The Killing House

by Chris Mooney

  The TSA had also implemented a number of security measures designed to stop a terrorist from smuggling a bomb on to a plane. Careful attention was paid to clothing: shoes, coats and belts were checked – and now underwear, thanks to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Muslim man who had managed to board a Northwest Airlines flight en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, with plastic explosives smuggled inside his pants. Fortunately, the bomb had failed to detonate.

  While luggage X-rays, full-body scans and searches amounted to nothing more than theatre – a performance meant to impart a false sense of security to commercial-airline travellers – people who owned a plane or had the financial means to charter one weren’t subjected to the same scrutiny. Lobbyists working for the highly lucrative domestic private air-travel industry had thwarted the TSA’s attempts to implement similar security measures for people flying by general aviation aircraft. These travellers were allowed to access their planes directly, bypassing all security checkpoints.

  Before leaving the townhouse, Fletcher had changed into clothing more suitable for surveillance work. Wearing sunglasses, he pulled a rolling suitcase behind him as he followed Karim across the windy tarmac. In addition to his sidearm and MTV vest, the suitcase contained a wide assortment of tools and equipment.

  Fletcher had made no effort to hide anything; Karim had assured him that the suitcase wouldn’t be subjected to a search. Karim had also assured him that they could speak safely on the plane. His people swept it for listening devices, always, prior to takeoff.

  Karim, Fletcher knew, considered owning a plane a waste of money. His business, however, sometimes required him to fly at a moment’s notice. The man had purchased a Cessna Citation, a modest jet compared to the lavish corporate Gulfstream parked near by. A Gulfstream could seat a dozen people comfortably and offered a host of amenities, such as an area for conferences and multiple flatscreen TVs with innumerable entertainment choices.

  Karim didn’t indulge in such pomp and circumstance. The interior of Karim’s Cessna was entirely practical, consisting of six comfortable and spacious tan leather executive seats strategically arranged to maximize space. High-gloss veneer tables bolted to the floor and cabinetry with polished gold accents decorated the cabin, along with a beige carpet that showed no sign of wear.

  The pilot stood outside the cockpit door. Karim shook the man’s hand and introduced Fletcher as a business associate who would be accompanying him to Alabama. The pilot didn’t ask for Fletcher’s name or passport, and he didn’t ask to search his suitcase. He retreated inside the cockpit, shutting the door behind him.

  Blocking the aisle leading to the rear of the plane was a tall, thin woman dressed in a form-fitting black jacket and a matching pencil skirt. A long, side-swept fringe of stark white hair concealed her right eye, its tips hanging like daggers across her cheekbone. All of her hair was white, the sides cut short, the back cropped. Fletcher had seen this type of haircut on a good number of young cosmopolitan women. It complemented her sharp, angular features.

  She held out a hand a good arm’s length away and said, ‘Your coat and suitcase please.’

  She was British. Her accent suggested she had been raised and educated in the Midlands – Birmingham, Fletcher suspected.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Karim told her. ‘This is Robert Pepin, an old, dear friend and colleague. This is my personal assistant, Emma White.’

  Fletcher extended a hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Miss White.’

  She shook his hand and he felt the strength in her grip.

  ‘I’m not anyone’s miss,’ she said, polite but firm. ‘M. As in the letter.’

  ‘Yes. Right,’ Karim said. ‘Now let’s get –’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Pepin won’t mind a security search,’ she said.

  ‘I mind it,’ Karim replied. ‘Please step aside and let Mr Pepin through.’

  The young woman complied but didn’t hide her disapproval. Her face, stark and severe in its beauty, expressed clear Teutonic characteristics – pale, almost translucent skin and a thin but strong nose in profile. She had applied a light touch of eyeshadow and lipstick to her porcelain features, but there was nothing delicate about her.

  Fletcher moved to the end of the plane and stuffed his suitcase and jacket in the overhead compartment. Knowing he had aroused Emma White’s suspicions, he decided to take a seat facing the cockpit so he could keep a close eye on her.

  He watched her behind his sunglasses. Emma White – M, as in the letter – reminded him of another woman he’d met several years ago, a Boston-based investigator and forensics expert named Darby McCormick.

  The McCormick woman still fascinated him. Much like Emma White, Darby McCormick possessed a distinct and savage beauty. But it was the woman’s fierce intellect that had drawn him, and her physical mettle brought to mind comparisons with the legendary female Amazon warriors from Greek mythology. Fletcher wondered – and not for the first time – what it would be like to know Darby McCormick more intimately.

  Karim strolled down the aisle, holding a cardboard box stuffed with pastries.

  ‘Would you like one? Coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Fletcher said. He leaned forward in his seat, and in a low voice added: ‘You neglected to mention that someone else would be on board.’

  ‘Emma takes over the role as my shadow when Boyd is away. She takes the job quite seriously.’ With a conspiratorial grin, Karim added, ‘She’s quite capable of handling herself.’

  I’m sure she is, Fletcher thought. When the young woman offered to relieve him of his belongings, Fletcher had caught sight of fine scars along her callused palm and fingers.

  ‘In case you forgot, Ali, there’s a three-million-dollar bounty on my head.’

  ‘You have nothing to worry about. In addition to being stubbornly loyal, M is very discreet.’

  Fletcher didn’t question Karim’s conviction; the man had a finely tuned internal Geiger counter for such matters. Still, he marvelled at Karim’s ability to trust. With the exception of Karim, Fletcher did not indulge in such sentiment. His survival depended on it.

  ‘And she can help us,’ Karim said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Her knowledge of computers is … well, frightening. She performed the data mining on the Herreras. I’ll have her research this company you’re going to visit, see what we can find out about the premises.’

  Fletcher said nothing. Karim was a meticulous planner; the woman’s presence here was no accident. Karim had intended to use her on this from the very start.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you limited our interactions.’

  ‘I’ll keep her up front,’ Karim said. ‘Would you mind if I joined her for the flight? She has some paperwork for me.’

  Fletcher shook his head and Karim trudged away.

  Fletcher closed his eyes as the plane taxied to the runway. He saw himself standing on the front doorstep of the Herrera home. Felt the falling snow against his hair and neck as he replayed his conversation with Theresa Herrera.

  He paused the frame just before she was shot.

  The shooter had been standing only a few feet away from Theresa Herrera. The woman in the fur coat could hear them talking but she couldn’t see him. There were no windows to watch from.

  You couldn’t see my face.

  You couldn’t see me drawing my sidearm.

  So what made you panic and start to shoot?

  19

  Marie Clouzot drove through the entrance of the Franklin Grove Cemetery, a maze of looping, hilly roads contained within ten-foot stone walls. She knew where she was going, having scouted the area during a previous visit to Petersburg, Pennsylvania.

  She climbed a steep hill on the northeast side of the cemetery and, reaching the top, saw the new silver Cadillac DeVille Statesman hearse parked in the prearranged meeting spot. She pulled behind it, angling her Chevy so Brandon could easily access their latest prize.

  They always picked cemeteries
to do the exchange. Here, a hearse wouldn’t arouse suspicion, and more often than not there were no security cameras watching. Such was the case with Franklin Grove; Brandon had checked with the company in charge of both maintenance and security. The person with whom he’d spoken hadn’t found the questions in the least bit odd or suspicious, as Brandon Arkoff was the owner of Washington Memorial Park, one of the finest funeral homes Baltimore, Maryland, had to offer.

  The lapels of Brandon’s navy-blue suit jacket flapped in the wind as he darted around the hearse, his head turned so she could see only the right side of his face. Even after all their time together, he was still sensitive about his disfigurement.

  Having done this many times before, there was no need to speak. They knew their responsibilities.

  Marie moved to the back of the hearse and opened the hatchback. The door swung to the left, blocking the view of anyone who might suddenly appear at the bottom of the hill. No one was standing there, but Brandon always moved as though the police were about to descend on them at any moment. He threw open the Chevy’s door, flinching at the sight of the blood on the passenger’s seat. It was everywhere, bright and red: smeared against the seat and console, across James Weeks’s jeans and the front of his wool coat, on his cut and swollen lips; it had soaked into his long, blond, girlish fringe and dried on his high, smooth forehead peppered with acne.

  Brandon shot her a withering look of disapproval.

  ‘I accidentally broke his nose when I pinned his head against the console,’ Marie said, fishing the plastic police-grade handcuffs from her jacket pocket.

  With a grunt Brandon lifted the limp body out of the passenger’s seat, turned and dumped the unconscious teenager on top of the tarp set up next to the coffin they always used – a dark stained timber model with a high-gloss lacquer polish and carved panels of The Last Supper fitted on each side. The lid was already open, the edge resting against the hearse’s padded ceiling.

  Marie secured the cuffs around the boy’s ankles. Brandon, kneeling on the hearse’s back seat, reached over the headrest and grabbed the teenager underneath the arms. Together they lifted Weeks and moved him inside the coffin – a difficult task, given the tight opening. Weeks’s lolling head smacked up against the edges of the lid and coffin. Having been heavily sedated, he made no sound, nor any sign that he had registered pain.

  It took a moment to get Weeks settled on his back. His broken nose had started to swell, reducing the blood flow to a trickle. Brandon stuffed the edges of a handkerchief up the boy’s nostrils to stem any further bleeding. Marie went to work folding the tarp, careful not to allow any blood to spill.

  ‘How much of the sedative did you give him?’

  ‘All of it,’ she said.

  ‘Put the tarp inside the coffin – and your coat and gloves. They’re covered in blood.’

  She did. Brandon reached up, grabbed the edge of a polished sheet of inlaid wood and swung it down. It clicked in place, hiding James Weeks.

  Marie reached inside the coffin with her clean hands and grabbed the small lock resting on the white satin bed lace interior. She pulled back the fabric and locked the bottom half, while Brandon secured the top. Now Dr Stanley Weeks’s eldest child was imprisoned inside the coffin’s false bottom. Holes had been drilled along the sides; precious Jimmy would have plenty of air for the long drive back to Baltimore.

  Marie shut the hatchback. Three minutes of work and it was done.

  Brandon joined her outside. ‘I’ll take care of the Chevy,’ he said, winded from the exertion. Stocky for as long as she’d known him, middle age had packed on another thirty pounds; exercise easily fatigued him. ‘Take the hearse in case someone saw you.’ He opened the back of the Chevy and removed the plastic bucket holding the rags, bleach and paper towels. ‘Get going. I need to clean up this goddamn mess.’

  Marie shot him an icy stare. She didn’t have the time for another argument.

  She left without kissing him goodbye.

  Marie concentrated on driving. When she reached the highway, she stayed in the slow lane and stuck to the speed limit.

  Her thoughts drifted to Brandon. He had always been prone to worry, but what had happened in Colorado had pushed him over the edge.

  Brandon hadn’t accompanied her to Colorado; he’d been in Baltimore with Rico Herrera. Brandon manned the phone so Rico could talk to his mother. Theresa Herrera was supposed to kill her husband and then disappear. For ever.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. Theresa Herrera had employed a New York private investigator to look into the disappearance of her precious little boy, and a man had shown up on her doorstep. Listening to their conversation, Marie had known the man simply wasn’t going to skulk away. And he would have insisted on coming into the house – something she couldn’t allow to happen. The idea had panicked her, yes, but, as it turned out, her instincts were correct. When she threw back the door she saw the man holding a gun, and she shot him. The bomb was to be used only as a last resort, a way of cleaning up a crime scene in case something went horribly wrong. The dynamite, connected to a disposable cell phone and detonated by a single call, was concealed at the roomy bottom of her beautiful Birkin bag. During the course of her many home visits to the parents of missing children, she had never once come close to using it. Nine times out of ten the wife killed the husband, or vice versa. In the two instances when this hadn’t happened, she had killed both parents, staging the scene to appear as though they were victims of some sort of domestic squabble. Marie slipped out the door, leaving no evidence, and drove home with no one the wiser.

  Brandon had demanded that they postpone the trip to go after James Weeks. It was too soon, he’d said. Marie had tried to soothe his paranoia by reminding him – again – of the facts. The man who had showed up on Theresa’s front doorstep, the private investigator or whatever he was, was dead; she’d shot him twice in the chest. She’d fled through the back of the house and disappeared into the woods; nobody had seen her, and no one had followed her. Theresa Herrera was dead and the Birkin bag sitting on the foot of the bed had killed Dr Herrera. There were no survivors, no witnesses. Everything was fine. There was no reason not to head to Pennsylvania.

  Brandon had wanted the dust to settle. He had wanted to wait at least three months.

  Marie had no intention of waiting that long. She intended to take James Weeks, with or without Brandon’s help. He had relented, but not without a fight.

  Her anger began to soften when her thoughts turned to all the obstacles she and Brandon had overcome. Together.

  She needed to show Brandon how much she appreciated him. Maybe order a takeout from that Italian restaurant he loved, then settle down in front of their big LED-screen TV and watch the video she’d taken of Theresa Herrera.

  Marie made it to Baltimore in two hours flat.

  The building for the defunct printing press had a long, wide bay that could accommodate a tractor-trailer. She pulled inside and parked at the far end. Then she got out and went to work.

  Everything was set up and ready when Brandon arrived nearly an hour later, sitting in the passenger seat of a champagne-coloured Toyota Camry. The driver was bundled in a wool navy-blue pea coat. Marie saw the craggy face and thick, bulbous nose, and smiled. Gary Corrigan, tall and in his early fifties, had devoted the past two years to bodybuilding. Whenever Marie hugged him, as she did now, it felt like she was wrapping her arms around a cloth sack stuffed with smooth boulders. Corrigan kissed her on the cheek and then scurried away to leave them to it.

  Marie already had the casket gurney pushed up against the back of the hearse. The coffin was too heavy for her to lift by herself. With Brandon’s help, they grabbed the bars and pushed the coffin across the gurney’s sturdy rollers. He refused her offer to help him carry Jimmy Weeks downstairs.

  She followed him, glancing at the small refrigerator set up on a grimy corner desk. She was about to go to it when she remembered she had already tucked the bottle of Gato
rade inside her pocket.

  Brandon placed the teenager face first against the operating table. The sedative had started to wear off; James Weeks moaned as they removed his clothing. He flinched slightly when the scalpel cut a two-inch incision between his shoulder blades. His eyes fluttered open under the bright operating lights.

  While Brandon shaved off the boy’s hair with a pair of electric clippers – head lice were a constant problem down here – Marie picked up a flashlight and made her way back towards the stairwell. She moved past it, her trainers whisper-quiet against the concrete floor, and unlocked the door at the far end of the short hall.

  Lying near the back of the small room and curled into a foetal position on the concrete floor was a bone-thin teenaged boy dressed in torn jeans and a threadbare T-shirt several sizes too small. Barefoot and shivering, he held up a shaky hand to shield his eyes from the bright beam of light.

  The smell, as always, was atrocious. Breathing through her mouth, she moved closer, careful of the slop bucket. When she leaned forward, placing her hands on her knees, the boy didn’t try to move away.

  ‘Are you ready to see your mother, Rico?’

  20

  Rico Herrera broke down, sobbing in relief. Being mildly dehydrated, he could produce only a few tears.

  Marie smiled. ‘I brought you something to drink,’ she said, and placed the bottle of Gatorade on the floor, directly in his line of vision. ‘Look.’

  She stepped back, shining the beam of the flashlight on the bottle. Rico stared at it. He swallowed dryly several times, but didn’t dare move without permission.

  ‘Go ahead, honey. You’ve suffered enough.’

  Rico rolled on to his stomach. Having little food and almost no water for the past three days, he crawled to conserve his strength.