The Killing House mf-1

by Chris Mooney

  Karim called for him. Fletcher returned to the office.

  ‘Here’s what I found during my initial pass,’ Karim said. ‘William Jenner worked as a patrolman for the city of Baltimore until early ’98, when he and his partner, Marcus De Luca, responded to a 911 call from a woman who said her ex-boyfriend had come to her house and threatened to kill her. The woman later claimed that both cops had raped her.’

  Lovely, Fletcher thought.

  ‘Because the woman was mentally ill — a paranoid schizophrenic, according to a doctor’s testimony — and because there was no forensic evidence to back up her accusation, the jury dismissed the charges,’ Karim said. ‘Interestingly, both Jenner and De Luca retired from the force after the trial. Now take a look at this.’

  Karim turned back to his computer. William Jenner’s licence disappeared from the wall, to be replaced by a silent video clip of a well-dressed newsreader with stylish glasses for Baltimore’s ABC2 news. The woman spoke wordlessly for a moment; she was then followed by a video montage of firefighters battling an early-morning blaze.

  ‘That would be William Jenner’s house,’ Karim said. ‘The address matches the one on his licence.’

  Fletcher wondered if Jenner had been killed, his body dumped inside his house — or cremated at the funeral home.

  ‘I also checked Gary Corrigan’s house,’ Karim said. ‘That too had been set on fire. There’s no doubt our lady shooter and her male friend are closing down shop and getting ready to leave. I need to share this information with my Baltimore contact and make some additional phone calls. Let’s reconvene here in, say, two hours. Take a shower and relax.’

  Fletcher took his netbook and left the office to collect a fresh set of clothes from the Jaguar. He also retrieved the forensic unit holding the data downloaded from Corrigan’s iPhone.

  There are three others. At least, Corrigan had told him.

  They’re alive, Corrigan had said.

  If you don’t take me with you, you’ll never find them.

  Fletcher thought of the three homes that had been set on fire and wished he had taken Corrigan up on his offer.

  Fletcher entered Karim’s private basement apartment. He did not take a shower, and he did not relax.

  The spacious bedroom contained a small desk. He placed the netbook and forensic device on its top and turned on both items. Dust swarmed inside the milky columns of light pouring through the pair of ground-level windows. He could hear the busy Manhattan traffic, the rapid click of shoes and heels moving fast across the pavement, people talking to one another, in person or on phones.

  Fletcher connected the forensic device to the netbook. He transferred the data and rubbed the fatigue from his eyes.

  Would Nathan Santiago survive his septic infection, or would he die?

  Fletcher felt his heart racing. The question had triggered the lizard part of his brain, the prefrontal cortex area housing useless emotions — anxiety, apprehension and fear. Adrenalin coursed through his system, the hormones and neurotransmitters already beginning their savage attack on his central nervous system. Fail to stop it now and his rational mind, already vulnerable in his fatigued state, would gallop away. But fighting it by trying to tighten the reins only fuelled the irrationality, making the brain nearly impossible to control.

  Long ago and through much practice, Fletcher had learned how to subvert the disruptive chemical process through transcendental meditation. He didn’t have time right now. He needed to see if Corrigan’s phone contained any information on the possible whereabouts of Santiago. He shelved his concern for the moment, about to get to work, when there was a knock on the apartment door.

  He heard it open and then Emma White spoke to him from the adjoining room.

  ‘Forgive the intrusion,’ M said, ‘but Mr Karim sent me. He needs you straightaway. He’s waiting for you in the garage.’

  50

  Fletcher stepped out of the elevator, carrying a garbage bag full of laundry, and found Karim pacing near the Jaguar. The man had thrown on his tatty bomber jacket but left it unzipped. Beneath the buttoned flannel shirt Fletcher saw the outline of a bulletproof vest.

  Fletcher opened the trunk and tossed the garbage bag inside. Karim stopped pacing.

  ‘My contact at the hospital called me — the one working the ER who was going to get Santiago squared away for us,’ Karim said, his voice echoing through the chilly air. ‘Boyd hasn’t shown up, and he isn’t answering his phone. Neither is Dr Sin.

  ‘Boyd’s BMW has a tracking unit — all of my company vehicles do — and the signal shows it’s still parked at the beach house. His phone also has a GPS chip, and it shows he’s still at the house.’ Panic had leached colour from Karim’s face and there was a visible sheen of sweat on his smooth forehead. ‘I don’t know about Dr Sin. She doesn’t use one of my phones, so I can’t locate her through my network.’

  Fletcher’s mind was already working. ‘When I was inside the house, I noticed a security console in one of the first-floor bedrooms.’

  ‘That’s the monitoring station for the security cameras posted in and around the house. I know where you’re heading. Yes, it’s connected into my network, but I can’t access the cameras or whatever videos are stored on the hard drive. The whole bloody thing is offline.

  ‘Malcolm, I know I shouldn’t have to ask this, but were you followed?’

  ‘No.’ Fletcher, ever vigilant, had made sure no one tailed him to Cape May, New Jersey — or to Karim’s home.

  ‘Then they must have found the house some other way,’ Karim said.

  ‘What about triangulating Dr Sin’s cell signal?’

  ‘I don’t have that equipment here. It’s under lock and key at a secure location — the police and federal government don’t look too kindly on an independent security contractor who can trace a cell signal at whim when they have to obtain court-ordered subpoenas.’

  ‘Are you heading there now?’

  ‘No. I’ve sent M. I’m going to New Jersey.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘I’m coming with you. I have to be there in case…’ Karim’s voice trailed off. He didn’t know what to do with his hands and he had difficulty swallowing.

  Fletcher leaned over the trunk to start collecting his tools and weapons. ‘Before we leave, you need to check to see if the New Jersey police were called to your home.’

  ‘They weren’t; I already checked. Did you check your car for a tracking device?’

  ‘I always do.’

  ‘I’d feel better if we took one of my vehicles,’ Karim said. ‘I’ll drive.’

  The black Range Rover had tinted windows and a cream-coloured interior and smelled of new leather. As Karim navigated his way through the morning traffic clogging Midtown, fighting for any opening, Fletcher divided his attention between the windows and the passenger’s side mirror, studying the vehicles, watching for any sign of a tail.

  ‘I have people following us, watching for anything suspicious,’ Karim said. ‘They’ll follow us to New Jersey and then my people there will take over — we’ll be completely covered. Don’t worry, they won’t see you.’

  Fletcher nodded but still conducted surveillance, memorizing vehicle makes and models.

  Karim drove with both hands on the wheel. His BlackBerry sat inside a dashboard cubbyhole. He kept glancing at it.

  ‘You can’t call an ambulance,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘We’re a good hour away — probably more in this traffic. For all I know Boyd and the doctor are clinging to life.’

  ‘You need to consider the evidence.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘Since Boyd and his car are still on the premises, it stands to reason neither he nor the doctor had time to clean up properly. If you call for an ambulance, the paramedics will enter the house and, at the very least, find blood in the treatment room. The police will be summoned. Forensics will be called in to collect blood samples. If Santiago’s DNA sample is stored inside C
ODIS, they’ll want to know how blood from a missing seventeen-year-old wound up inside your home.’

  Karim threaded his hands through his hair. ‘You and your goddamn logic,’ he muttered. Then, louder: ‘What’s that pragmatic brain of yours telling you about how Santiago was located?’

  ‘I can tell you he wasn’t wearing a tracking device.’

  ‘You checked his pockets?’

  ‘His pockets were empty.’

  ‘Shoes?’

  ‘He was barefoot,’ Fletcher said. ‘Tracking units are bulky items. If Santiago was wearing one, I would have found it.’

  ‘Then they must have used something else — something small, something that could have been sewn into Santiago’s clothing. Or his skin.’

  ‘His skin?’

  ‘How familiar are you with radio-frequency identification?’

  ‘I know the meat-packing industry uses RFID tags to identify a livestock’s herd of origin.’

  Karim lit a cigarette. ‘Human applications have been devised,’ he said, cracking open his window. ‘A glass-encapsulated RFID chip slightly larger than a grain of rice can be tucked inside a pocket or sewn into clothing — or, in the case of biometric security, surgically inserted beneath the skin. The Mexican attorney general did that to his senior staff, had a chip implanted in that web of skin between your thumb and index finger. You notice anything like that on Santiago?’

  ‘The man had a number of scars,’ Fletcher said. ‘If I’m not mistaken, the RFID chip you’re referring to is no longer manufactured.’

  ‘You’re partly correct. The FDA approved the chips for human use in 2008. Then all these independent medical studies tested the glass-encapsulated chips on dogs and cats. They developed cancerous tumors, and the FDA revoked approval. The company that manufactured it — there was only one — went into bankruptcy, but then they received a godsend when the Indian government started a project to take every citizen’s fingerprints and iris scans, and store them on these tiny RFID chips so they could be identified.’

  ‘And the range of these chips?’

  ‘A couple of miles,’ Karim said. ‘All you need is a special antennae hooked up to a computer that has the right software. If you weren’t followed, Malcolm, then Santiago had to have been tagged with one of these RFID chips or some other type of hidden tracking device that emitted a signal powerful enough to allow his captors to pinpoint his location. It’s the only conceivable scenario.’

  And one I failed to consider, Fletcher thought.

  Karim propped an elbow on the door and massaged his forehead. In the silence that ensued, Fletcher contemplated what might have happened in Cape May. He surmised that Nathan Santiago had been removed from the premises. The question facing him was, had the woman and her partner decided to remain behind — or had they left people behind? They employed the services of at least two men: William Jenner and Marcus De Luca. Jenner’s home had been torched, but Fletcher couldn’t assume that either Jenner or his partner were dead. Were the former Baltimore patrolmen waiting at the Cape May house?

  Fletcher considered tactics. Tall brush and scrub cedar bordered the driveway; even in daylight, the area would provide plenty of hiding spots where he could watch. With the downtown area a quarter of a mile away, an outside gunshot would sound no louder than a firecracker in the harsh ocean wind.

  Shooting, however, would be foolish. Karim equipped all of his vehicles, even his personal ones, with bulletproof windows and special armour that could withstand a bomb.

  ‘How do you do it?’ Karim asked.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Unplug yourself from your emotions.’

  ‘I’m not uncaring, Ali.’

  ‘Looking at you — hearing you — I don’t get a sense that you’re… well, feeling anything.’

  Fletcher didn’t answer.

  They drove in silence.

  ‘Mathematics,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The human body is nothing more than a complex energy system. It has a finite amount of resources. Focusing energy into endless speculation is a waste of time and, worse, a drain on mental resources. Better to channel my focus on the upcoming task.’

  ‘Malcolm,’ Karim said, drawing out the word, curls of smoke drifting from his nostrils, ‘there are times when I truly envy you.’

  51

  Fletcher insisted on making the final approach to the house alone. When he exited the car, he wanted Jenner, De Luca and whoever else was waiting in the house to think he’d come alone.

  Karim’s Cape May home was on Whitney Avenue, a road that curved around a tall, sand-dusted hill upon which sat the house. It turned on to Greenview, the street that ran parallel to Whitney. Because of the narrow roads and the dangerous curve, street parking wasn’t allowed.

  Fletcher took Greenview. Only one other home was near by, and both sides of the street were empty of vehicles. He drove where the road curved around a rocky shore and pulled onto Whitney. He saw no cars parked anywhere nearby. Fletcher drove past the driveway entrance for Karim’s home and continued straight ahead, looking for someone in a parked car and watching the beach house. He found no parked cars or people.

  The small downtown area consisted of boutique stores, coffee houses, bistros and restaurants. The area was relatively quiet, given the winter season. A handful of people moved in and out of the various establishments, anxious to get out of the cold wind. A young white male bundled in a dark winter parka and wearing a charcoal-coloured woolly hat paced in front of a clothing store, smoking a cigarette and looking thoughtfully down the street, in the direction of Karim’s home.

  Was he a spotter? Watching for someone to enter the driveway and then calling William Jenner? Fletcher checked all the cars parked in the meter spots along the street. They were mostly upscale models and they all had either New Jersey or New York plates. The vehicles were empty. The man he’d seen smoking tossed his cigarette into the wind and moved inside the store.

  Fletcher pulled into a gas-station lot, turned and navigated his way back to the house. He handed the monocular to Karim.

  ‘When I reach the driveway, I want you to look for heat signatures in the surrounding brush before turning your attention to the house.’

  Fletcher slowed and turned left. A slight bump and then the car climbed up the steep driveway. From the corner of his eye, he could see Karim’s pulse beating in his throat. His own heart rate remained unchanged.

  Earlier, Karim had told him about the garage. With both remotes located inside the house, he had given Boyd Paulson a four-digit code to use on the keypad-entry system located on the outside of the garage. Reaching the top, Fletcher found the circular area clear and the garage-bay door hanging open, the black BMW parked inside. The door he’d entered last night — the porch door leading into the kitchen — was closed.

  Karim searched the grounds with the monocular. Fletcher’s gaze swept the dunes, on the hunt for movement in the shaking brush and sea grass, the glint of a sniper scope — an unlikely scenario, but one he had to consider.

  ‘There’s no one out here,’ Karim said, and turned his attention to the house.

  The garage, wide and windowless, was painted a dull white. The BMW was parked in the same spot it had been a few short hours ago. Fletcher’s roving gaze recorded what he saw now in the daylight, comparing these new images to the ones he had stored in his mind.

  ‘I’m not detecting any heat signatures inside the house,’ Karim said. ‘This device can see through a single wall but not multiple walls and floors, right?’

  ‘Correct.’ Fletcher pulled into the garage bay and looked at the security camera mounted in the right-hand corner, directly above the door leading to the portico that annexed the house. ‘The security camera’s light is blinking.’

  ‘Because the system’s offline,’ Karim said. ‘If they’re in there, they can’t watch us from the monitoring station.’

  ‘You mentioned earlier that it conta
ined a hard drive.’ Fletcher had his attention on the rearview mirror, watching for movement. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Karim nod.

  ‘The drive is secured by a magnetic lock,’ Karim said. ‘If you don’t remove it with a special key, the drive is erased. I have the key with me.’

  Fletcher put the car in park. Karim removed a sidearm — an updated version of John Browning’s legendary Colt design, the powerful BUL M-5 10-mm developed in cooperation with the Israeli Special Forces.

  ‘Stay here,’ Fletcher said, and withdrew the SIG from his shoulder holster.

  He stepped out of the car. No one came running, and no shots were fired. He moved around the car and hit the garage-door button. The bay filled with the roar and clack of gears as the door lowered. He waited until it was halfway shut and then hand-signalled to Karim to kill the engine. Karim did and opened his door.

  ‘I’ll talk to you over this,’ Fletcher said, and handed over a small Bluetooth headset that clipped around an ear. ‘I’ll be wearing one as well.’

  ‘You’ve already found something, haven’t you?’

  ‘The garden hose on the side of the house, I used it last night. After I finished, I placed the spray nozzle back on top of the hanging rack. Now it’s lying against the ground.’

  ‘Maybe the wind knocked it down.’

  Fletcher shook his head. ‘Someone used it recently,’ he said. ‘There are still some damp pockets on the garage floor that haven’t evaporated, and the remaining micro-fibre towels I saw last night on the shelves in here are missing, as well as three rolls of kitchen towel.’

  Karim stared dumbfounded at the garage shelves.

  ‘I’ll contact you when I’ve secured the house,’ Fletcher said. ‘Until then, please remain here.’

  ‘Bollocks. Going in alone is — ’

  ‘I need to concentrate. I can’t do that while guarding you.’