The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  Jason and Cobb crossed Arlington Street, then passed through a wrought-iron gate and into the Boston Public Garden where, it seemed, everything was in bloom and bursting with color. With the day as beautiful as it was, they decided to forgo a trip to one of the city’s many Starbucks locations and walk through the Garden, where Jason knew they wouldn’t find food vendors sullying the park’s beauty, to buy coffee from a vendor on the adjacent Boston Common, where they would.

  In the Garden, they strolled between beds of brilliant tulips—red, yellow, and orange—past a statue of George Washington astride a horse, and over a small bridge that spanned the four-acre pond. Passing beneath them was one of Boston’s famous Swan Boats—a small passenger boat carved to look like a huge swan and powered by a young man at the back, pedaling as though he were on a bicycle. The Swan Boats were a quaint Boston attraction that dated back to the 1870s.

  This walk would have been romantic if Jason were with Sophie, but he wasn’t.

  They left the Garden, crossed Charles Street, and entered the Boston Common, the oldest public park in America and Boston’s answer to New York’s Central Park.

  “What’d you think of the interview?” Cobb asked.

  Jason didn’t think much of it, actually. He’d been uncomfortable through a lot of it, as Cobb recounted facts that Jason either remembered differently or couldn’t remember at all. Then there was the awkward episode with the checks that left Jason feeling a little . . . unclean.

  “I’m just glad it’s over,” he said, hoping to put an end to that line of discussion.

  “I’m with you there.”

  Every now and then someone seemed to recognize them but gave them their privacy. After a few more minutes of walking and small talk, they still hadn’t found anyone selling coffee.

  “I could buy you a balloon,” Jason said, nodding at an old man standing with a fistful of helium balloon strings in one hand and dollar bills in the other.

  “I’d settle for a snow cone,” Cobb replied as they reached a cart with an image on its side of a rainbow-colored snow cone.

  Jason bought them each a cherry cone and they continued walking. As they passed a playground, Cobb nodded to a middle-aged man leaning against a tree, watching the children on the monkey bars.

  “A guy like that,” Cobb said, shaking his head, “hanging around a playground where he doesn’t belong. He deserves to be strung up.”

  Jason looked more closely at the man as they passed. He could have merely been a father watching his child play, but maybe there was more to him, some darkness that Jason couldn’t see. Perhaps he had no children of his own on the playground and liked to watch other people’s kids at play while bad thoughts ran naked and wild through his mind. Maybe Cobb’s radar was sharper than Jason’s. He turned to Cobb to ask what had triggered his suspicion when he noticed that Cobb had stopped walking. Jason followed his gaze to a woman and a young girl not far away. The child was sitting on a tall stool. The woman stood in front of her, applying bright paint to her face. A kitten design. Cobb kept staring, and Jason realized that the sight might be causing unpleasant memories for him.

  “Come on, Ian.”

  Cobb looked away from the face painter and over at him again. “Yeah. Let’s keep going.”

  They strolled in silence for a few moments, with Jason unsure how to break it, before Cobb finally said, “Your hair looks a little redder out here in the sun.”

  Again with the color of my hair. “I’ll take your word for it, I guess.”

  Cobb nodded, as if confirming the fact. Then he said, “I think we have a lot in common, you and me.”

  “Besides surviving a serial killer?”

  “Yeah, besides that. You were in an accident that crippled your wife.”

  Jason hated that word, crippled.

  “Well, as you heard a little while ago,” Cobb went on, “my parents and youngest brother were in a car accident. Left my mother and brother dead and my father in what they call a permanent vegetative state.”

  “Yeah, I was sorry to hear that.”

  “And my other brother died in a crash just a few years ago.”

  “Sorry about that, too.”

  “Thanks. And I was sad to hear about your accident. Mind my asking how it happened?”

  Jason didn’t like to even think about the accident, much less talk about it. He looked away and said nothing.

  “Sorry,” Cobb said. “Don’t mean to pry. Just thinking about all these things we have in common. Like . . . your son . . .”

  “What about my son?”

  “Well . . . I read in an article that he’s got Down syndrome.”

  There were a lot of articles being written about Jason right now—about Cobb, too—and some delved into topics he’d rather remain private. But Max’s Down syndrome wasn’t one of them. “That’s right,” he said, smiling. “He’s a really great kid. Along with my wife, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is. It’s just that . . . my youngest brother, Stevie, had Down syndrome. That’s another thing we have in common, you and me. Stevie, he’s the one that died eight years ago in the accident that killed my mother.”

  “Again, I’m sorry for your loss,” Jason said because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Me, too.” Cobb took a bite of his snow cone. Red syrup ran down his chin until he wiped it away with his sleeve, leaving what would surely be a stain on the light-blue fabric. “Johnny, my other brother, was a redhead . . . like you. You remind me a lot of him, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  Ah, now it made a little sense. Not a lot, but maybe a little.

  “Of course not.”

  “So you and I have a fair bit in common, right? Car accidents, Down syndrome, red hair . . .” He trailed off.

  “Uh . . . I guess,” Jason said. This was getting strange. “And again, there’s the biggest thing of all . . . Crackerjack.”

  “Well, yeah, of course.” After a pause, he added, “And there’s more.”

  Jason didn’t feel like hearing any more.

  “I saw the way you looked at him,” Cobb said, almost conspiratorially. “At Barton. After you killed him.”

  Jason said nothing.

  “I saw the look in your eyes. You enjoyed it. You were glad he was dead.”

  Most of his time in Barton’s stable was fuzzy, but Jason remembered very clearly standing over Barton’s dead body, staring down with no remorse at the man he’d just killed. He had sensed Cobb watching him at the time and wondered what the man had seen on his face. At the time, he’d felt . . .

  “I don’t know that I enjoyed killing him,” he said carefully, “but under the circumstances, I was definitely glad he was dead. Thrilled, in fact. It was either us or him who was going to end up that way, and I’m glad it wasn’t us.”

  “Yeah, I was glad to see him die, too. See, that’s what I mean. A lot in common.”

  Jason was ready for this little walk in the park to end. He looked at his watch. “Hey, Ian, it’s getting late. Didn’t you say you have a job to get to this afternoon?”

  “In Tewksbury.”

  “Right, Tewksbury. And I need to call my agent. So I’m going to take off.”

  “Okay. Hey, you got a plumber you use?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  Cobb tossed what was left of his snow cone into a nearby trash can, then pulled a wallet from his back pocket and opened it. “If you ever need one, or . . . you know, you just want to talk about anything . . . here’s my card.” He handed Jason a business card. It was sticky from the snow cone.

  “Thanks.”

  “Hell of a thing we went through together, huh, Jason?”

  “Hell of a thing.”

  Cobb nodded once. “All right then.”

  He turned and started walking away. Jason felt unexpected relief the moment he was gone. And then . . .

  The back of his neck tingled. Gooseflesh rose on his arms. His immediate
instinct—without even knowing the cause of it—was to run like hell. His heart kicked at the inside of his chest as though it wanted to flee even if Jason didn’t have the good sense to do so.

  It took him a moment to realize the cause of these reactions. Cobb, who had gone only a dozen feet, had started to whistle that same nameless tune he’d whistled behind the bathroom door at the hotel. Only then, the door had largely muffled the sound. Out here in the open air, it carried clearly, and Jason was slammed with a brief, irrational feeling that Cobb would stop and turn around to wave goodbye, only Wallace Barton would be standing there instead.

  That’s ridiculous, Jason told himself. Cobb likes to whistle. So what?

  Something made him take a few steps after Cobb to hear him better. Then he felt a coldness dripping down his spine . . . because Cobb’s whistling, though growing fainter, also grew more familiar. Chillingly so.

  A lot of people whistled, though, Jason reminded himself. Some were better at it than others. Some warbled sustained notes and others injected very little vibrato. Some blended their notes seamlessly together while others released them in tiny staccato bursts. Jason had never paid close attention to any of this before, but he knew that whistlers had distinct tones and styles.

  And Ian Cobb’s whistling struck a major chord with Jason. Because it was similar, too damned similar, to the whistling he’d heard in Wallace Barton’s stable.

  Hell, maybe more people whistled like that than he could possibly imagine. He wasn’t much of a whistler himself, but if he were to whistle at that moment, perhaps he would sound a lot like Ian Cobb.

  And Crackerjack.

  Cobb had gone nearly fifty yards from where they’d said their goodbyes, and Jason had followed, staying a good twenty feet behind him. But if Cobb were to glance back, he’d see Jason immediately, which could be tough to explain. So he stopped and watched Cobb crest a small hill, then disappear behind it, whistling all the way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Long day, Lamar Briggs thought as he sank back into his favorite chair, a decade-old recliner with worn armrests, stained fabric, and a depression in the seat that, after years of evenings spent watching television from it, conformed perfectly to his backside. Beside him, his wife, Bonnie, had her chair reclined this evening, as usual, but Briggs didn’t. He was sitting up, a notepad in his lap, a pen in his hand. The television across the room was tuned to The Real Scoop. While it was nearly eight-thirty at night, Briggs knew the segment they were watching had been taped earlier.

  On the screen was Elaine Connors, on whom Briggs had a little crush, if he had to admit it—and he’d indeed had to admit it a few years ago because Bonnie could tell that he did and asked him about it directly, and he didn’t care enough about the matter to lie. On TV, Connors had just said to Jason Swike and Ian Cobb, “Now, gentlemen, I have a surprise for you.”

  Briggs watched as Leonard Sanderson—father of Michael Sanderson, Crackerjack’s fourth known victim—walked on-screen. Briggs had met Sanderson. As one of the detectives on his son’s case, Briggs had spoken with him several times while his son was missing. Every time Briggs had heard the man say that he’d give up everything he owned—which was a hell of a lot—to bring his son home alive, Briggs had believed him, which was really saying something because Briggs rarely believed anyone with whom he spoke in connection with a case. And when Michael’s body was eventually found, Sanderson’s devastation was all too real.

  Now there he was on television again, not pleading for his missing son’s life but chatting with Elaine Connors and the two men who had been able to do what Michael Sanderson hadn’t—survive their encounters with Wallace Barton. Briggs watched Connors introduce him to Swike and Cobb.

  Over the next few moments, Sanderson thanked the men for what they did, stopping Crackerjack, then tried to give them each $100,000.

  “You worked that case for a year,” Bonnie said. “He hasn’t offered you anything.”

  “Couldn’t accept if he did,” he said, while thinking the exact same thing. Not that he expected a gratuity in his line of work—though he wasn’t above skimming a little here and there where he could on the job—but it was a little galling that he put all those hours into the case in return for nothing but his meager paycheck, while Swike and Cobb put a few days into it and were each being given a hundred grand.

  “I know that,” she said. “Would have been a nice gesture, though.”

  “Shh, I’m trying to listen.”

  Briggs watched Cobb give his half of the money to Swike, whom he said was the real hero. It wasn’t the first time Cobb had said that. He must have felt strongly about it.

  “Whoa,” Bonnie said. “Talk about a gesture. The guy’s a plumber and he gives away a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Plumbers do just fine,” he said. “Remember what we spent to fix the leaky shower?”

  “Still, that’s a lot of money to most people.”

  Briggs couldn’t deny that. He watched Swike take the second check, looking a bit uncomfortable. Probably figured he should have tried to refuse the money like Cobb did and worried he now looked like he was trying to cash in on the whole thing. It looked a bit like that to Briggs, actually.

  Cobb told Connors that he had no plans other than to return to his plumbing business, and Swike said he had a book deal in the works. That was interesting. Maybe Swike was cashing in, after all. Or, to view it less cynically, maybe he was just a writer who hadn’t had a break in a while until the story of the year fell in his lap, giving him the chance to ply his trade and kick his stalling career in the ass.

  Connors wrapped up the segment, and when a commercial for adult diapers came on, Briggs turned off the television. He looked down at the notepad on his knee.

  “Good thing I wasn’t watching that,” Bonnie said.

  He looked at her over his reading glasses, which he hadn’t needed a few years ago. He’d tried bifocals last year but couldn’t get used to them. “I’ll turn it back on.”

  “Never mind. I have to take the pie out of the oven. Not that you deserve it.”

  She ruffled his short hair, which was far more than halfway to gray now, as she headed into the kitchen. Briggs smoothed his hair back down and scanned his handwritten notes.

  J.S. clearheaded or drugged?

  Tackled W.B.?

  W.B. on top of J.S., facing him?

  Fought for hammer?

  Check location of hammer wounds.

  Which hand?

  Book deal for J.S.?

  “Iced tea?” Bonnie called from the kitchen.

  “This late? You want me up all night?”

  “Depends on how you mean it.”

  “You’re a shameless tease,” he called.

  “Who says I’m teasing?”

  Briggs leaned forward in his chair. In the kitchen, Bonnie was bent at the waist, taking the pie from the oven. She no longer had the body of a twenty-five-year-old, but neither did her body look fifty-nine years old, which it was. To Briggs, it looked somewhere in between, and for the most part, that was good enough for him these days. He watched the little sway in her hips as she carried the pie to the counter and placed it on a cooling rack.

  She might have only been teasing, but maybe she wasn’t. He hoped she wasn’t. Actually, she better not have been, because now she’d put it in his head. Come to think of it, he’d make sure she wasn’t.

  Later, though. Until then . . .

  He looked back down at his notes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sophie turned off the television above her living-room fireplace and stared for a long moment at the blank screen. At last, she said, “Two hundred thousand dollars?”

  Jason nodded. He was sitting at the end of the sofa, near her wheelchair. He could have reached out and held her hand if he thought it would have been welcome . . . which it wouldn’t, of course. Not even a little. But still, she had invited him over to watch the interview. Other than the few minutes of news
they’d watched the night he left the hospital, they hadn’t watched television together since their separation.

  “Just like that, he gave you two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Well, first it was only a hundred.”

  “Oh, is that all? Only a hundred.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know. It’s incredible.”

  She looked over at him and there it was again—that look in her eyes. Not love, or anything close to it. It wasn’t even affection. But whatever it was, it was not anger, or disappointment . . . or fear. And it made it easier for him to remember the way she used to look at him—which he liked to do sometimes—back before he lost her. When they used to make each other laugh. When she loved him. Before the night when she thought she saw darkness in him.

  “We’re really going to be okay, aren’t we?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  She held his gaze a moment longer before looking away.

  “Jason,” she began, “we’re still married because we needed your insurance plan. But now—”

  “Okay if Max joins you?” Janice asked as she led her grandson into the room. For the first time in his life, Jason was glad to see his mother-in-law, who had agreed to distract Max during the interview broadcast so he wouldn’t hear the disturbing subjects discussed. They had worked on a puzzle together in his room. Max really loved his puzzles.

  “Hey, Max,” Jason said. “Get over here.”

  The boy graced them all with that wonderful smile of his as he hurried across the room and jumped onto the couch beside his father.

  “Grandma said you were on TV,” Max said.

  “I was.”

  “You’re famous?”

  “A little, I guess.”

  “If you’re on TV, you’re famous,” the boy said. “Like Wile E. Coyote.”

  “Wile E. Coyote?” Jason said, feigning indignation. “Couldn’t I at least be the Road Runner? Or better yet, Bugs Bunny?”

  “Daffy Duck, maybe.”

  “What? You’re dithpicable,” Jason said in his best Daffy Duck voice, which made Max giggle.

  “You’re dithpicable,” Max echoed.