The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (2 page)

“Did he ever mention a girlfriend or anyone else he knew up there?”
 

She thought for a moment, then said, “No. At least, I don't think so.”

“What about relatives in the north-east outside Boston? Anywhere he might have gone?”

“There’s just me now. My husband Billy died six months ago. Him and Adam never got on on; I think that’s mostly why he left and never came back to see us. I thought now Billy’s gone and everything he might like to come and stay with me for a while. I’m moving to a proper house with the life insurance, so there’d be no problem putting him up.” She looked down at her lap and trailed off into silence.

“OK Mrs Webb. I've got some standard questions that I have to ask. Don't take offense at any of them.”

She nodded.

“Have you told the authorities, filed a missing persons report with the police, things like that? If not, you should.”

“I spoke to the Vermont State Police. That was a month ago. They haven't done anything.”

“Do you remember who you spoke to? I'll give them a call and see if they've turned anything up.”

“I’ve got his name somewhere,” she said, reaching into her bag. After a moment’s search she emerged with a crumpled piece of paper. “His name was Detective Sergeant Karl Flint. I told him everything I knew.”

“OK. Has your son ever had any trouble with the law, been involved with drugs, anything like that?”

“Not since he left Boston. Not as far as I know. He grew up in a rough neighborhood, Mr Rourke. Things happen.”

“And how regularly did he normally keep in touch with you?”

She frowned and her lips pursed. “You think I'm panicking over nothing? You think I'm just a stupid woman who can't bear to let her boy out of her sight?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “But I've got to ask. I've got to know whether or not this is unusual for him, or if he's ever dropped out of view before.”

“He'd call at least every couple of weeks. And always when he was moving anyplace new.” Without prompting, she reached into the bag again and pulled out a couple of slightly grainy photographs. “That's Adam,” she said, passing them to me. “They're the most recent ones I could find, but they're still a couple of years old. Sorry.”

The pictures showed a young man with short, windblown black hair and narrow, gaunt features, but the photos were taken from too far away and are too poor in quality to get more than a general impression of his face. No distinguishing marks. In both shots he was wearing a cream-colored jacket with red flashes at the collar, pockets and cuffs. The backgrounds were interchangeable town skylines, different in both.

“Does he have any tattoos, piercings, scars, anything that might help identify him?” I asked.

“I don't know what else he's got now, but he used to have a tattoo of a wolf on his right arm. Billy hated it.”

I nodded and made a note. “If it's OK with you, I’ll need to keep these photos for now. If you've got any letters, cards, anything he's sent you in the past year or so, I'd like to see those too. Also the names of any friends here in Boston or anywhere else he might still be in touch with.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Mrs Webb took one of my cards. She glanced behind her as Kathryn, one of the three 'kids’, our junior staff, walked into the office with Rob. Rob nodded to me as he took off his coat and headed for his desk. “Do you think you'll be able to find him, Mr Rourke?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I don't know, Mrs Webb. It all depends on why he disappeared. If he's just switched jobs and forgot to call, yeah, I don't think it'll be too difficult. Same if he's taken ill or been in some kind of accident. But if he’s on the run from some kind of trouble or anything worse has happened to him, it could well be that we never find him. The odds of tracing someone who’s been gone from wherever they should’ve been for more than a couple of weeks aren’t good at all, which is why most missing persons cases have a low priority with the police. It’s not nice, but it’s the truth. If it’s just that we don’t know where he is, not that he’s vanished from there, then we might be OK. If not... well, we’ll do our best.”

“Were you ever a cop?” she said. “You sound like you were in the police.”

“I was in the FBI. So was Rob over there. I left four, nearly five years ago.”

“Why? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Health reasons,” I said. “Then Rob offered me a job here in the private sector.” I didn’t tell her how the death of my parents and the stress of working violent crimes had combined to give me full psychotic episodes and an eventual complete breakdown. I didn’t tell her how I’d spent time in an institution. I didn’t tell her because you don’t say these things to new clients trusting you with finding their nearest and dearest.

She smiled. “I’ll call you if I find anything else that might help,” she said. Then we exchanged pleasantries and she left just as neatly as she’d arrived.

Once she was gone, Rob said, “So, what do you think?”

“I think this is either going to be pretty straightforward, or else he’s gone for good. No middle way. It depends in the State Police found anything and if he’s got any easy-to-reach friends who know more than his mom.”

“I figured it'd he simple for you to check out the Vermont locals next time you're up in the wilds. If Gemma’ll put up with you for an extra couple of days, that is.”

Rob was an arch urbanite, and as far as he was concerned any place that didn't have its own international airport was a dangerously rural, alien environment. “It'll certainly be easier than doing it from here,” I said. “I’ll see if she can put me up next weekend and into the week after. Meantime, I’ll give Detective Flint a call.”

“I suppose Gemma can say if the kid’s been brought in dead at all as well.”

“If the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner's had anything to do with it, yeah, she should he able to find out. Especially if it happened in Gemma's patch up north. There’s even a chance she’d have done the autopsy itself if it was. But it’d most likely be a John Doe job; if he was IDed, they’d have contacted his family. I’ll ask her when she gets here tonight.”

“You taking her out to dinner?”

I shook my head. “Cooking.”

“I never thought I'd see the day. Microwave chicken, is it?”

“Ho, ho.”

I reached Detective Sergeant Karl Flint through the Vermont State Police switchboard at the third attempt; he’d apparently spent most of the morning at the scene of a hit-and-run, away from his desk. When I explained my reasons for calling, he sighed. “Look, Mr Rourke, you know how it is with these cases. When the guy's mother spoke to us, we got what we could out of her. I made a couple of phone calls, checked with Burlington PD, asked them to have a look anywhere that kind of transient might hang out. I had his photo sent to Amtrak, the airport, cab companies, just to see if anyone remembered him. We've had nothing back, no one's seen him, and I've got higher priorities than one guy who's most likely moved out of state.”

“Yeah, I know, and I explained that to her when she came to see us. Did you run him through the system?”

“He's got a record, but nothing other than juveniles. Nothing on his driver's license. Nothing on tax he might be paying as an employee, but he's not claiming welfare. He doesn't have any credit cards, and the last time he used an ATM was back before he was reported missing. Unless this guy gets arrested or shows his face somewhere someone knows him, my guess is he'll stay vanished.” Flint paused, then said, “I wish you the best of luck, Mr Rourke, but I don't think I can be much help.”

“Could you send me whatever you’ve got on his movements? It might not be much, but it could help. It’ll mean I won't have to go over the same ground as you.”

“Sure, I don't see any harm in that. You'll have to give me something in writing first, just to confirm who you are and that whatever confidential information we've got stays confidential. Handle the paperwork, cover our asses. Otherwise, be my guest.”

We exchanged numbers, then I said goodbye to the detective and hung up. By noon, I had copies of all the information the VSP had on Adam Webb, and it didn’t amount to much. That was how it went usually. You came into this world screaming and bloody and there wasn’t anyone nearby who could claim not to know you’d arrived, but it was all too easy to leave it without so much as a ripple behind you.

Not that he was necessarily dead, I had to remind myself. But if he was, and there was anyone who’d know, it was my girlfriend, and that meant holding on until the evening.

I’d met Dr Gemma Larson in the far north of Maine while helping out Aroostook County Sheriff's Department on a murder case in my old home town. At the time, she was the county's part-time medical examiner. We just sort of
clicked
out of nothing, that way that some people do. No secret, no memory, was too private or too deeply held to share, and nothing else seemed to matter if we were together. Before we’d met, I’d figured my breakdown had probably put paid to any real hope of a normal family life with someone, and I’d accepted that to one extent or another. Afterwards, I couldn’t imagine going back to how things were before. I’d been in love with her for eighteen-odd months. In April she’d managed to land a post at North Country Hospital in Newport, Vermont, as one of the state’s regional medical examiners. It was still a three-hour drive from Boston, but that was half what it had been to Houlton in Maine. Close enough to spend more than just the weekends together, and that was fine with me, gas bill be damned. If I could’ve worked closer to where she was, I would’ve done.

She came through the door a half hour late, her face hidden in a haze of shoulder-length blonde. I took her bag to tip the odds in her favor in the struggle against her purse and coat. Then, when she’d won the battle and successfully ditched both, produced a bunch of flowers from behind my back. She smiled then. It lit her up along with everything else around her. She was thirty-three, four years younger than me, but sometimes I felt like we were both kids.

“What have you done?” she said, eying the bouquet. “Something to be sorry for?”

“Nothing. That’s for being here, and this,” I said, pulling out a narrow box covered in gift wrap, “is because I’ve not seen you in a week.”

She opened it and held up the necklace inside. Nothing too fancy because I wasn’t made of money, plain silver with a pendant that was either a flower or a bird or a butterfly depending on how you looked at it. She watched it dance in the light for a moment and said, “That’s lovely. Is that my birthday present?”

“You never cashed in the voucher I wrote for you, so yes. Otherwise I’d still owe you one by the time the next came around. It’s OK?”

She smiled again. “It’ll do.”

We kissed long and deeply then, holding each other tight. I could feel the curve of her figure as it tapered towards her waist and then out over her hips. I could feel every breath she took, every movement as she pressed against me. Each time she went away, I missed that closeness.

Eventually she said, "So where’s my chocolates to go with all this? Don't tell me you forgot.”
 

“The store sold out, so I figured I'd have to do you an entire dinner instead. Three courses, wine, the whole nine yards.”
 

“Three?”

“There are cookies in the kitchen. Treat them as an appetizer.”

She slapped me playfully on the shoulder. “So what are we having? I can't smell anything cooking.”
 

“I didn't know what time you'd be here so I haven’t started yet. It'll be salmon in a mushroomy sauce with apple pie afterwards. The pie's not my own work; I bought frozen. I’m not a superhero.”
 

“No one's perfect. Since you're going to be slaving away over a hot stove and I’ve just driven halfway across the country, I think I'll ditch my stuff and then have a quick shower if that’s OK.”

“Depends if I'm allowed to join you or not.”
 

“You keep your hands to yourself,” she scolded, shooing me away. “I expect to be fed on my return.”
 

I saluted. “Yes, ma'am. Whatever you say, ma'am.”
 

Once talk over dinner turned to work, I showed her the photos of Adam Webb and asked if she could check whether he’d turned up in any of the state's morgues when she was back in Vermont.

"Who is he?” she asked.

“Bit of a drifter. Grew up here in the city but moved away. His mom's looking for him. Those photos are old; he's twenty-five now.”

“Can I take one of them back with me? I'll show it around.”

“Sure. If it's no problem. Don’t feel like you have to just because it’s me asking.”

“It'll do me good, looking so diligent. There's talk that Dr Kirkland could retire in a few months, which would leave the Deputy Chief ME’s post open.”

“You've only been there seven months and you're already looking for promotion? I never knew I was going out with such a career-minded girl.”

“Hey, it can't do any harm, making a name for myself. The higher up you are, the more interesting work you get.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “You're not getting anything interesting at the moment then?”

I refilled her glass. “I’m busy, sure,” she said, “I might have to do an autopsy on a kid killed in a hit-and-run when I go back on Monday. The State Police think it may have been something to do with the heroin trade, and the vehicle impact might have been an attempt to cover prior damage. Blood screens, forensics, everything. I don’t get that kind of thing much.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Not the killing.” She speared the last remaining piece of fish with her fork. “But heroin's huge all over the state. As huge as anything can be in such a quiet place. I’ve had two ODs since I started there, and the way I hear it the trade’s the main game in town.”

The conversation moved on then, before stopping altogether once we’d eaten dessert and drunk the last of the wine. Then Gemma took me in her arms once again and reminded me of one more reason why I loved her.

The following evening we went to Aidan Silva's gathering at his home over the river in Cambridge. His wife Jolene was in full hostess mode, taking coats, thrusting drinks under the noses of newcomers and merrily performing all necessary and several unnecessary introductions. A few of Aidan's friends from the force turned up. Rob brought his wife Teresa. Then there were some of the Silvas' neighbors — whose faces and names quickly merged into one interchangeable set — and a half-dozen or so friends of Jolene's who clucked and fussed over each couple as they arrived, everything brought to you by the letter O.
Oh, she's ever so nice. Oh, I hope you're making sure he treats you like a princess. Oh, aren't you just lovely together.
Just as I was thinking we’d never escape our turn in the spotlight, they saw that one of the neighbors was pregnant and descended on her like a flock of Valkyries, leaving Gemma and me to hide somewhere out of the way.