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

by Rickards, John

“Yeah,” he said, “but most of those either turn out to be buried in a ditch or else they’ve thrown themselves off a bridge, Mr Rourke. Try not to end up either way if you can.”

  “No promises,” I said.

  15.

  I should’ve listened to that voicemail again. I still hadn’t listened to that voicemail again. I ate a lonely dinner in Gemma’s front room and did my best to ignore both my cell phone and the sense of horror I felt whenever I thought about replaying Gemma’s death.

  I wanted to catch her killer.

  I didn’t want to hear her die again.

  By eight thirty I was in the bar. The place was pretty much empty. If Bleakwater Ridge had any serious drinkers, the cold was keeping them at home tonight. Ed Markham was in, as always, but he was alone. Charlie had either left early or else he hadn’t made it out at all.

  “Hi, Ed,” I said, sitting opposite with a bottle of something I didn’t really want but might as well have.

  “Evening, Alex. You look like you've been burning the candle.”

  “Kind of. I'm not getting much sleep right now.”

  “Understandable, and especially in winter. The old houses around here can get pretty drafty. You'll get used to it after a while, then you'll sleep like a baby.”

  I didn't share his optimism and wasn’t planning on being here that long anyway. “On the subject of old buildings, do you know much about North Bleakwater?”

  Ed thought for a moment. “You mean Echo Springs? That's what the people who lived there called it, back when. My dad could remember when they were still trying to make it work as a town, even if it was already starting to empty. By my day, it was totally abandoned. In better repair back then, of course. There was some talk, back in the Sixties I think, of turning it into a campground. But the state’s full of them already and no one had the money.”

  “What happened to the town?”

  “Science and weather, you could say. From what my dad told me, and my grandpa when he was still around, it started just as a hotel by the spring at the other end of the lake. Rich folk from New York, Boston, big towns all over, used to come up here and a half dozen other places to ‘take the waters’. We’re talking back around the Civil War, now. They'd stay at the hotel and knock back spring water like it was going out of fashion, then go home telling everyone how great they felt. Echo Springs was never a big draw, I think, but it did well enough that people started putting up other buildings around the hotel until it was practically a new town.

  “Then the water craze died out. People realized there was more to curing disease than just drinking. So science killed the hotel, and the rest of the town started to follow. But they still had the springs and Echo Stream, so they tried becoming a mill and factory town. Nothing big, but enough to keep people in work. Things looked like they were going OK — my dad was even thinking of switching jobs to work there when he was young — when there was the Great Flood of ’27.”

  “The town was flooded?”

  Ed shrugs. “Partly. It’s on the lowland, not up on a ridge like we are. But the main damage the rains did was cause a landslide that buried the springs and totally changed the course of Echo Stream, so the new mill businesses had nowhere to take their water from. With the Depression soon after, no one was in much mood to try rebuilding again, and people moved back here, or went south looking for better times. What's your interest?”

  I dodged the question so I wouldn't have to explain what I’d been doing in the old town in the middle of the night. “Do people often go out there? I guess any tourists passing through would want to check it out.”

  “I guess. Not that we get many. You walk round the lake, you walk through it. Have you seen someone then?”

  I shook my head. “Tire tracks. I just wondered if people regularly drove out there. Curiosity, that's all.”

  Ed's eyes twinkled in a way that suggested he didn’t believe me. “Not that I know of. Maybe the occasional guy going fishing at that end of the lake, but not in winter; it’s near hard-frozen now. School trips in spring; I doubt there's anyone grown up here who hasn't been taken out to the ruins to learn the history of the area. You reckon the tracks you saw could've been anything to do with your girlfriend's murder?”

  I started to see how deep the old man's obsessive thirst to find his granddaughter's killer ran. Coming in here, night after night for two years, hunched over a lonely beer, constantly searching for whoever took Stephanie. No forgiveness. No desire to forget and move on. I'd have cracked under the strain long before and gone mad or eaten a bullet, like I was cracking already. I said, “Did your granddaughter ever go to visit North Bleakwater?”

  Ed's eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard what happened. I read the news reports.”

  “Did you now.” His voice got real frosty. “And what made you want to do a thing like that?”

  “Whatever happened to her happened in the same area as Gemma's murder. No obvious motive in either. Maybe it’s the same person, or maybe they both stumbled on the same thing.”

  Ed slammed his hands on the tabletop, like he was going to throw himself at me. “You don’t start poking into business which isn’t yours, Alex. You've got no right. You haven’t had to ask yourself what happened to a girl you’d known from a baby, when she’d come just to visit you and it was you should’ve been watching over her. That’s my pain, not yours.”

  “You poked into mine, Ed. And I know it’s not the same, but we still both lost someone we loved.”

  “It's not the same! You never had to face the worrying, the wondering what had happened, where she was, why she couldn't be found. You didn't have to go through weeks not knowing, watching the cops lose interest. You didn't have your own kids calling you up to find out what the hell had happened to their little girl while she was in your care. Don't you dare go making comparisons you can't understand!” He stood, face burning with anger, and snatched his coat from the back of the chair. “At least you got to bury your girlfriend. You got to say goodbye. You don’t have the right to involve yourself in my hurt till I've been able to do the same!”

  Then he was gone and cold air spilled into the bar behind him.

  16.

  “Hi, honey, it's me. Um, I thought I'd ring to ask you about the weekend. Susan's invited—” I hit 'call’ to disconnect and took another gulp from the generous glass of vodka on the coffee table. I wasn’t a drinker — more than once I’d wondered if I had been, maybe I’d handle stress better — and the stuff, all I’d been able to find in the house, wasn’t doing much for me, but this was the third attempt I’d made to replay the message and I figured I needed all the reinforcement I could get for what I had to listen to.

  For what I had to relive.

  Again.

  This time I made it through all of Gemma's final words, trying to keep my mind blank and not start dwelling on what might have been. Then there was the crack as the windshield went and I lost my nerve again.

  I went upstairs to rinse my face with cold water. The whole landing and half the stairs up to it were now immersed in frozen air. Whatever was causing it was getting worse. The steam as I exhaled twisted and swirled into half-glimpsed patterns and shapes which looked almost recognizable.

  “... it's just started snowing again and I'd better keep my eyes on the road. I love you, honey, and I'll—”

  Crack.

  I closed my eyes and downed the rest of the glass, but I kept listening this time.

  A creak, maybe the seatbelt, and the pitch of the engine started dropping. Gemma's foot must have been off the gas. I tried not to imagine her slumping over the wheel.

  Slushy crunching as the tires left the ruts made by other traffic along the highway. The high-pitched rattle and scraping as the car rolled through the bushes by the roadside. A few seconds of muffled bumps and crackling as it headed down the slope. It didn’t sound as though it was traveling too fast. The thump as the car struck the tree and the airb
ag fired. Deflation. Another faint seatbelt creak. I hoped it was just settling after the impact. I hoped Gemma died outright, and realized how messed-up it was that I was wishing that.

  I poured another hefty shot of vodka.

  The engine's idling hum continued for a while, a couple of minutes at least. One faint swish of traffic passing by on the road, but there were no other sounds, no further vehicles. I knew that the car was far enough downhill that I wouldn't necessarily be able to hear any more over the phone anyway.

  A couple of twigs snapped. Close by — they'd have to be, to be heard over the engine. Clunk. The door, opening. A few seconds later, the motor died and I heard the jangling as someone took their hand away from the keys in the ignition.

  Breathing, slightly hard, huffy. Then, very faint, “Uh-huh. Good.”

  A man’s voice. Not particularly deep. I couldn’t make out the accent for sure, although it didn’t sound like native New England. Fabric swishing, barely audible. Not smooth, like nylon, but maybe wool or a fleece jacket. A faint metallic noise, snick. Then more fabric noises and a dim scraping. The man grunted. The same metallic noise again.

  A rustling sound followed a few seconds later by a couple of spongy thuds, then the squeak of protesting material. It came to me: seat stuffing. He was using a pocket knife or something like it to make or enlarge a bullet hole in the back of Gemma's seat. He’d pried the bullet out with his knife and was playing with the hole to make sure it looked as though the round had passed through the car. Through her, through the head rest, and eventually through, I figured, the rear windshield.

  Some more silence, broken briefly by the rise-fall tone of a car passing on the road above, then the second clunk of another door opening. It was fainter than the first so I guessed it was the one at the back.

  Chink, chink, crunch, crunch. The rear windshield, being smashed by whatever implement the guy used on the seat. Illusion complete.

  Clunk. The back door closed. More noises from outside the car. Skittering? Sweeping? The guy was doing a hurried job of hiding the tracks he’d left in the snow. It didn’t sound like he was taking long over it — the noise quickly faded — but with the falling snow what he did must have been enough not to give away his presence at the scene when the cops arrived.

  Another car passed on the highway. I wished just one of them had seen the break in the undergrowth and stopped to investigate. But they hadn’t. By the time this one was gone, the sounds of the killer making his exit had faded completely and everything was silent again. It stayed quiet until the recording reached its automatic time limit and cut out.

  I breathed out hard as I put the phone down.

  Despite the whirl of questions and 'what ifs' stampeding through my head, I didn't feel any fresh hurt from Gemma's death, only a sense of relief that she’d died instantly. I understood a little of what Ed meant about how bad it is to wonder what happened but never actually to know. No surprise the need for justice or revenge, whichever it was he wanted, was eating away at him.

  Gemma's murderer had been waiting specifically for her, of that I was positive. He'd picked a spot to shoot from and made sure he could get down to her car quickly. There’d been no audible shot, which suggested the gun had been small caliber or else silenced — probably why the round hadn’t gone far after it hit — and he’d only needed to fire once, even though it was growing dark and she was a moving target. He’d known to search for the bullet and take it away, and he’d done a fair job of making it look like it went clean through. He’d shut off the engine to make the car harder to spot and tidied up before he’d left. He’d come and gone on foot, which meant he’d either had a vehicle stashed nearby, or he’d been willing to hike miles in the snow and the dark. In any case, he’d been familiar with the area.

  And someone had told him she was coming.

  17.

  When I crawled off the couch next morning there was light coming in through the windows, but that didn't mean anything much. The clock on the mantel was flickering as if the batteries were low. I tried to work out how many days had passed since I got here, but I couldn’t get the same answer twice.

  Outside, the town looked dead, deserted. Glancing both ways down West Road I saw maybe one or two cars still in people's driveways, but no more than that, and no one on the street. Everyone else must have already left for work. I checked my jacket twice, once for the keys, once more for the gun.

  I’d started to understand the whole thing a little better since hearing the recording again. The preparation the killer must have done to get both the time and place right and to make a clean escape afterwards. The fact that he’d known where she was driving from and where she was heading. He’d known what car she was in and must have had some inkling of when she'd pass his position.

  Altmann would’ve known all of that. He'd been to the house before and he could have checked her shift schedule. Anyone else working at the hospital could also have known, as might, perhaps, any regular work contacts outside the hospital. Her neighbors might also have known enough to make them possibilities, though the ones I’d spoken to didn’t seem to know a damn thing. The voice I’d heard on the recording didn't sound like Dr Altmann, although I only had one word to go on and that was at some distance from the phone. What bothered me most, though, was still motive: why did the guy kill Gemma?

  I had no idea of the exact route I’d taken to North Bleakwater in the dark, so I just followed the road down to the lakeshore and then cut around the edge of the frozen water, tracking the shoreline for a half hour or so until I saw the first broken shells of buildings looming through the snow-shrouded trees.

  Maybe the murderer had been a pro working to hire, in which case the information needed to ambush Gemma would’ve come from his employer and all bets were off in terms of alibis and voices. Motive, then, was still an issue though;if anything an even bigger one. Maybe he’d been a nut who saw himself as an assassin. A local backwoods psycho would have a familiarity with the area, but what about the shooting skill? And why was Gemma the only shooting victim in the area for years if the guy was pathological?

  Unless Gemma wasn’t his only recent victim. Stephanie Markham had last been seen heading up the same stretch of road. Maybe there was someone out in the woods who regarded it as his territory, and death to trespassers. But even that didn’t sit right; why shoot her driving through it and leave all the other traffic on the same road at the same time alone?

  Nevertheless, the killer couldn't have hiked miles to the scene. So he’d either hidden his vehicle nearby, or else he lived in town. And where better to hide your car than the overgrown, barely-used track that led to North Bleakwater? It joined the highway maybe a half mile south of where Gemma died. Whoever had broken into the house the other night had hidden their car in the town itself. If the intruder was connected to the murder, maybe even the guy who’d done it, then presumably they'd have been happy to use the same place. If the killer had paid regular visits for long enough, maybe Stephanie Markham had encountered him on a detour from her hike, off looking at the old ruins, and saw something she shouldn’t have. Even the Haleys — they were tourists, just the sorts to make the trip to a genuine ghost town.

  Fitting Gemma into the equation was still the hardest part, but I had time to work on that if I found anything here.

  I passed the L-shaped remains of a small factory of some sort. Two rows of high, narrow windows in the brickwork, post holes to suggest where one story had ended and another had begun. The interior was a mess of stonework and wood broken here and there by stunted black trees and a couple of remaining iron workbenches, all covered in a layer of snow. A crumbling edifice of cracked grey stone that might once have been a kiln or large oven of some sort, now just a shapeless mass, leaning against the collapsed remains of the building that had housed it. The space beneath the bivouacked ruins was dark, a treacherous maze of crawlspaces half-filled with dirt and ice. I could see the town's overgrown former main street running into t
he trees to the southeast, away from the lakeside and bound for nowhere.

  Past the newer industrial additions to North Bleakwater, I came once more to the bridge over the dried-up bed of Echo Stream, the open space around it, and the hotel on the far side. The decaying structure had lost some, but not all, of the majesty it possessed after dark. In the grey light of day the signs of neglect were far more obvious — dark patches of damp-riddled wood, runnels of brown-red from metal fittings, holes where bugs had made a meal of the boards.

  A lone figure in a puffy red winter coat and an insulated hunting hat was sitting on a pile of old timber outside the building. He saw me coming and said, “Morning, Alex.”

  “How's it going, Ed?”

  “OK,” he said. “It's going OK. I guess I should apologize for last night. I didn't have any call to go flying off the handle like I did.”

  “That's all right, I understand. Why are you out here?”

  “What you were talking about last night got me thinking, I guess. So when I woke up this morning, I thought I might head out to the old town and see what I could see. You know, maybe jog a memory or something. How about you?”

  “I’m checking out the hotel. Someone's been here and I thought I'd find out what they were looking for. It might be nothing. You're welcome to come along.”

  He nodded and climbed stiffly to his feet. Said, “Sure.”

  The trail of crushed foliage at the back of the hotel was just as clear as last time I was here. I looked at the hard-packed ice. "What do you reckon?” Ed said.

  “Hiking boots, I think. The older marks aren't too clear with the fresh snowfall, but from the tread that's what I'd say they were.”

  “That doesn't narrow things down any, not in this area at this time of year.”

  There were at least two sets, one smaller and narrower, that might have been made at the same time — a couple of people walking side by side. There were also other prints of a different sort, ordinary shoes, but there wasn’t a lot I could tell from them. A man's, probably, about the same size or a little larger than mine. There might even have been two sets of these too, overlapping. All four print groups came and went the same way. If there was a backwoods territorial psycho out here, he must have had a bunch of friends.