The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (8 page)

I looked at it. Looked at the icon. I was well aware that tech support, especially in government bodies, could be very slow to clear out old accounts unless someone had been fired and needed wiping from a given system ASAP.

If it worked — a big
if
, still — there’d be access logs, I knew. Records. Maybe no one would check them, not unless they had reason to. But if they did, and I’d gone looking for information, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who had used her login and then I’d be on felony charges for accessing data I had no business reading with zero chance of a successful defense.

I looked at the password. Looked at the icon.

Switched the screen off and walked away. For the time being. Told myself I didn’t need to see the official report on her death. I wanted to know what might have been going on at work, that was all, and maybe the file folder the guy had left for her was still here somewhere.

So I went through the rest of the house, checking the drawers, closets and even the trash. I made the climb up into the attic room to see if Gemma had moved any of her things into what used to be empty space. She hadn't. No cardboard file. Nothing from work except on the computer that I wasn’t going to touch. Temptation was gnawing at me and it was growing dark early outside as the mountains to the west shut out the sun.

By eight I was in the bar again. The Sunday night crowd was thin, down a dozen or so heads on yesterday. Ed and Charlie were in again when I arrived, sitting at the same table, and I joined them.
 

After navigating small talk for a while, Ed said, “I hear you've been out asking folk about what happened. How's it going?”

“So far, so nothing. I met Officer Ehrlich and she told me a bit about what she found, but not much. How did you know I've been talking to people?”

“She’s a good girl, Sylvia. May Tyler saw you calling at houses on West. I guess no one could help you, huh?”

I shook my head. “I take it you guys haven't seen anyone unusual around town? You seem pretty keyed-in to everything that goes on.”

Charlie's eyes flicked towards Ed and he said, “No one like you’d be after. There's not many out-of-towners stop here.”
 

"We'll keep our eyes open, though,” Ed said. Like last night, his tone hinted at something deeper going on.

When Ed left to take a leak a while after, Charlie leaned towards me and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You can trust us to keep our eyes open,” he said. “We're in here every night. Ed, well...”

I tried not to look like I thought he was crazy. “Yeah? You get a lot of trouble in town?”
 

“No. Look, I dunno if he’d want me telling you this, but Ed lost his granddaughter Stephanie two years ago. She’d come to visit him on vacation, like she used to for a couple of weeks every summer since she left high school. Real keen walker, Steph. She went hiking north one day, said she might trail camp overnight, never came back. Sheriff’s Department tried to find her when Ed called them. Then the staties made a big song and a dance about trying to find her on the Long Trail, except she wasn’t there and eventually they gave up too.”

“Ed thinks she was killed by someone she met round here.”

“We come in most nights looking—” Then Ed was coming back and Charlie clammed right up. That more or less killed the conversation and once I’d finished eating I left, claiming I needed to sleep but knowing I probably wouldn’t.

Snow was falling, chalk dust blowing down from the mountains, and I hurried back. The town was still deserted. The ancient stoplights at the intersection with West shone like the pitiful strobes at a ‘70s high school disco, but they did so to an empty dance floor. I was alone as I crossed and vanished into the shadows.

Even with a little time to grow used to its emptiness, the house was no easier to settle in than the night before. I stretched out on the couch in front of a movie and fatigue dropped on me like a cliff. Not
tiredness
, not
sleepiness
; I was just bone-weary. By the time I was halfway through the film, my raw, itchy eyes had started picking up blurred spots of dark, shadowy movement at the edge of vision. Once I decided I’d had enough of this I crawled off the sofa and went on a tour of the house, checking all the doors and windows, trying to be sure everything was locked down for the night.

The building was fairly warm; despite drafts blowing through some of the chinks in its armor, the heating system was a good, sturdy one. My first thought when I walked along the landing to Gemma's bedroom was therefore that the window inside must have blown open. The air immediately in front of her door was icy, and as soon as I hit it my breath turned to fine spiderwebs of steam. When I touched the handle the metal was ice cold and numbed my fingers. When I went in and flicked on the light, I expected to see the casement wide open and snow dancing on the bedcovers, but the window was firmly shut and locked and the air within was just the same as the rest of the house beyond that cold spot.
 

I ran my eyes around the uncomfortably empty room but nothing seemed out of place. Puzzled, I turned off the light and closed the door behind me. Passed back through the narrow band of cold and finished checking the last two rooms on this floor, still no closer to knowing where the mystery draft came from.
 

The last place I looked was the attic. Its bare floorboards seemed solid enough, and there wasn’t much wrong with the windows. Up here I could hear the rattling and scraping of wood on wood. The breeze was tugging at the bare branches of the trees that massed by the lakeshore. Their gnarled limbs twisted and swayed, stark black shadows against the ice beyond, like fevered dancers at a religious ceremony. I watched for a while before breaking away and retreating towards the glow rising from the landing, afraid for a moment that the country would take me like it had taken Gemma and like it had taken Stephanie Markham and swallow me up in darkness forever.

Newport would’ve been nothing more than a small town in most other places. In the rolling piedmont of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, though, it was as close to urban as you could get. The city was neat and well kept, although as far as I knew there wasn’t much in particular to visit it for. Sure, the lake was nice when it wasn’t frozen — tree-lined and hilly all the way across the border into Quebec — but pretty lakes were hardly rare in New England. Now the town looked almost monochrome — black highway, spindly leafless trees, white snow; even the red-brown of most of the buildings was dark from a distance.

I found the hospital without any difficulty and parked in the lot outside. I had no official reason for calling on the mortuary and no badge or authority to back me up. I waited until I saw an old woman heading for the entrance, then tagged along a few yards behind. Let her negotiate the doors first, dogging her footsteps, then strode purposefully in the direction indicated by the 'elevators' signs while she occupied the receptionist. No one gave me a second glance as I pushed the button for the first floor, which the information board suggested was where most of the lab and diagnostic departments were housed, and vanished behind the sliding steel doors.

Upstairs, the problem was finding the mortuary. I wished I'd visited Gemma at work. I walked aimlessly along empty corridors for what seemed like hours — probably more like five minutes — when I started to hear a whirring hum that echoed and bounced from the walls. Rounding the next corner I came across a young guy in a blue uniform pushing some kind of combined floor polisher-cleaner system. “Mind how you go,” he half-yelled as I reached him. “Tiles might be a little slippery.”
 

“Thanks.” He didn’t look like he thought I was out of place so I said, “I’m trying to get to the morgue, but I'm kinda lost. Which way is it?”

“Morgue huh? Back the way you came, two turns to the right.” I thanked him and turned round when he added, “Figured it. You got the look.”

That stopped me. “What do you mean?”
 

“She was nice. I liked her. We talked sometimes.”

“Who? Gemma?”
 

The janitor nodded. “I see it.”
 

“What?”
 

“In your eyes, in your face. I liked her. It's a real shame what happened, and now you've got the Angel of Death riding inside you. I can see it, looking out. She’s killing you, eating you up from the inside. It burns, and it's burning you up. You'd best finish it before the Angel kills you. I see it.” He smiled and his eyes turned upward in fond recollection. “She was nice. I liked her.”
 

“Sure.” It was about all I could think of to say. Since I was brought up polite, I added, “Thanks.”
 

“I see it,” the guy called after me as I headed for the morgue. “Black wings, all around you, man. Darkness. Hounds to the hunters. Hounds to the hunters!”

Then I was gone.

The hospital's pathology department was small but well-equipped. Two lab rooms and an office to one side and the big double doors into the morgue itself opposite. Two people looked up at me from their work in the office as I knocked softly on the door and stepped inside. A third desk was conspicuously free of personal effects, a clean blank slate. Gemma's, I guessed. The first lab worker was a man somewhere deep into middle age, with thick glasses and a kind of studious puppy-dog look to him. The second was a woman around Gemma's age, tall and thin without appearing hawkish. She spoke first. “What do you want?” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Visitors aren't allowed down here.”

“My name's Alex. I was Gemma's boyfriend. And yeah, I know I’m not supposed to be here.”

Her expression changed immediately. I was getting used to that. “Come in,” she said. “She used to talk about you all the time. It must’ve been hell for you. We’ve had it hard but... I keep expecting to see her in the exam room or at her desk. I’m Ellen. Ellen Lynch.”

“We all miss her,” the guy added. “Clyde Turner.”

“Thanks. She talked about you both quite a lot too. Nice to meet you in person. But this isn't exactly a social call. I'm just trying to find out what happened to her.”

Ellen nodded. “She said you were a detective or a cop, something like that.”
 

“Something like that. I know the police are on it, but I’m trying to understand too. A friend of hers in the OCME put me up to it, Bethany. You know her?”

“No, not here at the hospital.”

I shrugged. No matter. “You and Clyde worked with Gemma all the time, right? Were you here the day she died?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Can you think of anything that might have made anyone want to kill her? Did she mention that she'd seen anyone strange at all, had she been in any arguments, anything like that? Doesn't matter how small.”

“Not that I can think of,” Clyde said, glancing at Ellen. “She didn't mention anything to me. Seemed normal. Nothing strange at all about the day she died.”
 

“Same here,” Ellen said. “She never had any trouble with anyone that I can think of. The closest she got to hassle at work was Frank — Dr Altmann from Physical Therapy — but that wasn't
trouble
so much. Kinda sweet, in a way.”
 

“What do you mean?”
 

“He had a bit of a crush on her, I think - everyone knew it. He never did anything about it, though. I mean. Don’t think that. I just mean that if there was a party or some of the staff got together for a drink he’d
always
invite her — helping the new ME settle in — and, well, if he was passing he’d always find a reason to stop in and chat. He knew about you guys, so he never said anything he shouldn’t; he’s far too polite. But if she’d been single or you guys had split he’d have asked her out by now for sure.”

“Unrequited,” Clyde chipped in. “Gunther from
Friends
but without the creepy stalker vibe. He’s OK. She just had to be sure to always gently let him down.”
 

“Yeah,” Ellen said. “He's nice. I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it, but I was just trying to show how there’s been nothing bad at work. He was real hurt when he found out what happened. We went for a drink that evening, talked everything over.”

“Staking your own claim, El?” Clyde stopped and blinked at me, apology written all over his face. “Sorry, that was in poor taste.”

I shrugged. “Don't worry about it.”
 

“I think I’ll go for coffee before I put my foot in it any more, just the same. I’ll keep an eye out for any of the management heading this way. They don’t often stop by, but they wouldn’t be happy to see you here.”

He slipped out into the corridor. I heard the distant whirr of the floor polisher briefly before the door shut again and cut it off. “Was Dr Altmann here the day Gemma died?” I said.

Ellen shook her head. “No. He had the first half of the week off work. You don't really think he'd have anything to do with it, do you? That’d be crazy. I doubt he even knows how to fire a gun.”

“You’re probably right. I'll talk to him. They used to talk a lot, maybe he knows something. What does he look like?”
 

“Forty, almost as tall as you. He's got dark hair but it's starting to show grey. It makes him look sort of distinguished. He drives a silver Audi.”
 

“Where does he live?”

“Barton. I can't remember the address; I’ve only been there once, to a retirement party he threw for one of the doctors. I can find out if he's working today and what time he'll be free if you want.”

“Thanks. What about recent cases — was there anything Gemma worked on over the week or two before she died that might have had anything to do with what happened?”
 

“Like what? Death's a tricky business. Everyone takes it differently.”

“Anything unusual, I guess. Someone killed Gemma for a reason, so maybe that reason was something to do with what she was working on.”
 

“This is northern Vermont, Alex. People die, but not many of them and not usually doing anything strange. Car wrecks, hit and runs, accidents, illnesses. The first shocking or surprising thing that’s happened since Gemma started here was her own death.”