by Chris Mooney
‘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.
8
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.
9
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 r
anch 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.’
Fletcher thought about the shell casing in the evidence bag and said, ‘I need a portable mass spectrometer – a new model, and preferably one manufactured in the UK.’ British companies were always on the cutting edge of forensics.
‘I’ll get you one,’ Karim said. ‘When will you be arriving in Chicago?’
‘Let’s meet Monday morning, at six.’
‘Six it is. Give me the address.’
Fletcher gave it to him.
‘If you’re going to be late, please call me,’ Karim said. ‘A dark-skinned man like myself loitering on the streets and holding a big, bulky suitcase – well, we don’t need anyone conducting racial-profiling and summoning the police about a possible terror threat, now do we?’
‘Paulson won’t be driving you?’ Boyd Paulson was Karim’s personal bodyguard. Born in Dublin, raised in London, the pugnacious former boxer had been attached to Karim since the beginning of time – and rarely let Karim out of his sight, as Karim had been the
target of many death threats over the years.
‘Boyd is on holiday,’ Karim said. ‘If you need anything else – anything at all – call me.’
‘I will.’
‘Malcolm … There’s nothing you could have done to save her.’
‘I’ll see you Monday,’ Fletcher said, and hung up.
10
When Lisa Alcione turned nineteen, she ran off to Los Angeles with the man she’d later marry, swearing to her parents she’d never return to Morrison, Colorado. She was forced to return once, to attend her mother’s funeral. Her husband, Tony, had not joined her. Business obligations.
He’s up to no good, her father had told her. A pig dressed up in a suit is still a pig, Lisa.
And now here she was, thirty-five and newly divorced, back in Morrison, back to working the front counter of her father’s ‘family-friendly’ motel, with its quick and easy access to the ski slopes. Maybe the family-friendly thing was true thirty years ago, but now the place catered to budget travellers and cost-conscious adulterers from Denver who paid for rooms in cash and registered under false names.
Standing behind the front counter, she watched her father clearing away the snow in his rickety Ford pickup. She’d been here only two months, and there didn’t seem to be a moment when dear old dad wasn’t reminding her how she had royally screwed up her life. I told you that good-for-nuthin’ had a wandering eye. Guys like Tony, with their Hollywood looks and money, they’re always gonna be lookin’ to upgrade to a younger, fresher model. Men got options, Lisa. Women don’t. Sure, the bright ones do, but God didn’t bless you with either brains or particularly good looks. You need to get your head out of the clouds and stop dreamin’ about some goddamn Prince Charming and settle for someone on your own level.
