PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Guateng 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2012
Copyright © Chris Mooney, 2012
Cover photograph © Dave Wall/Arcangel Images
Design: www.henrysteadman.com
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-14-196167-5
I: The Resurrection Men
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
II: The Living and the Dead
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
III: The Wages of Fear
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
IV: The Killing House
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Also by Chris Mooney – Falling
PENGUIN BOOKS
Chris Mooney is the internationally bestselling author of the Darby McCormick series and the stand-alone thriller Remembering Sarah, which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Darby McCormick series have sold in over twenty territories. The Killing House is the first book featuring former profiler and now the nation’s Most Wanted fugitive, Malcolm Fletcher. Mooney lives in Boston, where he is at work on the next Darby McCormick thriller. For more information, visit chrismooneybooks.com and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
For Darley Anderson
and
Maggie Griffin
He ne’er is crown’d with immortality
Who fears to follow where
Airy voices lead.
– John Keats
You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
– Psalm 88
Theresa Herrera stumbled out of her bedroom, fighting to keep the scream caged in her throat. Screaming wasn’t allowed; that was one of the rules. The first rule she’d been told. The most important one.
Oh my God, dear Jesus in heaven, this isn’t happening.
A phone rang. Not the familiar ring of the house phone or the chiming bells of her cell but a new and completely different ringtone – a constant, high-pitched chirp bordering on a screech. She forced her attention away from the bedroom, away from what had happened to her husband, and started running down the long, brightly lit hall, heading for the bedroom off the top of the stairs – her son’s bedroom.
Ring.
The bedroom door was open, always, and everything inside was just the way Rico had left it – the posters of Batman and a futuristic soldier called Master Chief hanging on the walls, the shelves crammed with assembled Lego Star Wars ships, books and thick encyclopedias containing the histories of superheroes and popular sci-fi characters from movies and video games. The hamper was still full of his dirty clothes, his desk was still crammed with his drawings, and his bureau was still packed with his scruffy and broken toys. Not a single thing had been moved. Missing did not mean dead. There was always a chance. Always.
Ring.
Theresa raced into the bedroom, her attention locked on the red Spiderman quilt. There it was, just as she’d been told: the disposable cell phone. She picked it up, nearly dropping it in her shaking hands. In the strong light coming from the hall she found the TALK button. She punched it with her thumb and brought the phone up, her mind and body swimming with a dizzying mix of excitement and pure terror.
‘Rico? Rico, baby, is that you?’
There was no answer. Could he really be alive, or was this some sort of cruel trick? Four years ago, Rico had been asleep right here in this bed while she attended an awards dinner with her husband. As Barry was being showered with praise for providing free psychiatric care to troubled children and teens, someone had used the aluminium ladder he’d left outside to paint the porch, climbed up to the first-floor window, cut the window screen and abducted her sleeping ten-year-old son from his bed. The babysitter, downstairs watching TV and talking to her boyfriend on her brand new iPhone, hadn’t seen or heard a thing.
‘Rico, it’s me. It’s Mom.’
No answer. Theresa pressed the TALK button again. Spoke his name again. Then she realized there was no one on the other end of the line. It was dead.
He’ll call back, she told herself. Beads of sweat rolled down her face and the small of her back, her heart was beating fast – much too fast. She was terrified, short of breath and on the verge of throwing up her Big Mac combo dinner. The only thing keeping the food down was hope.
Before Rico’s abduction, Theresa had developed a love of true-crime programmes. The Discovery Channel played them around the clock, the cases narrated by veteran detectives and FBI experts. When it came to child abductions, they all gave the same frightening statistic: if a child wasn’t found within the first forty-eight hours, the chance of their being found alive dropped to zero.
Hope came from the real-life case of Elizabeth Smart, a fourteen-year-old girl from Salt Lake City, who, like Rico, had been abducted from her bedroom. The Utah teenager was found nine months later – alive. Theresa’s nasty, pragmatic side liked to remind her, too much and too often, that nine months wasn’t the same as four years. Still, nine months was an incredibly long time to hold out hope, and Elizabeth Smart’s parents had never given up. Theresa had drawn courage and strength from their example, and now, after all these long and painful years, her faith was finally about to be rewarded … maybe. Possibly.
The phone rang again.
‘Rico?’
Ragged breathing on the other end of the line, and then: ‘Mom?’
The voice was slightly older, slightly deeper. Rico would be fourteen now; he would be going through puberty.
‘Mom, is that really you?’
It was Rico’s voice, no question. The nasal tone was still there, along with the slight lisp. She was talking to her son, her baby.
Theresa felt the sting of tears as that nasty, pragmatic side chimed in: You need proof.
The photograph, she thought. She’d been shown a photograph of Rico.
And it could have easily been Photoshopped. You need to be sure, Terry, one hundred per cent sure.
How? How can I –
Ask him something only he would know.
Theresa’s eyes squeezed shut. She spoke a moment later.
‘Rico, honey, when you were six, we had your birthday party at the Build-a-Bear at the mall. We built a bear together. Remember? You dressed it a certain way.’
‘Sergeant-General. That’s what I called him. Sergeant-General.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘He wore army fatigues and a military cap. We recorded a message. When you pressed the paw, the recording said, “I’m an army general, ten-hut.” ’
Theresa covered her mouth to stifle her cry.
‘You recorded the message, Mom. Not me.’
It’s him. My baby. The tears came, a floodgate of them, raining down her cheeks.
‘Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.’
Rico didn’t answer. On the other end of the line she thought she heard someone speaking in the background but couldn’t be sure.
Theresa caught movement coming from the hall. A shadow moved across the wall and floor, footsteps heading her way.
Then she heard Rico sobbing.
‘Don’t let them take me back there.’
‘Where? Where did they take you, Rico?’
‘I can’t take it any more. Please, Mom. Please help me. I don’t –’
Click and then Rico was gone.
Theresa yanked the phone away from her ear, frantically searching for the redial button. Rico was alive. Her son was alive and she had just spoken to him and he was terrified and possibly in pain and she had –
The phone slipped from her grasp. She went for it, bumping up against a wall shelf. One of the Lego Star Wars spaceships fell against the floor and shattered. A scream roared past her lips and she stifled it with her hands as the woman in the fur coat entered Rico’s bedroom.
The woman’s name was Marie Clouzot. Theresa had never met her before – had never seen her before, despite Clouzot’s intimation that they had met, although the Clouzot woman refused to say where or when this introduction had taken place.
This was what Theresa knew for sure: just a few short hours ago she had told Barry she was heading out to the grocery store. Ali Karim, a New York investigator who had agreed to look into Rico’s case, had called her earlier in the day to ask if she and Barry would be home that evening. Karim wanted to send over a man who had considerable experience in abduction cases and needed to know if they would be home between six and seven. Theresa said they would. She had spent the remainder of her Friday afternoon cleaning and tidying up the house (except Rico’s room; she never touched anything in there) when at the last minute she remembered she was out of coffee.
When Theresa returned at a few minutes past five, Colorado’s winter sky already pitch-black and threatening snow, she hadn’t seen any cars parked nearby. She pulled into the garage and opened the door leading into the mudroom, balancing a vegetable and cheese tray she’d purchased at the last minute. Offering food to her guest seemed like the polite thing to do, but there was another component to this purchase: the need to impress. To show that she was a good person, that her son was worthy of Karim’s time and attention.
Theresa set the tray on the kitchen island, startled when she saw someone sitting in one of the living-room chairs – an older woman bundled in a rich mahogany-coloured mink. Has to be one of Barry’s hospital or charity friends, Theresa thought, slipping out of her wool coat. Since Rico’s abduction, when her husband wasn’t burying himself in patient work at his practice, he was devoting the remainder of his free time to all sorts of charity cases. Barry wanted to be anywhere but home. He barely spoke about Rico any more, and she knew he carried a burning resentment at her refusal to get on with her life. He never said anything to this effect, of course. Barry had never been good at confrontation, and he was simply awful at hiding his feelings – he wore them on his face. But he had voiced his displeasure when he found out she had enlisted the services of what he considered to be nothing more than a glorified private investigator to look into Rico’s case.
As Theresa approached the living room, her first thought was that Barbara Bush had come to pay the Herrera family a personal visit. The woman had the same mannish look – George Washington in drag. But the woman in the fur coat wasn’t as stout as the former first lady, and she had jet-black hair that was stretched back across her scalp and worn in a bun. A black crocodile Hermès Birkin bag rested on her lap.
One thing was immediately clear: the woman’s plastic surgeon had screwed her. Her face had been pulled way too tight, giving her that pale, bug-eyed look Theresa had seen on a lot of older women trying to fight off Father Time with a scalpel. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the woman had a smile that seemed to run from ear to ear. Either God almighty Himself had cursed her with it, or she had specifically asked her surgeon to make her look like the Joker.
The woman stood clutching her handbag. She was tall, almost six feet. Her coat was unbuttoned, revealing a sharp charcoal business suit. Lying against the black blouse was a colourful, ornate jewel necklace that was missing several stones.
Why would she wear a broken necklace? Theresa thought, as she introduced herself. The woman wore diamond earrings and a pair of gloves made of thin black leather. Is she leaving? And where’s Barry?
The woman didn’t introduce herself. Theresa said, ‘I’m sorry, have we met?’
The woman smiled brightly. ‘You don’t remember?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’ I definitely would have remembered your face, Theresa thought.
The woman’s smile collapsed. ‘Marie Clouzot,’ she said, but didn’t offer a hand. Instead, she reached into her handbag and came back with a photograph, a close-up of Rico. His head had been shaved and his face was incredibly gaunt, like he’d been starved, and he looked so incredibly scared. Theresa felt the blood drain from her face and limbs as the woman began to speak in a warm and loving voice about Rico – how he was still alive and how she had made arrangements for Theresa to speak to him tonight. Then the Clouzot woman started in on the rules. Don’t scream. Don’t run or fight. Don’t try to call the police. Do anything stupid and Rico would vanish for ever.
Theresa opened her mouth, the questions forming on her lips. She couldn’t get the words out, overcome with the same overwhelming dread that had filled her the night she’d discovered Rico missing from his bed, the slit x in the window screen; with the same awful sense of her existence having been split in two – her former, normal life with her son and now her new life, this purgatory filled with the constant moment-to-moment terror of wondering where her son was, what had happened to him. And now here was this woman saying that Rico was alive, that arrangements had been made for her to talk to him. Tonight. When Theresa managed to speak, all she could produce was a low, guttural cry.
The Clouzot woman tucked the photograph in her jacket pocket and in that same calm and soothing voice told Theresa to relax. Everything would be fine. There was no reason to be afraid. Dr Herrera was waiting for them upstairs, in the master bedroom. The three of them would talk this out.
Theresa had a vague recollection of moving up the stairs, holding on to the banister for support in case her legs gave out. When she entered her bedroom and saw what had happened to her husband, she remembered the rules and managed to choke her scream back. She stumbled out of the bedroom, as Marie Clouzot said a phone had been placed on Rico’s bed. He would be calling at any moment.
And he did. Four long and nightmarish years had passed, and Theresa’s unwavering faith that Rico was still alive had just been confirmed with a single phone call. Her son was alive, he was being held somewhere, maybe even close by. He was scared and possibly in pain but he was alive.
Theresa gripped the edge of Rico’s lopsided desk to keep from falling. The room swam in her vision until her gaze settled on the disposable cell phone lying on the floor.
Don’t let them take me back there, Rico had said. I can’t take it any more.
Marie Clouzot slid her gloved hands inside her jacket pockets. ‘I know all of this is an incredible shock for you. Just keeping breathing, nice and slow deep breaths, or you’ll pass out. Yes, like that … Good.’ Her voice was patient and calm and so terribly quiet.
‘We’re going to go back to the bedroom now, Mrs Herrera. Just remember the rules. No screaming. Don’t run or, say, try to hurt me so you can call the police. If you do, I’ll have to use this.’ The woman held up a Taser. A click of a button and an electric arch of light crackled and jumped between two prongs. ‘While you’re lying disabled on the floor, I’ll take my leave, and Rico will disappear down the rabbit hole again, only this time we’ll have to kill him.’
We’ll kill him. How many people were involved in this? Theresa’s mind was on fire, scrambling to think. But she couldn’t, she couldn’t hold it together any more. She broke down, wailing.
‘I don’t want to kill him, Mrs Herrera. I really don’t. Your son has suffered enough. If you want him to live, we need to go back to your bedroom.’
‘Why? Why are you doing this?’
‘This is a conversation we need to have in front of your husband.’
‘Please,’ Theresa said, wiping at her face. ‘Please, I’m begging you, whatever this is about – if it’s money you want, I can –’
‘We need to go back to your bedroom. I’ll be right by your side.’ The Clouzot woman offered her a hand.
Theresa didn’t take it. ‘I want to talk to Rico again. I want to –’
‘Do you want me to bring you to your son?’
‘Yes. Yes, please, I’ll do anything just don’t … hurt him any more.’
The Clouzot woman put a hand on Theresa’s shoulder, the tender, gentle way a woman would – It’s okay, honey, everything’s going to be okay.
‘I won’t hurt him,’ Marie Clouzot said. ‘Now let’s go back to your bedroom and talk to your husband.’
Theresa didn’t move. A dim voice whispered that she was in shock. Maybe she was. She hadn’t so much as flinched when the hand touched her, and she didn’t fight back when the Clouzot woman lifted her to her feet. Theresa felt the woman gently wrap an arm around her. The next thing she knew she was being ushered forward, her legs numb and hollow.
‘That’s it,’ Marie Clouzot said. ‘One step at a time.’
Theresa stared at the brightly lit hall. It seemed as long as a mile, and incredulously she thought: This is what a condemned prisoner must feel like when he’s being escorted to the electric chair.
Her legs gave out as she stepped inside the bedroom. She would have fallen had the Clouzot woman not been clutching her arm.
‘It’s okay,’ the Clouzot woman said. ‘I know you’re scared. Think about Rico – how excited he’ll be to see you.’
The lamps on both nightstands had been turned on, giving the room an intimate setting. The shades and curtains were still drawn. Her husband was still dressed in sweatpants and his ratty old grey Yale T-shirt; he still lay spread-eagled on top of the white ruffled coverlet, his wrists tied to the copper-plated headboard and his ankles to the bedposts. He couldn’t speak; a strip of duct-tape was fastened across his mouth. He mumbled behind it, glaring at her, his hazel eyes wide with terror.
‘Just a few more steps,’ Marie Clouzot said. ‘That’s it, you’re doing great.’
The left side of Barry’s face was swollen. Had the Clouzot woman hit him, or had it been her partner? At five foot eight, Barry wasn’t a big man. She could have easily dragged him up here by herself, Theresa thought dimly. Sweat had soaked through Barry’s T-shirt and matted what little remained of his greying hair. She saw where the rope had cut his skin. Bright drops of blood dotted the white pillowcases. This morning’s bandage was still on his reedy and nearly hairless forearm. She had gone with him to the dermatologist’s office. A mole had changed colour. The doctor had taken a biopsy, and Barry had convinced himself that he had stage-four melanoma.
‘Almost there,’ Marie Clouzot said, edging Theresa closer to the side of the bed.
Seeing the bandage made what was happening very real somehow, as did the item that had been left on the nightstand: the heavy cook’s knife taken from the kitchen’s butcher block, the German Wusthof with the fourteen-inch blade she used to carve the holiday turkeys and hams. It was within arm’s reach.
Pick it up, that pragmatic voice screamed at her. Pick it up and kill her.
No.
You can do it, Terry. You have to do it.
I can’t. They’ll kill Rico.
The opportunity had passed. The Clouzot woman had let go of her grip and moved away. Theresa rested her thighs against the edge of the bed to keep from falling, her heart beating so fast she wondered if it was going to explode inside her chest.
Pretend to pass out, that pragmatic voice said.
She’ll wait, Theresa answered. Either that or she’ll hit me with the Taser and just walk out.
You don’t know that. Goddamnit, Terry, you have to try something.
Marie Clouzot, standing at the foot of the bed, reached into her handbag and came back with a small digital camcorder, one of those tiny Flip Video models.
‘Whenever you’re ready, Mrs Herrera.’
‘Ready?’ Theresa repeated.
‘For your confession,’ Marie Clouzot said. ‘I want you to tell your husband what you did.’
What I did? What is she talking about?
‘Don’t be shy, Mrs Herrera. You might not remember me, but I’m absolutely, positively sure you remember your former life in Philadelphia.’
Theresa felt frozen in place. A new fear bloomed in her stomach, and for a moment it replaced her thoughts of Rico and what was happening – unfolding – right now inside her bedroom.
‘Yes,’ the Clouzot woman said, and smiled – a bright and joyous Christmas-morning smile. ‘You remember now, don’t you?’
Theresa swallowed. She didn’t know what to say and she had to say something.
‘About … that. I didn’t know what –’
‘Don’t tell me, Mrs Herrera, tell your husband – and look at him when you speak. If you don’t, Rico goes bye-bye.’
The Clouzot woman brought up the video camera. Theresa forced her attention on to Barry. He gawked up at her from the bed, confused and frightened.
Theresa had been married to him for nineteen years, and not once during that time had she ever considered telling him about Philadelphia. The woman who had been born and lived in the Northeast – that person was dead and buried. Speaking about it to anyone, for any reason, wasn’t allowed. Theresa had told no one, not even Ali Karim. He could turn over every rock on the planet, and there was no way he would never find out who she really was.
And yet Marie Clouzot knew. She knew.
How? How did she find out?
‘Tell your husband who you are, and what you did,’ Marie Clouzot said. Her left hand held the camera steady as her right hand dipped into her coat pocket and came back with a compact 9-mm. ‘I won’t ask you again.’
Theresa began to talk – haltingly at first, and then her words gathered steam. Every word she spoke felt like another hot coal stockpiled in her stomach. She got past it by thinking of Rico – Rico alive and waiting for her.
When she finished, Theresa felt a hollow beating inside her chest. She still didn’t know who Marie Clouzot was, but she had an idea.
‘Is there anything else you’d like to add, Mrs Herrera?’
‘Yes.’ Theresa’s voice sounded far away, and strained. She cleared her throat and, steeling herself, spoke louder. ‘I want to apologize to you. As for what … happened, I didn’t –’
‘You have one minute to make your decision.’
Theresa blinked, confused. ‘Decision?’
‘I want you to pick up that kitchen knife and cut your husband’s throat.’
Theresa said nothing. She had nothing to say. That pragmatic voice had nothing to say. Her mind felt as vacant as an abandoned house.
Marie Clouzot had to raise her voice over Barry’s muffled screams. ‘Kill your husband, and I’ll bring you to your son. If you don’t kill your husband, I’ll kill you, and then I’ll leave and kill your son. Are you familiar with slow slicing?’
Theresa didn’t hear the question, still in shock by what the woman had said: Cut your husband’s throat.
‘Slow slicing is a form of execution developed by the Chinese,’ the Clouzot woman said, reaching into her pocket. ‘You use a knife to cut away portions of the body over a long period of time. It’s death by a thousand cuts.’
‘I … I can’t …’
‘Can’t what, Mrs Herrera?’
‘I can’t go through with this.’
The Clouzot woman placed the wrinkled snapshot of Rico on Barry’s stomach.
‘You have fifty-three seconds left to make your decision, Mrs Herrera.’
‘I want to help you,’ Theresa said. ‘Please, let me help you.’
‘Forty-nine seconds.’
Barry was screaming, thrashing.
‘We can come to some sort of … accommodation,’ Theresa said. ‘Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about how I can help –’
‘Forty-three seconds.’
Theresa saw her son’s frightened gaze staring up from the photograph lying on Barry’s stomach, and she saw her son staring at her from the photographs on the walls and bureau – Rico as a baby and as a toddler, each picture showing a boy with a round, brown face and a mop of unruly black hair; a gap-toothed smile and, along the right temple, a strawberry-coloured birthmark the size of a dime.
‘Thirty-nine seconds, Mrs Herrera.’
She stared at the photograph on Barry’s stomach. Rico was alive. Her son’s life depended on her next decision – a horribly cruel, life-altering decision.
Was her husband’s life worth it?
Don’t let them take me back there, Rico had said.
‘Thirty-seven seconds.’
I can’t take it any more. Please, Mom. Please help me.
Theresa grabbed the heavy cook’s knife.
Barry screamed from behind the tape. He screamed and thrashed, the rope cutting deeper into his skin. Blood trickled down his wrists.
‘You have twenty-two seconds left.’
God forgive me, Theresa thought, turning the knife in her hands, just as a pair of car headlights flashed across the drawn blinds.
Malcolm Fletcher parked the Audi at the bottom of the long driveway leading up to an impressive brick-faced Colonial, the home of Dr Bernard Herrera and his wife, Theresa. It was a few minutes past seven, and a light snow had started to fall.
The lights in one of the upstairs rooms winked off. The other windows blazed with light, but he couldn’t see inside. The blinds on the windows facing the street had been drawn.
He wondered why. There was no house across the road. Each home in this upscale neighbourhood here in Applewood, Colorado, had been set up on a good amount of acreage, far apart from one another to give the owners a great deal of privacy. Fletcher killed the engine and picked up the leather Dopp kit from the passenger seat.
While he felt reasonably confident that neither Dr Herrera nor his wife would recognize him, Fletcher still needed to exercise caution. With Bin Laden dead, Fletcher had shot to the top slot as the nation’s Most Wanted Fugitive – and the most expensive. The reward for his capture was three million dollars.
Fletcher had not undergone any cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance. Instead, he relied on the tradecraft he’d learned while employed as a federal agent. From the Dopp kit he removed a plastic case holding a pair of blue-tinted contact lenses. Because he was allergic to the materials used to manufacture lenses, he always put them in at the last minute. Then he put on a pair of glasses with tortoiseshell frames.
He checked his appearance in the rearview mirror. His beard was neatly trimmed and his black hair, thick and long, had grown out over the ears. For the past five months he had been living in Key West under one of his aliases and his skin was brown from the sun. With his tan, stylish glasses and coloured contacts, he bore no resemblance to his fugitive photos.
He was, however, the spitting image of the New York licence and passport photographs he carried for Richard Munchel, a self-employed computer-security consultant who occasionally performed work for the global security company Karim Enterprises. Ali Karim had contacted him using the anonymous and encrypted email system they had set up.
Karim had recently agreed to look into the abduction of a ten-year-old boy from Colorado. Four years had passed with no developments reported by the police, and the mother believed her son was still alive. Karim thought that Fletcher’s prior experience as a profiler for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit might possibly uncover a new investigative thread to explore, an overlooked angle or piece of evidence. Fletcher agreed, and Karim scanned and then emailed the police reports. Karim, an old friend and trusted ally, had not only provided him with safe harbour on many occasions over the years; he was also one of a handful of people who knew the truth behind Fletcher’s fugitive status.
Years ago, while employed as a federal agent, Fletcher had uncovered a classified ‘black book’ research project involving the Behavioral Analysis Unit. While conducting his own covert investigation, three men were dispatched to his home to make him and the evidence disappear. Fletcher escaped with his life but not the evidence; the FBI had confiscated it from his storage facility. The research project was quickly dismantled, the hospitals shut down, every scrap of paper and piece of evidence collected and destroyed. The FBI’s bureaucratic powers, having decided he was a liability, fabricated a story for the press: Malcolm Fletcher had attacked and killed three federal agents who had been sent to his home to arrest him in connection with the murders of several serial killers – cases he had worked on while employed as a profiler.
Fletcher climbed out of the car, pleased to be wearing a suit after these longs months spent under the hot Florida sun. He was a veteran of private schools, where ties and jackets were required, and then later, as a federal agent, he had grown accustomed to good suits and shoes. They were a part of his true identity, the last vestiges of the life he had led before becoming a wanted man.
His attention turned to the area between the right side of the house and the detached two-car garage – the place where someone had used an outside ladder to climb up to the first-floor window and abduct Rico Herrera from his bed. The intruder had not left behind any fingerprints or trace evidence, but police had recovered a man’s size-nine trainer impression from the dirt.
Fletcher shut the car door and moved up the driveway.
When the Clouzot woman saw the headlights flash across the closed blinds, she shut off the bedroom lights. Theresa didn’t put up a fight when the woman grabbed her arm and, with a surprising strength, marched her swiftly across the room to the windows facing the street.
Theresa was standing there now, with her face mashed against the window’s crown moulding and the gun’s muzzle digging into her left temple, Clouzot behind her. As instructed, Theresa had pulled back the side of the wooden blinds just enough to allow Clouzot to see the driveway.
Theresa could see too. The man who stepped out of the black Audi had long, dark hair and wore a dark overcoat. This has to be the man Ali Karim said would be coming by tonight to talk about Rico, she thought. The man experienced in abduction cases.
Clouzot leaned in closer. ‘Who is he, and what is he doing here?’
So Barry hadn’t told her about the investigator – or Ali Karim.
Don’t tell her, that pragmatic voice said. If you do – if you tell her this man is an investigator, that he’s here because you hired someone to look into Rico’s case – she might panic and decide to kill you.
Theresa felt Rico watching her from the photographs.
I can’t take it any more. Please, Mom. Please help me.
The doorbell rang.
‘He’s an investigator,’ Theresa said. ‘I don’t know his name.’
‘Police? FBI?’
‘I don’t know. He works for someone else, a man named Ali Karim. Karim owns a security company in New York. Manhattan. I hired him to look into what happened to my son.’
‘Why? What did you find?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You found something, some piece of evidence.’ Clouzot’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but the calm veneer was gone. The woman was scared. ‘Tell me.’
‘Nothing. I just –’
‘Just what?’
‘I … I couldn’t live with it any more, not knowing what happened to him. To Rico.’
‘Did you tell this Karim person your real name?’
‘No.’
‘What you did back in Philadelphia?’
The doorbell rang again.
‘No,’ Theresa said. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Lie to me and your son dies.’
‘I’m telling you the truth. I –’ Theresa cut herself off when she felt the gun muzzle dig deeper into her head.
‘Yell at me again,’ Clouzot said, ‘and I’ll kill you.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Clouzot said nothing. Theresa blinked the sweat from her eyes. The wooden blinds rattled in her trembling hand.
A moment later she saw the man move away from the front door. Instead of heading to his car, he walked to the top of the driveway and peered inside one of the garage’s bay windows.
Theresa felt the woman’s rapid breathing against her nape, heard the hitch in her throat when the man turned and made his way back to the house.
‘Let go of the blind,’ Clouzot said.
Theresa did. Clouzot released her grip and backed away. Theresa didn’t dare move.
Two beeps as the woman pressed the keys for a pre-programmed number on her cell and then Clouzot spoke into the phone: ‘If you don’t hear from me within the next five minutes, take Rico away and kill him.’
Fletcher couldn’t see inside the house. The blinds on the nearby windows had been drawn, and the front door, made of solid mahogany, contained no small perimeter windows.
No matter. Both the doctor and his wife were home. Both vehicles were parked in the garage. He rang the doorbell again, about to follow it with repeated knocking, when the heavy door cracked open.
When Theresa saw the man standing on her doorstep, she immediately wanted to scream for help – scream as she threw the door wide open and pointed at the sick bitch Clouzot, who was pressed up against the wall only a few feet away, listening. The owner of the black Audi was at least six foot five and as broad-shouldered as a timber beam – the kind of strong and powerful man she imagined could lift a small car or run through a wall without so much as suffering a single scratch.
‘Mrs Herrera?’ the man asked. He had a foreign accent – British, maybe Australian.
‘I’m Theresa Herrera.’
He eyed her suspiciously, and then she remembered how she looked – face and clothes drenched with sweat, hands and limbs trembling.
‘I’ve got that rotten stomach flu that’s going around,’ she said. ‘I take it that was you who rang the doorbell a moment ago.’
The man nodded. ‘Ali Karim sent me.’
From the corner of her eye Theresa saw Clouzot’s handgun. It was aimed at her, and there was no doubt in Theresa’s mind the woman would use it.
If you don’t hear from me within the next five minutes, Marie Clouzot had told her partner, take Rico away and kill him.
Theresa pressed her face closer to the door’s opening and said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer. When I’m not lying in bed I’m lying on the bathroom floor. I’m afraid now isn’t a good time.’
‘May I speak to your husband?’
‘He’s not here.’ She remembered he had looked inside the garage and seen both cars. She said, ‘He’s gone out for the evening with a friend and won’t be back until late, I’m afraid.’
The man took off his glasses, the lenses wet with melting snow. He had bright blue eyes.
‘My husband,’ Theresa said, the words drowning in her throat. She swallowed and started again. ‘My husband and I … we’ve decided not to retain Mr Karim’s services.’
The man showed no reaction. He glanced past her, inside the foyer. For a moment she thought he was going to push the door open and rush in.
Instead, he said, ‘May I ask what changed your mind?’
‘Finances.’
The man snapped his attention back to her.
‘We simply couldn’t afford Mr Karim’s fee,’ she said. ‘The bank denied us a second mortgage – they called only a couple of hours ago. I’m sorry you came all the way out here. Please tell Mr Karim I’ll gladly reimburse him for any expenses he’s incurred.’
‘There’s no need.’ The man dipped a hand inside his coat, staring at her with an unsettling intensity. It had a hypnotic quality, as though he had somehow entered her head and was listening to her true thoughts.
Then, incredibly, as if he knew what was happening inside her house, his hand came back with a 9-mm handgun.
Theresa stared at it with equal measures of fear and relief. Her expression was hidden from Clouzot. There was no way the woman could see her face – or the man’s handgun.
In an act of bravery – Please, God, please let this work – Theresa looked sideways, to the corner where the Clouzot woman was hiding. She held her gaze there for a moment as she said, ‘Again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.’
‘Have a good night, Mrs Herrera. I hope you feel better.’
The man reached forward, about to grab her or maybe to push the door inward, when the gunshot rang out.
Fletcher had caught the palpable relief on Theresa Herrera’s face when he removed his sidearm – a SIG SAUER P226, the same reliable and powerful 9-mm weapon used by the Navy’s SEAL Team Six. She was staring at it as he placed one foot on the threshold, about to throw the door open, grab the Herrera woman and pull her out when the gunshot erupted from inside the house.
Part of Theresa Herrera’s head disappeared, and she slumped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The front door swung inward. Inside the foyer of dim light and crouching behind the door was an older woman dressed in a fur coat. He caught a glimpse of her face, the odd, horse-like grin looking at him from across a 9-mm handgun.
The first shot, fired from less than a foot away, hit him dead centre in the chest.
Fletcher staggered backwards from the sudden impact. He spun awkwardly, tumbling back against the wrought-iron railing. The woman fired again. The round hit him in the abdomen, and he slipped on the snowcovered landing and tumbled down the short set of brick steps.
Fletcher landed face first against the walkway. He immediately rolled on to his side, hissing back the pain, snow stinging his face.
The woman fired again. The shot kicked up a clump of dirt and dead grass dangerously close to his head. Fletcher moved to his back and brought up his weapon, about to fire when the shooter threw the front door shut.
Theresa Herrera’s limp arm hung over the threshold. The door hit it and bounced back. Fletcher caught a flash of the dark fur coat retreating down the foyer.
Fletcher staggered to his feet. The lightweight ceramic armour plating woven inside the bulletproof vest had prevented the two rounds from piercing his body, but the impact had cracked at least one rib, sending his muscles into spasms.
The bullet had removed most of Theresa Herrera’s head, killing her instantly.
A spent shell caught his attention. Well studied in ballistics, he immediately registered what it was.
A door slammed open from the back of the house. Struggling to breathe, the cold air sharp with the odour of cordite, he stumbled across the front lawn towards the left side of the house – a task made more difficult in his shoes, as they offered no traction in the snow.
One shot. All he needed was one clear shot to take the woman down.
Fletcher stuck close to the side of the house. When it ended, he turned the corner, bringing up his SIG.
The garden, wide and long, was partially lit by the light shining through the back windows. A back door hung open; it led to a deck of pressure-treated wood. Through the falling snow he saw a clear set of footprints near the deck’s bottom step. He followed them across the garden until they vanished inside a black forest of tall pines. In the far distance and glowing like eyes in the night were the windows of a half-dozen homes.
He saw no sign of the woman. Had no idea if she was running or hiding somewhere, waiting for him.
Fletcher might have given pursuit if she didn’t already have a good lead on him. In his current physical condition, there was no way he could bridge the gap.
A more practical and urgent consideration, however, made him immediately turn and move back to the front: the police. One or more nearby neighbours had no doubt heard the multiple gunshots and called 911.
The front door hung wide open. Fletcher clutched the railing as he moved up the front steps. Snow blew inside the house, coating the foyer and Theresa Herrera’s small, still body in a fine layer of white. She lay face down in a twisted heap on the brown tile. Blood had pooled around her and dripped over the threshold, staining the snow a bright red.
Fletcher dropped to his knees, his ribs screaming in protest, and looked at the entry wound. It was tattooed with black powder. The size of the wound and amount of gunpowder confirmed the gun had been fired from a close distance – a few feet away from the door, to his right. The shooter had stood there, but she couldn’t have seen him – couldn’t have seen him drawing his weapon. There were no windows installed around the door, no nearby windows that looked on to the front landing. So why had she suddenly panicked and shot Theresa?
Wary of destroying potential latent fingerprints, he used a pen to pick up the casing from the floor. Fletcher dropped it inside one of the small evidence bags he kept tucked inside his back pocket, sealing it shut on his way back to the car.
Fletcher backed up and drove away, the car tyres slipping and skidding on the snow until they found purchase. Everywhere he looked he saw home windows bright with light. He caught more than one face pressed against the glass, examining the street for the source of the gunshots. They couldn’t see him; he was hidden behind the Audi’s tinted windows.
But they could see his car.
During his early years as a fugitive, Fletcher had invested his considerable savings in the stock market. Through careful management, he had amassed a small fortune, which had allowed him to purchase a number of safe houses under the names of various well-crafted identities and corporations. The closest home was in Sturgis, South Dakota – a small ranch house with a private garage holding a Honda Accord.
The townhouse in Chicago, however, had a custom-made Jaguar stored in the small garage. Armoured and bulletproof, the car contained other useful features that would be beneficial during the course of his investigation.
Fletcher cracked open the windows and listened to the cold night.
Two minutes passed with no sirens.
Ten minutes passed and he saw no police cruisers.
The city snowploughs, however, were out in full force, busy clearing the roads. Their numbers suggested a major snowstorm was about to descend upon central Colorado.
It was only when he reached the highway that he allowed himself to turn his attention inward to examine what had happened at the Herrera home.
Fletcher started at the beginning, seeing each frame with remarkable clarity, as though it had been filmed. He ran the movie forward and backward, sometimes pausing to study a particular frame.
He kept wondering if his actions – or lack thereof – had contributed to Theresa Herrera’s death.
It was clear the moment the petite woman cracked opened the door that something was wrong. The fringe of her short blonde hair was matted across her damp forehead. Her face was pale, her bloodshot eyes wide with terror. She had dark rings of sweat underneath the arms and collar of her long-sleeved grey T-shirt. I’ve got that rotten stomach flu that’s going around, she’d told him.
A logical explanation, and one he might have believed if she hadn’t told him the reason why she and her husband had decided to forgo Ali Karim’s investigative services at the last minute: Finances. We simply couldn’t afford Mr Karim’s fee.
Karim, Fletcher knew, hadn’t charged the Herrera family for his services. He didn’t charge anyone.
Karim, a former CIA operative, had left the Agency at a relatively young age. Instead of entering the lucrative private sector, he established his own security company in Midtown Manhattan. Having recently divorced, and with his ex-wife taking their only child, their son, Jason, back to live in her family home in London, Karim put his time and energy into his business.
In less than a decade, he had opened additional offices in several major US cities. Then, with the explosive growth of the Internet during the nineties, Karim’s careful and well-timed investments had allowed him to expand his business and purchase several private forensic companies in the United States and abroad. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, Ali Karim was the owner of a global security empire – and one of the nation’s richest men. Karim devoted his considerable wealth, talents and resources to providing pro bono investigative services for the victims of crime.
When Theresa Herrera said she couldn’t afford Karim’s fee, Fletcher thought the woman was trying to warn him – about what, he had no idea. He had drawn his weapon, wanting to be prepared, and he saw her relief before she looked sideways and held her gaze where the shooter was hiding, watching and listening. He was about to grab Theresa Herrera and take her to the safety of his car when the woman in the fur coat fired.
Still, he wondered if there was something he could have done to change the outcome. If he had acted immediately, instead of using the time to remove his sidearm, it was possible that … Useless, childish thinking. Theresa Herrera was dead.
Fletcher unbuttoned his shirt. The adrenalin had abated, leaving in its wake a growing pain in his chest and abdomen. He slipped a hand inside his shirt and undid the vest’s straps to relieve the pressure.
He gently pressed on his breastbone. Daggers of pain erupted from the left side of his chest; he had cracked at least two ribs.
While breathing was painful, he didn’t feel short of breath, dizzy, lethargic – all promising signs that he hadn’t suffered a flail chest, a life-threatening medical condition that occurred when part of the rib cage detached from the chest wall.
The next part would be difficult, but he had to do it.
Fletcher took in a slow, deep breath. Sparks of pain exploded through his brain and burned a bright white across his vision, but he fought his way through it. Having suffered such injuries in the past, he knew the importance of taking in the deepest breath possible in order to prevent pneumonia or a partial collapse of lung tissue known as atelectasis.
He took another deep breath and then repeated it again. Again. When he finished, he was flushed, drenched in sweat.
Fletcher took out his smartphone and dialled Karim’s private number. A small pause followed as the encryption software scrambled the call, and then Karim’s deep and smoky voice erupted on the other end of the line.
‘Well, that was bloody quick. I take it you found something good.’
Fletcher managed to speak clearly over the pain. ‘Theresa Herrera’s dead,’ he said, and walked Karim step by step through everything that had happened.
A long silence followed. In his mind’s eye Fletcher pictured Karim, a short, round man of Pakistani descent, seated behind the immense glass desk in his private office, leaning back in his chair and smoking one of his foul Italian cigarettes.
‘Do you need a doctor?’ Karim asked. ‘I can get you one, someone discreet.’
‘No. I know how to treat this.’
‘Do you always wear a bulletproof vest when visiting the home of a grieving family?’
‘My lifestyle demands that I live in a constant state of paranoia, Ali. I have to be prepared for any eventuality.’
‘What about the husband?’
‘I saw no signs of him, but I found two cars in the garage.’
‘And the woman who shot you?’
‘Just a glimpse,’ Fletcher said. ‘She’s Caucasian, late fifties to early sixties. Black hair pulled back across the scalp. I suspect she’s had a facelift.’
‘Would you recognize her if you saw her again?’
Fletcher, recalling the woman’s distinctive-looking smile, said, ‘Absolutely.’
On the other end of the line Fletcher heard the flick of a lighter. A pause as Karim drew on the cigarette, and then he said, ‘The police will go through Theresa Herrera’s phone records and see my number. Forgive me for asking this, but did you leave behind any evidence?’
‘No. I wore gloves the entire time.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘Still, you need to do something about your car. Someone might have seen it.’
‘I plan on switching it when I reach Chicago.’
‘I hope you’re not planning on driving there right now. I was watching the Weather Channel in preparation for tomorrow morning’s flight. The storm has changed; Colorado is about to get slammed with at least two feet. Best to play it safe and wait it out. You can’t afford to get stuck, or in an accident.’
Karim was right. Visibility was poor; Fletcher could barely see the highway.
‘It goes without saying that I’d like your assistance on this, Malcolm. That being said, I’ve put you in an odd and uncomfortable situation. If you need to disappear, I understand.’