The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) Read Online Free

much, but in the letters he wrote about working in upstate New York — Buffalo and Albany. In the first it seemed he was working at the rough end of the repo business, but a call to Buffalo PD told me his boss from back then was now in the middle of a year-long stretch for fraud. Adam sure hadn’t gone back to work there. In Albany he’d only been able to land a job flipping burgers and he’d hated it. That left his few remaining friends in Boston as the only available leads I could work from here, and that was — I knew — likely to be diving to, or beyond, the bottom of the barrel.
    Late in the afternoon, Gemma rang. I told her how much of a blank I’d drawn. “Well, I still hope he won’t show up here. I sent copies of the photo you gave me to Burlington, as well as every regional and assistant ME and hospital I could think of. I should hear back from most of them in a day or two.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Just one of the perks of going out with a pathologist.”
    “And such a gorgeous one, too.”
    “Very smooth. When do you want to come up to look for this guy?”
    “Well, I'll be seeing you at the weekend, so why don't I stay on for the first few days of next week as well? If it's OK with you.”
    She laughed. “Of course it is. The more time I get to spend with you the better. I can thank you properly for all those compliments you keep paying me. I doubt you'll have the ideal weather for wandering around Burlington — it's been snowing on and off since the end of last week. Are you sure Rob trusts you to get any work done while you're here?”
    “He suspects I'll be too distracted to go trawling around town for missing people.” I glanced across the office, where my partner was shaking his head.
    “Tell her I'll have you fired if she keeps you from doing your job,” he called out.
    I relayed the message. Gemma said, “I’ll be at work myself so he needn't worry. I'd better go now. Duty calls. Love you.”
    “I love you too,” I said, and hung up.
    Rob rolled his eyes. “It's enough to make you hurl.”
    I finally caught a break of sorts the next day at one of the two addresses listed for friends of Adam. The first was a run-down brick duplex in an equally run-down street. The box-like front yard was overgrown with yellowing grass and creeping weeds, most of them dying off as winter set in. Posted on the front door was a notice that said the property was being repossessed and its occupants evicted. The place was empty. The second was an apartment in a dingy building at the end of a strip mall. The stairwell reeked of piss. My knock was answered by a scrawny guy I guessed around Adam's age. He was wearing a Metallica T-shirt five or six years past the point where the band had been relevant to anything, stained jeans and had bare feet. A mop of blond hair topped a pale, tired-looking face.
    “Yeah?” the kid said.
    “Justin?”
    “Yeah,” he repeated. “What you want?”
    “I’m trying to find Adam Webb — his mom wants to get in touch but she doesn't know where he is. Have you heard from him recently?”
    He stood still, thinking, or so I hoped. Then he nodded once. “I got a call from him maybe two, three months ago. I think. Said he had the two hundred bucks he owed me. Is that recent enough? He in any trouble?”
    This was the only outside confirmation I’d had that Adam even existed two months ago. “It's recent enough, and he's not in any trouble. What else did he say?”
    “We talked a bit, y'know. Asked how he was doin'. I mean, he borrowed the money years ago when he first took off. I'd forgotten, but I guess he hadn't. He sounded like he was doing pretty good for himself, up north.”
    “Did he say what he was doing?”
    The kid shrugged. “Not really. Got the impression it might not have been totally on the level, but I didn't ask. He said he was working with some chick called Jessie, sounded like he maybe had a thing for her. At least, they were friends n'all.”
    “Did he say