Chapters
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Afterword
Copyright & Credits
Also By The Author
00.
“You’re a nice guy, Alex.” That’s what people say to me at parties. They look at me and they see what they want to see. They make their own assumptions on the basis of nothing much, weigh and measure. Friendly enough, if a little serious. Interesting career mix. But nothing there to envy. No riches, no grand life, to make them feel small.
They see me as non-threatening, which is why I’m only ever “a nice guy”, never anything more. There’s usually just the tiniest hint of pity in the eyes or in the voice.
Maybe that would change if they knew more of my past, and the blood and the guilt and the hurt there.
They judge everyone on acquisitions – the house, the car, the pretty wife, the three kids and the mortgage – and I come up short on all counts. My Bureau career dead for six years now, doing all right in the private sector, but it’s not the same, is it? I live in a small apartment, alone. No wife and kids, and I’m not looking for them, not any more. My best hope for family bliss was torn from me a year ago and I accept that there’ll not be another. At least, not one like it.
The people at parties would like me to keep trying, of course. Get out, get down, get laid. Get a life. Settle for what you can. “You’re a nice guy, Alex,” they’re thinking. “But you’re going to end up alone and dead with little to show for it. What a waste.”
That’s what they think when they tell me I’m a nice guy at parties. I know it, but I smile and nod anyway, and we talk for a while longer, and eventually I go back home to nothing much and I exist for another day.
I wonder what those people would say if they could see me now: in a narrow alleyway, police lights flashing in the streets beyond, and every cop in the city hunting me for murder.
01.
Boston, MA. 2004.
‘RELATIVES CALL ON ‘FALL RIVER KILLER’ TO BREAK SILENCE,’ the headline read. Dense columns of text filled much of page five of the Boston Globe beneath, along with the same mugshot of Cody Williams the media had used in every story written about him since his arrest seven years ago. Hair tied back in a ponytail, pulling his forehead taut and snapping his skin to attention, white in the photographer’s flash. Heavy eyes staring contemptuously forwards. A faint sneer on cracked lips.
Looking at it, I felt a hollow sickness and the same sense of pursuit, dislocation, something invisible closing in behind, that had been with me since the story about Williams’ inoperable pancreatic cancer first broke.
Since he became news again.
Since the past came back to threaten the present.
I didn’t usually read the Globe. If someone hadn’t left a copy in the shared foyer downstairs, if I hadn’t picked it up for something to skim in the elevator on the way up to the office while I shook off the fall chill, I might have been able to avoid the story at least until its inevitable regurgitation on the TV news later.
The families of several alleged victims of convicted murderer Cody Williams have pleaded with him to break his silence and reveal the location of their remains. Their request follows reports that FBI agents have recently attempted to persuade the ‘Fall River Killer’ to talk. Williams is currently serving a life term in Ashworth prison for the murder of serial rapist Clinton Travers in Hartford, CT. Although he never stood trial for their abductions, he is widely believed to have been behind the disappearances of seven girls over the course of a single year in the southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut area.
In an open letter to Williams, the relatives of those girls whose bodies have never been found ask him to give up their locations before he dies. “Don’t leave us forever wondering where they are. Let us bury our loved ones properly,” the letter reads.
Williams has always maintained his silence regarding the location of his alleged victims. In the seven years since his arrest, the remains of three girls – Kerry Abblit, Joanne Tilley and Abbie Galina – have been found in stretches of remote Massachusetts woodland. The bodies of Marie Austen, Brooke Morgan, Katelyn Sellars and Holly Tynon, all believed to have been abducted and murdered by ‘The Fall River Killer’, have never been located. Williams was recently diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and doctors say…
The elevator doors slid open and I lowered the paper. My boss, Rob, was already in. Robin Garrett Associates, licensed private investigators, security consultants, finders-of-the-lost, general nuisances. It wasn’t a bad office. We weren’t a bad company. We had a few junior staff and an intern and a coffee machine. By the standards of the industry, we were doing nicely.
“Morning, Alex,” Rob said. “Had a good few days?”
I nodded and sat at my desk. Tossed the paper down and didn’t look at it. “Yeah. I didn’t do anything much.”
“No?”
“Cleaned the apartment, caught up on a few chores I’d been putting off.”
“You’re right, that doesn’t sound like anything much.”
“Didn’t have much else to do.” I shrugged. “How were things here?”
“Fairly quiet. You didn’t miss a lot. The kids are dealing with most of the bread-and-butter stuff that came in. Oh, and Sophie stopped by to let us know what hours she’s available to work around her lecture schedule.”
“As busy as she was last semester?”
“That’s about the shape of things. Although it still looks like a cushy number compared to what I can remember of college.”
“Back in the day.”
He nodded. “Back in the day.”
“Sixty hours a week, writing on an old piece of slate, and your bus fare was a nickel. Did you trace McKean’s ex-wife?”
“I paid a visit to her place in Portland on Thursday. I don’t know why his lawyers think she’ll help his defense – she didn’t say very much about him that I’d want repeated in a courtroom.”
“She was full of happy reminiscences and fond memories of her dream marriage, huh?”
“Something along those lines, yeah. But I guess that’s their problem, not ours. I posted the bill to them this morning.”
“I don’t blame her for not wanting anything to do with him.”
“Yeah, nasty piece of work.” He flicked his eyes in the direction of my desk. “You had a couple of calls on Friday. There’s a note about one of them stuck to your screen. I told them if it wasn’t life-or-death urgent, they’d have to wait until you came back today.”
“They didn’t push i
t. Guess it can’t have been life-or-death urgent then.”
“Special Agent Downes, I think her name was. It’s on the note.”
“Tanya Downes,” I said, reading his scrawl. “From the Bureau’s Boston field office.”
“You know her?”
“No. After my time.”
“She said they needed to talk to you about Cody Williams.”
My heart sank but I tried to hide it. “Did she say why?”
“No.” Rob frowned. “You don’t exactly sound raring to go.”
“How much do you know about Williams?”
He glanced at the Globe I’d brought with me. “Only what I’ve seen in the news. I’d left the Bureau by the time he came along.”
“I was one of the agents working his case.” I sighed hard, swallowed my unease and reached for phone.
“Yeah?”
“I was kind of hoping I’d never have to think about the guy ever again, that’s all.”
When I eventually got through to Tanya Downes we briefly exchanged pleasantries, but otherwise it was all business. “I take it you’ve seen the press reports on Williams,” she said.
“They say he’s got cancer and could die anytime from weeks to months.”
“That’s right.”
“I was planning on holding a party when it happens.”
She ignored my remark. “We’re being pressured by the families of four of his victims to get him to talk and give up the places he hid their bodies before he checks out.”
“Yeah, I saw their letter to him in this morning’s paper.”
“How do you suppose he reacted?”
“He probably pissed himself he was laughing so hard.” I could almost picture him doing it. “Cody Williams was never the sort to repent on his deathbed.”
“That’s more or less been my experience of him as well. The letter, though, was more of a publicity tool.”
“Publicity for who?”
“By making it public, we hoped to increase the pressure on him to tell us what he knows. Privately, at the families’ request, we’ve been talking to him in prison for the past week or so, in the hope of getting something useful.”
“With no luck.”
Downes paused for a moment, then said, “Yes. He’s told us nothing about the locations of the victims.”
“The thudding sound you might be able to hear in the background is my jaw dropping from the sheer volume of surprise I’m feeling.”
“However, he has intimated that if he were to talk to anyone, it would be the agent who first spoke to him at the time of his arrest. Which was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“So we want you to come out to Ashworth and speak to him for us. Try to make him see how senseless it would be to take his secrets to the grave.”
“Go to the jail to appeal to Cody Williams’ better nature.”
“Or whatever you think will play best, of course. The doctors can’t give us a definite timescale for his condition, so we’re assuming we need to work as fast as possible. Obviously,” she continued before I could raise it as an objection, “the Bureau will pay whatever reasonable fees your agency wants to charge.”
I thought of all the good reasons I had for refusing. I thought of Cody's smug satisfaction. I thought of the way it had felt to stand helplessly by while he’d committed his crimes. While he’d killed those kids.
I thought of all the lies.
“I don’t know about all this, Agent Downes.”
“You don’t know if you can succeed?”
“I don’t know if I want to share the same air as Williams.”
“It’ll be good publicity for your company, especially if you pull it off. A media spotlight can only be good for business.”
“You mean this whole thing will be good publicity for the FBI,” I said. “You can have the local SAC or some spokesperson handing out soundbites about helping the community, victim support. The caring, sharing face of today’s Bureau. And you can’t afford to let this slip away from you.”
“Conversely,” she said as if I hadn’t spoken, “if it became known that you refused to help, I imagine the bad publicity would seriously damage the reputation of both yourself and your company.”
“Is that so, Agent Downes?”
“I doubt the families would think very highly of you either.”
“You forget that I was the one who got the guy that killed their kids. Of all people, they’d be the ones most likely to understand why I wouldn’t want to set eyes on a son of a bitch like Cody Williams again.” I tried to keep my temper in check. “Let’s face it, Agent Downes, the Bureau needs this far more than I do, so don’t try threatening me with talk about public opinion. You’re the ones who can’t afford to get crucified in the media if you don’t come up with the goods.”
The line went quiet for a moment before Downes said anything further. From her shift in tone, I guessed she’d decided to abandon that line of argument. “I’m sorry, Mr Rourke,” she said.
“Alex. Calling me Mr Rourke makes you sound like my dentist.”
“I wasn’t trying to coerce you, Alex, just pointing out the facts. I do understand why you might not want to speak to Williams. Really, I do. I know that it wasn’t long after his case that you had your, uh…”
“Breakdown. A couple of months after his conviction, that’s right.”
“And having spent a short while in the company of Williams, I’m inclined to agree with you that he is a son of a bitch and the sooner he checks out the better. But the families of his victims deserve one more chance to find out what happened to them, and time is running out. If there’s any chance we can persuade him to speak to us, we’ve got to try, for their sake. We’ll pay you well for your time and don’t forget the benefits – or otherwise – of that media spotlight.”
I rubbed my eyes, thinking long and hard. Rob was watching me across the room, although he was trying real hard to make it look like he was reading something on his screen. My head was swamped by memories long locked away.
I could smell the rancid sweat on Williams’ skin the first time we met, see the hunger and the mocking light dancing in his eyes. I could hear his easy denial of his crimes, the undertone that said he was lying and that he knew I was aware of it and was enjoying that knowledge immensely.
“Okay,” I said, much to my instant regret. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you, Alex.”
“Here are my conditions. Firstly, I’ll work on this until I exhaust all the possibilities I can think of for as long as I can stand it. When I say I’m all out of ideas, or I’m fed up with the whole thing, my job is over. I go in there and Williams tells me to go fuck myself, I can walk away.”
“That’s no problem.”
“Secondly, you’re going to have to clarify the legal position here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Williams was never convicted of anything apart from the murders of Clinton Travers and the attempted kidnapping of Nicole Ballard. We had to drop the charge of murdering Kerry Abblit for lack of evidence, and we could never make cases against him for the others.”
“But we know it was him,” she pointed out.
“You, me and everyone else knows, but that’s opinion, not legal fact. Williams isn’t going to incriminate himself by revealing the locations of four murder victims if he thinks he could end up in court. And I don’t want to go through the process of testifying again. If there’s going to be any kind of legal proceedings arising out of these interviews, I’m not going to be involved.”
“That’s fair enough. We’re still working out the details, but we already had those concerns in mind. No one’s bothered about trying to get him into court – he’ll have died in jail before any case comes to trial. It’s likely that the interviews will be arranged in such a way that nothing you learn in them would be admissible, so trying to bring murder charges would be a moot point. Good enough?”
“Yeah, I think so.�
��
“When are you available to start?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Excellent. I’ll arrange the details and then call you with a time when we can meet to go over everything beforehand. See you then.”
I put the phone down and pinched the bridge of my nose. Rob waited a few seconds for nicety’s sake and then said, “So, what’s the deal with Williams?”
02.
Providence, RI. 1997.
Purple-white lightning sheared through the thick bank of black cloud overhead as rain pounded against the windshield of our Lincoln Town Car. The oppressive, cloying heat that had surrounded Providence on my arrival from Quantico had given way to an explosive summer thunderstorm. Agent Jeff Agostini from Boston Field Office swore under his breath as he eased off the gas to account for the slick highway surface and cranked the wipers up to full speed by way of return. Winds buffeted the window beside me.
“Blazing sunshine back in Virginia, huh?” he said, half-shouting over the storm. He was a young guy, younger than me. Looked like a fresh OTC graduate. Well-built, eager and sharp-eyed. Close-cut blond hair and a sharp, aquiline nose. I hadn't known him long enough to judge his qualities as an agent, but he’d hardly shut up since we left the airport.
“That’s right. This’ll blow itself out before the afternoon, though, I reckon.”
“Maybe so, maybe so.” He tapped his index finger on the wheel in time to some unheard music running through his head. “First time in New England?”
I shook my head. “I was born in Maine.”
“Heh. Northerner, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You come back here much?”
“Last time I was in this part of the country was a series of rapes in Hartford a few months ago. Before then, I dunno. Not much.”
“Rapes, sure, I heard about those. You get the son of a bitch?”
I glanced at him. He was driving one-handed, freeing the other to gesticulate for emphasis on just about everything he said. Must just have been his way, I guessed. “Not yet.”
“Yeah, but I heard you had a suspect.”
“That’s right.”
The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut Page 1