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

by Rickards, John

  “If he’s as careful as you say, that seems weirdly careless of him.”

  “I don’t know. He must have had it a few years, kept it hidden, packaged up. He probably doesn't even think about looking at it now. Why bother after all that time? For me, it was something new. And like I said, he thinks he's the king of northern Vermont. He thought he'd wiped it, so he didn't worry. Same as he didn't worry about anyone seeing the doctor getting shot, or finding out about how we use the hotel. The way he sees it, he's invincible and if anyone causes trouble, he can just kill them too. Except you, because you've already talked to too many people.”

  “So it's the steel pipe you're offering me?”

  “That, and more. He leaves some of his cash under the floorboards at the old hotel in the room next to the bathroom — that's where I always take my cut from and get the money to pay the couriers. He probably cleans it out regular, but there's still plenty there. He's probably got shit at his house too if you can get a warrant. I dunno if you’d find any dope there, though. He always told me he'd kill me if he found I'd been using. He said drugs had done bad things to his family, so I couldn't touch the stuff because it turned people into screw-ups. If you don't want the cops involved, I can just call him and tell him I gave that pipe to you, that you know about the money, whatever, so he'll have to come and get you himself. It's up to you.”

  “And all I have to do in return is buy you a ticket to Miami and make sure you get to an airport out of state?”

  “That’s right. I want out of here, away from Flint and all the shit that comes with him. Maybe this time I’ll be able to stay out of trouble.”

  “Why’d you come and see me? You already said you stole another car. You could hitch a ride out of state. Hell, you could even walk the same route into Canada your couriers do.”

  “A stolen car’s not safe for long. Once it's reported, they've got the plates and it’ll only draw cops to it. Anyhow, they'll be checking the roads for me, and if they know about me, they probably know to watch for hikers over the border. If you drive me away, I can hide, way down low in the back. And I can't buy a plane ticket if they’re watching my cards. Besides, I know I’ve got something you want. We can work something out.”

  “You’ve not thought about testifying against him, cutting a deal for immunity, that sort of thing?” I guessed the answer already.

  “No way. Flint's friends, people from San Francisco, everyone who’s ever been pissed at me, they'd all come for me. I'd probably be dead before the trial even started. No, fuck that idea. I just want out.”

  That left me thinking for a while, running through ways of handing in the weapon that killed Carita Jenner without it seeming strange or leading to a lot of awkward questions. Eventually, I said, “OK, I’ll help you out like you wanted. But here's what I need you to do. You leave the pipe in its bag and write a note to go with it like: ‘Here's the weapon that killed Carita Jenner. I've been holding on to this for Detective Karl Flint. I was working for him, but now he's turned on me.’ I can take it to the cops and tell them it was left on my doorstep, or just drop it somewhere for them to find. But I want him first. So you’re going to call him real early in the morning and say you’re going to send the pipe to the cops if he doesn’t pay you off. That you want to meet him to swap the weapon for a pile of money and if he doesn’t show real quick you’ll give him to the police. Get him to North Bleakwater, alone. If he thinks you’re carrying the pipe he can’t risk bringing backup. Do that and I'll get you your tickets.”

  “Why all that?” Randy said. “Just give them the weapon. That'll be enough.”

  “Even if you’re right and there’s a print on it, even if they can match that print to his, matching the blood on it to Carita's DNA — if they’ve got a sample — will take days at least, probably more, giving Flint time to hear about what's going on and get out of the state. I don't want him getting away. Not with what he’s done. That's my deal, Randy. Take it or leave it.”

  33.

  I booked Randy into a hotel in New York for the following night, and found him a flight to Miami the day after. Flint I’d deal with in the early morning, catching him tired and off-balance. With nothing left of the day, and Randy’s presence in the house threatening to drive me nuts at any moment, I headed for the bar. Told him to stay out of sight and not to get too cosy or I’d shoot him myself.

  Ed and Charlie were in. I got a beer and ordered a burger and joined them, trying not to think about the murderer in Gemma’s house, eating her food, watching her TV. Breathing air that by rights should still have been hers.

  “You look like you've got something on your mind, Alex,” Ed said.

  I sipped the beer. “You could say that. So much so that I woke up on the lake last night. Gone sleepwalking.”

  “On the ice? Jesus, you’re lucky to be here. Doesn’t get thick enough to trust standing on it until later in the winter usually. Maybe at night it’s not so bad, but you could’ve drowned.”

  “I was just cold. How are you? I haven't seen you since the hotel.”

  “I’m OK. I've just been doing some thinking.”

  “Do you feel better for it?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. It was mostly trying to remember, you know. I looked at some old photos, stuff like that, thought back to things I'd forgotten a long time ago.”

  I thanked Bella as she brought my dinner to the table. “It's a strange thing, memory,” I said. “I look at this burger and I know I'm hungry, but I can't remember when I last ate.”

  It was the truth. Every detail of the case was pin-sharp, everything I’d learned or guessed about Gemma's murder and the events connected to it. I could remember everything about Carita Jenner, Adam Webb, Karl Flint. But everything else was haze, memories no more tangible than thick smoke. I didn't know if I’d eaten at all that day. I couldn't remember if I ate the day before or shaved that morning. I couldn't remember whether it had snowed or not. It was as though I’d started to only fully exist when I was concentrating on something, and the rest of the time I just ghosted through the world. The only thing real was Gemma and she was dead.

  “My system’s got to be fed up with the all-coffee diet by now,” I said, “but I guess I haven't felt much like food.”

  Ed nodded. “But tonight you do.”

  “Yeah, tonight I do. Eat, drink and be merry.”

  "For tomorrow, we die.”

  After a couple of moments' silence, Charlie tried to steer us on to firmer ground. He downed the rest of his beer and said, “Have you heard about that body they found near Hazen's Notch?”

  “Yeah, I heard about it.”

  “I can't remember the last time we had so much of this sort of thing happening around here. Don’t think we ever had. Do you reckon we've got one of those psychopaths living here? That could explain it.”

  “No, I don't think so,” I said. “All this’ll be for a reason, and it might be ugly and pointless, but it won’t be crazy.”

  “Where's your girlfriend buried?” Ed said out of the blue.

  “Maine. Near Bangor. Why?”

  “When everything's over, if the guy who killed her and Steph gets caught, I think I might like to go and see her sometime, if you don't mind. It seems a bit nuts, but it'd feel like the right thing to do.”

  “That's fine with me.”

  Charlie seemed to sense that his friend wasn't his usual self and that I had even more on my mind than I was letting on. He left after a couple of drinks, saying something about a TV show he wanted to catch. Ed and I sat there for another three hours or so, not talking much. I switched to Coke after the first two beers, keeping a clear head. It was gone ten when I left. I said nothing to Ed about what was coming in the morning; I figured he’d find out soon enough when it was all over. Snow was falling heavily outside. The wind was picking up as well, and clumps of ice whipped against my eyes. The breeze blew the sound of my own footfalls back past me, echoing every step I took. At least I assumed it was just the w
ind because when I checked behind me there was no one there.

  Randy was watching TV when I came through the door. He’d been smart enough to dim the lights in the front room and close the drapes and blinds in the kitchen. He was perched nervously on the only chair from which he could see both the front door and the windows. I guessed the hours alone had kept him thinking about how much trouble he was in. “There’s not much to eat here,” he said. “I found some cookies and some instant soup earlier.”

  “Sorry. I guess my girlfriend hasn't been keeping up with the groceries lately.”

  That knocked him back and he went quiet for a while. Then he asked, “Where am I going to sleep tonight? On the couch?”

  “No, I'm on the couch. You'll have to make do with the kitchen floor. I'll sling some blankets down or something. It won't be comfortable, but it'll have to do.”

  “What about...” He paused and scratched his ear, dropping his gaze. “What about upstairs? Aren't you sleeping in the bedroom?”

  “No, and neither are you. You even set foot in it and I'll kick your ass out and let you deal with Flint, the cops, and everyone else by yourself.”

  “Easy,” he said, holding up his hands. “I was just asking. I’ll be fine on the floor. In fact, if you get those blankets, I think I'll turn in now.”

  With Randy out of the way I tried to get some sleep myself, but his presence in the house stopped that dead. For all that he seemed to need me, and appeared too scared to think of me as anything other than a ticket out of the state, Randy was still a killer. Specifically Gemma’s killer. The house seemed to be reacting too, creaking and groaning louder and more violently than I could remember before. The stairs and landing had joined in the general unrest, the shrill squeal of their worn boards occasionally adding to the clamor. At first I thought it might be Randy moving around, but when I went to check there was no one there and the kitchen door was firmly closed.

  Some time in the small hours of the morning I had the impulse to stretch my legs and maybe get some fresh air outside born of the frustration of the near-sleepless. I clung to the idiot hope that a minute's movement might generate enough fatigue to drop me at last into unconsciousness, that a blast of the cold might make me appreciate the couch more.

  I opened the front door and stepped out on the thin icy crust blanketing the porch. Flecks of snow seemed to be falling upwards, carried by an updraft I couldn’t feel, as though the night was somehow rewinding, time flowing backwards. If it ran long enough, I wondered if I’d have the chance to undo everything and play it out anew.

  From the snow-scattered, TV static blackness I heard footsteps crunching through the ice, someone approaching. Long dark coat, hood pulled up and over their face, hands scrunched in their pockets. A single lock of hair, pale in the night-time monochrome, dropped down from the dark-shrouded face. My throat clenched and I caught myself nearly saying “Gemma”.

  Two, three steps further to the bottom of the porch steps. She lifted her face. A flash of her eyes reflecting some distant light, from another time, maybe, another world. I tried to work out when and where I was — if this was another memory dredged up from a lost backwater of my mind, a waking hallucination or a genuine visitation, a temporary crossing of the ephemeral boundary that forever separated us, Gemma and me.

  She smiled, quick and pure, the way she used to. I caught a faint scent on the air, metallic like rain or damp steel. Heard soft wings beating for a moment. Then she was gone.

  The snow steadied, seeming to hang on the air, then began to flutter downwards again. Sluggishly, time returned. I went back indoors and closed the door behind me.

  If I slept in the hours before dawn, I didn't notice it.

  34.

  The first violet strands of sunlight found me crouched by the cracked panes of a rot-laced window, listening to an approaching engine growing louder in the still air. My knees felt cramped and I was tired enough to be feeling light-headed, but I kept my mind fixed on the car and the man driving it. Randy had done as instructed and now here was Flint before the rest of the world was even properly awake. It took an age for the Taurus to crawl through the snow-covered trees and emerge on to the open ground by the hotel. I watched it pull up, the engine died, and there he was, alone, gazing warily at the ruined town before he locked his car and crunched through the snow to vanish beneath the base of the hotel.

  I was hiding in one of the rooms below the old top floor suite, surrounded by shards of rotten wood and shreds of fabric and carrying the pistol I’d taken off Randy. I waited until I heard Flint pass by on his way upstairs, then followed as quietly as I could, gun drawn.

  He was just done checking the suite’s second bedroom, when I walked in, skirting the hole in the center of the main room. “Good morning, Detective,” I said.

  Flint twisted at the sound, whipping his pistol up to face me in the time it took to blink. As he moved, so did I, and there we were with guns on each other. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead and his eyes were dark pits. When he saw it was me and not Randy, he frowned and relaxed his stance a little. The hand holding his gun was shaking. “Alex,” he said, breathing out hard. “What the hell are you doing here? You need to lower that thing.”

  I didn’t. “I came to see you. Everything OK, Flint? What were you expecting here?”

  “Lower the gun. You’ve got some explaining to do, Mr Rourke.”

  “So do you. Like why you killed Carita Jenner for a start.”

  “What?” His face was blank, but his eyes gave him away.

  “I was right there in the room when he called you to say he had the pipe you beat her to death with. But this isn’t a blackmail attempt. This is your reckoning. The weapon’s gone to the State Crime Lab and I guess it won’t be long before they match everything to you and to Jenner. And you know they will already; otherwise you wouldn’t be here. It’s over.” I wanted to shoot him, but I also wanted him to answer for what he did to Gemma and the others first. At least to tell me, to admit it.

  "What are you talking about? Why does some hooker who died years ago matter to you now?”

  “Because she should've mattered at the time. Because she was the start of something. Unless beating a confession out of Isaac Fairley was the true start, in which case she was just your first murder.”

  At the mention of Isaac, Flint shook his head. His skin was pale, drawn. “Lawyers,” he said. "You've been talking to someone about me, I guess. Who?”

  I ignored that. “So you knocked Fairley around to get the statement you wanted. Why’d you kill Carita?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You enjoyed it, right? It felt good. You were a couple of months into suspension, everyone on your back, pissed off at the world. She didn't want to give you any favors, not that night. She should've known better, right? Came out of the Bar None full of anger and hate, and wound up beating her in the head with a length of steel in an alleyway behind a liquor store.”

  “Where did you get it from?” he said at last.

  “A mutual acquaintance. Why'd you kill her?”

  “It doesn't matter now. Shit just happens, like I told you once, and that night it happened to her. She was a nobody. I don't deserve all this, not now. One mistake shouldn't fuck up an entire life like this. She'd have been dead before long anyway. What difference did it make?”

  “So what about the others?”

  “What?” His face went blank again.

  “The Haleys, Stephanie Markham, Adam Webb...” Blood was pounding in my ears. “And Gemma. Killed to protect your dope racket. What about them? Was it worth it? Such great and lofty secrets to protect.”

  “What are you talking about? I worked three of those cases, Alex. What dope racket? The only dope rackets I know about are the people I buy shit from when I want to. You’re a goddamn lunatic.” His gun came up again and mine followed. His eyes were twitchy, hand still trembling. “Now you just hold where you are. I don’t know what’s going on with you o
r what you think you know, but I’m leaving. I’m on a tight schedule now. I didn’t kill your woman, so don’t do anything stupid. I’m not your guy.”

  “You going to run, Flint?” I said, and something he must’ve seen in my face tipped the balance. I saw his knuckles whiten as he pulled the trigger.

  35.

  A sound like a thunderclap and I was diving sideways, dimly aware of his bullet, flown wide, slapping through the rotten wall behind me. I fired back, one round, and caught him clean through the right arm. Flint yelped with pain and the gun fell from his suddenly limp hand and clattered through the hole in the suite’s floor. As I rolled to my feet he smashed through the door into the second bedroom and there was the sound of glass breaking. I raced to the doorway and he was gone out of the window. Crashing noises came from the rotten balconies down the side of the tower as he dropped from one to another.

  Then I was out too and following him down, expecting the whole damn thing to fall to pieces around me. Below, Flint jumped onto the fallen roof of the wraparound veranda and the last pieces of it still attached to the building collapsed beneath him. I kept on: hang, drop, hang, drop, while he stumbled out of the wreckage, blood soaking his sleeve, and scuttled for his car. I hit the snowdrift at the base of the hotel, feeling my ankle twist and pull from the fall as I did, in time to see him fumble his keys left-handed and drop them into the churned ice beside the car, lost. He glanced at me, judged his chances, and ran.

  Flint ignored the open ground and crashed into the trees, loping between the dark and gnarled boughs. I chased, limping from the shooting pain in my ankle. By the time the trees ended suddenly and we were out on to the flat, white sheet of Silverdale Lake, he had a good thirty yards on me. The ice snapped and creaked as my feet hit it just like it had the night I woke up out here. I remembered what Ed had told me about the danger, about the way it wouldn’t be fully frozen yet, about how the temperature drop in the middle of the night could’ve saved me, at the very moment the lake swallowed Flint.