The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  He turned to Sophie and again saw something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in a long time. Maybe a little compassion, which didn’t surprise him—she was a kind person, after all—but there might have been more. It was clear that she was relieved he hadn’t ended up in a dumpster, a skin bag full of broken bones. But it was almost as though she saw him just a little differently now. Was she . . . impressed? Proud? He wasn’t sure what it was, but he liked it.

  “I know you don’t feel like talking about it right now,” she said, “and that’s okay, but you can’t be a big hero and not tell me the story. So sometime soon, you have to fill me in.”

  She took the remote control back from him. When their fingers touched, he tried to let his linger for a moment but she gently pulled her hand away.

  “Okay, hero. Want to look in on Max?”

  The house had two stories, but Sophie and Max now slept on the first floor, in bedrooms that had once been an office and a family room, respectively. Janice had claimed the master bedroom upstairs.

  Jason and Sophie moved down the hall toward Max’s door, which was ajar. Soft, blue-green light spilled onto the hallway floor, which used to be carpeted but was now covered with smooth tile. Jason knew the source of the glow: a night-light in the shape of a globe as large as a full-size lamp on his son’s nightstand. Max loved it. He said he could see the whole world right from his bed. Jason stopped outside the door and peeked in at his sleeping son.

  “We can wake him,” Sophie said as she rolled up beside him.

  “You said he hasn’t been sleeping well lately, right?”

  “Not so great the last couple of days, no.”

  “Let him sleep then. I’ll see him tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course.”

  He nudged the door open a little farther and walked softly to his son’s bedside. He loved to look at Max while he slept. The features of his face that some considered less than handsome—those common in children with Down syndrome—were beautiful to him. Everything about the boy was beautiful, from his appearance to his disposition. Any room he entered instantly grew brighter the second he set foot in it. Jason found himself smiling. Then the smile faded as he thought about how close he’d come to never being able to stand here again, watching his son sleep. And now he was frowning. Someday Max wouldn’t be here. When that day came, Jason would no doubt wish he had indeed left the world before the boy did.

  He turned and saw Sophie watching from the doorway. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes then. Despite any disagreements they might have had, she didn’t seem to doubt—at least not any longer—that he loved Max. That he would never hurt their son.

  “We don’t know that he can’t beat it,” she said for what must have been the hundredth time since Max had been diagnosed five months ago with a rare blood disease—atypical hemolytic-uremic syndrome, or aHUS—that causes the formation of dangerous blood clots throughout the body. “He’s not even experiencing symptoms,” she said. “Maybe he never will, right? Don’t you think that’s possible?”

  “Sure,” Jason replied without conviction, because they both knew how extraordinarily unlikely that was. “Tell him I was here, okay?” he added before leaving to spend yet another night alone in his apartment.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ian Cobb had all five shopping bags hanging from his left forearm. His right one was broken, of course, but that wasn’t much of an inconvenience, seeing as he was left-handed. He put the bags on the kitchen table, then stepped into the bathroom right off the kitchen. He had just lifted the toilet seat when he heard Carolyn’s voice outside the door.

  “Mr. Cobb? If you’re home, I’m going to take off, okay?”

  Seriously? She couldn’t even wait for him to step out of the bathroom?

  “Okay, Mr. Cobb? Can you hear me? I’m heading home now.”

  “That’s fine,” he called through the door. When he left the bathroom less than a minute later, she was already gone.

  He emptied the grocery bags one by one, placing the various items on the table and countertops. He left a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce on the counter but put the rest of the groceries away, everything in its place, whistling softly to himself as he worked. When he was finished, he turned on the small TV beside the microwave and found a news station. Then he boiled water to cook the spaghetti. He struggled one-handed with the lid on the jar of sauce but finally managed to get it open. When his meal was ready, he sat at the table and dug in as a weather report gave way to the top story of the day.

  The face of Wallace Barton, known now to the world as the infamous Crackerjack, filled the screen. Cobb ate and watched the segment. He saw various photos and videos of the crime scene, then his own face, followed by that of Jason Swike, which immediately made Cobb think of his brother Johnny, of course. Then he heard interviews and facts and opinions given by police officers and average citizens relieved to see an end to Crackerjack’s crimes. He saw himself again as he left the hospital yesterday, telling the camera that he owed his life to his fellow captive.

  He frowned. He didn’t want to be famous, even though he was now. He just wanted to be left alone.

  After dinner, on his way up the stairs to the second floor, he passed framed photographs on the walls. Pictures of his parents, his mother smiling years before her tragic death, his father still healthy and vegetative-state-free. A family photo with aunts and uncles on his father’s side of the family, including one man in his police uniform—Uncle Joe, who used to live two houses down and who had dropped dead from a heart attack ten years ago, an end too quick and easy for the hateful son of a bitch. And then there was Cobb’s favorite picture. It was of himself with his two brothers, as children—Ian, the oldest at eight years old, with Johnny a year younger and Stevie just five. They stood next to one another, smiling in their own ways. Cobb always saw his own smile as a little cockeyed. Johnny, the all-American kid in his ubiquitous Boston Celtics cap tipped back on his mop of red hair, smiled slyly. And Stevie, the facial characteristics of his Down syndrome evident, smiled with carefree joy. The last photograph in the row was of Johnny and Stevie taken one Christmas morning. Cobb could still see Johnny racing across the living room to get to the presents under the tree. It was the last year Johnny would be able to run like that. A few months after the photo was taken, Uncle Joe said that the boy had fallen down the stairs at his house. His leg had broken in eight places. It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen at Uncle Joe’s. It wasn’t even the last. But it was the worst time. He’d walked with a profound limp after that.

  Cobb had been heading for the second door on the right, his father’s room—which had been his old man’s office when Cobb was growing up—but found himself, as he often did, standing outside the first door. He looked into the room he had shared with his brothers so many years ago. The Boston Bruins pennant on the wall. On the dresser, Cobb’s Little League trophy surrounded by Johnny’s Star Wars action figures. Cobb’s single bed against the left-hand wall, and the bunk beds his brothers shared against the right wall. Stevie’s stuffed panda, which he’d called simply “Panda,” was on the bottom bunk. Taped to the ceiling above Johnny’s top bunk was the last thing he looked at every night before he went to sleep—a poster depicting the best-known of the celestial constellations. If it had to do with the night sky, Johnny loved it.

  After Ian moved out years ago and Johnny followed a year later, when it was just Stevie in that room, it looked different. One bed and none of the older brothers’ things. But a few years after Ian moved back in, he dragged all their old stuff down from the attic, including their beds, and with painstaking care recreated the bedroom of their youths. So now, everything was as it had been when they were children . . . long before Stevie, along with their mother, died in the car crash eight years ago, and before Johnny died in a different accident almost three years ago—one Cobb couldn’t bring himself to consider truly accidental. Johnny had dealt with too much pain in his shor
t life. He’d carried it with him from the time he was a young boy until the day he died. He talked about how he hurt all the time, sometimes physically but always mentally and emotionally. Since Johnny’s death, Cobb had carried his brother’s pain for him. It was a heavy burden. He didn’t know how Johnny had been able to bear it for as long as he had.

  The day after Johnny’s funeral, Ian brought his father home from the long-term-care facility.

  He missed his brothers.

  He missed his mother.

  He didn’t have to miss his father because he saw him every day.

  He moved to the next door down the hall and looked into the old man’s room.

  “Hey, Dad. Did you have a good day?”

  His father didn’t answer but Ian felt comforted by the steady whoosh, whir, click of the respirator. If Ian had his way, Arthur Cobb would live forever.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jason awoke with an undefined and highly uncharacteristic sense of optimism, and for a moment he didn’t know the cause of it. And then he did. It was the slight thaw he’d seen in Sophie’s eyes. And her calling him a hero. It was the news story he had watched with her, which he hadn’t enjoyed seeing last night but which seemed different to him today. What stuck with him weren’t the images of the stable that had been his prison, or the table with the leather restraints, or the photograph of Wallace Barton. No, it was the people interviewed on camera who called Jason and Ian Cobb heroes. It was Sophie hearing Cobb tell the world that Jason was the real hero.

  Yes, the sun streaming through his window seemed a bit brighter this morning to Jason Swike.

  He noticed it as he ate his toast at the breakfast table, listening to the messages from reporters and media outlets. And his world brightened even more when he heard the message from Elaine Connors, the famous cohost of the nation’s number-two newsmagazine show, The Real Scoop—second only to 60 Minutes in ratings share—stating her desire to come to Boston to interview him personally. She asked him to call her back on her personal and private number and pleaded with him not to share his story with anyone in the media before they’d had the chance to speak. He jotted down her number.

  And then he heard the 204th message. It was from Howard Burrows, his old agent. Howard had been busy in the forty hours or so since Jason’s escape from Crackerjack because he already had a low six-figure offer in hand from a major publisher for a nonfiction book about Jason’s ordeal and his eventual escape. And he expected to parlay that into an even sweeter deal with another publisher. Jason had never written nonfiction, but for six figures he thought he’d be able to manage. And there was still more. Two Hollywood producers to whom Howard had leaked word of the book offer had left messages for him. And good old Howard had managed all this unburdened by the inconvenient fact that he had dropped Jason from his client list two years ago. Fortunately, Jason wasn’t one to hold a grudge, at least not when book and movie deals were at stake.

  He unplugged his now fully charged cell phone, ignored the forty-one messages on it, and pulled up Howard’s office number from his list of contacts—a number he’d almost deleted from his phone. He dialed, knowing his call would go to voice mail because it wasn’t even 5:00 a.m. in Los Angeles, and left a message. Then he left one for Elaine Connors saying that he would be happy to sit for an interview. After that, he finished getting ready to head into the office. It was going to be an interesting morning.

  Normally, Jason hated going to work. Writing copy for a small marketing firm wasn’t a horrible way to make a living, but for an author who had just missed making the New York Times bestseller list a few short years ago with a novel that had very nearly been turned into a movie starring two white-hot Hollywood A-listers, it was soul crushing. And though his last two manuscripts hadn’t found a home with a publisher, every hour Jason spent churning out lifeless copy at the Barker Creative Agency was an hour he wasn’t writing another book that just might get published.

  Walking into the office felt different today, though. He knew he might have been imagining it, but it seemed to him that everyone looked at him differently. He certainly wasn’t imagining the nods and small smiles from people who had barely noticed him before that day, or the clap on the back from Greg Norwood, or the awkward fist bump from Todd Cleaves.

  In his cubicle, a small stack of files sat perched on the corner of his desk. Another occupied his chair. Several Post-it notes were stuck to his computer monitor. A quick glance told him that there was a theme, which essentially was “Welcome back, hero!”

  He hadn’t been imagining anything after all.

  He didn’t bother to clear his chair of folders. He was never going to sit in it again. He had a six-figure book offer in hand from a major publisher. He didn’t have the particulars yet, and he’d never been a math whiz, but that was at least $100,000, which was more than twice his current annual salary. And who knew? Maybe the offer was for two hundred, even three hundred thousand. And there could be a film option, which he had learned the hard way was never a sure thing, but which would mean another nice chunk of change if all the stars aligned.

  He couldn’t wait to speak with Howard.

  There was someone he needed to talk to first, though. He walked down to Ms. Landry’s office and rapped his knuckles on her open door. She looked up, and if she was surprised to see him, she didn’t show it.

  “Jason, good morning. What do you think of this?” she asked as she held up a sixteen-by-twenty-inch poster board and turned it so he could see the ad design for a new frozen-yogurt chain.

  “Honestly? I can’t stand it,” he said, wondering only vaguely which of his coworkers he had just shoved under a bus.

  “I feel the same way,” she said as she set the mock-up down on her desk. “It’s good to have you back. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks, but . . . I’m not back. I’m only here to say goodbye.”

  “You’re quitting? Are you sure? That’s a big decision, and you’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should take a week or two to think about it. I think we can spare you for that long.”

  He almost told her that he’d been thinking about it every hour of every day since the moment he had first walked through Barker’s doors, that the job had been slowly sucking the life out of him.

  “No thanks, Ms. Landry. I appreciate the offer but I really need a change.”

  He smiled and left. He stopped by his desk for his personal effects, which amounted to a photograph of Sophie and Max and a copy of The Drifter’s Knife, his only traditionally published book, which he kept next to his computer as a reminder to himself that he was an author.

  Walking out through Barker’s doors, knowing he’d never have to pass through them again, felt damn good. He felt good. Better than he had in a long while.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Detective Lamar Briggs stared down at the dark stains on the surface of the wooden table on which they believed Wallace Barton had tortured and killed most, if not all, of his victims. The stains were blood, of course, and laboratory technicians were already at work trying to match it to the victims. There wasn’t much of it to work with, though, given that Barton’s chosen method of torture was the cracking and smashing of bones with heavy, blunt objects. Each victim’s wounds had been largely bloodless except for the coup de grâce—a blow to the head, crushing the skull. The evidence suggested that the deathblow had been delivered after the victim’s head had been wrapped tight with multiple layers of clear plastic, which reduced excess spatter, leaving only a few dark-brown stains behind. A roll of Saran wrap had been found on the floor in the corner of the stall.

  Briggs looked now at the smaller table that had once held Barton’s instruments of torture. Incongruously, it had also held a veritable rainbow of face paints, along with several delicate, fine-bristled paintbrushes and a how-to book on face painting. Crime-scene technicians had already taken away the tools, though, along with the painting supplies and book.

  Briggs imagined picking up a mall
et, turning to a man bound to the table in front of him, and bringing the heavy tool down. He tried to imagine the sound the bone would make as it cracked. And he couldn’t help but imagine the sound a man might make as his bones snapped.

  He shook his head. Some people were absolutely crazy. Some were just plain evil. And some were a whole lot of both.

  He stepped out of the stall and took a moment to watch the techs working the scene in the stable with admirable efficiency, taking photographs and videos, measuring distances, dusting for fingerprints. This work had begun not long after Ian Cobb called 911, and between the stable and Barton’s house elsewhere on the property, there was a lot of ground to cover. That didn’t even include the grounds themselves, which at that moment were being searched square foot by square foot by cadaver dogs—canines specially trained to sniff out human remains. Barton tended to dump the bodies of his victims in secluded public places, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more victims, as yet undiscovered, that might not have made it off his property. There were forty-six acres in all to cover, though Briggs had directed the search teams to start looking in the woods nearest the stable.

  “Lamar?”

  He turned and saw Dusty Owens, his frequent partner—and, after decades of Briggs rubbing people the wrong way and not giving a damn about it, the closest thing he had to a friend on the force—walking toward him. Detectives with the Massachusetts State Police didn’t have regularly assigned partners; rather, if they worked with a partner at all, it was one with whom their superiors teamed them for a specific case. In Essex County—which drew the case because Crackerjack had dumped his first known victims there—the superior making such decisions was Lieutenant McCuller. He was the one who had assigned the case to Briggs initially, and he was the one who had teamed him with Owens, as he often did, intimating yet again that no one else wanted to partner with him. Briggs wasn’t overly troubled by that. He had stopped caring long ago what anyone else at work thought of him. Those worthy of Briggs’s respect seemed to respect him in return, even if they didn’t actually like him. And those who weren’t worthy of his respect didn’t matter.