The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut (6 page)

I stayed where I was. “First I want to know if you’re actually willing to tell me anything or not. If you just want to play a few conversational games, relive the old days and generally dick me around for a few hours, then I’m leaving. It’s not worth my time or effort. If you’re willing to give up information, then I’m willing to stay. But only if.”

“You’d quit? What would you say to all them crying families then? What would you tell them?” He sneered, then broke off into a fit of wet coughing. I didn’t know if it was part of the disease or the treatment for it. He made repeated hacking noises, then spat out a great wad of yellow phlegm onto the floor next to him. “I read that letter they sent to the newspapers. They’re still all so fucking wet-eyed over a couple of little whores. ‘Waa! Waa! Where’s our little baby? Waa! Waa!’” He sniggered at his own joke. “With them like that, and it being on the news, what would your bosses say to you, you walked out of here with dick to show for it?”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

“You don’t like me, do you, Agent Rourke? You never did. Even that first time we spoke, I could tell you’d have been happy to kill me right there.”

“What’s to like, Cody? In all the time I’ve spoken with you, all through the trial, all the TV spots and column inches I’ve read about you, I’ve never heard of one single decent thing you’ve ever done or one redeeming quality you’ve ever possessed. Now are you going to play ball, or do I get to go home?”

He nodded, slow and jerky like a marionette. “Yeah, I think you and I might come to an understanding. Sit down.”

I hesitated for a moment, then got a cup of lukewarm coffee from one of the vending machines in the corner and headed for the seat opposite Williams. Up close, I could smell the rancid sweat cloying beneath his prison uniform, the faint whiff of body chemistry gone badly wrong. His eyes were rheumy, but sharp, although his movements weren't as fast. A couple of small sores next to his bitten lips. Yellow teeth.

“Okay. Where do you want to start?” I asked him.

“I’ll tell you about the girls.”

“The four that haven’t been found yet?”

He smiled and shook his head. “All of them.”

“I don’t need to hear about them all,” I said, trying to work out what he was up to. “I told you I didn’t want you to waste my time, Cody.”

“Have you sneaked a microphone or some shit in here, Agent Rourke?”

“No. What would be the point?”

“No?”

“No.”

“I guess that’s a shame, some ways.” He shuffled in his seat. “You see, I never told anyone my story, how I did what I did, or why. I wanna do that before I die, y’know?”

“If you want me to get a tape recorder in here for you, it’s no problem.”

“No. I don’t want to do that whole ‘memoirs’ shit. I’d like this to be just the two of us, what with all the history between us. What we’ve both done.” Williams smiled again, inhaled noisily. “That way, you can listen to it all, and then you can decide what you want anyone else to know. Like an editor, right?”

“Or a priest.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he said, and I finally thought I understood why he was doing this. He wanted to get back at me in the only way available to him.
 

If he told me everything he could remember about the killings, every time I had to speak to one of the girls’ relatives, telling them where the authorities were going to find the bodies, I’d have to keep the rest of what he’d said buried. Every sordid detail would be kept forever fresh for me, and everything I didn’t reveal meant another half-truth, another lie. I didn’t know if Williams was aware of the protesters outside the gates, but whenever I heard someone calling for his release, the full knowledge of his crimes would surface in my mind, knowledge no one else possessed. Not only that, but some people would see him as co-operating with the authorities and he’d win extra perks as a result.
 

Son of a bitch.

But I’d been down this road before. Williams apparently didn’t know that I was no longer an FBI agent and that once our interviews were over, I’d have nothing more to do with him or his case. All I had to do was find out where the last four of his victims were buried, then I could walk away.

“Okay, let’s get this over with,” I told him. “How about we start with Katelyn Sellars? She was the earliest victim we haven’t found.”

“I’d rather start with the Abblit girl. She was the first of all.” He smirked, coughs again. Another gob of rancid mucus hit the floor. “Funny, I only know the names because I heard them on the news. And in interviews with you and the cops, of course. Names don’t matter. Who they were don’t matter. Only thing that mattered was what they could be, y’know?”

“No, I don’t.” I sighed, crossed my arms. “I guess we’re talking about your fantasies here, right?”

He laughed, phlegmy and wet, his shoulders shaking and his lank hair dancing. “Yeah, I guess we are. You wanna hear about them? Do you? I could tell you all about them. You got kids yourself?”

“No I don’t, and forget about trying to get a reaction out of me. I’ve talked to more freaks like you than I care to count. Assuming any of the other cons here would even give a child-killer like you the time of day, you must’ve heard plenty yourself. Do they shock you anymore? Or are you just bored by the stories and the people who tell them?” I leaned forwards, rested my elbows on the table, looked Williams in the eyes. “So you’re a sick fuck. You know it, I know it. Big deal. Let’s get to the point here, Cody.”

“But that
was
the point for me, Agent Rourke,” he said, smiling. He leaned in closer and I could see a strand of spit in the corner of his mouth stretching white with every word, somehow always holding itself together. “Don’t you want to hear how I fucked her? How I made that little bitch scream for me?”

“No, I don’t.” I stood and walked toward the exit, not even giving him the satisfaction of a black look. My hand was touching the door when Williams started laughing again behind me.

“I’m sorry, Agent Rourke. I’m just messing with you. Couldn’t help it. Come back and we can talk properly.”

I glanced round to see him smiling at me. “Properly?”

“Sure. Come on. Don’t you feel you owe it to me?”

“Okay, talk. But any more screwing around and I’m gone for good.”
 

“Whatever you say.”

I returned to the table and sat warily in the chair. “Why are you doing this, Cody? What are you getting out of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it so you can get one last thrill, going over your old crimes, knowing you won’t be touched for admitting them? Explain it to me. I can’t figure out if this is just a personal power trip, or you’re hoping for a release before you die, or what.”

Williams leaned back in his seat. “Why ain’t important, Agent Rourke. Don’t worry about it. Important thing is that I can tell you what you need to know. You and those whining fucks who wrote the letter. And I’m going to start with the Abblit girl.”

“If that’s what you want,” I said, folding my arms. “Shoot.”

“I remember that day real clear.” Williams dropped his eyes, withdrew into an inner world. From the ease with which he made the transition, and the way he licked his lips at the images in his head, I guessed he’d done this a lot over the past few years. And enjoyed it every time. “It was hot, sun shone all day. Hardly a cloud. I had to take a delivery to some guy out past Pittsfield in the morning. I was already thinking about it, even then. You know how you wake up some mornings and you’d just love to get laid?”

I kept silent, so he continued. “So I’m checking out the chicks on the way to this guy’s house, and it’s summer so they’re letting it all show, and while I’m there we talk about girls and stuff. What we like, what we don’t like. I head for home and I figure, yeah, today’s the day I get a girl.”

Williams looked back up, smiling faintly, old hunger burning in his eyes. I tried not to listen too hard to what I knew was coming next.

“I was almost home when I saw her,” he said. “The loveliest thing you ever set eyes on. Her hair was so dark, looked black in the evening. I just fell in love with her face, though. So pretty.” The smile broadened and his fingers flexed involuntarily, perhaps reliving the feel of Kerry Abblit’s face held in his hands. “I had to have her, y'know? I pulled up the van a little way ahead, next to this factory building they’d converted into offices. No one had bought them yet, though, so I knew there wouldn’t be anyone inside to see. I just stood on the sidewalk with a piece of paper in my hands, looking like every other delivery guy checking addresses, until she walked past. Got my hand over her mouth and hauled her back through the van’s side door. I had to knock her on the side of the head a couple of times to show her I wasn't going to fuck around. That didn’t spoil things too much. Got her tied up tight, then hit the road again.”

His eyes refocused on me for a moment before drifting back into the past. “I couldn’t take her home, I knew that, see. Too risky. So I drove out of town, looking for someplace quiet, all the while with her waiting in the back, like she was calling to me.” He laughed damply, just once, and shook his head. “Fuck, man. You know what it’s like when you just want some privacy — seems like everyone follows you around and you can’t get away. Must’ve taken me an hour to find some place to park the van, away from people who might’ve seen or heard. Man, I had a fucking hard-on like you wouldn’t believe by then.

“Oh, but you didn’t want to hear about that, right?” Williams said, glancing at me.
 

I locked eyes with him coldly, flatly. Kept my arms folded. Said nothing.

Disappointment washed across his face. His mouth took on a slightly petulant, unfairly put-upon pout. “Anyway, I kept her for a day or two, but eventually she just broke, so I had to get rid of her. So I wrapped her up in cloth and buried her near the beach a couple of nights later. Shame the bitch didn’t last longer.”

I let the room fall silent, making sure Williams has finished. I uncrossed my arms and said, “What kind of cloth did you wrap her in?”

He laughed. “Why the fuck would I remember that?”

“Come on, Cody. Your memory seems pretty clear to me. You must’ve replayed the whole thing plenty of times in your mind over the years. So tell me, what kind of cloth did you wrap her in?”

“That’s all you’re going to ask? You don’t want to know why I took her, what I was thinking when I did?” He sighed and slouched back in his seat, apparently baffled.

“I’m not asking that because there’s no point,” I told him. “There’s no rational thought process there. So one day you’re feeling horny and decide to do something about it; rational thought would have said to get a hooker, or go try your luck with the women in the nearest bar. But you didn’t. Rational thought would have told you Kerry Abblit was a thirteen-year-old girl and that what you were about to do was so far off the scale that you barely class as a human being any more. But you did it anyway. I don’t understand that and I never will, nor will anyone else. You’re a fucking alien to me. No point trying to figure you out if it’s impossible. And there are hundreds of guys just like you all over the country, so it’s not like you’re anything special. So, yeah, all I want to know is what kind of cloth you wrapped her in.”

Williams flicked his hair out of his eyes. “There ain’t that much different between us, Agent Rourke.”

“Yeah,
right
.”

“It doesn’t take much to turn you into me. And in any case, you and I have got other similarities.”
 

I said nothing.

He coughed a couple of times, then sniffed hard. Another rattling noise from somewhere inside his throat. He swallowed. “The cloth was a kind of beige. An old sheet I was saving for rags in my garage. Anything else? You already found her, right. How much more could you want to know?”

“Nothing that comes to mind.”

“Then I guess we’re done for today.” He spluttered again. “I’ll tell you about one of the others tomorrow.”

Without saying another word, I left him sitting alone in the empty visiting room. The door swished shut behind me and once again I was standing in the slightly synthetic air of Outer Control, away from his poisonous presence. I wanted a bath, a long one. I wanted to get drunk and forget all about the guy. Agent Downes swung off her chair behind the security desk and said, “How did it go?”

“Okay, more or less.” She must have seen me come close to leaving early on in the interview, but she didn’t mention it, so neither did I. “Williams seems to be willing to give up as much detail as we want — at least for the time being.”

“Really? That was quick.”

“It’s not as good as it sounds. He wants to talk about all the victims, not just the four we’re interested in, so I guess I’ll have to put up with another couple of days of him reliving past glories before we get anything immediately useful.” I ran my hands through my hair. “Did he explain to his lawyer at all why he suddenly agreed to do this? I know he wasn’t playing ball with you; why change just because it’s me he’s talking to?”

She shrugged and rolled her shoulders, working some life back into them as we made for the exit. “No idea,” she said. “Probably because you worked on the case originally, so he knows you’re going to understand what he’s talking about. You interviewed him before — maybe you impressed him.” She smiled at me.