The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (9 page)

A sad smile, then.

Altmann’s shift didn’t finish until four thirty according to Ellen, so I drove to the lakeshore and killed time with a coffee and a sandwich before I had to go take up station by the hospital.

”It's been ages since I've done this,” Gemma said. We were ambling along the boardwalk that ran out over the lakeside by the town’s single railroad track. Late spring sunshine sparkled from the water but a chilly breeze blew down from the north. I was nursing a cup of coffee and we were both wrapped up in our coats.
 

“What do you mean?"
 

"Gone for a walk along the waterfront like this. I think the last time, I must have been with my dad. My family used to drive down to a beach on Blue Hill Bay sometimes when I was little. We'd walk along by the sea, play around on the beaches. Most times we went you could see out as far as Mount Desert Island. Us kids would have ice cream or doughnuts and Mom and Dad would let us run off so they could have some time to themselves.”

“You should have said. We passed a doughnut place back on Main Street five minutes ago. It's a bit cold for ice cream, though.”

“Ice cream is always good,” she said, grinning. “You should know that by now.”

It was nearly five o’clock by the time a guy matching Altmann’s description came out of the doors and hurried across the parking lot. He was wearing a long coat over a suit and was carrying a briefcase. He climbed into a silver Audi and I followed him out on to the street, keeping to a sensible distance as he headed for the interstate and the fifteen-mile drive south to his home. No deviations or stops en route. He kept to the speed limit and showed no sign that he’d noticed me. When we reached Barton I tailed him to a road of large houses with even larger, mostly empty, yards not far from the shore of Crystal Lake. I drove past, just a regular traveler, as he turned into his driveway. Then I found a place to park out of sight.

“Yes?” he said when he opened the front door to find me on his porch. He’d ditched the jacket and tie, but hadn't finished getting changed for the evening. His voice was soft and quiet.

“Dr Frank Altmann? My name's Alex Rourke. I'm a private detective. I just need a few minutes of your time.”

“I know the name from somewhere...”
 

“I was Gemma Larson's boyfriend.”

He looked me over, then nodded a little nervously. Said, “Come in.”

Altmann’s home was spacious and looked like he’d always lived alone. The only family photos in here were of him and an older couple, presumably his parents. There were also a couple of framed pictures of groups of his hospital colleagues, including one that featured Gemma. He offered me a seat and I didn’t take it.
 

“Dr Altmann, you were friends with Gemma, right?” I said.

Mixed emotions crossed his face. “Yes. We met at a staff party not long after she joined the hospital. I don't usually have much to do with the morgue, obviously, but I've known Ellen, one of the lab technicians, for some time. If we had our breaks at the same time, I'd sometimes have lunch with Gemma or Ellen. We got on well together.”

“You saw each other fairly regularly. Did she act strangely at all before she died? Worried about anything or anyone?”
 

“Not that I noticed.”

“When was the last time you saw Gemma?”
 

“The week before she died,” he said.

“Have you ever been to her house?”
 

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

I held up my hands. “I’m just trying to find out as much as I can about the time leading up to my girlfriend's death, Dr Altmann. Someone was seen calling at her house a week before her murder. He drove a silver car and seemed to be a friend of hers. He left something with her. I need to know whether that was you or if there was someone else who'd visited her recently.”

“Yes, that was me,” he said, still looking less than happy. “Management were planning some procedural changes and I'd said I'd drop a copy of the proposals with her as I had to go to Burlington that day.”

“And you noticed nothing strange?”
 

“Again, no.”
 

“Are you married, Dr Altmann? Regular girlfriend, anything like that?”

His face flushed red. “What the hell does that have to do with you?”

“You said you were friends with Gemma. Did you ever want to take things further than that? You ever wish you were in a relationship with her?”

For a moment he paused, unmoving. His eyes narrowed slightly and he said, very coldly, “I want you to leave, Mr Rourke.”

“I’m just trying to figure out what happened, that's all.”
 

“It strikes me that's the job of the police. I’ll happily answer any questions they have because I cared for Gemma. She was a friend. You are neither a cop nor a friend. So get the hell off my property.”

I couldn’t help pushing further. A kick of bile at the back of my throat; anger, grief and jealousy fighting each other by turns. I
wanted
it to be Altmann who’d killed Gemma. And I wanted him to give himself away. “You cared for her. Did you fancy her, Dr Altmann? She was good looking, wasn't she? I know that, you know that. Did you want to get her into bed? Did you want to screw her? Must've stung you that she didn't return those feelings, huh?”

“Get the
fuck
out of here!” the doctor yelled. He took a step towards me, face red, hands clenching.

“You weren't working on the day she died, right? Just so I have as complete a picture as possible, could you tell me where you were between, say, five and six that evening?”

Altmann rushed at me, fury in his eyes, yelling incoherently. His hands scrabbled for grip on my shoulders as he barged me backwards like we were playing football. He was strong, surprisingly so. I didn't resist; the sensible part of me didn’t want to add assault to any potential charge of being a jerk on private property. I let him force me back all the way down the hall and hurl me away, out on to his porch. By the time I caught my balance he’d slammed the door shut.
 

Inside, I thought I heard him sobbing.

The house was in darkness when I opened my eyes. I’d been sleeping, not much, but some. My breathing sounded loud and ragged in the near-silence. Even the wind outside had stopped rattling the boards. I lay wrapped up in the blanket and listened hard.
 

Creak
.

A floorboard. it didn't sound like normal building noise. There’d been weight behind that. Something — someone — walking around.

Creak
.

From a slightly different position this time? It was hard to say. I swung my legs off the couch as quietly as I could. I was already pretty much dressed so I slipped into my shoes and grabbed my gun. I left the lights off and headed out into the hallway. It seemed to be empty.
 

I walked carefully up the stairs, edging along against the wall, pistol down at my side. My gaze was fixed on the landing. Nothing.
 

I cleared the last few steps. The air at the top of the stairs was cold, as bad as it had been outside Gemma's door the previous night. If this was the same mystery draft as before, it had spread a couple of yards. I quickly checked the bathroom behind me for the intruder, then sidled back into the band of frozen air, eyes on the remaining two doors and the hatch leading up to the attic room. The cold was incredible, soaking through my clothes and beneath my skin, reminding me what it was like to be a kid trapped in the dark by imaginary shadows on the wall. Then, as my hand closed round the bedroom door knob, there was a
thud
from downstairs.

I hauled ass back to the ground floor, watching for movement all around and wondering what the hell was going on. The hallway was still empty. I crept along it fast then, into the kitchen. Melting snow shone darkly against the tiles. Footprints, leading from the back door, out to the hall.

Creak
.

This time it was close enough to be almost ear-splitting. I jumped and snapped a look behind me in the second it took to realize that it was me who’d trodden on an old board this time.
 

I turned back and brought up my gun as a clatter came from the front room. A dark figure sprinted out in a blur and wrenched open the front door. Man or woman, big or small, I couldn’t tell a thing about them, just that they were dressed for night time and that they didn’t belong here. I didn't bother yelling at them to stop. I just chased.
 

The intruder raced through the yard and on to the white-covered road. They had a head start on me and they were a little faster. I still didn't shout anything and I didn't even think about using the gun, not on a public street. I just ran, heart hammering at my ribs. Through a parking lot by the lakeside, into the trees. The ground changed from blacktop to snow-covered leaf litter, darkening as I left the town behind. Twigs flicked chunks of ice at me as I crashed through the trees, specks of cold that turned to water wherever they touched flesh. My face was covered by a webwork of drying rivulets like tear tracks.

Muscles burning, my throat blasted raw, I kept running. Pure adrenaline and the thought of someone else invading Gemma’s private space, touching her stuff, desecrating her presence. I was exhausted but I didn’t stop. I had no idea how far into the woods we were or where we were going. Every so often I caught a glimpse of the intruder in the darkness ahead, passed branches still swaying from where they’d pushed through. I hadn’t gained any ground on them, but I’d not lost much either and all I could think about was catching them.
 

The sensation of space around me as I hit a break in the trees, clearer ground. The running figure ahead was gone, disappeared. I realized what that meant, my mistake, and started to turn, but too slow. I heard feet crunch against the snow behind me and then something cracked into the back of my skull and I was falling.
 

Everything went white.

When I came round I was lying in the snow, looking up at a huge, dark shape jutting out against the overcast night. The sky was a little lighter than before. The back of my head was numb from the ice, but still throbbed unpleasantly. My gun was there in my hand, untaken. Everything was silent and I seemed to be alone. When I rolled over and stood up, my legs felt awkward and rubbery and I was shivering fiercely. There was blood on the snow I’d lain in, but not too much. There was a swollen, split patch at the base of my skull, something that would probably have been hurting badly if I hadn't been so cold because bright spots flashed in front of my eyes whenever I touched it. I felt light-headed and nauseous, and my eyes had a hard time focusing.

At first I thought that maybe I’d run in a circle and wound up back in town because there were buildings all around me. That idea died fast. The structures were tumbledown: two walls, three at most, in one case just a jumble of rubble with a perfectly-preserved stone chimney rising from it like a post-apocalyptic miniature of the Washington Monument. Brick for the most part, weathered and cracked. Thin, straggly trees had forced their way through the detritus as the forest slowly took it back. Even with a concussion and frostbite it didn’t take long to figure I was in North Bleakwater. There was a line of footprints weaving away from me: the intruder's trail.

The tracks ran to the middle of the silent, overgrown town, where an expanse of coiled weeds opened out between buildings. Down its center, following the slope from east to west towards the lake, ran a gully maybe six feet wide crossed by a short stone bridge. Whatever water had once flowed through it was long gone. There were tire ruts running across the bridge and all the way through the town along what would probably have been its main street. The way the woods had spread over the remaining buildings, the road shouldn't have been more than a footpath any more. People had obviously used it down the years even after the town failed. I walked over the bridge and took a closer look at the tracks.

Multiple sets, overlaying each other. Regular visits, I guessed. Looked like a couple of different tread marks, reasonably fresh. I presumed that at least one set belonged to the intruder's vehicle as his footprints vanished beside them. He was long gone, driven off while I was unconscious. I pocketed my Colt.
 

Fifty yards from the bridge, an edifice of white clapboard loomed out of the woodland. Unlike most of the rest of North Bleakwater, this building and the couple of low stone structures on the other side of the street still seemed mostly intact. A rotten, mildew-riddled sign hanging over the main doors read: ‘Echo Springs Hotel’. Aside from its dilapidated state, the hotel looked like it had been abandoned while open for business. The slatted shutters were drawn back, and a fair amount of the glass in the window frames was still intact. The double front doors were chained and padlocked, however, and once I started moving around the T-shaped structure, the decades of ruin became obvious.
 

The wraparound deck that had once paraded along the head end of the hotel’s first floor had collapsed halfway along into a pile of rotten timbers. The paint on the walls was peeled and blasted by the elements. At the northern tip of the hotel's head, a stubby five-story tower rose from the roof. Even at the gables the remainder was only three floors high. The small wrought-iron balconies beneath some of the upper windows of this blocky, lighthouse-like structure were mere shells, their flooring and many of their supports eaten away by rust. What I guessed was once a private lawn spread out at the back of the hotel. It was overrun by thin, straggly bushes and saplings from the forest that was slowly devouring the corpse of North Bleakwater.

Someone had been here recently, though not the person I’d been chasing; the prints were different. There was a narrow line of flattened grass and crushed snow running along the edge of the lawn, close to the hotel wall. It was too dark to see how many people had been this way. It could’ve been nothing, tourists or kids from town, hiking round the lake so they can check out the ghost town. I went to see where they led anyway.