the right word for it.”

  Fan wasn’t, either.

  Max asked, “Are all these people here to see you, Daddy?”