The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (11 page)

“Will and Althea Haley,” he said. “At the time, there wasn't much publicity — nothing like Stephanie Markham; pretty white girl syndrome — and it was a couple of weeks before anyone wondered where they'd got to; a car rental place in Waterbury called their family when they didn't pick up their Volvo. The only reason anyone knew where they'd last been was because they’d phoned Haley's sister to tell her. State Police posted them as missing, but that was about it. I think the cops back in Minnesota had a look to see if there was any reason they might want to disappear; I don't know what became of that.”

I thumbed through the sparse information Elijah had collected on the missing couple. “Why didn't this get brought up when Stephanie vanished?”
 

“Technically, they went missing in Orleans County, maybe Franklin, but as far as the way the statistics and everything is organized, definitely
not
from the same area as Stephanie. I thought of writing a piece on them, linking the two together, but I couldn't get nearly enough information to make it worthwhile. You're welcome to keep these copies of what I got, if you're interested.”

“Sure, sure. Thanks, I appreciate the help.”

“No problem.” Elijah waved a hand dismissively. “If you want to know any more about all this, you'd be best off talking to the State Police.”

“I’m planning to. Do you remember who it was who was technically in charge of the Haley case?”

He shook his head and pulled his hat back on. “Afraid not. If there's anything still posted about them anywhere, it might say who to contact.”

“Maybe so.” Then something stirred in my head and I didn’t know if it was to do with Gemma or some vestige of professionalism connected to finding Adam Webb. “One last thing,” I said. “You know Burlington much better than I do. Where would I go if I was looking for a cheap bar where I might find out if anyone's offering casual work, or maybe to meet a couple of small-time criminals? Or if I wanted somewhere cheap and anonymous to call home for a while, where would be the best bet?”

He thought for a long moment, then said, “You might try the Mountain Bar on Patrick. Or there's the Hart, and Cavanagh's. There'll all pretty rough places. As for accommodation, there's not much to choose from. Maybe some of the newer developments in South Burlington, but most of those still wouldn't be cheap. There’s a couple of low-rent apartment blocks and boarding houses that advertise in the classifieds. The kind of places where you can get a room for thirty bucks a week so long as you don’t mind sharing a bathroom with everyone else on your floor and a bedroom with every form of parasite known to man.”

“Classy.”

“I can't remember where they are exactly, but they shouldn’t be hard to find. I don't know much about cheap motels. I guess you could try asking around the train station in Essex Junction — there must be plenty of people get into town and need somewhere to stay for a while.”

“Thanks, I might do that.”

“Another story?”

“Maybe. Or another missing person,” I said. “Or maybe one day I’ll need a way to disappear myself.”

“I’d have thought that would be easier in Boston.”

“You’d think. But wherever you go, people never seem to have a hard time just up and vanishing into the blue if they try hard enough.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but most of those either turn out to be buried in a ditch or else they’ve thrown themselves off a bridge, Mr Rourke. Try not to end up either way if you can.”

“No promises,” I said.

I should’ve listened to that voicemail again. I
still
hadn’t listened to that voicemail again. I ate a lonely dinner in Gemma’s front room and did my best to ignore both my cell phone and the sense of horror I felt whenever I thought about replaying Gemma’s death.

I wanted to catch her killer.

I didn’t want to hear her die again.

By eight thirty I was in the bar. The place was pretty much empty. If Bleakwater Ridge had any serious drinkers, the cold was keeping them at home tonight. Ed Markham was in, as always, but he was alone. Charlie had either left early or else he hadn’t made it out at all.
 

“Hi, Ed,” I said, sitting opposite with a bottle of something I didn’t really want but might as well have.
 

“Evening, Alex. You look like you've been burning the candle.”

“Kind of. I'm not getting much sleep right now.”

“Understandable, and especially in winter. The old houses around here can get pretty drafty. You'll get used to it after a while, then you'll sleep like a baby.”

I didn't share his optimism and wasn’t planning on being here that long anyway. “On the subject of old buildings, do you know much about North Bleakwater?”

Ed thought for a moment. “You mean Echo Springs? That's what the people who lived there called it, back when. My dad could remember when they were still trying to make it work as a town, even if it was already starting to empty. By my day, it was totally abandoned. In better repair back then, of course. There was some talk, back in the Sixties I think, of turning it into a campground. But the state’s full of them already and no one had the money.”

“What happened to the town?”

“Science and weather, you could say. From what my dad told me, and my grandpa when he was still around, it started just as a hotel by the spring at the other end of the lake. Rich folk from New York, Boston, big towns all over, used to come up here and a half dozen other places to ‘take the waters’. We’re talking back around the Civil War, now. They'd stay at the hotel and knock back spring water like it was going out of fashion, then go home telling everyone how great they felt. Echo Springs was never a big draw, I think, but it did well enough that people started putting up other buildings around the hotel until it was practically a new town.

“Then the water craze died out. People realized there was more to curing disease than just drinking. So science killed the hotel, and the rest of the town started to follow. But they still had the springs and Echo Stream, so they tried becoming a mill and factory town. Nothing big, but enough to keep people in work. Things looked like they were going OK — my dad was even thinking of switching jobs to work there when he was young — when there was the Great Flood of ’27.”

“The town was flooded?”

Ed shrugs. “Partly. It’s on the lowland, not up on a ridge like we are. But the main damage the rains did was cause a landslide that buried the springs and totally changed the course of Echo Stream, so the new mill businesses had nowhere to take their water from. With the Depression soon after, no one was in much mood to try rebuilding again, and people moved back here, or went south looking for better times. What's your interest?”

I dodged the question so I wouldn't have to explain what I’d been doing in the old town in the middle of the night. “Do people often go out there? I guess any tourists passing through would want to check it out.”

“I guess. Not that we get many. You walk round the lake, you walk through it. Have you seen someone then?”

I shook my head. “Tire tracks. I just wondered if people regularly drove out there. Curiosity, that's all.”

Ed's eyes twinkled in a way that suggested he didn’t believe me. “Not that I know of. Maybe the occasional guy going fishing at that end of the lake, but not in winter; it’s near hard-frozen now. School trips in spring; I doubt there's anyone grown up here who hasn't been taken out to the ruins to learn the history of the area. You reckon the tracks you saw could've been anything to do with your girlfriend's murder?”

I started to see how deep the old man's obsessive thirst to find his granddaughter's killer ran. Coming in here, night after night for two years, hunched over a lonely beer, constantly searching for whoever took Stephanie. No forgiveness. No desire to forget and move on. I'd have cracked under the strain long before and gone mad or eaten a bullet, like I was cracking already. I said, “Did your granddaughter ever go to visit North Bleakwater?”

Ed's eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“I heard what happened. I read the news reports.”

“Did you now.” His voice got real frosty. “And what made you want to do a thing like that?”

“Whatever happened to her happened in the same area as Gemma's murder. No obvious motive in either. Maybe it’s the same person, or maybe they both stumbled on the same thing.”

Ed slammed his hands on the tabletop, like he was going to throw himself at me. “You don’t start poking into business which isn’t yours, Alex. You've got no right. You haven’t had to ask yourself what happened to a girl you’d known from a baby, when she’d come just to visit
you
and it was
you
should’ve been watching over her. That’s my pain, not yours.”

“You poked into mine, Ed. And I know it’s not the same, but we still both lost someone we loved.”

“It's not the same! You never had to face the worrying, the wondering what had happened, where she was, why she couldn't be found. You didn't have to go through weeks not knowing, watching the cops lose interest. You didn't have your own kids calling you up to find out what the hell had happened to their little girl while she was in your care. Don't you dare go making comparisons you can't understand!” He stood, face burning with anger, and snatched his coat from the back of the chair. “At least you got to bury your girlfriend. You got to say goodbye. You don’t have the right to involve yourself in my hurt till I've been able to do the same!”

Then he was gone and cold air spilled into the bar behind him.

“Hi, honey, it's me. Um, I thought I'd ring to ask you about the weekend. Susan's invited—” I hit 'call’ to disconnect and took another gulp from the generous glass of vodka on the coffee table. I wasn’t a drinker — more than once I’d wondered if I had been, maybe I’d handle stress better — and the stuff, all I’d been able to find in the house, wasn’t doing much for me, but this was the third attempt I’d made to replay the message and I figured I needed all the reinforcement I could get for what I had to listen to.

For what I had to relive.
 

Again.

This time I made it through all of Gemma's final words, trying to keep my mind blank and not start dwelling on what might have been. Then there was the
crack
as the windshield went and I lost my nerve again.
 

I went upstairs to rinse my face with cold water. The whole landing and half the stairs up to it were now immersed in frozen air. Whatever was causing it was getting worse. The steam as I exhaled twisted and swirled into half-glimpsed patterns and shapes which looked almost recognizable.

“... it's just started snowing again and I'd better keep my eyes on the road. I love you, honey, and I'll—”

Crack
.
 

I closed my eyes and downed the rest of the glass, but I kept listening this time.
 

A creak, maybe the seatbelt, and the pitch of the engine started dropping. Gemma's foot must have been off the gas. I tried not to imagine her slumping over the wheel.

Slushy crunching as the tires left the ruts made by other traffic along the highway. The high-pitched rattle and scraping as the car rolled through the bushes by the roadside. A few seconds of muffled bumps and crackling as it headed down the slope. It didn’t sound as though it was traveling too fast. The
thump
as the car struck the tree and the airbag fired. Deflation. Another faint seatbelt creak. I hoped it was just settling after the impact. I hoped Gemma died outright, and realized how messed-up it was that I was wishing that.

I poured another hefty shot of vodka.

The engine's idling hum continued for a while, a couple of minutes at least. One faint swish of traffic passing by on the road, but there were no other sounds, no further vehicles. I knew that the car was far enough downhill that I wouldn't necessarily be able to hear any more over the phone anyway.
 

A couple of twigs snapped. Close by — they'd have to be, to be heard over the engine.
Clunk
. The door, opening. A few seconds later, the motor died and I heard the jangling as someone took their hand away from the keys in the ignition.

Breathing, slightly hard, huffy. Then, very faint, “Uh-huh. Good.”
 

A man’s voice. Not particularly deep. I couldn’t make out the accent for sure, although it didn’t sound like native New England. Fabric swishing, barely audible. Not smooth, like nylon, but maybe wool or a fleece jacket. A faint metallic noise,
snick
. Then more fabric noises and a dim scraping. The man grunted. The same metallic noise again.
 

A rustling sound followed a few seconds later by a couple of spongy thuds, then the squeak of protesting material. It came to me: seat stuffing. He was using a pocket knife or something like it to make or enlarge a bullet hole in the back of Gemma's seat. He’d pried the bullet out with his knife and was playing with the hole to make sure it looked as though the round had passed through the car. Through her, through the head rest, and eventually through, I figured, the rear windshield.

Some more silence, broken briefly by the rise-fall tone of a car passing on the road above, then the second
clunk
of another door opening. It was fainter than the first so I guessed it was the one at the back.

Chink, chink, crunch, crunch
. The rear windshield, being smashed by whatever implement the guy used on the seat. Illusion complete.

Clunk
. The back door closed. More noises from outside the car. Skittering? Sweeping? The guy was doing a hurried job of hiding the tracks he’d left in the snow. It didn’t sound like he was taking long over it — the noise quickly faded — but with the falling snow what he did must have been enough not to give away his presence at the scene when the cops arrived.
 

Another car passed on the highway. I wished just one of them had seen the break in the undergrowth and stopped to investigate. But they hadn’t. By the time this one was gone, the sounds of the killer making his exit had faded completely and everything was silent again. It stayed quiet until the recording reached its automatic time limit and cut out.