The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (13 page)

The tracks took us all the way up. The top floor of the tower was home to a single L-shaped suite that must once have been one of the largest and most luxurious in the hotel. Now it was a dank, almost empty chamber lined by grimy windows with several cracked or missing panes. There was a collection of mouldering furniture scattered around its edges and a hefty hole in the middle of the floor. The carpet had been rolled up and leaned against the wall in a curled, frozen heap. Where it had been was a hole in the middle of the floor, leaving just a couple of feet of boards between the edge and the walls. Not much walking space.

I tested the wood and looked down. There was a six-inch void between the floor and the second set of boards that made up the ceiling below; both layers were broken. The exposed wood around the edges was pale, and although it was a little frost-damp the surviving timber still seemed pretty sturdy. “This damage looks fresh,” I called over my shoulder. "Well, fresher than the rest.”
 

The remains of the fallen boards were lying in the room below. I lay down and dangled my flashlight at arm's length to get a good look at them. I got a prickly spiders-running-up-my-arm sensation as I peered down at the shards of hardwood. “You want to look at the room below, we can just go downstairs,” Ed said.

“If there's something exciting down there, yeah. Otherwise I don't want to disturb anything I don't have to. It's no good if whoever's been here gets scared away. We both know how obvious footprints are.” Scuff marks, shallow dents in the wood below me. “It looks like the floorboards were deliberately smashed, like someone took a hammer to them. They didn’t fall in by themselves.”

We searched the rest of the suite. There was nothing remotely interesting in the disintegrating furniture. The first door led into a small bedroom. Its furniture was mostly intact, although the mattress and any linen were long gone, leaving just the rusted iron framework of the bed. A dresser whose varnish was pitted and bubbled with decay and a single wooden chair completed the set. The carpet was gone and the boards looked pretty clean, at least by the standards of the rest of the building.
 

“You know,” Ed said, “sometimes, not very often, I've thought I've seen lights up here.”

“Really?”

“Like flashlights, maybe. My house is on the north side of the ridge, so I've got a pretty good view across the lake. There's been nights when I thought I could see a light moving around the old town, high in some of the buildings. Never very bright, and I can't remember there being more than one. I used to figure it was just kids messing around out here after dark. It makes you wonder now.”

“It sure does.”

The last room in the suite was small and narrow and was mostly filled by an ancient enamel bathtub turned ammonia-yellow with age. The tub had a lattice of fine cracks and there was a solid-looking tuft of frozen moss growing from the plughole. The toilet and the chain-flush cistern were both empty. I took a look under the bath and found myself staring at a brick-shaped package wrapped in plastic and tape. I pulled it out. Through the wrapping I could see sharp white powder like ground rock salt, speckled with tiny trace brown impurities. There was a second one tucked further back.

“What’s that?” Ed said.

I held it up to the light. “I’m not an expert, but I’d guess about a pound of heroin.”

When I told Flint about what we’d found at the hotel, I first had to convince him that it might have something to do with him and his case and shouldn’t just be shuffled on to narcotics, then that I hadn’t hopelessly screwed up the scene and ruined any chance of catching the drug traffickers. In the end he told me to sit tight and he’d come out with his partner, who’d at one point been on the Northern Drugs Taskforce, and they’d see for themselves.
 

It was about an hour until I heard two cars approaching. Another couple of minutes before a Taurus and a Neon bumped down the broken track and into the ruined town before pulling up, line astern, in front of where Ed and I were waiting. Flint climbed out of the first vehicle and stared at his surroundings with tired, sunken eyes for a moment, frowning. His partner in the Neon was a short woman about my age with quick, dark eyes.

“Alex,” Flint said. “This is Detective Fiona Saric.”

“Mr Rourke,” she said. She had a throaty, smoker’s voice. She extended a hand. “That's the building, huh?”
 

“What made you two want to go looking around in that dump?” Flint said.

I gave them the potted version. The break-in at the house. The tracks in the snow. Meeting up with Ed to check it out. I skipped over the part about his granddaughter and he didn’t mention it either. If Flint wanted to remember it for himself he was welcome to.

“You should’ve reported what happened at the house.”

“I’ve got no desire to turn it into another crime scene. The guy had gloves on — in this weather, everyone does. You wouldn’t have gotten anything anyway. If he came here and what we found is anything to do with him, I reckon you’ve got a much better chance at nailing him.”

“Describe these packages again,” Saric said.
 

“White powder, maybe a few brown-white impurities, sealed in plastic. About a pound, I'd guess.”

“They haven't been opened at all? This isn't just some big-time junkie's private stash?”

“They're so tightly covered they could’ve been shrink-wrapped.”
 

She nodded. “And you left them where they were?”

“Put them back under the tub, right where I found them.”

Ed nodded. “Uh-huh. Just like Alex said. Ain’t been no one else out here since we called you, either.”

“We’ll still need to go check it out,” Flint said. “Top room, you said? Let me go see.”

“Do you mind if I come too, sir?” Saric said before he could leave. “I’d like to see the building and have a proper look at what we're dealing with.”

“Sure.” Flint shrugged irritably. “You’re the expert. We just need to check these men’s stories, make sure nothing’s missing, so you go and I’ll wait here. No sense in us both climbing all that way. Don’t disturb anything if you can.”

Saric tramped off. Flint watched her go. “Gemma told me heroin was pretty big in Vermont,” I said. “Does much get smuggled in this way?”

“Some, I guess,
 
if this came down from Canada, but not very much comes cross-border. Most heroin supplies originate in New York and other places to the south.”

“But it does happen?”
 

“Sure.” He went quiet for a moment, then said, “You know, I've been here before. When I was at high school I went out with a girl from Bleakwater. We came here a couple of times in summer. There was a little more of it still standing back then, but it's not that different.”
 

“I didn't realize it was a make-out spot,” Ed said.

“It wasn't. Jessica's dad used to paint down by the lakeshore in his spare time. Since that was where everyone else we knew hung out, we couldn't; he didn't like me much. It was sometimes hard to take her back to my place ~ my older brother Jack was an asshole. Drunk, usually, or worse. So we ended up here.”
 

“Did it last?” I said for want of a better question.
 

“No. But that's what high school is all about. Best that way whatever age you are, you know? Being in a relationship is more trouble than it's worth, you ask me. How about you, how did you meet Dr Larson?"

“I was helping with a murder case in northern Maine a year and a half ago. She was the medical examiner. We hit it off pretty much straight away. She changed jobs, moved to Vermont so she'd be closer to me. If we'd never met, she'd probably still be alive.”
 

“Tough break,” Flint said. “Makes you think.”

Then his partner returned and spared him further awkwardness. “It’s all there. Just like they described. Hopefully it won’t be long before someone tries to collect,” she said. To the pair of us she added, “You did the right thing, calling this in and leaving everything alone.”

“What’ll you do?” I said.

“That’s not your concern,” Flint said.
 

The two cops took down what we’d told them in writing and told us everything would be formalized over the next couple of days. Then they said to go home. I figured they’d stake out the hotel — leaving the dope there, that had to be the plan — but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Bleakwater wasn’t Bogota, and if Gemma’s death tied to the intruder and he tied to the old ghost town, it followed that its use as a drug drop probably tied to him too in some way. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t have hidden his vehicle someplace else when he broke into the house; he could’ve parked on the street or down by the lakeside easily. The fact he hadn’t suggested he’d gotten used to using North Bleakwater as a safe bolt hole and had done so out of habit. Ed and me trooped back in the cold, footsteps blurring together as my mind wandered with them.

Gemma and I were walking through the trees, back towards the parking lot at the foot of the ridge on West Road. All I could hear were our feet crunching through the leaf litter. No talking. We’d had an argument. Brief, like the few others I could remember, and were now in the period of silence that would, hopefully, lead to making up. I wasn’t even sure what I’d said wrong; maybe it was the way I’d said it. Gemma hadn't lived here long and I thought — hoped — it was just stress from the move behind the row. She’d asked if I would ever consider moving closer to Vermont. I didn't think the question was loaded, so I’d said that with my job, living outside Boston would be almost impossible. And so there we were, trudging in silence.

We hit the parking lot. The lake was a sheet of blue-grey through the thin screen of trees to the left. A couple of families with young kids were heading the opposite way to us, towards the water's edge. Gemma's shoulders dropped a little and she shortened her stride, falling back and linking her arm in mine. She rested her head on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Alex. I guess I haven't quite settled in yet.”

“That's OK, I know.”

“I didn't mean to take it out on you.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide. “Promise.”

I leaned down and kissed her. “Like I said, it's OK.”

She smiled and I smiled in return. “You know I can't stay mad at you. I don't have the willpower.”

“You're only human.”

“I wonder why they hid that stuff so high up,” Ed said, snapping me back again, as the woods began to thin again on the hike home. “And here? I’d have thought you’d take your drugs to Burlington or someplace like that, you were trading them.”

“Maybe it’s safer. Dead drop system where no one sees anyone else in a place where you can pretty much guarantee no one will disturb your goods. Maybe they take it to the top because even tourists or kids will only risk going so far in a building that could fall down at any moment. The traffickers know it’s sound all the way to the last room, but other visitors won’t. Smash a hole in the floor so it looks too dangerous, complete the illusion. I don’t know that that’s how most operations would work, but it’s not completely crazy.”

“Seems that way to me,” he said. “Maybe it’s just the thought of getting close, maybe, after all this time... Just seems nuts. I’ll see you later, Alex. You keep me informed.”

“Sure.”

We parted ways, and so I went home to break the law.

Rosemary Saunders, 54, unattended death. Hospital patient in for surgery on one of her knees, died unexpectedly two nights after her operation. Post-mortem needed to determine the cause of death. Coronary thrombosis was the conclusion in Gemma's report.

They hadn’t deleted Gemma’s OCME network account yet, and now I was using it to find out what cases she’d been working on before she’d died. Drugs, I figured. Maybe there was a drugs angle.

Lester Hoffman, 28, and Kate Wylie, 26, accidental deaths. Both killed in a messy traffic accident on I-91. The only real work for Gemma had been to determine whether Lester, the driver, had been drinking or if he'd simply lost control of his car. She’d concluded the latter. There was no mention of anyone else involved in the accident.

Most of Gemma’s caseload recently seemed to be what I’d expect: routine. Nothing on the outside to suggest she’d died for it. If some sharp-eyed network admin spotted the login on her account, I’d be going to jail for very little gain so far.

Arthur Styles, 72, unattended death. Had a heart attack in his sleep while at his home in Newport. His post-mortem seemed to have been little more than a formality.

Adele Laine, 28, unattended death. Laine had been a habitual drug user, eventually falling prey to an overdose. From Gemma's notes, it looked like if her last hit hadn't finished her off, kidney or liver damage would probably have done the job before too long. There was no mention of any suspicious circumstances, and while I couldn’t be certain without the police case notes, I doubted there’d be any connection between Laine’s death and Gemma’s.

I’d stuck firmly to her work. I’d resisted the temptation to look at her own post-mortem, or to try for a connection to the VSP network and a copy of the crime scene report. I told myself I didn’t need either of those things. The reality was that I didn’t want either of them.

Eric Burns, 20, suspected homicide. Hit-and-run victim, the last post-mortem Gemma carried out. Death caused by blunt trauma consistent with vehicle impact, impossible to tell whether any of the damage had happened beforehand. Preliminary results of blood screening indicated small amounts of heroin or a similar opiate in his bloodstream. This must have been the guy Gemma mentioned last time I saw her.

Notes at the bottom of the file described the personal effects found on Burns, which were taken away as evidence the day after the autopsy, the day Gemma died. Three hundred and seventeen dollars in cash. Watch, a couple of bits of personal jewelry. Cell phone, more or less destroyed by the impact that killed him. Wallet with all the usual crap inside, including two scraps of paper folded away inside one of the credit card pockets.