John Rickards writes thrillers and crime fiction, as well as dabbling in short stories. Read samples or catch the latest news here, get in touch, or see what's going on at his personal blog.

PROLOGUE

“You’re a nice guy, Alex.” That’s what people say to me at parties. They look at me and they see what they want to see, make their own assumptions. Good points and bad points. Quiet, friendly, but a little withdrawn. A hint of strength that comes from the jobs I’ve had, present and past; no such thing as a spineless Fed. Yet there’s nothing there to envy. No riches, no grand life to make them feel small.

They see me as non-threatening, which is why I’m only ever “a nice guy”, never anything more.

It’s usually said with a hint of pity in the eyes or in the voice.

They judge everyone on acquisitions - the house, the car, the pretty wife, the three kids and the mortgage - and I come up short on all counts. My Bureau career dead for six years now, doing all right in the private sector, but it’s not the same, is it? I live in a small apartment, alone. No wife and kids, and I’m not looking for them, not any more. My best hope for family bliss was torn from me a year ago and I accept that there’ll not be another.

Certainly not another like it.

The people at parties would like me to keep trying, of course. Get out, get down, get laid. Get a life. Settle for second-best. “You’re a nice guy, Alex,” they’re thinking. “But you’re going to end up alone and dead with little to show for it. What a waste.”

That’s what they think when they tell me I’m a nice guy at parties. I know it, but I smile and nod anyway, and we talk for a while longer, and eventually I go back home to my empty life and I exist for another day.

I wonder what those people would say if they could see me now - in a trash-strewn alleyway, police lights flashing in the streets beyond, and every cop in the city hunting me for murder.

CHAPTER ONE

RELATIVES CALL ON ‘FALL RIVER KILLER’ TO BREAK SILENCE, the headline reads. Dense columns of text fill much of page five of the Boston Globe beneath, along with the same mugshot of Cody Williams the media’s used in every story written about him since his arrest seven years ago. Hair tied back in a ponytail, pulling his forehead taut and snapping his skin to attention, white in the photographer’s flash. Heavy eyes staring contemptuously forwards. A faint sneer on cracked lips.

Looking at it, I feel a hollow, queasy sickness. The same sense of pursuit, dislocation, something invisible closing in behind, that’s been with me since the story about Williams’ inoperable pancreatic cancer broke.

Since he became news again.

Since the past came back to threaten the present.

I don’t read the Globe. If someone hadn’t left a copy in the foyer of the building my agency shares with several other companies, if I hadn’t picked it up for something to skim in the lift, trying to shake the chill of the fall morning outside, I would never have seen the article. Not until the story’s inevitable regurgitation on the TV news later in the day, anyway.

The families of several alleged victims of convicted murderer Cody Williams have pleaded with him to break his silence and reveal the location of their remains. Their request follows reports that FBI agents have recently attempted to persuade the ‘Fall River Killer’ to talk. Williams is currently serving a life term in Ashworth prison for the murder of serial rapist Clinton Travers in Hartford, CT. Although he never stood trial for their abductions, he is widely believed to have been behind the disappearances of seven girls over the course of a single year in the southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut area.

In an open letter to Williams, the relatives of those girls whose bodies have never been found ask him to give up their locations before he dies. “Don’t leave us forever wondering where they are. Let us bury our loved ones properly,” the letter reads.

Williams has always maintained his silence regarding the location of his alleged victims. In the seven years since his arrest, the remains of three girls - Kerry Abblit, Joanne Tilley and Abbie Galina - have been found in stretches of remote woodland. The bodies of Marie Austen, Brooke Morgan, Katelyn Sellars and Holly Tynon, all believed to have been killed by ‘The Fall River Killer’, have never been located. Williams was recently diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and doctors say…

The lift doors slide open and I walk through reception and into our office, home to Robin Garrett Associates, licensed private investigators and a bunch more besides. A single large, utilitarian space. White walls, deep red carpet. Steel shelves and filing cabinets, catalogue office furniture. Like most open-plan workplaces staffed by fewer people than they could comfortably fit, it feels like converted factory space, not a purpose-built office building a few blocks from Kenmore Square. Bright morning light slanting through the windows, the artificial tang of metal and plastic from the clutter, the all-pervasive electrical hum from the computers and the coffee machine.

Rob Garrett, my boss and friend, looks up from his screen. Early forties, a few years older than me, close-cut brown hair now liberally shot with grey. “Morning, Alex,” he says. “Had a good few days?”

I nod and sit at the desk opposite. “Yeah. I didn’t do anything much.”

“No?”

“Cleaned the apartment, caught up on a few things I’d been putting off.”

“You’re right, that doesn’t sound like anything much.”

“Didn’t have much else to do.” I shrug. “How were things here?”

“Fairly quiet. You didn’t miss a lot. The kids are dealing with most of the bread-and-butter stuff that came in. Oh, and Sophie stopped by to let us know what hours she’s available to work around her lecture schedule.”

“As busy as she was last semester?”

“That’s about the shape of things. Although it looks like a cushy number compared to what I can remember of college.”

“Back in the day.”

He nods. “Back in the day.”

“Listen to us, like a couple of old men,” I say, grinning. “Did you trace McKean’s ex-wife?”

“I paid a visit to her place in Portland on Thursday.” He chuckles. “I don’t know why his lawyers think she’ll help his defence - she didn’t say very much about him that I’d want repeated in a courtroom.”

“She was full of happy reminiscences and fond memories of her dream marriage, huh?”

“I get the impression she’d be happy to see him spend a few years in jail, yeah. Something of a vengeful streak to that woman. But I guess that’s their problem, not ours. I posted the bill to them this morning.”

“I don’t blame her for not wanting anything to do with him,” I say, dropping the Globe onto the nearest stack of paper.

“Yeah, nasty piece of work.” He leans back and flicks his eyes in the direction of my desk. “You had a couple of calls on Friday. There’s a note about one of them stuck to your monitor.”

I tug the Post-It off and run my eyes over Rob’s scrawl. As I do so, he continues. “I told them if it wasn’t life-or-death urgent, they’d have to wait until you came back today.”

“They didn’t push it. Guess it can’t have been life-or-death urgent then.”

“Special Agent Downes, I think her name was. It’s on the note.”

“Tanya Downes. From the Bureau’s Boston field office.”

Rob nods. “You know her?”

“No. After my time.”

“She said they needed to talk to you about Cody Williams.”

My heart sinks but I try to hide it. “Did she say why?”

“No.” Rob frowns. “You don’t exactly sound raring to go.”

“How much do you know about Williams?”

He glances at the Globe. “Only what I’ve seen in the news. I’d left the Bureau by the time he came along.”

“I was one of the agents working his case.” I sigh hard, swallow my unease and reach for phone.

“Yeah?”

“I was kind of hoping I’d never have to think about the guy ever again, that’s all.”

When I eventually get through to Tanya Downes we briefly exchange pleasantries, but otherwise she’s all business and wastes little time. “I take it you’ve seen the press reports on Williams.”

“They say he’s got cancer and could die anytime from weeks to months.”

“That’s right.”

“I was planning on holding a party when it finally happens.”

“We’re being pressured by the families of four of his victims to get him to talk and give up the places he hid their bodies before he checks out,” she says, ignoring my remark.

“Yeah, I saw their letter to him in this morning’s paper.”

“How do you suppose he reacted?”

“He probably pissed himself he was laughing so hard,” I tell her. And I can almost picture him doing it. “Cody Williams was never the sort to repent on his deathbed.”

“That’s more or less been my experience of him as well. The letter, though, was more of a publicity tool.”

“Publicity for who?”

“By making it public, we hoped to increase the pressure on him to tell us what he knows. Privately, at the families’ request, we’ve been talking to him in prison for the past week or so, in the hope of getting something useful.”

“With no luck.”

Downes pauses for a moment, then says, “Yes. He’s told us nothing about the locations of the victims.”

“The thudding sound you might be able to hear in the background is my jaw dropping from the sheer volume of surprise I’m feeling right now.”

“However, he has intimated that if he were to talk to anyone, it would be the agent who first spoke to him at the time of his arrest. Which was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“So we want you to come out to Ashworth and speak to him for us. Try to make him see the pointlessness of taking his secrets to the grave.”

“Go to the jail to appeal to Cody Williams’ better nature.”

“Or whatever you think will play best, of course. The doctors can’t give us a definite timescale for his condition, so we’re assuming we need to work as fast as possible. Obviously,” she continues before I can raise it as an objection, “the Bureau will pay whatever reasonable fees your agency wants to charge.”

I think of all the reasons I have for refusing. I think of Cody’s smug satisfaction. I think of the way it felt to stand helplessly by while he committed his crimes. While he killed those kids.

I think of all the lies.

“I don’t know about all this, Agent Downes.”

“You don’t know if you can succeed?”

“I don’t know if I want to share the same air as Williams.”

“It’ll be good publicity for your company, especially if you pull it off. A media spotlight can only be good for business.”

“You mean this whole thing will be good publicity for the FBI,” I reply, frowning. “You can have the local SAC or some spokesperson handing out soundbites about helping the community, victim support. The caring, sharing face of today’s Bureau. And you can’t afford to let this slip away from you.”

“Conversely,” she says as if I hadn’t said a word, “if it became known that you refused to help, I imagine the bad publicity would seriously damage the reputation of both yourself and your company.”

“Is that so, Agent Downes?”

“I doubt the families would think very highly of you either.”

“You forget that I was the one who got the guy that killed their kids. Of all people, they’d be the ones most likely to understand why I wouldn’t want to set eyes on a son of a bitch like Cody Williams again.” I try to keep my temper in check. “Let’s face it, Agent Downes, the Bureau needs this far more than I do, so don’t try threatening me with talk about public opinion. You’re the ones who can’t afford to get crucified in the media if you don’t come up with the goods.”

The line goes quiet for a moment before Downes says anything further. From her tone, I guess she’s decided to abandon that line of argument. “I’m sorry, Mr Rourke,” she says.

“Alex. Calling me Mr Rourke makes you sound like my dentist.”

“I wasn’t trying to coerce you, Alex, just pointing out the facts. I do understand why you might not want to speak to Williams. Really, I do. I know that it wasn’t long after his case that you had your, uh…”

“Breakdown. A couple of months after his conviction, that’s right.”

“And having spent a short while in the company of Williams, I’m inclined to agree with you that he is a son of a bitch and the sooner he checks out the better. But the families of his victims deserve one more chance to find out what happened to them, and time is running out. If there’s any chance we can persuade him to speak to us, we’ve got to try, for their sake. We’ll pay you well for your time and don’t forget the benefits - or otherwise - of that media spotlight.”

I rub my eyes, thinking long and hard. I can see Rob watching me across the room, although he’s trying to make it look like he’s reading something on his computer screen. My senses are swamped by memories long locked away.

I can smell the rancid sweat on Williams’ skin the first time we met, see the hunger and the mocking light dancing in his eyes. I can hear his easy denial of his crimes, the undertone that says he’s lying and that he knows I’m aware of it and is enjoying it immensely.

“Okay,” I say, much to my regret. “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Alex.”

“Here are my conditions, though. Firstly, I’ll work on this until I exhaust all the possibilities I can think of. When I say I’m all out of ideas, or I’m fed up with the whole thing, my job is over. I go in there and Williams tells me to go fuck myself, I can walk away.”

“That’s no problem.”

“Secondly, you’re going to have to clarify the legal position here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Williams was never convicted of anything apart from the murders of Clinton Travers and the attempted kidnapping of Nicole Ballard. We had to drop the charge of murdering Kerry Abblit for lack of evidence, and we could never make cases against him for the others.”

“But we know it was him,” she points out.

“You, me and everyone else knows, but that’s opinion, not legal fact. Williams isn’t going to incriminate himself by revealing the locations of four murder victims if he thinks he could end up in court. And I don’t want to go through the process of testifying again. If there’s going to be any kind of legal proceedings arising out of these interviews, I’m not going to be involved.”

“That’s fair enough. We’re still working out the details, but we already had those concerns in mind. No one’s too bothered about trying to get him into court - he’ll have died in jail before any case comes to trial. It’s likely that the interviews will be planned in such a way that nothing you learn in them would be admissible, so trying to bring murder charges would be a moot point. Good enough?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“When are you available to start?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Excellent. I’ll arrange the details and then call you with a time when we can meet to go over everything beforehand. See you then.”

I put the phone down and pinch the bridge of my nose. Rob waits a few seconds and then says, “So, what’s the deal with Williams?”

CHAPTER TWO

Skip back just over seven years.

Purple-white lightning shears through the thick bank of black cloud overhead as rain pounds against the windshield of our Lincoln Town Car. The oppressive, cloying heat that surrounded Providence on my arrival from Quantico has given way to an explosive summer thunderstorm. Agent Jeff Agostini from Boston Field Office cranks the wipers up to full speed and swears under his breath, easing off the gas a little to adjust for the slick highway surface. Winds buffet against the window beside me.

“Blazing sunshine back in Virginia, huh?” he says, half-shouting over the storm. He’s a young guy, younger than me. Well-built, looks like he works out regularly for fitness rather than bulking out, eager and sharp-eyed. Close-cut blond hair and a sharp, aquiline nose. I haven’t known him for long enough to judge his qualities as an agent, but he’s hardly shut up since we left the airport.

“That’s right. This’ll blow itself out before the afternoon, though, I reckon.”

“Maybe so, maybe so.” He taps his index finger on the wheel like it’s in time to some unheard music running through his head. “First time in New England?”

I shake my head. “I was born in Maine.”

“Heh. Northerner, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You come back here much?”

“Last time I was in this part of the country was a series of rapes in Hartford, Connecticut, a few months ago.”

“Rapes, sure, I heard about those. You get the fucker?”

I glance at him. He’s driving with one hand on the wheel, the other gesticulating for emphasis on almost everything he says, but despite the constant energy boiling off him, he doesn’t seem overly worked up. Must just be his way, I guess.

“Not yet.”

“Yeah, but I heard you had a suspect.”

“That’s right.”

“Some guy you brought in for questioning, I heard. I think someone was talking about that at the office.”

“Yeah, we had a guy,” I say.

“Was it at the office? No, no. Saw it on TV.”

“He wouldn’t talk and the cops haven’t nailed him on the evidence. Not yet.”

He nods vigorously. “Some of them are real hardasses like that, yeah. Had one guy we brought in on one of the first cases I worked after the Academy. He was running guns and all sorts of shit in through Boston Harbour. Two years ago? Eighteen months ago?” He pauses, fingers drumming on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. “When did the Steelers take the Cowboys to the cleaners? Broke their quarterback’s leg, beat them by nearly fifty clear points.”

“No idea.”

“Anyway, whenever. So we have this guy with a warehouse - not just, like, a truck or something, but a fucking warehouse - full of serious military hardware. We have half a dozen people who claim they work for him. And, ha, we’ve even got a dozen Haitians he’d shipped in for some side deal with someone. They’re happy to testify that he was the one giving orders to the men who took them out of the container they were kept in on the way up from Florida. We’re still getting the forensics, but we’ve got the guy by the balls, right?”

“Sounds like it.”

“By the balls. And would he talk? Not a bit of it.”

“Not even to cut a deal?”

“You got it. He kept claiming he was just renting out this warehouse to some people he’d never met and the whole thing was nothing to do with him. Even after the forensics came in. He was just a landlord to the mob, or some shit. He was as innocent as anything.”

I nod. “And he was dead in the water when the case came to court.”

“Jury took less than an hour to decide. Sent down for a whole lotta years. And the look on his face, like he couldn’t believe it. I’m telling you, man, I laughed for days at that.”

As the strip malls on the outskirts of Providence begin to thicken and intensify, a sure sign that we’re nearing our destination, Agostini takes his eyes off the road long enough to look down at the case wedged between my feet. “Is there anything you want to know that wasn’t in the reports?”

“I don’t think so,” I yell back as another sheet of lightning wracks the sky. “You’ve got three missing kids so far, all between the ages of twelve and thirteen. The last one, Holly Tynon, went missing, believed abducted, some time late yesterday.”

“From right here in Providence. The first two, Kerry Abblit and Katelyn Sellars were from Fall River and Springfield, across the state line in Massachusetts.”

I nod. “Yeah. And there’s been no sign of them since, and no suggestion they were running away from home.”

“Right, right. No way were these runaways,” he says, conviction, determination running through his voice.

“It’s been two months since Abblit went missing and around four weeks for Sellars. Information on what happened to both of them is sketchy.”

“Sketchy. Yeah, you could say that.”

“No one saw it happen, and there’s nothing in the way of physical evidence to work on.”

“Yeah, and both city police forces were seriously thorough in canvassing for information, did a shitload of door-to-door, but there’s been nothing much of any use so far.”

“Nothing helpful on suspicious vehicles at the first two disappearances?”

“Uh-huh,” Agostini says. Tap, tap, tap from his fingers. “That is, we have a bunch of, like, possibles, but both happened in urban areas, so there were a lot of vehicles around. We could try tracking every car and truck and shit that were around at the time and still be working on it by the time we retire, you know?”

Into houses now, residential areas, highway beginning to blend with the town’s road network. A news van passes us, heading in the other direction, wholly out of place in this suburban landscape. Above, the storm continues to pound away.

“Okay,” I say, running through the facts more for my own benefit than for Agostini’s input. “So Holly was last seen at around 9:00pm yesterday, leaving a friend’s house to walk home, a journey of just under a quarter of a mile. A couple of people living on the same street as her friend remember seeing her pass by.”

“Yeah, they were the last ones we know that saw her.”

“For the moment. We might get lucky when this thing hits the evening news. Jog a few memories. At around 9:45pm, Holly’s parents called her friend but she’d left well before then. They then called other friends to see if she was with any of them, gone somewhere else on her way home. When those calls drew a blank, her father John went out to check the route between the two houses, to see if he could find any sign of her.”

“And he finds jack shit.”

“Right, nothing. At around ten fifteen, they call the police.”

Agostini nods. “And forty-five minutes later, the cops contact us, and as this is a child abduction we contact you NCAVC guys. Speaking of which, isn’t there, like, supposed to be another agent here with you?”

“Bert Drury. Went down with serious food poisoning this morning. Hospitalised and out of action for the time being.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. They didn’t tell you?”

“No, but I’ve been kinda busy, so I might have missed it.”

“Well, you’re working with me on this case. For now, at least. Have you had anything from Behavioural Analysis yet?”

“Not so far as I know. Last I heard they were still working on it.” Tap, tap, tap. “I’m partnering you on this?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Cool. Because I really hope we get this fucker before he snatches any more kids.”

“You got kids of your own?” I ask.

“No, this kind of thing just gets to me, you know? I guess you work on these cases a lot, though.”

“I guess so. But you never get used to it. Not when it’s kids. Trust me on that.”

Agostini swings the car into a street of pleasant identikit suburban housing. Upper-end blue collar or non-management white collar family homes. Tidy, compact front yards. Boxy but reasonably attractive buildings. A block of small stores and a gas station down one of the side streets we pass. And up ahead, two more news vans and a couple of patrol cars belonging to Providence PD. No TV crews out filming; they’re probably sheltering from the rain.

We pull up next to one of the cop cars and climb out. The Tynon house looks exactly the same as all the others on the block. If I wasn’t for the vehicles crowding the road outside, I wouldn’t have given the place a second glance. There’s no sign of the rest of the street’s residents; like the news teams, the storm must be keeping them indoors. That, and fear. Something has invaded their quiet neighbourhood and taken one of their own. I inhale deeply, drawing in as much of the clean, rain-washed air as I can.

Agostini looks oddly at me as he scrunches his neck, trying to draw his head down into his suit collar to protect it from the elements. I turn away from the street and follow him up the driveway to the house.

The uniformed cop who answers the door checks our ID, then points us through into the living room. There, a man and woman sit with their hands clasped together, saying nothing and staring at the far wall. Their skin is pale, eyes sunken and dark. A second man is sitting on the far side of the woman, one hand resting on her shoulder as he looks up at the two of us. From the sad, uncomfortable look on his face, and a hint of a resemblance, I guess he’s Mrs Tynon’s brother, here to support her.

Just as he leans towards Mrs Tynon’s ear to speak, someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn to see a detective in suit and tie, his badge on his belt. He looks us up and down and says, “I’m Detective Hall. Glad you could come.”

We shake hands briefly, then he slips past us and goes to speak to the family, hunching down to their level so he doesn’t have to raise his voice. No one likes breaking such an uncomfortable silence too badly, not if they can avoid it. “Mr and Mrs Tynon,” he says. “These men are from the FBI. They’re here to help us look for Holly.”

The brother keeps his eyes lowered, but man and wife crane their necks round to look at us. Both look haggard, emotionally battered. Some people react to the presence of the Bureau in an investigation with renewed hope, an indication of the efforts being made on their kids’ behalf. Others see it as a sign to expect the worst. Forensic techs in plastic coveralls on the evening news. Body bags or tactfully covered stretchers. Lonely collections of flowers left by strangers.

“Mr and Mrs Tynon,” I say, making eye contact with both. I see no renewed hope there. “I’m Special Agent Alex Rourke and this is Agent Jeff Agostini.”

“What happened, Agent Rourke?” she asks. “What happened to our little girl?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out, Mrs Tynon. Between us, Providence Police Department, Rhode Island State Police and a dozen other departments in New England, we’re going to find out. Whoever’s responsible for taking Holly, he won’t get away with it, I promise.”

I don’t know if her husband picks up on some uncertainty in my reply or not, but he drops his eyes and says, half-croaking, “You’re here because of the others.”

Agostini glances at me.

“Bill’s wife heard them talking about it on the news,” Tynon continues. “Those other two girls, the ones in Massachusetts. They’re saying it’s the same guy. The same as got our little girl.”

I decide to go with the truth. “We don’t know that, but there is a possibility, yes. Just as there’s a possibility that something totally different happened to Holly. It’s our job to find out for certain what happened and get her back for you if we can.”

Stop there, and pause as I catch sight of the framed family photos on the mantel at the far side of the room. Holly, smiling at me from behind the glass. Preserved, like a butterfly in a case. Next to the pictures are a couple of sporting trophies from some school tennis competition. A tiny model of a clarinet. Maybe she was learning to play the instrument. Fragments of a life preserved in miniature. Part of me wants to warn her parents, to soften the inevitable blow. To tell them that in child kidnap cases of stranger abduction for sexual purposes where the child is not released after the initial offence, ninety percent are dead within twenty-four to thirty-six hours of the abduction.

Mrs Tynon opens her mouth and says in a quiet, clear voice, eyes blank and hollow, “Did you find out for certain what happened to the other girls, Agent Rourke?”

That seventy-five percent are killed within the first three hours.

“Did you make the same promises to their parents? In all those weeks, do you even know where those children are?”

That chances are, she’ll never see Holly alive again.

“My daughter is dead, isn’t she Agent Rourke?”