The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (18 page)

Shivering, I shuffled through the snow, arms wrapped around my chest, and followed my own tracks towards the trees, praying the moaning ice would hold just long enough for me to make it.

This time, I met Elijah Charman at the offices of the
Press
on College Street. I’d more or less rationalized last night’s walk on the ice as a stress thing related to insomnia. Short term, the pills would fix it. Long term, grief, the stress of someone trying to shoot me, and being left with nothing outside the job was probably going to kill me. It was even possible, I now figured, that the shapes I’d seen at night in North Bleakwater were a symptom of the same thing and nothing to do with being clubbed on the head.

Worrying about it, as they’d been fond of saying when I was in therapy first time out, only made it worse. You pushed ahead, tried to shake the fear, or else tied yourself up in knots and it claimed you all the faster.

Elijah was hard at work, hammering out a story in preparation for tomorrow’s front page. “Nice juicy homicide,” he said when I sat down opposite. “Don’t know much so far, but it should be a solid one. Body found near Hazen’s Notch by Orleans County Sheriff’s Department. State Police say it’s a definite murder, but haven’t said who yet. I don’t often get the chance to work on something like this. Came in late last night, after deadline, though, so now we have to beat local TV for detail. You’ve kept our intern busy since you called earlier. What you’re looking at sounds... well, I’m not sure. Mad, or fascinating.”

The headline on the screen in front of him screams: ‘MAN MURDERED NEAR STATE PARK’. “As I said, I’ll take you both out for steak if he’s found what I need. How’s the flu?”

“It looks like I'm over the worst of it, so it's probably just a bad cold, thanks for asking. So, we get dinner and I have the exclusive to the story if all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense results in something we can print, right?”

“Right.”

“Then let’s get Neal up here. He’s got the written material. I’ve got to say I was surprised to hear you asking about Carita Jenner.”

“I didn’t. All I asked was about the murder of a prostitute here in Burlington that someone had told me about.”

“Ah,” he said with a grin, “but that’s the same thing. We don’t have a lot of hookers, and fewer murders of any sort. Make it an unsolved one and there’s only one candidate. Carita Jenner was my first homicide as crime editor.”

“Who was she?”

“Carita was a hooker and a junkie — twenty-two or twenty-three, I can't remember exactly. She'd been picked up several times by the cops during the three or four years previous and talk came out after that maybe she’d been seeing one regularly, perhaps swapping tips for freebies, perhaps just shakedowns for kicks. Anyhow, she was working her usual area one summer night in ’98 when she was beaten to death with something blunt. A baseball bat, iron pipe, along those lines. She was found the next morning in an alley near Stageway and South, a few blocks from where I used to live. Been dead a few hours. A real mess. Still had her night’s earnings on her. She didn’t have a pimp, no obvious guys with grudges, nothing.”

“No suspects?”

“The cops tried to find her clients, but that got nowhere. Her dealer had a solid alibi and no motive. The weapon was never found. No one witnessed the killing. Nothing at the scene to trace who’d done it. That was that. Tragic.” He looked past me. “Here’s Neal. He’s got the stories we ran at the time, you want to know more.”

Neal Skipworth, interning at the paper, was a young guy, neat, wearing a shirt and tie underneath a thick grey sweater. He shook my hand and said, “That was a pile of work, Mr Rourke. Old crime reports. News references to a detective in the State Police going back a half dozen years... Well, anyway, I’ve got it, but what’s it all for?”

“Mr Rourke’s keeping his cards close to his chest,” Elijah said.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Matter of life and death? Would that suffice?”

“It depends whose,” he said, grinning. “You’ll have to come with me and read what I’ve got off my screen; I didn’t have time to print it all. You can run off copies of anything you want.”

“Great. After you. Appreciate the help, Elijah.”

Neal had put together an impressive collection of files referencing Flint that covered almost his entire career. He’d trimmed some repeats and missed a couple of two-liner ones that wouldn’t, he thought, have interested me, but otherwise it was solid.

On the surface, Flint's case history looked reasonably sound. His earliest mention in the archives was as a young detective nearly ten years ago, before his promotion to sergeant. He worked a couple of relatively high-profile cases, or what passed for them in a low-crime state like Vermont. Made sergeant five years ago after an investigation into a serious assault uncovered a ring stealing cars from Montreal and bringing them over the border for sale. The Damien Ackroyd case was his first at his new rank, and one that received a lot of coverage, especially when Isaac Fairley testified that Flint had beaten a confession out of him.

The collapse of the original charges against Ackroyd was followed by widespread criticism of the police, with specific accusations leveled publicly at Flint. As well as discussing the beating of Isaac Fairley, some parties went further and made broader allegations, later retracted, about corruption, violence, and drug abuse within the State Police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

Flint's suspension lasted for just over three months. No charges were made against him and no further action was taken. He returned to work four weeks after Carita Jenner was killed and seemed to have been given a role in that investigation, though, as Saric had suggested, he hadn’t added anything concrete to the mix.

There was a lot of information on Jenner. She’d been killed on the night of July 17-18 that year, sometime between 11:30 PM and 1:30 AM, and was found the following morning by the owner of a liquor store which backed on to the alley where it had happened. Forensics made it clear she’d been murdered on the spot, not dumped there, and that it had been a savage attack. There were no witnesses, and trace evidence never pointed to an identifiable suspect, although it had exonerated the guy selling her dope. The
Press
mentioned rumors of her relationship with someone in the police, but Burlington PD denied this. There’d been repeated appeals for clients to come forward, but I understood why they’d have been even more reticent than usual; it was hard enough for most guys to admit to using a hooker, but but tell them they might have been the last person to see her alive and suddenly everyone was an amnesiac.
 

After Jenner Flint dropped off the press radar again for a while. His superiors had probably made sure he missed out on anything else too important until things had cooled down post-Ackroyd. His subsequent case history was much patchier. Over the four and a half years since reinstatement, he’d successfully worked a couple of murders — both domestic killings by one family member of another — several robberies and serious assaults, and a couple of child abuse cases. However, he also seemed to have been responsible for several failed investigations, predominantly violent crimes and disappearances. From the information in front of me, and the things he was sometimes quoted as saying, his performance seemed rather erratic. I remembered what Saric had told me about him being out on the ragged edge during his suspension; maybe he’d never quite come back.

If Flint was Delaney, or was Faber’s superior, the one running the show, there was enough in his past to suggest he might have helped bury a few crimes that could conceivably have been connected to the dope trade. Maybe more if, as with Adam Webb, the victims had simply disappeared without anyone who counted noticing they were gone.

When I was done, I thanked Neal and went to bid farewell to Elijah. “Before I go,” I said, “have you heard anything about Gemma’s murder? The police come out with anything?”

“No,” he said. “Not recently. Was there something you were expecting?”

Well, I considered telling him, they’ve got a specific suspect who tried to kill me in a shootout, all of which apparently hasn’t been made public. “No, just wondering. You’re not always the first to hear things in my position.”

Elijah gave me a wry smile. “I’ll bet. Sorry, man. Don’t forget about that dinner.”

My phone rang as I walked back across the lobby of the
Press
building. I recognized the number, but I couldn't remember from where. “Hello?”

“Hello, Alex.” It was Murray Larson, Gemma's dad. His voice was flat, clipped. He didn’t sound any happier with me than he’d been at the funeral. “I’ve been trying to reach you at your home, but I guess you're away at the moment.”

“That's right.”

“Where are you at the moment?”

“Does it matter?”

“Under the terms of Gemma's existing will, her possessions pass to her family and her property is to be sold. Her attorney is handling those matters. Do you have anything that belonged to her at your apartment?” Murray sounded as though he was forcing the words.

A will. Neither of us had ever thought about making one. Or, in Gemma’s case, another one. Neither of us had planned on dying, because you don’t, as a rule. “No,” I said.

“Are you sure? If you're going to be home any time soon I can have Mr Chalmers call round just to see if there's anything you've forgotten.”

“I loved your daughter, Mr Larson. I don't like the suggestion that I'd steal from her or her family.”

“If you loved her, you wouldn't have asked her to make the sacrifices she did. She did everything for you.”

“Goodbye, Mr Larson,” I said. I didn't want to be drawn into an argument, not with a grieving old man, so I cut the connection.
 

To shake the bad feeling Gemma’s dad had left me with, I drove to the corner of Stageway and South, and the place where Carita Jenner’s battered body had been found on a summer morning four and a half years previously. There was no longer any sign of what happened in the narrow gap running between a row of dusty stores and the back of a set of commercial units converted into small office space. The urban fabric had closed over the brutal killing of a young woman, just as people forgot. I wondered how long it would be before Gemma's death was remembered only on her gravestone.

The snow in the alley was barely disturbed except where stores had taken out their trash. At night I doubt there'd have been any reliable witnesses living for at least a block in any direction. The walls lining the alley muffled the outside world, closing it out. I could imagine how alone Carita would have felt as the first blows rained down and her screams went unnoticed.

If this had been her regular spot, I guessed there had to be enough prospective clients passing down South after dark. I took a drive around the surrounding couple of blocks, getting a feel for the area, and before long came to an unlit neon sign that read: ‘Bar None’. The same place, Saric had told me, she’d dragged Flint out of a couple of weeks after Fourth of July that very same year for getting into a fight. One so bad she’d been worried he’d hospitalize a man. I didn’t know if it was exactly two weeks after, but maybe. If so, the very same night a prostitute, a dope user who’d been involved with a cop, was viciously beaten to death in a seemingly motiveless attack.

Sometimes things look connected but they’re just coincidence. But when the coincidences pile up, sooner or later you’re left with no other viable explanation.

I spent the drive back to the house remembering Flint sitting in his office, calmly telling me that he had no real leads in the investigation into Gemma's death, that sometimes shit just happened for no good reason. I thought of him trying to tell me it might have been a hunting accident.

Crack
.

Flint telling me I should go back to Boston, let the police handle the investigation. Staking out the hotel where Delaney’s organization —
his
organization — had arranged the delivery of heroin smuggled in from Canada.

Crack
.

Flint storming out of a bar on a July night. Beating a young woman to death because he was angry and she wouldn't do what he wanted.

Crack
.

With every thought I heard Gemma's windshield smashing again as the bullet punched through it, killing her over and over.

For a long time after I returned, I sat in my car with the engine dead and tried to calm down. When I finally walked indoors and into Gemma's front room, Randy Faber was sitting in one of the armchairs facing me.

I slammed my hand into my jacket, clawing for my gun. Randy jumped out of the chair with his empty palms outstretched. If he was armed, he wasn’t going for a weapon. Not that I cared one way or the other.

“Whoa, whoa,” he said. I recognized his West Coast accent from the recording of Gemma's death. Randy Faber. Mr Delaney. “Easy now, man.”

I snapped the Colt up two-handed in front of me, flicking the safety off and sighting down the barrel at his face. It took a huge effort not to pull the trigger. Every microsecond that passed I thought of Gemma's windshield going, of her slumping against the wheel with blood pouring from her throat, of this son of a bitch lowering his gun and going to fix the scene. Every regret for every lost opportunity I’d ever had, every shameful memory of every fuck-up I’d ever made, every moment I’d spent living out the results of a bad decision, all of it coalesced into a single voice screaming for me to get it right just this one time and
shoot
. To kill the guy in front of me and avenge everything Gemma and I had together and everything we’d never experience now because of him.

Two things stopped me. For one, even through the blinding fury, part of me still wanted to nail Flint first for his ties to the whole thing and Faber could be the key to doing that. Number two, he no longer looked like the cold professional I’d pictured pulling the trigger to kill Gemma, or shooting his way out of a drugs bust in California.

His eyes were red and puffy, his skin was pale and his hair and clothes were a mess. He looked like he hadn't slept in a couple of days. He was scared, and not of me. On the table was a police scanner, quietly squawking into the air.