The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke)

by Rickards, John

  I tried a smile. Didn’t know if it worked. “So how did it look when you found her?”

  “The windshield was a mess, the front end was all out of shape and the radiator had ruptured,” she said. “It was still steaming. The back window was smashed and there were still bits of glass on top of the trunk. It looked like it had hit hard enough to hurt.”

  “And Gemma?”

  “You sure you want to hear it?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed hard.

  “She was face down over the wheel. The airbag had fired. I could see blood on the front of her coat, but nothing else. The driver's side door had popped open a fraction from the impact, but the glass was intact. I opened the door so I could lean in and find out if she was alive or not. Then I went back up to the road.”

  “Was there any sign that anyone else had been near the car — footprints, things like that?” I asked, unwilling to dwell long on the image of Gemma slumped dead in the wreckage.

  “Did you hear something on the message?”

  “No,” I said, thinking that she had a point. If I could stomach it, maybe there’d be more on the recording after the shooting. “Wondering was all. How about up on the highway?”

  She thought for a while before deciding to answer that, and I figured we’d reached the line of what she’d consider sharing. “I don't remember seeing any tracks in the snow, but it was dark and I was looking at a car wreck, not a murder scene. I think the State Police examined the road when they took over, but I'm not sure. By that time, there'd been me, Wayne, the doctor and a couple of paramedics there.”

  The radio in the Impala crackled into life. Ehrlich leaned into the car and had a conversation with the dispatcher. Then she turned back to me and said, “That’s as much as I can say, Mr Rourke. And now duty calls. Gotta go.”

  “No problem. I appreciate you helping me.”

  “Have you got a number I can reach you at if we get any further calls about men poking around in the woods?”

  “Sure.” I gave her my cell and she climbed into the cruiser. “If I come across anything I’ll call your department.”

  She nodded, then said, “Just remember what I said. This is a State show and they’re not going to go easy if you get in the way. I can sympathize, maybe more than I should, but don’t expect the same from them. If I were you, and don’t think bad of me for suggesting this, I’d find another way to deal with your grief.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “Take care, Mr Rourke. Be safe.”

  Once the cruiser had vanished down the road I looked up beyond the blacktop to the wooded mountain spur to the south. If I’d had to choose a spot to shoot someone driving through the dip where Gemma died, that was it. Plenty of cover, good view straight down the road because of the way it jinked between ridges. Not far from the road the slope steepened considerably, with jumbled boulders interspersed through the forest. I tried to imagine a line between the rocks and the spot Gemma’s car would’ve been in before it swerved off the road. I wondered why the cops hadn’t been able to find the bullet; it should’ve been in the car, in the road surface, or else fallen out somewhere between one and the other.

  I climbed the frozen slope, looking for the killing spot among the rocks. The woods thinned out over the difficult ground, and this in turn had opened up the space beneath for thorns and tough, scrubby weeds. I wasn’t much of a woodsman but even I could see that someone had been this way before. Here and there were broken and crushed stems leading in a coherent trail uphill. They weren’t close enough together to form a continuous set of tracks — the woods were still too packed for the wiry plant growth to have spread far — but what there was had been perfectly frozen in place, like the land itself wanted me to find it.

  Forty feet or so above the level of the highway, I came to a weathered outcrop of rock which looked out along the road. I brushed away some of the snow that coated the stones and the dirt of the forest around them, hoping for something that would confirm my theory. There were scrapes in the lichen on the rocks, though maybe I’d caused them myself. Wedged between a couple of stones a few feet away, though, was a plastic wrapper from a disposable chemical hand-warmer. It didn’t look like it had been there longer than a few days. Nothing else, but at least this showed for a fact that someone had been here, and it looked like they’d maybe been waiting a while.

  For the right car. The right shot. The kill.

  9.

  “What do you want?” The man’s voice was guarded if not actively unfriendly. I guessed I didn’t look much like a salesman or a religious nut.

  “I’m calling about the woman who lived across the street. Did you notice anything strange in her behavior, odd people hanging around the neighborhood? Anything at all that was out of the ordinary over the past couple of weeks.”

  The guy regarded me suspiciously, an unspoken ‘No, but I sure am now’ clearly running through his head. He was middle-aged and a little pudgy. There was a newish-looking SUV on the driveway. Classical music was playing in the house behind him. “I already spoke to the police when they called by,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name's Alex Rourke. I'm a private detective and I am — was — the woman's boyfriend.”

  He didn’t tell me to get lost straight away, but I had the impression was trying to figure out a way of politely bidding me goodbye without seeming insensitive. In the end he just said, “I didn't see anything, like I told them.”

  “Nothing at all? You didn't see anyone you don't know in the street, no one called on her?”

  “Not that I saw, not in the last couple of days before...”

  “Did you see anyone before then?”

  He folded his arms. “Last time I saw anyone call on her must’ve been a week or so before it happened. I was cleaning out my car. She spoke to some guy on the porch. It looked like she knew him. He gave her a folder, which is what made me notice, I suppose. Official-looking. Apart from that, the last person I remember seeing there was you, or at least someone with the same car as you. If you're looking for any more than that then I’m sorry, I can't help you.”

  In an afternoon spent canvassing the neighbors, this was the first useful information I’d had. “What did the man she spoke to look like?”

  “I don't know.” He shrugged. “Regular guy. Middle-aged. Wore a tie and a long coat, one of those expensive wool ones. Might have had a suit as well. His car was silver, new-looking. I don't remember the make. That's all I know.”

  The front door closed an inch or so as he finished answering. I figured my time was up so I thanked him and left. It sounded like the visitor was maybe a colleague of Gemma’s, and since she hadn’t mentioned it last time I’d seen her I suspected it wasn’t anything important, but at least it was something. Maybe there’d been something going on with her job she hadn’t told me.

  Back in the house, the first thing I did was check Gemma’s mail and the unopened personal letters I’d left alone when I arrived. One had a handwritten address, the other was printed and was just a bill. The written letter was a couple of pages of tight, neat script folded around a photograph. From her parents, letting her know how their vacation in San Francisco was going. It was postmarked the previous Wednesday. Gemma was already dead by the time it was sent.

  The notes by the phone in the kitchen didn’t amount to much. Aside from a couple of scribbled phone numbers with 'Bob K', 'Celia' and other cryptic names next to them, there were times and a couple of numbers for the St Johnsbury party and two responses — both negative — to inquiries she’d made for me about Adam Webb: 'Brattleboro - don't recognize' and 'Chief - not as far as she knows'.

  There was nothing much more on her computer upstairs at first glance. Notes from work she was typing up, some email correspondence with a couple of other pathologists that mostly went clean over my head. Two more responses from other regional medical examiners saying they’d not seen anyone resembling Webb. A pair of messages from her sister Alice.
The first asked if Gemma and me were planning on taking a vacation this year. The second had arrived on Tuesday evening at about the time I was driving up the interstate to see her body.

  Gem,

  I tried to call you earlier but I guess you must be out. You doctors, always partying! Let me know what you and Alex decide about doing for Mom’s birthday. I know Dad wants everyone together for the big six-oh. Maybe Al will have popped the question by then - you never know! Have you got any time off next month? Talk soon sis.

  - Alice

  I reread the last couple of sentences, then closed her mail and moved on, keeping my mind carefully blank. I didn’t want to let slip a fresh heap of emotional baggage about a future we’d never have. An icon on her desktop caught my eye and spared me from falling into melancholy again. ‘OCME Gateway Services’. Remote login to the OCME intranet. An intranet, if her user account hadn’t been deleted, on which I could access the report on her own murder, probably crime scene stuff too if it was linked to the VSP’s forensics service. It took less than a minute to find her username and password details on a notepad full of similar reminders in the desk drawer.

  I looked at it. Looked at the icon. I was well aware that tech support, especially in government bodies, could be very slow to clear out old accounts unless someone had been fired and needed wiping from a given system ASAP.

  If it worked — a big if, still — there’d be access logs, I knew. Records. Maybe no one would check them, not unless they had reason to. But if they did, and I’d gone looking for information, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who had used her login and then I’d be on felony charges for accessing data I had no business reading with zero chance of a successful defense.

  I looked at the password. Looked at the icon.

  Switched the screen off and walked away. For the time being. Told myself I didn’t need to see the official report on her death. I wanted to know what might have been going on at work, that was all, and maybe the file folder the guy had left for her was still here somewhere.

  So I went through the rest of the house, checking the drawers, closets and even the trash. I made the climb up into the attic room to see if Gemma had moved any of her things into what used to be empty space. She hadn't. No cardboard file. Nothing from work except on the computer that I wasn’t going to touch. Temptation was gnawing at me and it was growing dark early outside as the mountains to the west shut out the sun.

  By eight I was in the bar again. The Sunday night crowd was thin, down a dozen or so heads on yesterday. Ed and Charlie were in again when I arrived, sitting at the same table, and I joined them.

  After navigating small talk for a while, Ed said, “I hear you've been out asking folk about what happened. How's it going?”

  “So far, so nothing. I met Officer Ehrlich and she told me a bit about what she found, but not much. How did you know I've been talking to people?”

  “She’s a good girl, Sylvia. May Tyler saw you calling at houses on West. I guess no one could help you, huh?”

  I shook my head. “I take it you guys haven't seen anyone unusual around town? You seem pretty keyed-in to everything that goes on.”

  Charlie's eyes flicked towards Ed and he said, “No one like you’d be after. There's not many out-of-towners stop here.”

  "We'll keep our eyes open, though,” Ed said. Like last night, his tone hinted at something deeper going on.

  When Ed left to take a leak a while after, Charlie leaned towards me and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You can trust us to keep our eyes open,” he said. “We're in here every night. Ed, well...”

  I tried not to look like I thought he was crazy. “Yeah? You get a lot of trouble in town?”

  “No. Look, I dunno if he’d want me telling you this, but Ed lost his granddaughter Stephanie two years ago. She’d come to visit him on vacation, like she used to for a couple of weeks every summer since she left high school. Real keen walker, Steph. She went hiking north one day, said she might trail camp overnight, never came back. Sheriff’s Department tried to find her when Ed called them. Then the staties made a big song and a dance about trying to find her on the Long Trail, except she wasn’t there and eventually they gave up too.”

  “Ed thinks she was killed by someone she met round here.”

  “We come in most nights looking—” Then Ed was coming back and Charlie clammed right up. That more or less killed the conversation and once I’d finished eating I left, claiming I needed to sleep but knowing I probably wouldn’t.

  Snow was falling, chalk dust blowing down from the mountains, and I hurried back. The town was still deserted. The ancient stoplights at the intersection with West shone like the pitiful strobes at a ‘70s high school disco, but they did so to an empty dance floor. I was alone as I crossed and vanished into the shadows.

  Even with a little time to grow used to its emptiness, the house was no easier to settle in than the night before. I stretched out on the couch in front of a movie and fatigue dropped on me like a cliff. Not tiredness, not sleepiness; I was just bone-weary. By the time I was halfway through the film, my raw, itchy eyes had started picking up blurred spots of dark, shadowy movement at the edge of vision. Once I decided I’d had enough of this I crawled off the sofa and went on a tour of the house, checking all the doors and windows, trying to be sure everything was locked down for the night.

  The building was fairly warm; despite drafts blowing through some of the chinks in its armor, the heating system was a good, sturdy one. My first thought when I walked along the landing to Gemma's bedroom was therefore that the window inside must have blown open. The air immediately in front of her door was icy, and as soon as I hit it my breath turned to fine spiderwebs of steam. When I touched the handle the metal was ice cold and numbed my fingers. When I went in and flicked on the light, I expected to see the casement wide open and snow dancing on the bedcovers, but the window was firmly shut and locked and the air within was just the same as the rest of the house beyond that cold spot.

  I ran my eyes around the uncomfortably empty room but nothing seemed out of place. Puzzled, I turned off the light and closed the door behind me. Passed back through the narrow band of cold and finished checking the last two rooms on this floor, still no closer to knowing where the mystery draft came from.

  The last place I looked was the attic. Its bare floorboards seemed solid enough, and there wasn’t much wrong with the windows. Up here I could hear the rattling and scraping of wood on wood. The breeze was tugging at the bare branches of the trees that massed by the lakeshore. Their gnarled limbs twisted and swayed, stark black shadows against the ice beyond, like fevered dancers at a religious ceremony. I watched for a while before breaking away and retreating towards the glow rising from the landing, afraid for a moment that the country would take me like it had taken Gemma and like it had taken Stephanie Markham and swallow me up in darkness forever.

  10.

  Newport would’ve been nothing more than a small town in most other places. In the rolling piedmont of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, though, it was as close to urban as you could get. The city was neat and well kept, although as far as I knew there wasn’t much in particular to visit it for. Sure, the lake was nice when it wasn’t frozen — tree-lined and hilly all the way across the border into Quebec — but pretty lakes were hardly rare in New England. Now the town looked almost monochrome — black highway, spindly leafless trees, white snow; even the red-brown of most of the buildings was dark from a distance.

  I found the hospital without any difficulty and parked in the lot outside. I had no official reason for calling on the mortuary and no badge or authority to back me up. I waited until I saw an old woman heading for the entrance, then tagged along a few yards behind. Let her negotiate the doors first, dogging her footsteps, then strode purposefully in the direction indicated by the 'elevators' signs while she occupied the receptionist. No one gave me a second glance as I pushed the button for the first floor, which the
information board suggested was where most of the lab and diagnostic departments were housed, and vanished behind the sliding steel doors.

  Upstairs, the problem was finding the mortuary. I wished I'd visited Gemma at work. I walked aimlessly along empty corridors for what seemed like hours — probably more like five minutes — when I started to hear a whirring hum that echoed and bounced from the walls. Rounding the next corner I came across a young guy in a blue uniform pushing some kind of combined floor polisher-cleaner system. “Mind how you go,” he half-yelled as I reached him. “Tiles might be a little slippery.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t look like he thought I was out of place so I said, “I’m trying to get to the morgue, but I'm kinda lost. Which way is it?”

  “Morgue huh? Back the way you came, two turns to the right.” I thanked him and turned round when he added, “Figured it. You got the look.”

  That stopped me. “What do you mean?”

  “She was nice. I liked her. We talked sometimes.”

  “Who? Gemma?”

  The janitor nodded. “I see it.”

  “What?”

  “In your eyes, in your face. I liked her. It's a real shame what happened, and now you've got the Angel of Death riding inside you. I can see it, looking out. She’s killing you, eating you up from the inside. It burns, and it's burning you up. You'd best finish it before the Angel kills you. I see it.” He smiled and his eyes turned upward in fond recollection. “She was nice. I liked her.”

  “Sure.” It was about all I could think of to say. Since I was brought up polite, I added, “Thanks.”

  “I see it,” the guy called after me as I headed for the morgue. “Black wings, all around you, man. Darkness. Hounds to the hunters. Hounds to the hunters!”

  Then I was gone.

  The hospital's pathology department was small but well-equipped. Two lab rooms and an office to one side and the big double doors into the morgue itself opposite. Two people looked up at me from their work in the office as I knocked softly on the door and stepped inside. A third desk was conspicuously free of personal effects, a clean blank slate. Gemma's, I guessed. The first lab worker was a man somewhere deep into middle age, with thick glasses and a kind of studious puppy-dog look to him. The second was a woman around Gemma's age, tall and thin without appearing hawkish. She spoke first. “What do you want?” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Visitors aren't allowed down here.”