The Killing House

by Chris Mooney

  The elevator doors opened to a long hall of cream-coloured walls and a hardwood floor covered by a Turkish rug. Fletcher walked across it, passing by a side table holding stacks of mail and a bouquet of orchids arranged in a vase, and stepped into an anteroom designed to resemble an old English library. The tall space held several leather armchairs and sofas, a pair of antique secretarial desks and folio stands. The bookcases, made of a deep mahogany, stretched from floor to ceiling, the shelves packed with rare first editions.

  The elegant room usually smelled of old wood and aged paper. This morning, the pleasant aromas had been spoiled by Karim’s cigarette smoke. It drifted in through the cracked-open door to the man’s office, a Spartan, oval-shaped room of bare white walls and windows offering a sweeping view of Central Park. Karim, dressed in another one of his threadbare flannel shirts, sat behind a bank of flat-screen monitors displayed on a multilevel glass desk.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said in a dry, tired voice. ‘Would you like coffee? There’s an urn in the waiting room, along with some pastries and fruit.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Do you want to rest for a bit or do you want to get right to it?’

  ‘Right to it.’ Fletcher placed the evidence bag on the desk and said, ‘The drinking glass from the closet.’

  ‘I’ll have my lab process it for fingerprints this morning, see if we can get a name to match this woman’s face. Speaking of which, that wildcat cartridge you found? No fingerprints. Any other presents for me?’

  ‘I also downloaded data from Corrigan’s phone, but I haven’t had time to examine it.’

  Fletcher draped his coat over the back of the chair set up in front of the desk and settled into his seat.

  ‘Let’s start with my Baltimore contact,’ Karim said. ‘I told him I came across information from a credible source that the building you found might contain missing children, and he agreed to take a look.

  ‘The building was empty. No sign of the Lincoln or any other vehicles. There was, however, an underground garage. He found hoses and told me the floors and walls were damp. He also said the garage reeked of bleach. No blood – at least none that was visible. He can’t call in forensics until he gets more “concrete” information from me.’

  Karim inhaled deeply from his cigarette. ‘I’ve got him wiggling on a fishhook. He thinks I’m sitting on something big, asked to speak to my source. He’s not going to wait for me. He’ll start sniffing around on his own.’

  ‘Who owns the building?’

  ‘Another limited liability company,’ Karim said. ‘This one is called Crowley Enterprises. David Crowley is listed as the LLC’s owner, and the address listed on the documents? Belongs to an undeveloped strip of land in Oregon.’

  ‘And the Baltimore plates I gave you?’

  ‘Both the Lincoln and the Lexus belong to ABC Property Management.’

  ‘The same LLC that owns the house in Dickeyville.’

  ‘Correct. So now we have two LLCs with phoney addresses: ABC Property Management and the one that owns these buildings you found, Crowley Enterprises. Two different lawyers filed the papers – one in Baltimore, the other in San Diego. Going after them is a waste of time – client confidentially and all that. I could use my own lawyers to press them, but the only thing we’d end up with is a physical description of our lady friend – and that’s if we’re lucky. Besides, I doubt she used her real name.’

  ‘I think she has a male partner,’ Fletcher said. ‘In addition to the king bed, I found an assortment of men’s clothing in the drawers. Someone lives with her.’

  ‘So we’re looking at a couple who kill together and sleep together.’ Karim stifled a yawn. ‘How romantic.’

  ‘And we know they employ at least two people – Jenner and his companion, Marcus. Have you spoken with Dr Sin?’

  Karim nodded. ‘She told me about the missing kidney. What do you think that’s –’ He cut himself off, looked at Fletcher sharply. ‘I didn’t divulge the doctor’s name to you, and I gave her explicit instructions not to –’

  ‘She didn’t tell me,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘Did Boyd tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how do you know her name?’

  ‘I recognized her perfume.’

  ‘Her perfume,’ Karim repeated.

  ‘You asked for my assistance with her case. The home invasion that killed her –’

  ‘Right, right. I completely forgot you handled that matter.’

  ‘The night I went through her home I found two bottles of Ce Que Femme Veut in the bathroom vanity,’ Fletcher said. ‘It’s quite rare. Last manufactured in 1965.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘The night I entered her home? Thursday, 19 October 1994.’

  ‘Your memory is goddamn remarkable.’

  Fletcher said nothing.

  ‘There’s a name for your kind of memory, did you know that?’ Karim said. ‘It’s called “superior autobiographical memory”. A professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine, coined the term. It’s very rare, this type of memory. This professor has found only a handful of people who possess this unique intellectual gift. He gave each person he tested a random date and they could go back in time and recall everything they experienced on that day – what meals they ate, the people they spoke to and the content of their conversations. What they read and the television programmes they watched. These people can remember almost every single detail of their lives going back years, the way an ordinary person remembers what happened yesterday, if he or she can remember it at all.’

  Fletcher did not share Karim’s wide-eyed enthusiasm. He had been born with this type of instant recall. For as long as he could remember, he could pick a date at random, travel back in time and relive any memory as though he were experiencing it in real-time. He remembered everything and forgot nothing.

  ‘Were you able to uncover any information on Nathan Santiago?’

  ‘Yes, I have the information right here.’ Karim started to root through various loose sheets and pads of paper. ‘I didn’t run Santiago’s prints yet, thank God. That would have set off a firestorm of questions. Here they are.’

  Karim handed him sheets of paper holding printed aged-enhanced photographs of Nathan Santiago. In the photos, the young man had black hair worn in a variety of styles, but the face was identical.

  ‘That’s him,’ Fletcher said, placing the sheets on the corner of the desk. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nathan Santiago left his three-decker tenement home in downtown Lynn, Massachusetts, to visit a friend who lived four blocks away. The boy vanished into thin air, never to be seen or heard of again – until now.’

  ‘Boy?’

  ‘Teenager,’ Karim said. ‘He was seventeen when he disappeared, which would make him twenty-five today.’

  ‘He’s been missing for eight years?’

  Karim nodded sombrely. ‘There’s more,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette in a small and crudely shaped clay ashtray created by a child’s hand. Jason Karim, Fletcher knew, had made that for his father.

  ‘Nathan Santiago’s mother?’ Karim said. ‘She vanished too.’

  47

  Karim reached across the desk and handed Fletcher a thick sheet of paper. It was a colour picture of a round-faced, middle-aged woman with light brown skin and shoulder-length black hair. Her nose was crooked. Fletcher suspected it had been broken one too many times by a husband or boyfriend. The haunted look in her eyes brought to mind Dr Sin, the way the doctor had stared into space, wondering what she had done wrong for such horror to have entered her life.

  ‘Louisa Santiago was a single mother and a nurse,’ Karim said. ‘She left her job at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, and that’s the last anyone saw of her. The police found her Honda Civic in Lynn, parked in the lot for the subway stop for Wonderland Station. Husband’s not in the picture, as far as I can tell. I won’t know anything further until I ge
t copies of the police reports.’

  Fletcher continued to stare at the photograph as his attention turned inward, his mind’s eye focusing on the eleven garment bags hanging inside the closet. He could recall each item of clothing, the rips and tears, the dried spots of blood. He saw himself turning to the garment bags hanging on the right-hand side – here it was, the second to last bag holding a green hospital smock and matching green scrubs. Sitting below it was a pair of white clogs with scuffed and worn edges.

  He told Karim.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘They were the only hospital clothes inside the closet,’ Fletcher said. ‘Did Louisa Santiago disappear before or after her son?’

  ‘After. Nathan Santiago was abducted on the evening of 5 November 2004. The mother, Louisa, vanished four years later, the day before Thanksgiving.’

  Fletcher thought back to the research he had conducted inside his Colorado motel room – the names of the eight families who had a child disappear, followed months or years later by a parent. Eight families, and the closet contained eleven garment bags.

  ‘The list of the families I gave you in Chicago,’ Fletcher said. ‘I didn’t include single parents in my preliminary search.’

  ‘I know, which is why I asked M to expand her search.’

  His office phone rang. Karim glanced at the caller-ID screen and with a grin said, ‘Speak of the devil.’

  He answered the call. Karim didn’t speak for the first few minutes. He ended the conversation asking M to come straightaway to the house to deliver an evidence bag to the lab.

  Karim hung up and said, ‘M looked into the medical records of the missing parents on your list. You’ll be pleased to know that, in addition to Theresa Herrera, these parents don’t have their medical records stored on the Medical Information Bureau’s database.’

  Karim lit a fresh cigarette with a worn, gold-plated lighter. ‘So now we have a connection between Theresa Herrera, Louisa Santiago and the eight married couples on your list. It appears your initial theory was correct – that our lady friend in the fur coat was there to abduct Theresa Herrera.’

  Karim leaned back in his seat with a heavy sigh. ‘Rico Herrera,’ he said. ‘Do you think he could still be alive?’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Nathan Santiago – the sooner, the better. Dr Sin told me she’s bringing him to Manhattan.’

  ‘He’ll arrive at Sloan-Kettering between seven and eight this morning. M has the documentation ready for Santiago – driver’s licence under another name, corresponding medical insurance, et cetera. That way we can keep Santiago safe and hidden. She has a cover story already worked out. I’ve managed to procure a doctor who does emergency rounds. This person will be in place when Boyd admits Santiago.’

  Fletcher nodded, well aware of Karim’s Rolodex of the walking wounded – prior victims of violence he had assisted, people who were all too willing to perform some favour or service to help out a fellow innocent.

  ‘All the bases are covered,’ Karim said. ‘We haven’t discussed Santiago’s missing kidney. What do you think that’s about?’

  ‘I think our couple is subsidizing their kidnapping operation with the sale of blackmarket organs.’

  Fletcher told Karim about Corrigan’s vial of pills, how the two medications were used in conjunction to treat hand tremors and alleviate surgical anxiety. How Corrigan had been scheduled to perform surgery – a fact confirmed by Jenner. How’re your hands holding up? Jenner had asked Corrigan on the phone. You ready for surgery?

  Then Fletcher told Karim about the ornate dining-room table and the words Jenner had spoken to his companion, Marcus, while inside the house: Call Rick on your way, tell him to keep everyone at the hotel.

  They might as well hop back on their jets and go on home, Marcus had replied.

  ‘Private or chartered planes aren’t subject to the same security as commercial flights, as you well know,’ Karim said. ‘If people had flown in to collect organs, they would be ushered back to their private jets or chartered planes without having to undergo any searches. They could fly away with their organs properly packed and cooled with no one the wiser.’

  ‘Your Baltimore contact who searched the buildings, did he find any coolers or medical equipment?’

  ‘The buildings were empty. What about the house in Dickeyville?’

  ‘Organ harvesting requires specialized surgical equipment. I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘So if Corrigan was telling you the truth – that there were at least three other victims who were still alive – then he was performing the surgery in another location.’

  ‘Which is all the more reason why we need to speak with Nathan Santiago. These people are shutting down their operation.’

  ‘I understand and share your frustration, Malcolm, but I’m not a magician. I can’t wave a wand and make Santiago wake up and start talking. He’s near death as it is.’

  Fletcher opened his netbook.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Karim asked.

  ‘I placed a GPS transmitter inside Corrigan’s throat.’

  Karim smoked, waited. Fletcher pressed keys and moved a finger across the netbook’s track pad. Fletcher stared at the screen, his eyes narrowing in thought. Then he went back to typing.

  A moment later, he leaned back in his chair, propped an elbow up on the armrest and rubbed a latex-covered finger across his bottom lip.

  ‘What?’ Karim asked.

  ‘The signal is no longer transmitting,’ Fletcher said.

  48

  On the computer screen Fletcher saw the route the transmitter had travelled, where it had stopped broadcasting.

  ‘Malfunction?’ Karim asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Fletcher said. ‘It was transmitting perfectly before I left for New Jersey. I need you to look up an address for me: 9611 Washburn Road in Baltimore.’

  Karim turned to his keyboard. Typed and clicked the mouse button repeatedly.

  ‘Address is in West Baltimore,’ he said.

  ‘Is it a funeral home?’

  Karim eyed him curiously. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Does it offer cremation services?’

  ‘Hold on … Okay, here’s the website. Funeral home is called Washington Memorial Park … Yes, it offers cremation services.’

  And now we have the reason why the GPS tracker stopped transmitting its signal, Fletcher thought. The device was destroyed when Gary Corrigan’s body was cremated.

  ‘How did you know?’ Karim asked again.

  ‘I didn’t. The ashes inside the closet made me think of it. To obtain the ammo from Sacred Ashes, you need to be able to provide ashes. Someone with access to a crematorium could do it – and easily forge the necessary death certificates.’

  ‘This business of making ammo using human ashes, what do you think that’s about? Why does she – or he – do it?’

  ‘Part of their revenge fantasy, I suspect. Does the funeral home’s website contain the names of the owner or owners? Photographs?’

  ‘I’m looking right now … No. There’s nothing listed under the contact page, no names or personal photographs. There are, however, pictures of the facility. It’s set in a wooded area, has its own adjoining cemetery.’ Karim looked away from the screen and said, ‘What if the other victims are somewhere on the grounds, maybe even in the funeral home itself?’

  ‘We won’t know until we perform a search.’

  Karim glanced at his wristwatch.

  ‘Have your Baltimore contact do it,’ Fletcher said. ‘If these people are shutting down their operation, we can’t afford to waste any time.’

  Karim nodded in agreement and reached for his phone. While he conducted his conversation, Fletcher ruminated on the bedroom closet containing the killing shrine.

  Eleven garment bags and eleven sets of cremated remains tucked in bags behind the footwear. The highball glass contained a small trace of ash – human, not cigarette, ash. The closet did not smell of cigarette smoke
. The woman in the fur coat sprinkled cremated remains in her bourbon and ingested her former victims as she sat in her chair, staring at the clothing and reliving … what? The kidnapping of the parent? She had also used the ashes to place three separate orders with a company that specialized in adding cremated remains to gun ammunition. She didn’t keep the ammo inside the closet. And what was the reasoning behind the custom-made ammunition? What purpose did it serve?

  Fletcher didn’t have an answer, just an idea that led back to his original theory that all the victims were connected. One thing was clear: the woman in the fur coat and, possibly, her male partner were motivated by revenge.

  And the children … after you harvested their organs you cremated their remains, didn’t you? But what did you do with their ashes?

  Karim hung up the phone. ‘My contact is going to look into the funeral home,’ he said. ‘Now let me tell you what I found on Gary Corrigan. He has a record. After he graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, he completed his residency at Saint Agnes, also in Baltimore. He stayed on and worked there as a cardiac surgeon until early 2000, when a routine audit showed he was shorting patients their medications, most notably Valium.’

  ‘He must have been using Valium to treat his hand tremors or surgical anxiety. Or both.’

  ‘You said he was using a beta-blocker and that other drug.’

  ‘Propranolol,’ Fletcher said. ‘The medical cocktail is relatively new.’

  ‘So he tried self-medicating with Valium and got caught. Why not just seek treatment?’

  ‘Because the hospital would have to disclose it or face possible lawsuits. And would you want a surgeon who suffered from hand tremors?’

  ‘Good point,’ Karim said. ‘In any event, the hospital didn’t sweep the matter under the rug. Saint Agnes brought Corrigan up on charges. After his arrest, the medical board revoked his licence to practice. Judge didn’t give him any jail time, just fined and ordered mandatory drug counselling. Corrigan entered a rehabilitation unit in Maryland that specializes in addiction within the medical community – drug addiction, from my understanding, is a common and widespread problem. Three months later, he was released.’