The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (21 page)

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.

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 or 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.

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.

He’d glanced back right as it happened, maybe hearing the same noises I was, and I could see his eyes clear as anything, staring at me, as the surface gave way beneath him with a wet
crunch
and he shot straight down in a gout of spray.

I thought about trying to reach the hole in the ice, or else finding something to throw him and help him out. But I didn’t do either of those things. I just stood there for a time, then turned and walked back to dry land.

The sun was well up by the time I limped back to Gemma’s house. I’d been careful to disguise my tracks, and had taken a while to dispose of Randy’s gun where no one was likely to find it. Flint was gone and I was done. I hadn’t killed him, but I hadn’t saved him either, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

The house was silent and still. Randy was already gone, picked up by the driver I’d hired to take him to New York and his ticket to a new life in the south. If things had worked out differently, it could have been Gemma and me on a plane, heading for a vacation someplace warm. Sitting on a beach, hand in hand. Basking in the warmth of the sun and each other. That wasn’t going to happen any more, not in this life, and Flint hadn’t been the only one who’d taken that from me.

On Gemma’s computer I went looking for a particular business in San Francisco, tied to a particular name. It took a few minutes, but it seemed ‘Bluewave Financial’ was the one I was looking for.

My call was answered by a perky Californian voice. “This is Bluewave Financial Services, Michelle speaking, how may I help you this morning?”

“Curtis Marshall, please.”

Vivaldi played briefly before a second woman's voice said, “Curtis Marshall's office. How can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to Mr Marshall,” I said.

“I’m afraid he's in a meeting right now. Can I take a message?”

“This is extremely urgent and it's a call Mr Marshall has been waiting for.” I pictured Randy in the car, listening to the radio. Relaxing, maybe thinking about hooking up with his cousin in Miami. “It concerns his nephew Joel,” I said. “If you could put me through, I know he'll be grateful for the interruption. It won't take long.”

“Who should I tell him is calling?”

“You shouldn’t.”

More Vivaldi, this time for a minute or so. Then a man's voice, deep, a little hoarse. “Who is this?”

“Mr Marshall?”

“Yeah. Who is this?”

“We've never met, Mr Marshall, but I guess right now I'm a friend.”

“What do you want? This better not be a waste of my time.”

“The same thing you want, Mr Marshall. A guy called Randy Faber stole someone close to you once.”

“What do you know about Joel?” Marshall's voice cracked a little as he said the name.
 

“Not much. But Randy also took someone close to me, and now he's run out of friends. I know where he's going to be twenty-four hours from now. If you're interested.”

No hesitation. “Go on.”

“He's boarding a flight from New York to Miami at ten thirty tomorrow morning, touching down at thirteen forty-five. I won’t go into details over the phone, but maybe he'd like to see some familiar faces down in Florida, being in a strange town and all. And I know how eager you must be to catch up on old times.”

“What is this information costing me?”

“Nothing. All I want is peace of mind. You can give me that by making sure Randy doesn't take any more lives.”

There was a slight pause at the other end, then Marshall breathed out and said, “I’ll be more than happy to see the little shit gets the welcome he deserves. I guarantee you'll have your peace of mind.”

“Thank you very, very much, Mr Marshall,” I said, and meant every dirty word of it.

I packed my meager things, took out the trash, made sure I’d left the place as tidy as Gemma would have wanted. Before I left, I took one final look around, breathed in the faint traces of her scent for the last time.

Then I was gone. I’d just dropped my bag in my passenger seat when a new-looking maroon sedan pulled up by the curb. Two middle-aged men got out, both wearing suits. One carried a clipboard, his eyes wandering over the building, and the other had a briefcase. They saw me and walked over, careful to keep their footing on the icy drive. “Good morning,” said the older and better dressed of the two. He checked his watch. “Just about, anyway. Lindsay Chalmers.”

I gave him a wave but didn't shake his hand. “Alex Rourke.”

A light went off in his head. “Ah. You have my deepest condolences for your tragic loss. I'm the attorney handling Dr Larson's estate and this is Jerry Kollina. He’s valuing the house as part of the handling of her will.”

“A realtor and a lawyer. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere. Well, do what you have to. I'm going home.”

His eyes strayed briefly towards my bag. Then he saw me watching him and guessed from the displeasure coloring my face that I maybe wasn’t the sort to go stealing my loved one’s possessions before they could be divided up according to her last wishes. He tried an awkward smile. I didn’t return it. “Have you been here long?” he said. “If you have anything left to attend to here, please, feel free to stay. I wouldn't dream of intruding.”

"A few days. I had to pick up some of my stuff and deal with a couple of things, but they're taken care of now.”

He gave me his card, and that was that. As I reversed on to the road, ready to drive away from the two men, away from Gemma's empty house and away from Bleakwater Ridge, I thought about what I’d just done to Randy. I thought about Flint and how he’d ordered Randy around, and that had given him the power to kill people with a single phone call. I didn’t like that same feeling of control, but I could see how some people would get off on it. I just felt I’d owed it to Gemma, and I hoped she understood why I’d done what I’d done.

And knew that if she’d been alive, if she’d been able to talk to me, that she’d have been horrified, because that was the thing with avenging someone. The people who deserved it the most were always the ones who wanted it the least.

Then I thought some more about Flint's orders to Randy and something clicked. With a cold, sick feeling, I realized what had happened. What I’d missed. Flint was dirty, a murderer and a drug user, but he hadn’t been Randy’s boss. I’d got the wrong person.

I wished I was a cop. I wished I could summon swarms of cruisers to hunt down Fiona Saric, to corral her and arrest her and lock her down before she could vanish. But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t call them on the basis of things I shouldn’t have known in the first place, all to tell them to seize one of their own.

The dope operation had been run by a cop. Randy knew that, and it made sense. All the right connections. But it hadn’t been Karl Flint. Saric had been his partner for years. She knew everything he knew, and using the name of a cop everyone else knew was probably crooked and violent gave her the perfect fallback for when things went south on her. A fallback so good Flint had died for it. It had been Carita Jenner which had made it all feel right, and Saric had been the one to sow the seed with me on that score. She must have followed him out of the Bar None that night, seen what happened and where he ditched the weapon, and kept it. Then she’d given it to Randy a couple of days ago because she knew everything was coming to an end. Took the cell phone he used for dope running so she could plant it on Flint; it was why he’d been surprised when I’d called. Not because he wasn’t expecting it, but because he didn’t know whose phone it was. She was probably the one who’d tipped Flint and me off to the farm, figuring either me or Randy would take a bullet. Maybe the same one who’d pushed the search parties away from where Steph Markham had been killed. Covering her operation.