The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (16 page)

“OK. Delaney — if you heard his voice again, you'd know it?”

She nodded. “Of course. He didn't sound local. West coast, maybe. California. Some place like that.”

“Good,” I said. “Did you ever see him or hear him with anyone else? Do you know anyone else working for him?”

“No. The time we saw the car near the drop point, there was a couple of people in it, but I don't know if either of them was him.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“I don't know. Dark color. Might have been a station wagon.”

“Whereabouts was the drop point? Did you use different ones each time or was it always the same place?”

“It was always the same. In a room in this old abandoned hotel, someplace just off Route 100. We'd stash the packages under a bath tub.”

Bingo. As expected. If I could find Webb’s body, there was a chance, however small, that it would still hold some evidence to identify Delaney. I had to wait to look for it though, because right after I said goodbye to Jessie and headed for my car, I got a call that threw out all my plans.

“I know what happened to her, to your girlfriend,” the voice said. The speaker was muffled and gravelly, the words clipped and abrupt like they didn’t want to be recognized. I couldn’t even be sure if it was a man or a woman. “I
know
, but this is dangerous. I’ll talk if we can meet.”

“How do you know?”

“You want to hear or don’t you? The cops won’t find out. You must know that by now. There’s a reason. Two o’clock. Huggett’s Farm off Route 108 outside Bakersfield. It’s abandoned. Foreclosure. No one there. You call a cop, you show up with company, you get nothing.”

Then I was talking to dead air.

I found it on my second pass. A dirt track with an ancient realtor’s sign out front so weather-beaten I couldn’t even read the name of the agent. The gate was open and rusty. I drove slowly along the dirt track that swung down a gentle slope towards the farm, following a set of fresh tire marks. Unkempt buildings emerged from a stand of snow-wreathed trees in front of me as I rounded the final turn a couple of minutes later and reached the farm complex. It was small and from the weeds and the general sense of rot and decay, I guessed it hadn't been occupied in at least ten years.

I pulled up in front of a wooden barn that had once been painted red, but had peeled so bad it was now just flecked with scraps of crimson. Climbed out, lit a cigarette, checked my gun and tucked it away again. The air was cold and still and quiet. The front of the property before the stand of woodland framing the track had mostly been open fields. The back of the farm complex seemed to be a belt of sloping snow-covered pasture maybe a half mile long and three hundred yards across, hemmed in by more trees lining the far side. I thought maybe I saw movement in the bare branches and the gloom, just for a moment, but I no longer knew if I could trust my eyes on that score.

The other vehicle’s tracks seemed to circle the central yard a couple of times, but any marks leading away were confused and part-swept. It looked like it had probably pulled around the back of a feed tower beside one of the other buildings. I circled round the barn and went to investigate. Got almost to the end of the wall before a man in a state trooper’s uniform swung out, gun raised, yelling at me to stop right there and put my hands on my head.

There were five of them, regular cops, as well as Flint and Saric. Once they’d relieved me of my weapon and hauled me over to the unmarked gray van they’d arrived in, the two detectives directed the troopers to go back to their positions watching the center of the farm while they gave me a grilling. Flint in particular didn’t look happy. His eyes had an edge to them, narrow and dark. He looked tense, sweaty. Wired.

“You’d better have a damn good reason for being here, Mr Rourke,” he said. “At the moment you either look like a suspect or a deliberate nuisance.”

“A suspect for what?”

“Most murder victims are killed by members of their family. A man like you must know people who work for hire.” He was trying to get a rise and it almost worked. The muscles in my jaw clenched but I said nothing. “So why are you here?”

“I’m thinking of investing in property and this place looked a bargain. Why do you think? I had a call from someone who said they knew who shot Gemma. They wanted to meet me here, now, and they’d talk. No cops, no company, et cetera et cetera.”

“What a stroke of luck. Name? Number?”

“Neither. Caller ID was barred and I never got a name. They were disguising their voice too. It was an anonymous tip, Flint. You of all people should know how they work. How come you’re here with the cavalry at the same time? Don’t tell me it’s a crazy coincidence.”

The two cops glanced at each other. Flint said, “We had a guy come forward saying he was on Route 100 at about the time Dr Larson was killed. He said he drove past the spot a few minutes before it started snowing again — so a few minutes before she did — and there were two vehicles pulled over at the side of the road. One was a blue pickup or SUV — he wasn't sure — and the other was a tan sedan.”

“Tan?”
 

“That's what he said. There were two guys standing between them, looking like they were checking under the hood of the pickup. One of them was carrying a gym bag. The witness slowed down, thinking they might have had a breakdown or something, but then one of the guys stared at him and twitched his jacket open to show he was carrying a gun. The witness drove off but he tried to get their license plates. He couldn't see the pickup’s but he got the sedan’s.”

“And he waited until now to report it? That doesn’t seem strange
at all
.”

“Let’s say the witness is a less-than-upstanding pillar of the community — he’s a recovering junkie with a string of busts, in point of fact — and he didn’t hear about the murder until now.” Flint shook his head. “It happens like that sometimes, as you know goddamn well. And you should be thankful because this witness is the main reason I don’t see you as a major suspect despite your turning up here and now. You understand?”

“Drug deal gone wrong rather than a professional hired by me with money I don’t have for no motive whatsoever. I got the picture. Nice you think so highly of me.”

“We ran the plates and the car is registered to one Randy Faber. Is that name familiar to you?”

“Should it be?” My toes were numb in the cold and my face felt like stretched rubber. I rocked to and fro, just trying to keep my circulation going.

“Your girlfriend never mentioned him?”

“No.”

“What about the name Curtis Marshall?”

“Never heard of him.”

“OK,” he said. “So maybe she got unlucky and drove past something she shouldn’t have at just the wrong time for it. Faber’s from San Francisco and he's got a record — nothing big, a couple of weapons violations, a charge for threatening behavior that was later dropped. But his name is flagged in SFPD and FBI investigations into a big-shot businessman and criminal boss called Curtis Marshall. They think Randy used to be a hitman for Marshall but had to leave California a few years ago when the local cops busted one of Marshall's crystal meth plants. There’s no proof of this, but the story goes that Randy was so eager to get away that the son of a bitch fired on a couple of his own guys running for the same car he was. One of those killed was Marshall's nephew Joel and his uncle has been after Randy’s blood ever since. Why he’s showed up here I don’t know, but as murder suspects go he’s a solid one and he has a history in the drug trade. Maybe he’s running his own operation now.”

Saric nods. “So now, Alex, you may have walked clean into the middle of drug gang business right when they’re cleaning up loose ends. We had a tip from an informant that Randy was supposed to meet a distributor here right about now. But instead you show up. That looks bad, or else very unlucky. This guy’s armed, dangerous, and has a record for shooting his way out of police raids. We’ve got five other officers with us and I still wish we had more. That’s how serious this is.”

“And if it wasn’t for the fact that we need to keep a low profile until he
does
show, I’d still be arresting you for interfering with an investigation,” Flint said. “You say you had a phone call from some guy who tells you to come out here. Either that’s Faber himself planning on putting a bullet between your eyes, or it’s a rival hoping you’ll do for him instead, or you’re right and our witness is no good and maybe you hired Faber yourself, or else your story is bullshit and you’re just trailing our people, hoping for scraps.”

“If I was looking for scraps I’d try elsewhere because so far you’ve found jack,” I said. “I get a lead, I follow it up even if it could be a set up. I’m not a fool, but I’ve got no choice. What about you, anyway? You get one tip that says your suspect does business by the side of a public highway — less than a mile from the ghost town he apparently uses to keep his goods in, in fact — and another says he knows a nice, isolated farm that’s been empty for years he uses as a meeting place. Any parts of that strike you as contradictory? Someone’s lying to you, Sergeant Flint.”

“A witness put an armed guy at the scene of a shooting. That part’s enough for me. So far. Don’t make me dig further.” He glared at the snow-blanketed fields. “On top of all that, Faber’s late and I’m frozen stiff. Give him his gun back, Fiona. He looks like he’s going to do anything with it, you shoot him. Then you stay by the van, Mr Rourke, out of the way until we’re done here. You so much as go for a piss and I’ll think twice about not taking you in. Clear?”

“If your informant had been genuine, Alex,” Saric said, handing me my Colt, “and you’d found out who killed Dr Larson, would you have told us, or would you have gone for him yourself?”

I didn’t get to answer that because at that moment there was the snap of splintering wood as a bullet punched into the wall beside me.

It took a moment for me to realize what had happened. There was no gunshot
crack
, just a distant pop like a damp firework. I looked at the hole in the wooden boards. Shredded, uneven. Tiny motes of dirt, sawdust and frost still hanging in the air. Hard to say who it was aimed at. I dived around the van while Saric shouted, “Gunshot!”

A second slug buried itself in the hood and I knew for certain now that I’d been the target. I ducked down, hopefully keeping the engine block between me and the shooter, and cradled my gun. It wasn’t a massive endorsement of my life to date, but this wasn’t the first time someone had tried to kill me, and experience at least lent me a certain grace under fire. Not everyone was so lucky, of course.

“You see anything?” Flint yelled. I didn't know who he was asking. I could hear the panicky voice of the state trooper inside the van as he radioed in. Splinters of black plastic burst over my head as a third round punched through one of the wiper blades.

Looking around, I saw that Flint and Saric had taken shelter behind the vehicle the same as me. Saric was bobbing her head out and back as she tried to get eyes on the treeline opposite. Flint looked at me and said, “I told you not to pull a weapon, Rourke.”

“It’s licensed, I’m ex-Bureau, and right now there’s some son of a bitch trying to put a hole in my head,” I shouted back. “The hell with that.”

“I said—”

Another round hit the van. “Have that argument with me later.”

“God damn it! Saric, you stick with him. He fucks up, you shoot him.”

I could see one of the cops scooched down at the corner of the barn beyond Saric. To the right, my field of vision was restricted by the building on one side and the wheel arch of the van on the other. I saw an empty tract of farmland, trees in the far distance. No sign of movement.

“Nothing,” Saric said. The trooper beyond shook his head too, eyes wide.

I peeked quickly left around the front end of the vehicle. Saw a blur of snow-covered fields, dark forest encrusted with white. I held that first glance like a Polaroid as I ducked back. Nothing was out of place. Not a goddamn thing. With no answering shot I risked another, longer look, this time over the top of the van's hood. Two-fifty, three hundred yards away, the dark gaps between the bare branches along the treeline were still and empty.

Back down again. The couple of troopers I could see looked scared — only natural when someone's firing a gun at you, but not helpful. I guessed none of them had ever been in this kind of situation before, and training only carried you so far. Flint was keeping his head down, and didn’t look like he fancied budging any time soon. “We've got to get over there,” I said to Saric. “Unless you’ve got SWAT out here somewhere, we can’t hang around behind the van, waiting an hour for backup, while this guy repositions and gets a bead on us.”

“What've you got in mind?”

“We get back into the farm buildings, through the trees by the road, then break right into the woods. Work our way around to him in cover.”

She frowned. “You and me? You’re not a cop, Alex.”

“So take one of your cops if any of them know how. Point is,
I’m
not going to sit here forever waiting to get killed. You can shoot me yourself, or else we can deal with this.”

“Jeez. OK. Try to leave any firing to me. I don’t want to be up in front of Professional Standards to explain any more than I have to.”

We ran, keeping low, towards the barn. As we rounded the corner, there was another distant shot and the trooper crouching there, right next to us, went down clutching his arm and swearing. One of his colleagues dashed to check on him as we scurried past.

“Faber's off his game today,” Saric said as we cut through the derelict buildings towards the trees. “I wonder if he was expecting all of us, or just you.”

Once in the cover of the forest we doubled back, around the edge of the field, trying to keep as quiet as possible. The ground was rough and broken, peppered with fallen branches and old stumps. The carpet of snow was enough to deaden the noise we made but there was still plenty of crunching and scraping as we stalked through the trees. Everything around was quiet.