“It is a little like wrestling sharks naked, or so I understand. But then your speciality was very much investigative work.”
She glanced at the box file and I gave it an experimental heft to show willing, but left it closed. It was heavy, solid-feeling. I already knew most of its contents from the original investigation and trial; hell, I’d written some of the reports that must be in there. The only additions of note I could think of since then would be scene reports and examinations of the bodies of Kerry Abblit, Abbie Galina and Joanne Tilley.
“The three girls you’ve found so far,” I said to Downes. “What’s the story with them?”
She pursed her lips, thinking. “Joanne Tilley was the first to be found, nearly five years ago. She was buried in woodland not far from Ware in Hampshire County.”
“Quite a way from where she went missing.”
“Right. Her remains had skeletonized, but the medical examiner’s office identified her from dental records. There didn’t seem to be any clothes or remaining possessions buried with her.”
“No scraps of material or anything like that?” I said.
“None at all.” She shook her head. “The remains were disturbed when a nearby tree fell in a storm, hauling up its root system en masse. No animal activity, but they had been moved a little by the tree and the rain. We couldn’t be certain, but it looked like she might have been strangled.”
“Yeah?”
“As I recall, there might have been other injuries, but it was impossible to say whether they occurred pre- or post-mortem.”
Joanne Tilley was a sweet, quiet child. A huge Disney fan. She dreamed of becoming a veterinarian at a zoo or wildlife park when she was older. On Sundays she liked to go to her grandmother's house with the rest of her family. Her favorite food was butterscotch.
Outside it was still dry but I could see from the way the trees were swaying that the wind had picked up. My breath left vapor bursts on the glass.
“Was there anything to suggest how Williams would have dumped her in that location?” I ask. “Parking lots or access roads he would have had to use, that sort of thing?”
“Two. A parking lot and a fire break, both around a half mile away from the dump site. At the time she was found we checked for old reports of suspicious activity or vehicles in the area from before Williams’ arrest back to when she was first reported missing.”
“I was guessing you found nothing.”
She nodded. “Nothing at all. Although we weren’t really expecting to. It would’ve been nearly impossible to get anything we could pin on Williams without knowing exactly when she was dumped.”
“Barring an old report of someone seeing him waltzing out of his van with her body tucked under one arm, shouting his name to anyone within earshot.” I grimaced. “And there’s not exactly much chance of that.”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Carrying a girl’s body a half mile he would probably have used a bag, or wrapped her in fabric or plastic. But there was no fibre evidence of any kind?”
“Nothing. Either we missed it, or everything was moved or destroyed by the passage of time or the tree falling.” Downes took her eyes off the road long enough to glance at me. “Is this important for the interview with Williams?”
“The more I know about him already, the less I’ll have to persuade him to give up and I don’t really have time to read the entire file now. Which vic was found next?”
A truck flashed past, heading north back to Boston. The garish yellow text on the side looked like it read ‘BODY PARTS’. I guessed I must’ve misread ‘AUTO’ and didn’t dwell on it. Other traffic was relatively light, even though it was leaf-peeper season. The wrong kind of weather to go ogling the foliage.
“Kerry Abblit,” Downes replied. “She had a similar burial some way from where he must have parked his vehicle. She was found in marshland a few miles south of Fall River, not far from Horseneck Beach, about six months after Joanne Tilley. It looked like a combination of erosion and animal activity uncovered her. Again, the remains were skeletonized.”
“Strangled?”
“Strangulation was the most likely cause of death, yes.”
Kerry Abblit could be trouble at school, but she was just free-spirited, her parents said. She had dozens of friends and was a secret fan of the old jazz albums her dad collected. She had a pet mouse called Till.
“However, there were also signs that she’d been injured before death, possibly beaten. A broken arm, blunt trauma to the skull. We had more luck with trace evidence than we did with Tilley. There were half a dozen or so dark synthetic fibers with her bones.”
“But they didn’t match any samples taken from Williams’ van or house,” I said. When Agent Downes looked at me I added, “Because you would have charged him with her murder by now if they had.”
“That’s right. I see your time away from the Bureau hasn’t slowed you down.”
“A few years older, a few grey cells less than before, but yeah, I can still make intelligent guesses, chew my own food, go to the bathroom without help,” I said. “So the fibers came from whatever her body was carried in, or something used to tie her or hold her in place, or from wherever she was taken before or after death.”
“Some sort of carpet was the probable source, according to forensics. But there were too few, and they were too old, to say for certain. But if they were, then most likely they’d have come from where she was kept or from the vehicle used to carry her.”
“So he stashed her somewhere else while he was beating the hell out of her.”
“Unless he had another vehicle.”
“We never found any indication that he had a second vehicle. But another property is possible, I guess. A derelict, maybe even a cheap motel somewhere.”
Downes raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t that be too public?”
“Not necessarily. I worked on a case once with some guy who was on the run for… something. But as he was hopping from state to state, he was picking up hookers, taking them back to wherever he was staying, and beating them to death.”
“No one noticed?”
“You’d think someone would hear screams or something, but these were very cheap motels, and not usually especially crowded. They’d only find the victims when they cleaned the rooms after he left. A dead girl in the bathroom. Four or five states he did this in, until we caught up with him someplace in Louisiana. Got there before he left town again. He decided to shoot it out with the police rather than surrender, as I recall, and took a bullet to the head as a result. Suicide by cop. But it goes to show – you can commit murder in a public place like that without anyone noticing.”
We passed a signpost pointing left for MCI-Ashworth. Downes made the turn, onto a narrower and quieter road than the main highway.
“Anyway, so then you found Abbie Galina,” I said.
She nodded. “We were hopeful after Abblit that we were going to turn up all the body dump sites fairly quickly. The first two showed up only six months apart. I know the families were optimistic.”
“But Abbie was found a couple of years after the other two.”
“Two years, yeah. It was the same deal as the others. She was buried in the countryside, not too close to road access to minimize the chances of discovery, but not far enough away to be too difficult to manage.”
Abbie Galina had had a difficult childhood, struggling with a life-threatening illness in her first two years. But she had recovered fully and was a healthy, happy girl who had started showing signs of a real talent for art.
“They were all buried naked, as far as you can tell?”
“Right.”
“So what happened to their clothes and personal possessions? I know we never found much at Williams’ home when we searched it. There was a piece of jewelry that had belonged to Kerry Abblit – which he claimed he’d bought at a yard sale – but no sign of everything else.”
Downes shrugged. “They were probably thrown a
way in the trash or burnt. Williams might let you know for sure if you can get him to play ball.” She rolled her eyes and for once her businesslike façade cracked a little. “Oh, crap.”
The prison complex loomed up ahead, a blocky structure of red brick, tall and ominously unfriendly in the gloom. Twin high fences topped with razor wire surrounded the facility. There was one main building divided into a number of wings, while a couple of smaller structures made up the rest of the complex. There was a scattered gathering of people, some bearing placards, on the grass near the gates and the main parking lot. A couple of news vans were parked nearby and camera crews were out and about, getting crowd shots or prepping for thirty-second anchor spots. The only placard I could read from the car had the words ‘LIBERTY BEFORE DEATH’ emblazoned on it in bright red letters.
“I’m sorry, Alex. I was hoping we could avoid this,” Downes said apologetically.
“Cody Williams has supporters?”
“People are suckers for anything that can be painted as a ‘hard luck case’.”
“But Cody Williams…”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
As we passed the knot of protesters, heading for the gate into the main parking lot, not the separate visitors’ one, I saw many of them turn to look at our car. Most of those gathered here looked depressingly normal – middle-aged, white- or blue-collar, or younger and more colorful student types. None of them looked like the freak-show crowd you got at such protests in the city; I guessed the jail was too far for them to drive. A couple waved their placards, but only half-heartedly, unsure of our identities or purpose. I found myself shaking my head. Small-minded 'crusaders' without the first idea about the man they were crusading for. I wanted to jump out and yell Cody's crimes and character at them until they got the message, to shake them by the shoulders and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing. But I couldn’t. Camera crews turned to see what the commotion was about, and my heart sank. I only hoped they’d have lost interest by the time we left the car to head inside the prison complex.
“How can they possibly support him?” I said. “He’s a multiple child murderer.”
She shook her head. “Never convicted. He’s in jail for one attempted abduction and the murder of a serial rapist. Paint it right and they can make him look like a tragic vigilante who went over the edge. One of his fan websites claims he was trying to protect Ballard by abducting her.”
“People believe that?”
“People are idiots.” She shrugged.
“You could have mentioned his fan club when you were offering me the job.”
Downes said nothing as she swung the car into an empty space and pulled up. We sat in silence for a moment, gusts of wind tugging at the windows. The prison blocked out the view ahead, a solid wall of brick, final and absolute. I dropped the box file in the passenger footwell and looked across at her.
“Best get moving,” I said.
“You’re not taking the file?”
I shook my head. “No point, not this early in proceedings. Today isn’t likely to be about details.”
As I stepped out of the car I looked back at the gates and the knot of protesters. I saw some of the TV cameras pointed in our direction and I quickly turned away. Downes locked the car and led me towards the entrance without paying any attention to the crowd behind us.
“Remember what we’ve agreed with Williams and his attorney,” she said as we hurried across the parking lot. “Whatever he says to you doesn’t have to be admissible, so don’t give him a Miranda warning.”
“I can’t anyway – I’m not in law enforcement, remember.”
“True,” she said. “But don’t worry about anything like that. Williams also doesn’t want any recordings made of your conversation, and no witnesses to overhear what he said. Think of it as an informal chat.”
“An informal chat, right. Nothing more.”
“You’ll be meeting in the visiting room because he feels safer knowing it’s not likely to be wired in any way.”
“I’d prefer it if he was a little on edge. If he’s totally confident in his security, he’ll be harder to break down.”
“His conditions. And we have to abide by them, because if he decides to clam up, there’s nothing we can do. Basically, he’s calling the shots here. We just have to hope he really does want to talk to you.”
I nodded. “Right. Who else is going to be around?”
“The guard on duty and I can watch through the door glass, and there’s CCTV covering the room. No sound, though.”
“He’s not worried about lip-readers?” I was only half-joking.
“Chances are he’ll face away from the camera,” Downes replied as we stepped into the building. I wasn't sure, but I thought she was only half-joking as well.
Inside, we were met by a woman who identified herself as Deputy Superintendent Alia Shaw. Maybe a couple of years older than me, about my height. Blonde hair cut short. A long, haughty face to match a severe brown trouser suit she wore like body armor.
“Special Agent Downes, Mr Rourke,” she said, extending a hand in greeting. In her other, she held visitors’ badges for the pair of us. “Welcome to MCI-Ashworth. I know Agent Downes has visited our facility before, but have you, Mr Rourke?”
I shook my head. Inside, the prison felt like a hospital. Sterile walls and smooth floors, a slight curve to almost every edge, just to take the sharpness off. All in an off-cream color. I guessed it was supposed to soothe people, to dull the brain into utter passivity until it turned into so much grey sludge. Lobotomies without the surgery. Why they had it in the administrative part of the complex as well as the prisoner sections, I didn’t know. The air smelled of acrylic and air-con.
“We’re a medium-security facility with maximum-security systems,” Shaw said as she led me down one of the multitude of interchangeable corridors. “We’ve only been fully operational for ten years.” She smiled. “Your tax dollars at work.”
“Really?” I asked, feigning interest. The sound of voices echoed dully in the distance before fading out again. “Solving the overcrowding problem, huh?”
“That’s about the shape of it.” She shepherded us through a set of locked doors to the right, nodding at the guard stationed there. We swung left and through what looked like a waiting room. Up ahead was a security station barred front and back by twin barriers like an airlock, and beyond the trap was a hospital-style door through which I could see the orderly collection of tables and chairs that made up the visiting room. The lights were either off entirely or turned down real low and the room was wreathed in gloom.
“This is Outer Control,” Shaw said. “You’ll have to leave most of your personal items here for security reasons. I’ll provide you with one of our debit cards so if you want a coffee or anything you can get it from the machines in the visiting room.”
I dropped my wallet, keys and scant pocket clutter into the box provided by the guard on duty.
“You’re not going in, is that right, Agent Downes?” Shaw said.
“That’s correct. I’ll be watching through the door from here.”
Shaw turned to the guard and said, “Tell them to show Williams in.”
A grating, mechanical buzzing echoed across the dim emptiness of the visiting room. A door on the far side opened and the bright electric glare beyond temporarily flooded the area with light, picking out everything in sharp relief. Silhouetted against the blue-white glow were two men, one of them a guard with his hand on the other’s shoulder. A flash of the second man’s long, unkempt hair, bouncing against his shoulders as he shuffled forward. No more than five and a half feet tall, a ragged, wiry figure hidden behind a prison uniform slightly too large for him. Eyes that caught a stray reflection from the high windows to the right and glittered in the gloom as he sat and his escort turned to leave.
“For Christ’s sake, Clive, turn some lights on,” Shaw said to the guard next to u
s.
Two of the fluorescents inside flickered into life, strobing the prisoner below, picking out every feature in crystal detail. Lank curly brown hair. Hooded eyes and sallow skin. Blank expression. Grey sweatshirt stamped with the DOC logo over a rumpled white shirt turning yellow at the corners. Manacled hands resting on the table, fingernails bitten and ragged.
A second buzzer sounded, and the door in front of me opened. Cody Williams looked up and smiled crookedly.
05.
Providence, RI. 1997.
“I want to start by walking Holly’s route,” I said to Detective Hall and Jeff Agostini once we’d left the Tynons alone and retreated to the kitchen. “It should only take five minutes. I’ll go talk to the friend she was with and her family. What are their names?”
“Tina Aitken is the girl,” Hall said. “Cole and Natasha are her parents.”
“Tina, Cole, Natasha. Right.”
“What do you need to ask them?”
“I just want to hear whatever details they can give me first-hand. Have you spoken to them?”
Hall nodded. “Yeah, I have.”
“Any chance the father did this? It’s best to start close and work outwards in my experience.”
“No,” Hall said, shaking his head. “He was watching TV with his wife between the time Holly left and the time John Tynon called him to see whether she was still there.”
“In which case, all I want is just to hear their stories and to get a look at the neighborhood. There’s a chance Holly wasn’t grabbed by a complete stranger, but by someone who lives locally who might have seen her on the journey home.”
“You think that’s likely?” Agostini asked.
“No. Possible.”
“Possible, right. It’s just, like, hard to imagine the son of a bitch who’d do something like that living somewhere like this, you know?”
“It’s always hard to imagine it happening anywhere,” I said. “But it happens.”
Hall nodded. “Yeah, it happens. Even here. Although this is the first we’ve had in years. What’ll you be looking for, Agent Rourke?”
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