The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut (29 page)

“And the bad?” He tore a huge mouthful from his sub.

“You don’t want to know about the bad.”

“I saw you on the news.”

“That wasn’t the bad. That wasn’t even close,” I said.

“I don’t want to know about the bad.”

“Told you.”

“Is there anything else you need from me?” he said after a moment’s chewing time. “You’ve already got the company car, right?”

“Does anyone else know about that?”

“No.”

“If they ask…”

“If they ask, I’ve got it.” He jabbed the air with a strip of bacon. “Or one of the kids has got it. Or it’s in for repairs. Or my in-laws are holding it hostage in revenge for my failure to provide them with grandchildren. The one thing that definitely
hasn’t
happened to it is that you’ve got it.”

“Thanks, Rob.”

“Just don’t write the damn thing off. I’m going to be real pissed if all this comes out because of an insurance claim. So what else do you need?”

“Keep my emails so I can check them over the net. I can’t do that if you’ve already accessed them from the office. I’m still hoping Goddard will come back to me, and if he does, I need to know about it. It’ll also give people a way of contacting me if they need to.”

“No phone?”

I shook my head. “Don’t want my cell traced, or anyone to know where I’m staying.”

“Fair enough.”

“If anything comes up on Perry, or anything like that — any of the old leads we were working before — drop me a message and let me know.” I finished the last of my lunch and lit a cigarette.

“Still on the case.”

“Can’t work it from inside a cell,” I said, staring at the pond. For a moment, there was a break in the rain and the surface suddenly flattened and stilled, a mirror for the sky and the trees on the other side. That sense of disconnection, everything flipped, a reflection of the world I normally inhabited. “Have the cops been in touch with you yet?”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “Two detectives dropped by first thing the morning after to ask if I’d seen you. Perigo and Morton. Either I just caught them on a bad day, or they’re always jerks with an authority complex.”

“Great. A couple of hardasses.”

“Like concrete. They’ve called once or twice to check on me, but I’ve kept quiet.”

I shrugged. “I guess I’m lucky this is Worcester PD’s case.”

“They are Worcester PD. Specially assigned to liaise with Boston on Tucker’s murder.”

“Shit.”

“In your favor, at least having no suspect straight away meant they should’ve processed the scene properly. If your guy dropped anything himself, they’ll be looking for him too.”

“Guys, plural.
If
they dropped anything. And if the police haven’t been paid to look at me and only me.”

“Why’d you think they killed Tucker? Did they just do it to get you, or did Tucker know something for real?”

I shrugged. “They grabbed my stuff to plant with the body before I’d even been to talk to the guy. My guess is they wanted someone they could kill where I’d take the blame. Get me out of the way. Tucker was just their first opportunity.”

Rob crumpled his trash into a ball and weighed it thoughtfully in one hand. “These guys, did you get a look at them?”

“No, I was pretty out of it. I heard them talk, but that was about it. Why?”

“I told you Perigo and Morton came to see me, and they’re the cops on the case. But yesterday afternoon we had another visit from a couple of guys who called themselves Harvey and Andrew. If they were cops, I’m a goddamn ballet dancer.”

“What did they want?”

“Wanted to know if I knew where you were,” he said. “Same answer as before. But they had that feel to them. Body language, whatever. Tough guys, or at least they thought they were.”

I thought of Gabriel Heller and the corpses in the BMW’s trunk. “Not cops.”

“They weren’t even dressed like cops.”

“No suits?”

Rob shook his head. “Only time those two would’ve worn a suit would be in court. Shirts and jeans, and neither of them expensive. Boots too. One guy was big, one smaller. The smaller one had a scar on his face. Looked like someone had rammed a broken bottle through his cheek.”

“And this was yesterday afternoon?”

“Yeah. You know them?”

“Gabriel Heller’s people, I think. The guys at Tucker’s place mentioned him so that’s what I’d assume.”

“They didn’t say
why
they were looking for you.”

“Hard to say you’re planning on killing a man if you find him, isn’t it? I don’t suppose they left a number in case you changed your mind?”

“No. Their kind never do.”

“Guess there’s no point having a cell phone when most of your friends are in the slammer.” On the far side of the pond, a bedraggled crow paddled in the flood, occasionally pecking at flotsam by its feet. “Look, Rob, I’m sorry I got you into all this.”

“It can’t be helped.”

“Yeah, it could have been. I just hope it’ll all be okay once I’ve got it all figured out. Cops is one thing, men like Heller are another.”

We sat there for a few moments more. I finished my coffee, then said, “Spit it out, Rob.”
 

“What?”

“Something’s on your mind. It’s been bothering you since you got here, it was the reason you wanted to speak to me, and it’s still bothering you even after everything we’ve talked about. So what is it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess.” Another sigh. “I guess there is something. Look, Alex, some of the clients have been… well, they’ve been asking…”

I nodded. “They’ve seen the news.”

“Yeah, they have.”

“And they know I work with you.”

“Yeah, they do.” He dropped his head.

“And they’ve been getting a little twitchy about employing a company with a murder suspect on their books. I know it’s only ‘police want to speak to’, but the cops don’t release a name unless they’ve got something to back it up, and people come forward if they’ve got nothing to hide. So just about everyone’s thinking ‘he did it’.”

“Yeah, that’s about the shape of it. Some of them are saying they’re not sure about taking us on. They never say why, but they ask about you, and it’s pretty damn obvious. We’ve lost out on a couple of jobs, and there’s a few more who are nervous. And it’s getting worse the longer this goes on. So…”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“I’m going to have to put out a statement saying that I’ve suspended you pending the outcome of the police investigation, that we urge you to come forward, and to say that if it turns out you were prevented from coming forward by circumstances we don’t yet understand and you’re exonerated then we’ll re-evaluate the situation then, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Take my name off the letterheads.”

“Basically. Disown you. Disavow you. Whatever spooks call it.”

“Fire me.”

“Officially. The association’s just hurting the business too much. It’s not like the market’s bottomless or our profits can take the hit. I wanted you to hear it from me before you caught it any other way. I got your back, but I can’t
have
you back until this is all done and forgotten.”

I shrugged. “It’s no big deal, Rob. You’ve got Teresa, you’ve got four other people working for you, and they suffer when work suffers. You’ve always been good to me. You gave me a break when the Bureau had given up on me, and I still appreciate that. You could’ve put that out, gone on the evening news to tell the world I was always an asshole, and I’d still have forgiven you.”

“You’d have been pretty pissed.”

“Sure. But you could’ve explained and I’d have believed you. Eventually.”

“Heh. Anyway, you got everything you need? I’ll keep your email clear, dazzle the cops with bullshit if they try to access it. You hang onto the car for as long as you need it. And if you need us to do anything for you, same as now, just get in touch. We’ll sort something out.”

“I will do.” I glanced up at the clouds. “Hell of a day for all this.”

“Hell of a day.”

“End of an era. You’d best get back, Rob. No sense either of us sitting around in weather like this any longer than we need to.”

We shook hands. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d done that. “Good luck, Alex, and keep in touch. I’ll see you when all this has blown over.”

And then he was gone, taking another piece of my old, normal life with him. And so was I.

Kris and I met not far from the apartment Sophie had told me was Perry’s. The neighborhood was like a Victorian industrial ghetto. Buildings like tall dark sweatshops. The streets felt blocked-in on all sides, gloomy, walled. The scent of broken dreams on the air.

“You want me to keep an eye outside,” he said.

“Right.”

“You’re expecting trouble?”

I shook my head, said, “Not really, no. Rob didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about the information.”

“So why leave me outside? Why have me here at all?”

“I don’t want you following me up there and spooking Perry, and the only way I can be sure you won’t is if you know what to do.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t spook him.”

“Okay. I don’t want you coming up there and putting me in the middle of another fucking bloodbath. How about that? Perry could give me Goddard or Heller or both. This is important.”

“Whatever. You want me to hang back, I’ll hang back.”

He wound up the window on his car. The conversation seemed to be over, which suited me fine. I walked down the street to Perry’s building, eyeing the area up as I went. Looking for anything amiss, anything that doesn’t belong here. A car too expensive for the neighborhood. A guy loitering nearby with clothes that hadn’t worn in yet.
 

I saw nothing.

The inside of the building mirrored the streets outside. Drab brickwork and one gloomy stairwell that wrapped around a central elevator core. A bank of mailboxes with apartment numbers but no names. The smell of dog hair and bug spray. Perry’s apartment was at the end of a short corridor on the third floor. No sound from the neighbors’ places, but I heard a TV playing in his.

I knocked and the door swung all the way open, held by a big guy in a suit jacket and polo shirt. His matching twin stood by the wall beside him, watching me, while a third man sat in an armchair facing the doorway with a gun pointed my face.

45.

“Good afternoon, Mr Rourke,” he said. “Please come in.” His voice was gruff but cultured; a real well-mannered tough guy. He had close-cropped greying hair and a bristling mustache, like an aging Army sergeant major in a five thousand dollar suit.

I could have tried running, shooting me in the corridor would have been an easy task for a child, let alone these guys. So I stepped into the room and let one of the twins close the door behind me.

There was no sign of Perry in here, and it looked like the apartment hadn’t been occupied in a while. I felt like an idiot.

“My name is Mr Rutherford, and if you so much as think about stepping out of line here, I will shoot you,” the man with the gun said. His eyes were flat and cold, and if he wanted it, I knew I was a dead man. He probably wouldn’t even have blinked before pulling the trigger. “If you’re lucky, I may only take one of your knees as a warning first. If you’re not, or if you threaten either me or my employer, I will kill you. My employer wants to speak to you, so he’d like you alive. But he doesn’t want it enough to give you the chance to mess us around again, so you won’t get that chance. You’re a smart man, Mr Rourke. You should know the odds here.”

“Who’s your employer, Mr Rutherford?”

“Like I said, you’re a smart man.”

“You work for Gabriel Heller.”

Rutherford nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off mine. I could feel the twins looming over each of my shoulders. “I’ll be taking you to see him, Mr Rourke. And you’ll be coming along quietly, and you’ll behave yourself.”

He said this with a clarity and calmness that left me in no doubt that he’d happily make good on his threats if I did otherwise. Some people were all bluster when they said things like that. You learned to spot them easily enough. Rutherford wasn’t one of them. He had an air of absolute finality about him.

“That’s fine, Mr Rutherford. I want to talk to your employer too. There’s things we’ve got to discuss.”

“I’m sure. Lawrence here is going to search you for weapons, and then we’ll go to see Mr Heller.”

Without a word, one of the twins began patting me down. My gun was in the car back down the street, so he was out of luck. Part of me wondered if that would be the only traces I’d leave behind — an empty car and a loaded gun.

Rutherford and the twins took me back downstairs and out to a waiting Opel. It was a few years old and dusty. A guy in a battered jacket and a baseball cap was behind the wheel. I thought maybe I’d seen him standing further down the street on the way here, but now I understood that these guys wouldn’t look out of place in this neighborhood because chances were they
owned
this neighborhood. I couldn’t see Kris or the Crown Vic anywhere.