The Killing House
Page 1
CHRIS MOONEY
The Killing House
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
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
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE KILLING HOUSE
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
I
The Resurrection Men
1
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.
Theres
a 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.
2
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 po
ssibly 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.’