Chris Mooney - The Killing House

Hands covered in latex and the empty cartridge pinched between his fingers, Fletcher rubbed a cotton swab along the inner brass wall to collect the gunpowder residue. Karim came around the table to watch, then, thinking better of it, lit a fresh cigarette, entered the living room and began to pace across the oriental carpet. Sometimes he paused to examine a painting or charcoal drawing, standing in such a way as to keep Fletcher’s progress within his line of vision. Then he resumed his pacing.

Twenty minutes and two cigarettes later, Karim noticed that Fletcher was leaning back in his chair.

‘What is it?’

Fletcher didn’t answer. He propped an elbow on the table’s corner, resting his chin on a thumb as he rubbed his index finger across his bottom lip, staring at the computer screen.

Karim marched back into the dining room and, standing behind Fletcher, bent forward to read the results.

The mass spectrometry software had failed to identify the sample.

‘I was told these portable units have a limited library,’ Karim said. ‘I’ll have this sample tested in New York. My forensics people are at my lab right now. The mass spectrometer we have there is hooked up to a software library that can identify every — ’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘You know what this is?’

Fletcher nodded.

‘Human ash,’ he said.

A cool silence enveloped the dining room.

Karim broke it a moment later. ‘Someone’s cremated remains were packed inside that ammo cartridge.’ He spoke slowly, as if having trouble finding the correct words. ‘That’s what you’re telling me.’

Fletcher nodded, his gaze fixed on the computer screen. He didn’t doubt his findings. Mixed in with the gunshot’s chemical components, its primer residues and organic compounds, were the unmistakable chemical signatures of human ash — phosphate, sodium, calcium, chloride, sulphate, silica, potassium and magnesium.

He read them off one by one for Karim’s benefit. Karim, however, still seemed unconvinced.

‘The concentration levels of each leave no room for debate,’ Fletcher said. ‘Minute quantities of beryllium and mercury are also present, as well as — ’

‘I believe you.’ Karim drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘Could our lady shooter have loaded the ashes herself?’

‘If she had the proper tools and the proper knowledge, yes.’

‘I can tell by your tone you don’t think she did.’

‘You have to know exactly what you’re doing or you’ll risk a misfire. Why risk it when you can hire a company to do it for you?’

‘There’s a company that performs this… service?’

‘I know of only one. It caters to hunting enthusiasts.’

‘You mean gun nuts,’ Karim said. ‘Is this legal?’

‘Perfectly legal.’

‘Let me guess: this company is based in the South.’

‘Alabama, I believe.’

‘Of course,’ Karim added in a sour tone. While he had a permit to carry a gun, he rarely did. He detested firearms, believed their availability and the ease with which they could be obtained in the United States — through simplistic forms and substandard background checks, especially in the Southern states, where owning a firearm was as common as carrying a wallet — had directly contributed to the country’s rapidly rising crime levels. The notion had been firmly cemented in Karim’s mind by his son’s murder. Jason Karim, after enduring a savage beating, had been shot to death with seven hollow-point rounds.

‘So instead of sprinkling Uncle Bobby’s ashes at sea, in a garden or what have you,’ Karim said, ‘you pay to have his cremated remains stuffed inside shotgun shells so you can go out and, what, shoot yourself a Thanksgiving turkey? Then everyone gathered around the holiday table digs in comforted by the idea of having a tiny part of Uncle Bobby digesting in their bellies, is that it?’

‘I’m not debating the merits of such a service, Ali. I’m merely telling you it exists.’

Karim examined the ash dangling from his cigarette. He flicked it into his coffee cup and said, ‘I’d thought I’d seen everything. The world we live in now…’

Karim shook the disgust from his face and looked around the dining room before his gaze settled on a reproduction of Marie-Denise Villers’s Young Woman Drawing. He stared at the angelic face, at her intense but gentle dark eyes and the golden corkscrew curls dangling across her small shoulders, as though waiting for her to validate his feelings.

‘Will the Denver crime lab discover this?’

‘Depends on the expertise of the forensics staff,’ Fletcher said. ‘If someone recognizes the cartridge as a wildcat, he or she may decide to run testing. But they won’t find anything.’

‘Because the crime scene has been contaminated by the bomb.’

‘And the snow. By now it’s already washed away the residue needed for testing.’ A pause, then Fletcher added, ‘You can’t extract any DNA from these ashes.’

Karim blinked in surprise at hearing his thought spoken out loud.

‘The cremation process destroys the phosphodiester bonds that hold DNA nucleotides together,’ Fletcher said. ‘All that remain are the chemical signatures listed on the computer screen.’

Karim’s cell phone rang. ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ he said, pulling his BlackBerry from a rumpled pocket.

While Karim conducted a near-silent conversation with the caller on the other end of the line, Fletcher took out his smartphone, connected to the Internet and searched for companies that specialized in placing cremated remains inside ammunition. As he suspected, there was only one such company, and it was based in Alabama. He clicked on the link for the company website.

Sacred Ashes, based in the town of Dunbar and formed by two former game wardens, billed itself as a cost-effective memorial for the outdoors person. Page after page extolled the benefits of using their service — the virtually non-existent ecological footprint compared to interment; the significant savings that would be made by opting out of purchasing traditional funeral services, casket, burial plot, gravestone or urn. One pound of human ash and a payment of $1,500 provided 250 cartridges for either a shotgun or a pistol. The rifle enthusiast had to make do with 100 cartridges. All the ammunition came in standard calibres. An additional payment of $100 provided the mourner with a finished handcrafted ammunition box that was ‘mantel-worthy’.

Fletcher was reading through customer testimonials when Karim returned to the line. ‘That was my contact in Colorado,’ Karim said. ‘They found Barry Herrera — or, more specifically, his head.’

‘Where?’

‘Sitting on a tree limb about half a mile from the blast site.’

‘So the husband was either close to the bomb or right on top of it when it went off.’

Karim nodded. ‘At least now we know he was inside the house that night.’

‘He was alive when the bomb detonated.’

Karim’s brow furrowed. ‘You told me you didn’t see him.’

‘I didn’t,’ Fletcher said. ‘When Theresa Herrera answered the door, she was frightened but composed. She wouldn’t have been able to maintain her composure if her husband was dead — or if she knew about the bomb.’

‘What I don’t understand is why the shooter allowed Herrera to answer the door in the first place. Why not just wait for you to leave?’

‘I think the answer lies in the sequence of events,’ Fletcher said. ‘Let’s start when I pulled into the driveway. I saw the lights for one of the upstairs bedrooms turn off. The blinds had been drawn — the blinds for all the windows facing the street had been drawn. That happened before I arrived.