The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  “What do you want?”

  “You watch my little movie yet? I got better quality video than I’d hoped for. I assume it’s more obvious than ever that you can’t call the police.”

  Cobb had played him perfectly, knowing that Jason would have had little choice but to dispose of the body, and all Cobb had to do was record the event to add significantly to his leverage.

  “Things got ugly between us, Jason.”

  “Things were always ugly, Cobb.”

  “True enough, I guess.” He paused. “Even if I swear to leave you and your family alone, there’s no chance you’re going to look the other way and let me do what I do in peace, is there?”

  “Every time I hear about another murder, or even a missing person, I’ll wonder if it’s another person dead because I didn’t do something about you now. I can’t live like that. My wife wouldn’t let me live like that.”

  “You can’t take the blame for what I do, Jason.”

  I might have no choice, if you keep planting evidence to set me up, he thought.

  “I can’t help it,” he said. “We’d never feel safe.”

  Cobb was silent for a moment. “That’s what I thought. I’m going to have to kill you. I didn’t want to. I know you’re not my brother, but . . . I really felt something between us. Crazy, I know. But you’ve left me no choice. It’s either you or me . . . and I think we both know how that comes out.”

  “You or me,” Jason said. “Does that mean you’ll keep Ben out of it from now on?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw Ben leaning toward him from the passenger seat, straining a little against his seat belt.

  “If he keeps himself out of it,” Cobb replied. “But when you’re dead, if I suspect he’s even considering saying anything to the cops about my involvement, I’ll kill him. And if he has family—brothers, sisters, parents—I’ll kill them, too. Tell him that.”

  “I will. How about my family? You’ll leave them out of it, too?”

  “Once you’re gone, if Sophie keeps her mouth shut about me, I won’t have to hurt her . . . or Max. Her mother, either. Deal?”

  “Sophie will do whatever she has to do to protect Max, I promise you, even if that means letting my killer go free.” He paused. “If you’re the one still alive at the end, that is.”

  Cobb said nothing for a moment. Jason thought he heard him chuckle.

  “I’m sorry it came to this, Jason,” Cobb said after a moment. “As soon as I hang this phone up, I’m going to start thinking of you as just another guy. Just another future victim. Any connection between us will be cut. You understand? So watch your back.”

  “You, too.”

  Jason heard that chuckle again, or perhaps it was a sigh, right before Cobb disconnected.

  He shook his head and looked over at Ben. “Cobb said—”

  “I know. Your phone’s loud. I could hear Cobb’s half of the conversation, too.”

  Jason sighed. “I have to kill him myself. There’s no other way.”

  “You mean we have to kill him.”

  “No, Ben. I have to kill him. Not you. You need to stay out of it.”

  “I’m already in it. Remember a little while ago when I helped you stage that dead guy’s fake fall down the stairs?”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. Cobb brought me into this, not you.”

  “If you stay out of it, he’ll leave you alone.”

  “You really believe that?”

  He didn’t know what to believe.

  “Cobb made me a part of it,” Ben said. “His mistake. Now he has to face both of us.”

  Jason looked over at his friend. “Is that seriously supposed to make me feel better?”

  “You know it does. Admit it.”

  Jason let a small, weary smile slip through his defenses.

  “You think he’ll really leave Sophie and Max alone?” Ben asked.

  “He’ll know I told her everything, which means she could go to the cops at any time. No, he won’t leave them alone. All the more reason for him to die.”

  “At least she’s safe for now.”

  Jason’s phone rang again. Assuming Cobb was calling him back, he answered without looking at the display.

  “What now?”

  “That’s a nice phone manner you have, Jason.”

  “Janice? It’s late.” He glanced at the dashboard clock: 12:48 a.m. He thought of Sophie and Max and his heart began to race. “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m sorry to call so late. I figured if you were asleep or something, the call would go to your voice mail.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just wondering something. Is there any chance you were here earlier? Within the last hour or two?”

  An unpleasant crawling sensation began at the base of Jason’s neck and traveled swiftly down his arms and his spine.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, Sophie and Max are away as you know, and you’re the only other person with a key to the house.”

  “Janice, was someone in the house?”

  “I’m not sure. I fell asleep in the living room a couple of hours ago. A few minutes ago I thought I heard something. A door closing maybe. Not loud, but whatever it was, it woke me up.”

  “But why do you think—”

  “I’m coming to that. I was getting a glass of water to take up to bed when I noticed the kitchen phone off the base. But I always keep it on the base. Always. So I always know where to find it. And besides,” she continued, “it felt like someone had been in the house. There was something in the air. A faint lingering odor maybe. Or just a feeling. That probably sounds silly to you.”

  “Wasn’t the alarm on?”

  “I hadn’t set it yet. I was going to on my way upstairs.”

  “Janice, if you’re worried about someone being in the house, maybe you should get out of there right away. Then call the police.”

  “There’s no need for that. I figured you had been here and I wondered why, so I looked around the whole house to see what you might have been doing here. There’s no one here. If someone was, he’s gone now.”

  She’d never liked Jason all that much, he knew, and she liked him even less after the accident that left her daughter disabled—an accident for which she surely blamed him, and justifiably so—but God only knew what she thought he’d been doing there tonight. The important thing at the moment was that if Cobb had been there, he was gone now.

  “Janice, please set the alarm right now.”

  “Do you think I’m in danger?”

  “I don’t,” he said truthfully, “but you should be setting it anyway.”

  “You think someone was here?”

  “Honestly, no,” he lied. “Most likely you left the phone off the charger yourself—everyone makes mistakes, right?—and then spooked yourself into thinking someone had been there.”

  “I truly doubt—”

  “I’m sorry, Janice, but I have to go. Good night.” He ended the call.

  “What was all that?” Ben asked.

  He worked it through quickly. It was certainly possible Janice had merely left the phone off the base. But no, he felt sure Cobb had been there. Why? To get to Sophie and Max. But they weren’t home. So why didn’t he try to force their whereabouts out of Janice? He couldn’t have known that she didn’t know their true location. Yet he didn’t even wake her. Why?

  Because he didn’t need to. He got the information some other way. The phone was off the hook. Call logs. He found Geri’s number, then used it to learn her address.

  “Jason? What are you thinking?”

  “Damn it. He has a huge head start.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Jason was calling again. The second time in the past twenty minutes. And again, Cobb didn’t answer. This time, though, Jason left a message.

  “Cobb, I’ve been thinking about what you said. About us going our separate ways. About you
leaving my family alone if I forget about you. Well, you win. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to Sophie and Max. So I’m taking them away. Far away. Somewhere you’ll never find us. Don’t even bother trying. I’ve written about characters who need to disappear. I’ve researched the hell out of it. And I know how to do it. So forget about us, Cobb. And I’ll try to forget about you. And when I read about a murder somewhere, I’ll tell myself it couldn’t have been you. I’ll ask myself, what are the odds it was you? No way it was you. If I tell myself that enough times, maybe I’ll start to believe it. Anyway, to hell with you, you son of a bitch.”

  Cobb didn’t know what to make of the message. Was Jason telling the truth?

  Probably not. He was simply panicking. That was good. He wouldn’t think clearly if he was panicking.

  And he had good reason to be nervous, Cobb thought as he drove slowly past Geri Hurd’s house. Because there was no way Jason could have beaten Cobb here. And there were no signs of police activity. The windows were dark, as expected in the middle of the night. Everyone would be sleeping. That would make things easier.

  Geri’s house was the second in from the cross street, and Cobb parked around the corner. First he would secure the people inside; then he’d pull his van into the driveway and carry them out one by one. He switched his phone into silent mode and walked to Geri’s house, staying in the shadows of the trees lining the street when he could. When he reached the house, he moved quickly toward the back, ducking below the level of the windows. He knelt at the back door and peered through one of its windows into the kitchen. He didn’t see evidence of a security system or a dog and, with his lock picks, made quick work of both the dead bolt and the lock in the knob. He opened the door quietly, stepped into the dark kitchen, and took a moment to listen to the house. He heard nothing but the hum of the refrigerator.

  His plan was simple. He’d tie up Sophie and Max and Sophie’s friend, then call Jason and tell him to come save them. He’d ask how he could do that, and Cobb would agree to accept his life in exchange for theirs. Because Cobb was tired of this. Jason was never going to come around. That was obvious now. It was time to end it. If Jason wanted them to live, he would have to die. If he didn’t agree to come, they were dead. If Cobb heard a siren or saw a cop car, they were dead.

  Cobb would have to pretend to believe that Sophie would keep her mouth shut about his killing Jason in order to protect her son, and he would promise to let them go if Jason had the guts to do the right thing, if he loved his family enough to make the ultimate sacrifice for them.

  It wasn’t true, of course. Once they were all dead, Cobb would stage it like a murder-suicide. It wouldn’t be difficult to believe: Jason, who never got over his wife leaving him and taking their son with her, goes postal. That kind of thing happened all the time.

  Standing in the living room, lit only by the wan moonlight drifting in through the window, he looked down at an unfinished puzzle on the coffee table. He headed quietly for the hallway, figuring that Sophie had to be staying in a first-floor room. He slipped his stun gun from his pocket as he neared the first door. A bathroom. The next door down the hall was ajar. A glance revealed a sleeping bag on the floor beside a pullout sofa that had been made up and used as a bed. The sleeping bag was empty and the bedcovers on the pullout were in disarray.

  Damn it.

  He checked the rest of the house, finding it just as empty. Geri Hurd had almost certainly taken the Swikes wherever they were going, given that Sophie couldn’t drive and there was no way Jason could have picked them up yet, not if he first wanted to dispose of the dead body Cobb had left him with, which he’d certainly want to do before reuniting with his family.

  Cobb frowned. Had Jason somehow guessed that Cobb figured out where Sophie and Max were staying and was coming for them? Or had he simply planned to meet his family somewhere, as he claimed in his message, and Cobb had arrived after they’d left? Whichever the case, Cobb had no idea where to start looking for them. Given Jason’s failure at hiding from him in a motel, it was doubtful he’d let his wife and son go to one. More likely, he’d meet up with them somewhere and they would disappear together, for a while at least. That would make them difficult to track down. Sure, Cobb would find them eventually, but until then, he’d have to look over his shoulder . . . for the cops, in case Jason grew tired of hiding out . . . and possibly even for Jason himself, if he ever recognized and embraced the darkness in him and decided to come after Cobb.

  Cobb’s eyes fell on a broken living room window, and a rock on the floor surrounded by shards of glass. Then he heard a siren not far away. Sophie—or, more likely, her friend—must have tossed the rock through the window from the outside as they left to make it seem as though someone had broken in, then called the cops, possibly posing as a neighbor.

  Jason had gone all-in on this. He was planning to escape with his family—to hide out or start over or whatever he was planning—while at the same time hoping Cobb would be arrested for breaking and entering. It wouldn’t land him behind bars for long, maybe only a year or two, but Jason probably figured that would be long enough for his family and him to disappear for good.

  He was dead wrong, though.

  The sirens were almost there. Cobb hurried through the house and was slipping out the back door and through the neighbor’s yard as the police were banging on Geraldine Hurd’s front door.

  Down the street and around the corner, behind the wheel of his truck again, Cobb pulled away from the curb and left the neighborhood slowly, without passing the Hurd residence or the police. Moments later, he was on his way back to Massachusetts. He had two and a half hours to kill. He would spend that time thinking about the things he’d do to Jason when he caught him. Maybe he’d come up with something truly unique—unique and really painful. Something he’d want to try on others. Something that would earn him a snazzy new nickname from the media. Maybe Jason would become the first official murder committed by a new serial killer, one with a signature far more interesting than Crackerjack’s face painting and bone breaking had been.

  His body could never be found, of course. He had too much of a connection to Cobb. But he could be a good test subject, someone on whom Cobb could experiment before settling on a new method, something that might please the thing inside him.

  Before he killed Jason, Cobb would have to remember to thank him for his sacrifice.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Jason’s cell phone rang, and he almost punched his thumb through the display screen when he answered it.

  “Sophie?”

  “It’s me. We’re out.”

  Thank God. As soon as he’d realized that Cobb was likely going after his family, he’d called her and told her to get the hell out Geri Hurd’s house. By his rough calculation, at that time of night, it would take Cobb less than two and a half hours to get there. Assuming he had gone right to Sophie’s house in Swampscott after leaving the motel, then left immediately for Woodstock, he’d probably been less than thirty minutes away when Jason sounded the alarm. Considering that Sophie’s physical limitations would slow their getaway, there had been no time to spare.

  “Geri was able to get you all out of there?”

  “She couldn’t carry me down the porch stairs, but she helped me slide down them. We left Max in the house for that. I didn’t want him to see.”

  Jason had never hated Cobb more than at that moment.

  “We’re heading to—”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said quickly. “Don’t go to a motel, but don’t tell me where you’re going. I don’t want to know. Just in case . . .”

  She didn’t ask Just in case what? “Okay. But aren’t you coming to meet us?”

  He hesitated. “I would. I want to. But I have to . . . take care of things here.”

  “Which means . . .”

  “It means I’ll do what I have to do to take care of things here.”

  “If I wasn’t in a damn wheelchair, Jason�
�”

  “I know. I wouldn’t want to be in Cobb’s shoes if that were the case. Listen, do you still have Ben’s number?”

  “I think so. Yes, I’m sure I do.”

  She had to be terrified, but he couldn’t tell from her remarkably steady voice.

  “He left here a little while ago, on his way to you. Call him and tell him where to meet you. He’ll stay with you until . . . it’s all over.”

  “Which will be when?”

  He had no idea. “No more than a few hours, I hope.”

  After a long pause, she asked, “You really can’t go to the police?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Okay.” He heard her take a deep breath. “Listen good to me now. I don’t want you to get hurt.” He was glad to hear that. “And I don’t want Max to get hurt, either.”

  “Neither do I. So . . .”

  “So you need to do whatever you have to do. You understand what I’m saying?”

  After another moment of silence, he said, “I think so. Aren’t you worried about . . .”

  “A little. But you have to stop him. So do whatever you have to do. Just don’t get hurt or killed.” After a moment’s pause, she added, “And if there is something . . . something inside you that . . . well, use it if you have to. Embrace it if it helps. Whatever it takes.”

  There wasn’t much he could say to that, so he said nothing.

  “But Jason? Just don’t lose yourself, okay? You know what I mean?”

  “I do. And don’t worry, Soph. There isn’t . . . I’m not—” He stopped himself. He was tired of their disagreement about this. “I won’t,” he said. “I swear.” Just before he ended the call, on impulse, he added, “I love you, Soph.”

  A tiny pause, then, “Seriously, Jason? Now?”

  “Sorry.”

  He disconnected and set his phone to silent mode. From the Camry’s trunk he grabbed a tire iron, then he walked around the corner and down two blocks until he was standing across the street from Ian Cobb’s house. It was a center entrance colonial, like most of the houses on the street. What struck Jason was how normal it looked. This was the house of an infamous serial killer, yet from the outside there was no clue as to the evil that lived within its walls.