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

by Rickards, John

  “Tan?”

  “That's what he said. There were two guys standing between them, looking like they were checking under the hood of the pickup. One of them was carrying a gym bag. The witness slowed down, thinking they might have had a breakdown or something, but then one of the guys stared at him and twitched his jacket open to show he was carrying a gun. The witness drove off but he tried to get their license plates. He couldn't see the pickup’s but he got the sedan’s.”

  “And he waited until now to report it? That doesn’t seem strange at all.”

  “Let’s say the witness is a less-than-upstanding pillar of the community — he’s a recovering junkie with a string of busts, in point of fact — and he didn’t hear about the murder until now.” Flint shook his head. “It happens like that sometimes, as you know goddamn well. And you should be thankful because this witness is the main reason I don’t see you as a major suspect despite your turning up here and now. You understand?”

  “Drug deal gone wrong rather than a professional hired by me with money I don’t have for no motive whatsoever. I got the picture. Nice you think so highly of me.”

  “We ran the plates and the car is registered to one Randy Faber. Is that name familiar to you?”

  “Should it be?” My toes were numb in the cold and my face felt like stretched rubber. I rocked to and fro, just trying to keep my circulation going.

  “Your girlfriend never mentioned him?”

  “No.”

  “What about the name Curtis Marshall?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “OK,” he said. “So maybe she got unlucky and drove past something she shouldn’t have at just the wrong time for it. Faber’s from San Francisco and he's got a record — nothing big, a couple of weapons violations, a charge for threatening behavior that was later dropped. But his name is flagged in SFPD and FBI investigations into a big-shot businessman and criminal boss called Curtis Marshall. They think Randy used to be a hitman for Marshall but had to leave California a few years ago when the local cops busted one of Marshall's crystal meth plants. There’s no proof of this, but the story goes that Randy was so eager to get away that the son of a bitch fired on a couple of his own guys running for the same car he was. One of those killed was Marshall's nephew Joel and his uncle has been after Randy’s blood ever since. Why he’s showed up here I don’t know, but as murder suspects go he’s a solid one and he has a history in the drug trade. Maybe he’s running his own operation now.”

  Saric nods. “So now, Alex, you may have walked clean into the middle of drug gang business right when they’re cleaning up loose ends. We had a tip from an informant that Randy was supposed to meet a distributor here right about now. But instead you show up. That looks bad, or else very unlucky. This guy’s armed, dangerous, and has a record for shooting his way out of police raids. We’ve got five other officers with us and I still wish we had more. That’s how serious this is.”

  “And if it wasn’t for the fact that we need to keep a low profile until he does show, I’d still be arresting you for interfering with an investigation,” Flint said. “You say you had a phone call from some guy who tells you to come out here. Either that’s Faber himself planning on putting a bullet between your eyes, or it’s a rival hoping you’ll do for him instead, or you’re right and our witness is no good and maybe you hired Faber yourself, or else your story is bullshit and you’re just trailing our people, hoping for scraps.”

  “If I was looking for scraps I’d try elsewhere because so far you’ve found jack,” I said. “I get a lead, I follow it up even if it could be a set up. I’m not a fool, but I’ve got no choice. What about you, anyway? You get one tip that says your suspect does business by the side of a public highway — less than a mile from the ghost town he apparently uses to keep his goods in, in fact — and another says he knows a nice, isolated farm that’s been empty for years he uses as a meeting place. Any parts of that strike you as contradictory? Someone’s lying to you, Sergeant Flint.”

  “A witness put an armed guy at the scene of a shooting. That part’s enough for me. So far. Don’t make me dig further.” He glared at the snow-blanketed fields. “On top of all that, Faber’s late and I’m frozen stiff. Give him his gun back, Fiona. He looks like he’s going to do anything with it, you shoot him. Then you stay by the van, Mr Rourke, out of the way until we’re done here. You so much as go for a piss and I’ll think twice about not taking you in. Clear?”

  “If your informant had been genuine, Alex,” Saric said, handing me my Colt, “and you’d found out who killed Dr Larson, would you have told us, or would you have gone for him yourself?”

  I didn’t get to answer that because at that moment there was the snap of splintering wood as a bullet punched into the wall beside me.

  26.

  It took a moment for me to realize what had happened. There was no gunshot crack, just a distant pop like a damp firework. I looked at the hole in the wooden boards. Shredded, uneven. Tiny motes of dirt, sawdust and frost still hanging in the air. Hard to say who it was aimed at. I dived around the van while Saric shouted, “Gunshot!”

  A second slug buried itself in the hood and I knew for certain now that I’d been the target. I ducked down, hopefully keeping the engine block between me and the shooter, and cradled my gun. It wasn’t a massive endorsement of my life to date, but this wasn’t the first time someone had tried to kill me, and experience at least lent me a certain grace under fire. Not everyone was so lucky, of course.

  “You see anything?” Flint yelled. I didn't know who he was asking. I could hear the panicky voice of the state trooper inside the van as he radioed in. Splinters of black plastic burst over my head as a third round punched through one of the wiper blades.

  Looking around, I saw that Flint and Saric had taken shelter behind the vehicle the same as me. Saric was bobbing her head out and back as she tried to get eyes on the treeline opposite. Flint looked at me and said, “I told you not to pull a weapon, Rourke.”

  “It’s licensed, I’m ex-Bureau, and right now there’s some son of a bitch trying to put a hole in my head,” I shouted back. “The hell with that.”

  “I said—”

  Another round hit the van. “Have that argument with me later.”

  “God damn it! Saric, you stick with him. He fucks up, you shoot him.”

  I could see one of the cops scooched down at the corner of the barn beyond Saric. To the right, my field of vision was restricted by the building on one side and the wheel arch of the van on the other. I saw an empty tract of farmland, trees in the far distance. No sign of movement.

  “Nothing,” Saric said. The trooper beyond shook his head too, eyes wide.

  I peeked quickly left around the front end of the vehicle. Saw a blur of snow-covered fields, dark forest encrusted with white. I held that first glance like a Polaroid as I ducked back. Nothing was out of place. Not a goddamn thing. With no answering shot I risked another, longer look, this time over the top of the van's hood. Two-fifty, three hundred yards away, the dark gaps between the bare branches along the treeline were still and empty.

  Back down again. The couple of troopers I could see looked scared — only natural when someone's firing a gun at you, but not helpful. I guessed none of them had ever been in this kind of situation before, and training only carried you so far. Flint was keeping his head down, and didn’t look like he fancied budging any time soon. “We've got to get over there,” I said to Saric. “Unless you’ve got SWAT out here somewhere, we can’t hang around behind the van, waiting an hour for backup, while this guy repositions and gets a bead on us.”

  “What've you got in mind?”

  “We get back into the farm buildings, through the trees by the road, then break right into the woods. Work our way around to him in cover.”

  She frowned. “You and me? You’re not a cop, Alex.”

  “So take one of your cops if any of them know how. Point is, I’m not going to sit here forever wa
iting to get killed. You can shoot me yourself, or else we can deal with this.”

  “Jeez. OK. Try to leave any firing to me. I don’t want to be up in front of Professional Standards to explain any more than I have to.”

  We ran, keeping low, towards the barn. As we rounded the corner, there was another distant shot and the trooper crouching there, right next to us, went down clutching his arm and swearing. One of his colleagues dashed to check on him as we scurried past.

  “Faber's off his game today,” Saric said as we cut through the derelict buildings towards the trees. “I wonder if he was expecting all of us, or just you.”

  Once in the cover of the forest we doubled back, around the edge of the field, trying to keep as quiet as possible. The ground was rough and broken, peppered with fallen branches and old stumps. The carpet of snow was enough to deaden the noise we made but there was still plenty of crunching and scraping as we stalked through the trees. Everything around was quiet.

  At a spot behind a frosted holly bush opposite the van, cops still visible clustered in cover around it, we found the shooter's trail. Footprints, a rectangular patch of packed snow where Randy Faber — presumably — had laid down at the base of the holly to fire. Good position, plenty of cover. There were dimpled scuff marks off to the right that looked like fingertip scrapes.

  “He’s gone. He picked up his brass before he left,” I said. “Smart guy.”

  “Back the way he came,” she said, pointing at a line of footprints heading west through the woods. The trail was easy to follow even at a jog. About a quarter mile through the forest we hit a narrow gravel road running north-south along the line of the mountains. I thought I could still hear an engine fading into the distance. There were fresh tire marks in the snow, curving in to the shoulder where Faber had parked his car.

  “We missed him,” Saric said, out of breath. “We goddamn missed him.”

  27.

  Backup eventually arrived with an ambulance and a crime scene unit hot on its heels. The wounded cop was fine, sitting up and talking to the paramedics while they checked his injury. Then there were questions for me, and paperwork, and a great deal of waiting around in the cold before I was allowed to go. Flint wasn’t happy with his attempted bust turning into a shooting gallery, but I didn’t care. When I climbed into my car he handed me a photo, though.

  “That's Randy Faber,” he said. “Remember what he looks like. If you see him at all, you call us straight away. Don't approach him, especially after today's events. You meet him, you're liable to end up having to defend yourself.”

  I said, “Sure.” Wondered if he’d really just suggested he’d accept any claim of self-defense I made if I happened to shoot Faber, or if I was just reading too much into his words.

  “We’ve stopped watching the old town, by the way,” he said before leaving. “Someone snuck in already and took the dope. I didn’t see a thing. Faber must know the area pretty well. Watch yourself.”

  Then he was gone.

  The guy in the five-year-old picture looked young. He would have been twenty-seven by now. Blonde hair, dark brown eyes. Lean and fit-looking without being heavily muscled. He didn’t look particularly intimidating, but maybe he didn’t need to be.

  I knew Faber had been shadowing me. I also knew the voice on the recording of Gemma's death had an accent that wasn’t from the northeast, and he was from California, just like Jessie had said ‘Delaney’ was. Had he really killed Gemma and Adam Webb? If he had, Gemma’s murder hadn’t played out like Flint’s witness suggested; though I’d already seen that much at the scene. The car color matched, though. Faber could have arranged the farm meet to get a shot at me, but he might just as easily have been going there for his own reasons, only to find a bunch of cops waiting for him.

  And then he’d tried to kill me anyway.

  After the events at the farm, it wasn’t until the last twilight dwindled to black that I finally reached the site of Adam’s murder. Jessie's scrawled map was easy enough to follow even in the dark and I had little problem finding the same gravel parking lot she’d pulled into on the night he died. As I bumped through the entrance my headlight beams picked out the edge of a sizable copse of trees a little way up the slope. I parked and waited with the door ajar for a minute, getting used to the chill and the dark. The overcast night was starless, but the snow carpeting the slopes around Hazen’s Notch glimmered faintly.

  “I could do this forever,” Gemma said softly, nestling tighter into the crook of my arm. Lying on the turf under a blanket, night air cooling, surrounded by the flickering of insects drawn out by the darkness. The rocks off to our left were dull gray gleams. We were looking up at the stars. God's great join-the-dots puzzle. It was the end of one of the last days of summer. On the cusp of fall, nights already lengthening, warmth heading south into distant memory. “I’m warm, I've got you, and all that above me.”

  We’d spent the day picnicking on the slopes between the bulwark of Mount Mansfield and White Face Mountain in a little hollow out of the wind. I wasn’t sure where we were exactly and it didn't seem to matter. We’d made love like teenagers as the sun went down, the sky a brilliant purple-orange. Had hardly moved since. While Gemma talked, I wondered whether to suggest we get married. It wasn’t a simple matter, with our jobs and the distance between us, but it was the kind of thought that came easy at times like this. As if by sealing your relationship you’d also be able to seal and hold your feelings exactly as they were on that beautiful night in the middle of nowhere when nothing else mattered.

  “Yeah, I'd like that,” I said. I didn't know whether I was replying to her or to my own thoughts.

  I grabbed my flashlight and a folding tool that doubled as a snow scraper and a shovel from the trunk and checked that my gun was loaded. Felt a spike of adrenaline. The trees here were primarily evergreens. I guessed this was all plantation wood. On the edge of the copse the trees were still thick with needles but the interior was mostly bare brown trunks, and the only green parts visible were high up in the canopy. The plentiful outer cover meant I didn't have to go far inside to know I was near the site of Adam's murder as Jessie couldn't have seen what had happened otherwise.

  Under the high, heavy sheet of needle-lined branches the snow was far thinner than the open ground beyond. I used the shovel to clear away the ice, started looking for traces of a dead man. For an hour the only sounds I heard were metal on snow and the white noise swish of the fir trees in the wind like a hundred vengeful spirits from some Japanese folk tale. Then finally I found two brass shell casings. 10mm caliber, centerfire pistol. The earth nearby was disturbed, rumpled and crushed by what looked like running feet, everything preserved by ground that had been wet enough to make clear impressions and cold enough to freeze soon after.

  I followed three, maybe four, sets of footprints back to the spot where Webb had waited for Jessie that night. There I found a confused line where one set strode back and forth repeatedly. There were a good couple dozen cigarette butts dropped in its path. The others — definitely now two of them — converged on Adam’s from the direction of the other parking lot further up the track. By the time they reached the camp they’d spread ten yards apart, the hunters fanning out as they closed. Once Adam had ran they’d followed, trying to hem him in. There was no sign of other shell casings, so it looked as though they waited until they were certain of a killing shot before firing. They chased Adam to the point where I’d found the two cartridges, then, to judge from their stride lengths, they’d slowed to a walk. Both hunters' tracks converged on one spot at the end of Adam's trail. Here and there I saw signs of what was maybe a third set, coming from the same direction as me. The tracks were smaller, probably a woman’s: Jessie, finding the scene just like she said.

  The mass of prints became confused at the killing site as the two pursuers had milled about. On the edge of this well-trodden patch, I found the beginnings of an area of broken earth with a couple of thin, mangled tree roots still c
lawing up from the frozen surface.

  I cleared away more snow. The patch was six feet long, maybe just over. A couple of feet wide. All frozen soil that had been turned over and broken up not long before winter set in.

  Here lay Adam Webb. I started digging.

  The grave turned out to be fairly shallow. I was a little surprised the killers had chosen to bury him right here, but then they’d had no way of knowing anyone would look for him in this spot. A couple of feet down I uncovered the fingers of his right hand, blackened and distorted, but unmistakable as such even in the dark. Further down his arm, the remains of a wolf tattoo were still visible. There was no smell, not over the acrid scent of ice-hard earth.

  I carefully scraped away the rest of the dirt packed around his corpse. He was still dressed in hiking gear and the winter had held back the decomposition process enough for me to instantly recognize the face as Adam's, even discolored and smeared with powdered mud. His eyes were open, but the orbs were cloudy and looked cracked where the fluid inside had frozen. There was a ragged, bullet wound at the base of his throat and another in the left-center of his rib cage.

  The first wound was so similar to Gemma's that for a split second I couldn’t stop myself imagining what she must have looked like in her own grave near Bangor and I almost lost it.

  Breathe out, focus.

  I looked at the icy eyes of the corpse. I knew I should leave it alone for the forensic technicians, but I also wanted as much information as possible myself so I checked his pockets, clothes, and the ground underneath.

  The pockets yielded a fair amount. Wallet, cards, driver’s license, other crap, all in the name of Adam Webb. Just over a hundred bucks in cash, a couple of business cards from the kind of small-time places he might once have applied for work, and a scrap of paper with a cell phone number on it. There was a decent map of the Green Mountains in his jacket, on both the US and Canadian sides of the border, as well as an unused guidebook entitled 101 Secluded Walks In Northern Vermont. A pocketknife, some keys, and loose change completed the collection.