The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (22 page)

Always two steps ahead. Two layers deep. Randy had said the voice on the phone could have been anyone, man or woman. God damn it.
God damn it
.

That’s why they’d never met in person. She’d been setting Flint up to take the fall right from the very start. She’d been smart in the way Damien Ackroyd never was, keeping it damned well hidden that she was anything other than a regular detective. No sports cars or fancy houses.

And it had been the Ackroyd case which had given her away. She’d said she couldn’t stand drug use for what it did to people. ‘Flint’ had told Randy he’d be killed if he ever sampled the wares. But the real Flint, by his own admission, had sampled plenty himself.

I knew she wasn’t at work because I’d called the BCI and they’d said she wasn’t on duty. Now, as I pulled up in front of the pleasant-looking old brick house in Burlington the phone book suggested was hers, I could see she didn’t seem to be home either. No lights, no movement, no car out front. No answer when I rang. One of the neighbors said he’d seen her loading up the car and leaving first thing that morning.

She was gone. Probably driven all the way to Montreal by now.
God damn it
.

Short of anything better to do, I drove up the hill to Battery Park and spent ten minutes walking in the cold along a path lined by bare, empty trees at the top of the bluff. Beyond was Lake Champlain and the last, unmarked, resting places of Stephanie Markham and the Haleys. Everything felt grey and empty even though the sun was shining through the tattered clouds. I tried to think of a way to trace Saric but came up empty.

Then my phone rang, and Saric herself said, “Hello again, Alex. I imagine all hell's about to break loose back home.”

“How did you know?”

“Karl called me in a panic first thing this morning, wanting me to cover for him at work. Since Faber survived the farm, I assume he’s just made use of the evidence I gave him.”

“Yeah. So what do you want? Unless you're calling to tell me where you are, I doubt I'm interested in what you're going to say. You won. Well done.”

“I thought I'd apologize. I overreacted with Dr Larson. I thought she was on to something when she wasn't. That was probably the only mistake I've made in all the time I’ve been doing this. I shouldn't have killed her; I'd still be in business if I hadn’t. For a while, anyway.”

“Business? Is that what you call it?”

“Semantics. Listen, Alex, I still have something that belongs to you. Well, sort of. I thought you might like it back.”

I paused. Somewhere, muffled in the background at the far end of the line, I heard a man's voice yell something in French. The high-pitched tones of a child answered a second later. “What?” I said.

"You don't know?” She sounded curious.

“No. Don't know, don't know if I care.”

“I thought someone would’ve told you. I've still got a piece of your girlfriend's jewelry. Randy took it from her body.”

I frowned. “What?”

“It was hit by the bullet. I think he was worried he’d left traces on it. And I kept it in case we ever needed to plant it on someone. I’ve always tried to be prepared. Oh, I suppose her family were given her personal effects, not you, and they wouldn't have known. It's a silver necklace with a sort of flower-bird-thing hanging from it. Very nice, though I'm afraid it's in two pieces now.”

I thought of Gemma, holding the necklace up to the light when I gave it to her. The last time I saw her. The last time we were together.

“I forgot I had it,” Saric said. “If you want it back, you can have it.”

It stuck in my throat, but I asked anyway. “Where are you?”

There was a roar of wind as she turned. "You might want to move the phone away from your ear for a moment.”

A thunderous boom erupts from the earpiece. “Who did you kill this time?” I said.

She laughed. “Not me, Alex. Cannon. I don't understand it myself, but I'm told it's a tradition. They fire the cannon out over the river this time every year. A little cold, but everyone’s enjoying themselves.”

“Name the place.”

“Figure it out. There aren't too many spots near the border that will fit the bill. I'll be waiting.”

She hung up.

I wondered who, amongst the few local non-cops whose numbers I had, would know about tourist attractions over in Quebec. Gemma’s friend Bethany was the first to jump to mind, but when I dialed the number she’d given me it was dead. I double-checked the slip of paper and saw that the handwriting on it was my own and the number was Gemma’s landline.

I screwed up the note and tossed it away real fast, tried to pretend I’d never seen it. Tried to pretend that I didn’t know what it meant.

Rob solved it in the end. I asked him if he could look up events on the border for me. “Somewhere with a cannon or two by a river,” I said. “I guess it must be an old fort or something, but I don't know where. I heard people talking French so I assume it’s in Quebec.”

“Huh.” Tapping on his keyboard. “Fort Lennox? But that’s mostly open in the summer. Nothing about them firing off cannon in winter. How are you, by the way?”

“I’m OK. Back at work tomorrow, the day after at the latest. What else?”

“Hmm... looks like there’s a few over the border on the Richelieu River. Here we are: Fort St Marc. Today’s the anniversary of something long-winded from the War of 1812. They have an annual fete there. Fireworks, guys in costume, the works. Looks nice.”

“Whereabouts is it?” I said.

Ah hour and a half later, I pulled into the visitors' parking lot next to the hulking stone bulwark of Fort St Marc. The place looked busy enough. Carnival atmosphere, everyone wrapped up warm. Stepping out of the car and hauling my coat around me, I felt isolated, cut off from the people milling to and fro. Exposed, especially since I’d had to leave my pistol behind on the other side of the border. I joined the weekend visitors to the old fort, heading through the gates and up on the flat-topped ramparts. The central courtyard was alive with food stalls, most of which were adopting a pretense of simple period stuff, as well as entertainers of all sorts. The sun was going down and I guessed it wouldn't be long before the fireworks started. From where I stood on the western bastion I had a great view of a sweeping bend in Richelieu River and everything for at least a mile in almost every direction.

My gaze turned inwards as I scanned the faces of the people ambling around below, looking for Saric. Not easy, not with so many scarves, hoods, big coats. She might have been down there, but I didn't get the feeling that she was. I’d switched my attention to the visitors on the ramparts by the time my cell rang. “I was beginning to think you weren't coming,” Saric said. “I thought I'd got it wrong again and you couldn't work out where I was.”

I turned, trying to run my eyes over everyone in the fort, looking for anyone holding a phone. “I nearly couldn't. Nearly didn't bother, either.”

One, two. Deep in conversation. Both men.

“What, can't see me?” she said.

No point hiding it. “Not yet.”

“You're looking in the wrong place. Turn around.”

The rampart behind me was empty all the way to the edge. Beyond, though, on the far side of the river, a figure was leaning against a dark car parked by the side of the track that ran above the bank. The figure waved. “Hi, Alex,” Saric said in my ear.

“I thought you might have had the guts for a face-to-face.”

“Don't be stupid. I’m not suicidal. I thought it might be fun to see you one last time, but I'm happy doing that through binoculars. And don't even think about trying to get round here in time to catch me. The nearest bridge is three miles away and I'm gone as soon as I see you leave.”

“Where's Gemma's necklace?”

“The people organizing the festival have a property collection point. There's a package with your address given as the sender, but no postage on it. I told them someone must have forgotten it on the way to the post office.” Her tone changed. Nasty, controlling. “Go fetch, boy.”

“At what point did you stop being a cop, turn your back on everything you should have stood for?”

“When I saw that big old house that Damien Ackroyd had, all the things he owned, and I thought about my idiot junkie brother.” She sighed. “He must have known the dope was killing him, but he still had to keep buying it. Dealing didn’t appeal to me, but that kind of customer demand was hard to resist, as was the money, so I decided to go into delivery. Karl was an easy fall-guy if I ever needed one. I was already giving it serious thought when he killed that hooker. When he made a half-assed attempt to wipe that pipe down and hide it in a dumpster a couple of blocks away, he became my ‘get out of jail free’ card. It's all been roses ever since.”

“Well, I sure am sorry to ruin it for you.” Looking at her, the world tasted sour. Only a few hundred yards away, but it might as well have been a million miles. And I knew she was enjoying herself.

“Don’t sweat it, Alex. It had to happen eventually. Karl was so easy to control, once you knew what buttons to push, but he was never stable enough for this to last forever. Everything ends.”

“You were in it for the cash, huh? Was it worth killing for?”

“Alex, do you have any idea how it feels to be top of the heap? Do you think someone with my skills should spend thirty years investigating burglaries and auto theft and then retire on a police pension? Really?”

“No. I'd never have let someone like you join the force in the first place. I'd have let you rot under the rock where you were living.” I wished I had a gun. Pistol, rifle, anything. Grab that cannon they were firing earlier, put it to use. Anything at all, if it could only reach her. Hit her with the fury I had balled up inside. Give her what she deserved. But I couldn't.

“Do you know how much fun it is to know you can have someone killed just because you want it to happen? And when I've done it, they vanish and I still get invited to all of the department's parties. I only wish it was possible to drop it into conversation. ‘How was my day? Well, I did a couple of hours at the office, then I had a pair of tourists stabbed to death, then I did lunch. How was yours?' Too bad it doesn't work that way.”

The line went quiet, although I could hear her breathing. When she spoke again, her tone was lighter, almost playful. “You’ll never bring her back. You know that, don't you? You can’t get back what I took from you.”

I hung up. Tried to forget her words, the truth of them, the bitterness left in me. I went to collect Gemma's shattered necklace, a reminder both of the woman I’d loved and the woman responsible for taking her away, and faced the drive south knowing that Fiona Saric was well and truly beyond my reach.

Back in Burlington, I kept my word and took Elijah and Neal out for a steak dinner, even though there was nothing I could give them story-wise that wouldn’t have seen me arrested. But Elijah had helped with so much, and I’d promised. I didn’t talk a great deal, but it was an OK evening, all things considered. I wondered if he’d figure some of it out when the lab examined the pipe Flint had beaten Carita Jenner to death with. I wondered how long it would be before Flint’s car was found, and if anyone would realize what had happened to him. After we were done eating, I called the Owl’s Head and asked to speak to Ed. I told him everything was finished, and that Steph could rest easy now. I didn’t want to go into detail over the phone, and he didn’t ask me to. He just said, real simple, “Thank you, Alex.”
 

After another night in the E-Z Rest I left Vermont for good, but I didn’t head for Boston. I took US-2 east all the way to Bangor, Maine. The cemetery there was covered in a fresh coat of thick snow and more fell in slow, heavy clumps from the charcoal-grey sky above. From the top of the low hill where Gemma lay buried, I could no longer see my car, the wall that lined the cemetery, nothing but snow falling against the blanket of white beyond, cutting this place off from the world outside. I looked down at the new, clean, stone marker, cold tears studding the corners of my eyes like shards of glass.

Then I thought back and remembered her face, the way she moved, the warmth of her body. Her eyes, shining. Her voice, her laugh. I felt her moving against me, her hand brushing against my cheek, her hair on my shoulder. The air smelled, one last time, of spruce bark and tall summer grass. A pair of butterflies danced through the snow above me until they were lost against the clouds as I stood there with my eyes shut, holding Gemma long and tightly for the last time, the touch of ghosts upon my skin.

If you've made it this far into the book, I can only assume you either enjoyed it enough to finish, are one of those people who absolutely
has
to finish a book no matter how bad it is, or else have skipped ahead to find out what on earth possessed anyone to write this drivel. Obviously I hope it's the first of those. If not, well, sorry.

Why a "writer's cut", and why now? (Obviously I know writers don't produce "cuts" of their work and that that's a film-only term, but "writer's redraft" or "writer's edit" both sound very, very silly so I've stuck with a technically incorrect but popularly understood term rather than get finicky.)

I wrote the first draft of
The Touch Of Ghosts
in 2002, finishing almost exactly ten years, in fact, to the day that I'm writing this afterword. The third and final draft was cleared and sent on to copy-editing in early 2003, but the book had changed greatly from what I'd originally envisaged by that point, and the changes -- while necessary to fit with what my editor wanted -- were always a bit of a stretch.

Now, I should say that I had no issue with what my editor came back with or the alterations she suggested at the time. I was a mere squirt of 25, this was my second published book, and frankly I didn't have the skill or the life experience to pull off what I'd originally thought of as the story: the different ways people handle loss and grief, and one man's obsessive desire to scrabble around in the dark and find out what happened to the woman he loved before he went slowly mad.