The Killing House (6 page)

Now he needed to change his appearance.

Fletcher shaved off his beard and then, using a pair of clippers, cut his hair short to conform to the shape of his head. He opened a cupboard door and surveyed the various salon-quality hair dyes he always kept on hand. He decided to go grey. Half an hour later, the process was complete.

He examined his new appearance in the mirror. He thought he looked like a retired Marine, but one who was still physically capable of battle.

The passports and accompanying documentation he needed were stored in a floor safe inside the master bedroom's walk-in closet. He found the one for Robert Pepin and noted the man's green eyes before slipping the passport, driver's licence and credit cards into the pocket of a pair of pinstriped light grey trousers. He selected a white shirt. Like all of his clothes, it had been custom-made to accommodate his 50-inch chest, large neck and long arms.

Fletcher rolled up the shirt cuffs, put on a dark navy-blue vest and retired to the corner leather armchair to
meditate. Twenty minutes later, he blinked awake. Rested, his head clear, he retrieved the notes he had made inside his motel room. He transferred the information to three sheets of paper, tucked them inside a manila folder and headed back downstairs to the kitchen.

The doorbell rang promptly at 6 a.m. Fletcher opened the front door and saw Karim. The man wore a beat-up driving cap that matched the rest of his bargain-basement attire - a threadbare flannel shirt, wrinkled chinos and scuffed burgundy loafers that needed to be resoled.

'You didn't have to dress up on my behalf,' Karim said.

'It's called blending in, Ali. If I dressed like you, I'd draw attention from the neighbours.'

Karim chuckled as he stepped inside the wide marble foyer. Gripped in his hands were a bulky plastic case and a brown shopping bag. He dropped the case on the floor and with a grim smile handed the shopping bag to Fletcher.

Inside was a new bulletproof vest.

'It's a Modular Tactical Vest - the same one used by the Marines,' Karim said, taking off his cap. His hair, as thick as porcupine needles, was still black, but his grey sideburns had turned white. 'Modular PALS webbing, integrated side SAPI pouches and a quick-release system to remove it in case of an emergency. There are also integrated channels for communications wiring.'

'Completely unnecessary, but thank you.'

'It's the least I can do, since this latest errand almost got you killed.'

Fletcher hung Karim's coat and hat in the foyer closet, and then motioned to the hall leading to the kitchen.

Karim was believed to be somewhere in his early sixties, but during the three decades Fletcher had known him the man moved like someone who seemed a moment away from collapsing. He shuffled into the kitchen and groaned as he sat in one of the high-backed chairs arranged around the centre island.

'I believe this is the first time I've ever set foot inside one of your pieds-a-terre,' Karim said. 'Do you spend a lot of time here?'

'When I can.' Fletcher, standing on the opposite side of the kitchen island, picked up the Cafetiere and poured coffee into two white mugs.

'That oil painting,' Karim said, pointing to the far wall inside the dining room. 'Why does it look familiar?'

'It's a poor imitation of Monet's
Waterlillies at Giverny.
'

'So why did you buy it?'

'I didn't. I painted it.' Fletcher slid a plate across the black-speckled marble.

'What's this?'

'Breakfast,' Fletcher said. 'More specifically, an omelette.'

Karim prodded it with a fork. 'Why would you put lettuce in an omelette?'

'It's spinach.'

'Same thing.' Karim sighed and took a bite. 'These eggs have no bloody taste.'

'I made yours with egg whites.'

'And here I was, thinking we were friends.'

'The last time we spoke, you were enraged that your physician ordered you to change your diet and lose weight in order to decrease your soaring cholesterol levels.' He glanced at Karim's considerable paunch and added, 'Either you're carrying triplets, which I highly doubt, or nothing has changed.'

Karim picked up his coffee mug. 'Cream?'

'No cream, no sugar. It's coffee, Ali. Not candy.'

'You'll make some lucky man a wonderful wife, Malcolm. You've got the nagging part down.'

Karim put down the cup and pushed aside the plate. Then, in an act of defiance, he lit a cigarette. He had the courtesy, however, to tilt his head back and blow the smoke up at the ceiling.

Fletcher opened a manila folder. 'This is the woman who shot me,' he said, and placed the sketch in front of Karim. 'Do you recognize her?'

'No. I would have remembered seeing a face like that. Is that really her smile?'

Fletcher nodded as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter. 'She grinned at me just before she started shooting,' he said, and picked up his fork. 'I take it you've spoken with the Colorado police.'

'Rather,
they
spoke to
me
. They pulled Theresa's phone records, saw my name and started dialling. I told them the truth - leaving your name out of it, of course.'

Karim flicked cigarette ash on to his plate. 'I also spoke with my contact at the Applewood police
station - the homicide detective who referred Theresa Herrera to me. No one saw your face, but two people reported seeing what they believed was a black car with tinted windows leaving the house. No licence plate, thank God.'

'They wouldn't have found anything.' The address listed for the licence belonged to an apartment complex in Queens, New York.

Fletcher forked the last bite of his omelette. 'What about our shooter?'

'The woman in the fur coat? What about her?'

'Did anyone see her?'

'My contact didn't mention anything, and he's involved in the investigation. Then again, he's not looking for her.' Karim inhaled deeply from his cigarette.

'What about the crime scene?' Fletcher asked.

Karim peered at him through the smoke. 'You haven't heard?'

'Heard what?'

'There is no crime scene, Malcolm. The house is gone.'

12

'I assumed you'd heard it on the news or read about it on the Internet,' Karim said.

Fletcher shook his head. He had taken few breaks on his journey from Colorado to Chicago, and these had been spent processing the information he'd collected, forming possible theories about the Herrera family, the female shooter and what had been occurring inside the house before he showed up.

'What happened?'

'An explosion took down most of Theresa Herrera's house,' Karim said. 'It happened before the police arrived. The shock wave shattered the windows of nearby homes, and the falling debris caused significant property damage. No casualties, thank God, just minor injuries from the exploding glass and the usual trauma one experiences in such things.' Karim flicked his ash on the plate. 'The Applewood police station is small, and since they're ill-equipped to deal with something like this, they called on their brothers in blue in Denver for assistance. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, incidentally, has a field office in Denver, so they too were summoned.

'The preliminary theory is that the bomb was placed
on the first floor. The blast pattern suggests dynamite. You didn't hear it go off?'

'No,' Fletcher said. 'And I doubt the shooter returned to the house to plant the bomb, so it was detonated either by a timer or remotely by a beeper or a cell phone.'

'Why plant a bomb?'

'To destroy evidence.
Is
there any evidence?'

Karim let loose a dark chuckle. 'The storm dumped almost two feet of snow by the time it tapered off late yesterday afternoon. It's going to be quite some time before the police find anything of value - it will be
weeks
before any information trickles my way.'

'From your source.'

'
Sources
. Now that the ATF is in play, the agent I know there will discreetly send me copies of the reports once they've been filed. The Colorado homicide detective has agreed to keep me in the loop. He knows that, when the time is right, I'll give him the information he needs to make an arrest. These sort of high-profile cases come around once in a lifetime. They can make or break a career.'

'So you intend on pursuing this.'

'Why wouldn't I? I gave my word to Theresa Herrera that I'd look into her son's abduction.'

'And now her murder.'

'And now her murder,' Karim repeated softly. 'There's also a personal reason.'

'Which is?'

'Like you, I don't enjoy loose ends - or mysteries.
I want to find this woman.' Karim tapped a finger against the sketch. 'I want to know what she was doing inside Theresa Herrera's house.'

'And you don't believe Colorado is up to the task.'

Karim shrugged. 'Who's to say? You know how it goes with small-town police departments. The best talent moves on to greener and more lucrative pastures, and what's left behind is more often than not a midlevel offering of people who are constantly being threatened by yet another round of budget cuts, bureaucratic red-tape and superiors who are more concerned about advancing up the career ladder than rolling up their sleeves and doing actual work.'

'Denver is assisting them.'

'But that will last for only so long. Denver has its own problems, and as for the ATF ... When it comes to bureaucracies, it's been my experience that shit always floats to the top. I saw it happen at the Agency, and I know you witnessed it at the FBI. I've learned not to place my trust in such things.'

Fletcher drank some of his coffee.

'Theresa Herrera told me her husband had gone out that night with a friend. Has he shown up?'

'The police have been unable to locate him,' Karim said. 'At the moment they have him listed as a "person of interest". Until they find him - or what's left of him, if he was inside the house when it exploded - they're obligated to investigate the theory that he planted the bomb, which only benefits us. While they're chasing their straw man, we can pursue this mystery woman
who shot you without them looking over our shoulders.'

'What can you tell me about Barry Herrera? I assume you conducted a background check.'

'I always perform a thorough search on anyone looking to hire me.'

'And?'

'He's as clean as a whistle,' Karim said. 'The man was born and raised in Montpelier, Vermont, the only child of Marcus and Samantha Herrera. They both died of cancer - the father in 1978, the mother in 1984. Barry attended the local high school, where he excelled in academics and tennis. Brown offered him a scholarship. He graduated summa cum lade and moved on to the BU School of Medicine, where he picked psychiatry as his field of study. From there he, like many doctors, bounced around various public and private hospitals, working mainly with troubled children. In 1989 he met Theresa Henderson, an office assistant at a privately owned clinic in Raleigh, South Carolina. They married in 1993 and moved to Applewood, Colorado, in 1998, when he accepted a job.'

'And the wife?'

'Unremarkable. Born Theresa King in Danbury, Connecticut. Went to the public school and local college. Moved with a college friend to South Carolina, met Barry Herrera, married.'

'How deep did you dig?'

'As deep as I could,' Karim said. 'A routine background check provides a snapshot - a starting point.
The real treasures, as you well know, are locked behind secured databases scattered all across the Internet. I assigned someone else to do the actual data mining. This person is as good with computers as you are.' Then, with a sly grin, Karim added, 'Maybe even better.'

'Anything jump out?'

'No. Nothing.'

'Financials?'

'Barry made a good living, so the wife stayed at home. They had a reasonable mortgage, which they paid on time every month, along with their credit card and car loans. They invested in their retirement accounts and saved a tidy sum for an emergency. No suspicious payments or withdrawals. They were a boring, upper-middle-class couple living the American dream.'

'Until someone abducted their son.'

'Yes,' Karim said sombrely. 'Until that.'

'Did you meet him?'

'No. I was scheduled to meet him and his wife yesterday at their home. I never spoke to the man on the phone, only his wife. She was the one who initiated contact.'

'Did he share his wife's belief that her son was still alive?'

'She never mentioned anything to the contrary.'

'What did she say about her husband?'

'Just that he was busy. That in the last two years he spent more time away from home, burying himself in his work as a child psychiatrist. What happened to their son put a strain on their marriage. These things often do.'

Karim, Fletcher knew, had first-hand experience with such matters.

For years Karim had maintained a rather bonhomie relationship with his ex-wife, Judith, often travelling to England to share holidays with her extended family, who still welcomed him into the fold. Their son had wanted to attend high school in the States, and at age fifteen moved across the pond to live with his father.

Jason Karim was seventeen years old when he was abducted on his way home from a private Manhattan school. Karim had endured five dreadful, nightmarish days before his son's body turned up in an alley in the Bronx. Karim flew to London to deliver the news to his ex-wife.

Judith blamed him for their son's murder. Jason should never have been allowed to navigate his way through such a dangerous city, especially at night. Karim acquiesced to his ex-wife's wishes to have their son buried in London. But Judith had attended neither the wake nor the service; she'd suffered a breakdown and was now confined to a private hospital paid for by Karim.

Karim still made semi-annual pilgrimages to visit Judith, who had retreated to a cocoon of fantasy, telling doctors that her son was alive, travelling the globe as a hedge-fund manager. Despite medication and therapy, she still regularly picked up the phone, dialled an imaginary number and pretended to speak to her imaginary son, his imaginary wife and her two imaginary grandchildren - a boy named Bradley and a girl named Clare.