The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (15 page)

Maybe I was being paranoid; if the driver was going from Newport, say, to Burlington, well, it wasn’t like there were a lot of viable routes in this weather. And if they were tailing me, they couldn’t have been a pro because they were doing a poor job of hiding it. The tan sedan stuck with me all the way down to Waterbury and the I-89 interchange, then along the interstate all the way to Burlington until I finally lose sight of it when I took the Kennedy Drive exit for South Burlington.

Elijah Charman had given me the names of a few places that might serve as starting points for finding Webb before. I figured if Webb had been here any length of time he’d have stayed reasonably central. He’d told his mom he was working as a tour guide, but that didn’t ring true; there were plenty of places to visit around here, but not so many or so close together anyone would employ a guide, especially an out-of-towner with no qualifications or experience. Webb would’ve been working for on-the-spot cash hires — bars, diners, nightclubs, manual work — or falling back on the kind of petty crime I knew he’d been involved with before. Since none of that paid well, he’d have been living somewhere cheap.

The three bars Elijah had pointed me to were a bust. The only good that came from any of them was the barman in the Hart, who gave me the names of three more places, as well as the addresses of a couple of dirt cheap housing units he knew.

The first was a three-story block clustered around a central courtyard. There was no sign of the building's manager and I had no luck trying to reach him by phone, so I contented myself with putting up a couple of missing person flyers.

The second place, over the river in Winooski, looked like converted industrial space, a long hulk of crumbling brickwork with dozens of high narrow windows. A similar structure on the other side of the street had yet to undergo redevelopment. There were a couple of dozen buttons on the intercom by the front door: all numbers, no names. A separate bell beneath was marked 'manager'. I rang it a couple of times and then, when there was no answer, gave it a solid blast for thirty seconds or so.
 

Eventually, a sagging man in his forties opened the door, wearing a dark blue jogging suit emblazoned with the UVM logo. His face was covered in sweat, so I maybe I’d interrupted a workout. So I hoped, anyway. The alternatives were unsavory and I’d need to eat at some point that day. He looked me up and down. “Sixty dollars a week, first week in advance,” he said gruffly. “No pets, kids by arrangement only. Electric and water are included. Trash gets picked up Tuesdays.”

"Thanks, I'll bear that in mind. I'm looking for someone, wondering if you can help.”

“I don't mess with residents' privacy.”

“I’m a private eye from Boston. The guy I'm looking for isn’t in any trouble and I'm not here to hassle him. If there were names next to the buzzers down here maybe I wouldn't be asking you at all. I guess people come and go too quickly for that, huh?”

The guy frowned. “Look pal, there's plenty of people in this city who need cheap housing. This place ain't great but it's OK, I keep an eye on everyone in here, and I don't screw around with the tenants. If this guy isn't in any trouble, why're you looking for him?”

“Would you believe me if I told you his mom was worried about him?”

“Serious?”

“Yeah. Straight up. That’s all it is.”

He thought for a moment, then nodded and his face relaxed. “OK, fair enough. Who’re you after?”

“A guy called Adam Webb.” I showed him a flyer. “The last time anyone heard from him was a couple of months ago. He said he was working as a tour guide, but that doesn't seem likely to me.”

“Are these pictures the best you've got?”

“Afraid so.”

We shuffled aside to allow one of the residents, a pale woman in her early twenties, to sidle past and out of the building. The manager looked up as she passed and said, “Is your stove working OK now? I don't know how good a wiring job I did on it.”

“Yeah, it's fine now, thanks,” she says, looking back over her shoulder at us. Gaunt and drawn. Dark hair, deep-set eyes. Healthy, though thin. She was wearing a fleece jacket and hiking boots. Her gaze wandered briefly to the paper in the manager's hand, then to me. I couldn’t tell what she read there, but she pulled on a woolen hat and scarf real fast, then turned and hurried down the street.

“I don't remember having anyone stay here under that name,” the manager said, talking to me again. “I’ll check the records just to be sure, but it doesn't ring any bells. Same with the face, but the photo's so blurry I doubt I'd know him if he mugged me in the street.”

“Would you mind posting a couple of these in the entrance here? Just in case anyone living here recognizes him.”

“Sure, sure. If you give me a couple of copies I’ll take them inside and check my records. It won't take a minute.”

When the guy returned from the depths of the gloomy building he was shaking his head. “I don't have any Webbs staying here, not in the last two or three months, anyway. Only one Adam, and he's too old to be your guy. But I'll stick up the description; maybe someone knows him.”

“Thanks for your help.” I said.

“No problem, man. Do what you can do, right?”

On the way back to the car I saw the woman from the tenement building again. She was lurking in the snow-packed gap between the empty brick shell on the other side of the road and the chain-link fence surrounding the adjacent lot, watching my car. Maybe she was just trying to work out if I was a cop or not. Whatever her reasons, I was curious. I used a break in the traffic to cross over and headed towards her hiding place.
 

She let out a little gasp and did a brief rabbit-in-the-headlights impression when I turned the corner to face her. I smiled and took out a cigarette. “Hi,” I said. “Have you got a light?”

“Who are you?” Her eyes were wide, pale skin flushing.

“You need ID to borrow a match in Vermont these days? My name's Alex Rourke. Why?”

“Are you a cop or something?”
 

“I’m a private investigator. With cold feet and an unlit cigarette.”

“What do you want with—” she caught herself before she said a name “—with that guy you're looking for?”
 

“Exactly what I told the manager of your apartment building. His mom back in Boston hasn't heard from him for a couple of months and she wants to get in touch. The company I work for does a lot of missing persons work, so she came to us.”

The woman sniffed and nodded hesitantly. “You got a card or anything like that?”

I returned the cigarette to its pack and hunted around in my jacket for a business card. The woman took it and read it carefully. “And you work for this Robin Garrett guy?”

“Call the office if you don't believe me.”

“Why are you looking around here?”

“I’ve been looking all sorts of places. I've covered the bars he might have gone to and now I'm checking out where he might have lived while he was in town. Do you want to tell me what all these questions are about?”

“Me and Adam were friends.”

I picked up on the tense she’d used straight away. ”What do you mean ‘were’?”

She looked at me, blinking, and seemed to collapse inwardly as though all the air had been knocked out of her at once. “He's dead,” she said, tears beginning to sparkle in the corners of her eyes. “I think Mr Delaney killed him.”

The woman said her name was Jessie Taylor. Presumably the same Jessie Adam’s friend back in Boston had mentioned. I drove her to a steam-filled diner a few blocks down the street. She cried the whole way and kept it up for a while inside, which drew some odd looks from the waitress who served us.

I kept my voice down while I talked. “Who's Mr Delaney?”
 

“He's the guy we worked for.” She ran shaky fingers through her hair. “Well, I don't know if we worked for him, but he was always the guy we spoke to.”

“And what did you do for him?” I took a mouthful of strong, gritty coffee, trying not to show any recognition of Delaney's name while I thought back to the autopsy notes.

“You sure you're not with the cops?”

“Sure.”

“We used to carry stuff,” she said, barely more than whispering. “Y’know, over the border. We'd pick it up, usually near some place called Sutton in Quebec. Then we'd hike into the mountains like regular tourists, all the way down to the delivery point. Delaney told us it was always best to use a couple for that kind of thing, so we could pose as sweethearts or something if anyone asked. That way we wouldn't get so much hassle. But no one ever asked. Maybe he knew someone in the Border Patrol, or he paid off the cops.”

I could guess what 'stuff' Adam and Jessie carried over the border. Slightly surprised at the route, but I guessed the old Vermont smuggler ethic died hard, or else the dope was especially good. And I’d have bet good money I knew where their final drop point was. I wrote the word 'heroin' on the back of my cigarette pack and showed it to her. “Is this the kind of stuff you and Adam were carrying?”

She nodded, looking away. “Yeah. Not much usually, just a couple of bags.”

“Pure?”
 

“I guess. I never asked.”

“So how did Mr Delaney fit into all this? And why would he kill Adam?”

Jessie finished the rest of her cofFee in a series of gulps and motioned for a refill from the waitress. She seemed to be calming down now. “I don't know how Adam met him, but I heard about the job from a guy I was with in a bar. I needed money bad, so someone put me in touch with Delaney — I didn't know his name then. I guess Adam wound up working for him the same way. He explained everything to us, showed us where to go and such. I don't know if he checked us out to make sure we weren’t cops or anything; I guess he must have done. The only time I ever saw Mr Delaney he was wearing, like, a scarf, glasses and a hat so I couldn't see his face. He said that was what to call him, so I doubt it's his real name.”

“Sure.”

“The way it worked, every now and then we'd both get a phone call telling us where to pick up. Then we'd get together, pack and cross into Canada. We'd collect the stuff, hike back — that usually took a couple of days, trail-camping — and call a number we were given. We'd let the phone ring three times, then hang up, to let them know we were done. There'd be cash waiting for us. And that was it.” She paused long enough to down half her coffee. “The money was good, but once Adam saw how it all worked he wanted more than that.”

“He tried skimming some off the top?”

“The packages were always sealed. They'd have known. And they were usually close by when we dropped the stuff off. One time we even saw their car waiting.” She started picking at one of her fingernails. “But Adam figured he could switch a couple of bags of dope for a couple of bags of baking powder or something and they wouldn't find out until we were long gone.”

“You went along with his idea? You can't have known him long. You trusted him that much?”

The hand-wringing increased. “I didn't want to do it. But we'd kind of become friends from all that time alone together. He was a nice guy. Cute, funny. I could’ve done worse than end up with him. And he said he knew someone who'd want to buy such a large batch of dope and that we'd make a fortune out of it. I knew they'd kill us when they found out, but, well, my life was nothing much at the time and that money was real tempting.”

“That's understandable. Plenty of people would have done the same.” I didn't tell her that in my experience there was only one way it had ever been likely to end. Not that it had ever stopped anyone from getting greedy before.

“So one delivery, he had a plan. Before we went up, he left his car and some of our things in a rented garage in Newport. The plan was that he'd hike down and make the drop with the fake packages. I'd walk to Newport and pick up the car, and then we'd meet up at this place we passed through every trip we made. It's a patch of woods not far from Hazen's Notch. There's a couple of parking lots for summer tourists a little way down the slope, either side of trees. We were going to meet up in the woods, then head for New York State.”

“What went wrong?”

Jessie drained her cup and stared at the bottom of it. “It was night. I got the car like we planned. I drove up to the woods; there's trees all over up there, our place was just an old-looking patch of forest. Nice, really.” She smiled briefly, then it was gone. “I got out of the car and went up the hill, hoping Adam was already there so we could go straight away. Then I saw a light in the trees. When I got a little closer I could see shapes — people — moving. I heard a gunshot, and Adam shout out, but his voice was all garbled. The light stopped and stayed in one place for a while.”

“What did you do?” I asked softly.

“I ran, Mr Rourke. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't call the cops and tell them what happened or they'd have arrested me. I couldn't speak to anyone I knew in case Delaney was looking for me as well, and I didn't have the money to run far. So I got the only shit apartment I could afford for more than a couple of months and I've been waiting ever since, either for Delaney to forget about me, or for someone to put a bullet in me too. You know what it's like when there's someone out there who wants you dead, Mr Rourke?”

“You wouldn’t believe. Can you draw me a map so I can get to the site where Adam was killed?”

She nodded and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her coat. “Sure. Give me a pen.”

Jessie sketched a very rough plan of the area around the woods on a paper napkin. She looked tired and strung out. Maybe it was just living so long on her nerves, maybe she’d been using a little of the stuff she’d once carried south to relieve the tension. I'd have asked, but her problems weren't mine and it wasn’t like there was anything I could have done to help.

“Thanks,” I said. “Have you got a number where I can reach you if there's anything else I think of, or if Mr Delaney gets caught?”

“No. I ditched my cell after Adam died and my apartment doesn't have a landline. Drop me a note or something.”