Chris Mooney - The Killing House

Fletcher glanced over Borgia’s shoulder, at the wall and corner shelves packed with sterilized bags of surgical scrubs and towels. He saw boxes of latex gloves, vials and syringes, and a wide assortment of medical equipment.

An operating room.

Back to Borgia: the man’s left sleeve had been rolled up and he leaned slightly over the table, his hand splayed across the stainless steel. His skin was covered with a dark liquid that was, most likely, Betadine. Borgia hissed through gritted teeth as Marie Clouzot made a small incision on the webbing between his thumb and index finger. Then she traded the scalpel for a pair of surgical forceps, dipped the ends inside the wound and came back with something small pinched between the prongs. She set the tiny object on the table, not far from Borgia’s hand.

Fletcher lost sight of it; Clouzot blocked his view, having turned to a nearby surgical cart. She was much taller than Borgia, stockier. She wore dark jeans, black boots and a pink, V-neck sweater that had the texture of cashmere. She also wore a surgical mask and latex gloves. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a tight bun.

Fletcher’s gaze focused on the barrier separating him from the operating theatre: a chain-link door secured by at least one padlock. His head remained absolutely still as he conducted a cursory examination of his immediate surroundings.

The same grey/silver chain-link fencing had been used to erect his walls and ceiling. Eye bolts secured the chain link to a galvanized stainless-steel frame. He had been imprisoned inside what was essentially a custom-made dog kennel: just enough room to lie down. Judging from the ceiling height, he wouldn’t be able to stand. To the right of his cage, fifteen to twenty feet away, was an open door leading to a dimly lit passageway of concrete.

His gaze shifted back to the operating table. Clouzot dabbed gauze on Borgia’s hand, then she picked up the needle and went back to stitching his wound. The operating lights were extremely bright but it still took Fletcher a moment to find the small object she had removed from the incision: a glass tube, the size of a grain of rice. Something was contained inside the glass. He was too far away to make out what this was, but his mind was working.

Slightly larger than a grain of rice, Karim had told him.

Then the information came to him: he had been riding with Karim to New Jersey, they had been discussing how Nathan Santiago could have been found, and Karim offered up a theory — radio-frequency identification.

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, Karim had said. 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?

Fletcher hadn’t. But Clouzot, he suspected, had just removed an RFID chip from Borgia’s hand — Special Agent Alexander Borgia’s hand.

‘When do you think he’ll wake up?’ Borgia asked.

‘Hard to say,’ Clouzot replied, pulling the surgical thread. ‘One dart hit him in the thigh. The one that grazed his neck delivered maybe a quarter of the sedative. He’s a big man.’

‘So, what, another hour? Maybe two?’

The woman laughed, a deep, throaty sound. ‘You’re not going to let it go, are you?’

‘I have to try,’ Borgia said.

‘You can’t reason with a monster, Alexander.’

Borgia made no reply. The conversation ended, and was replaced by moaning, dry and plaintive whispers asking for mercy and forgiveness. Fletcher couldn’t see Clouzot’s face, but Borgia gave no indication that he’d heard the inhuman cries. Either he had inured himself to this suffering, viewing it as nothing more than a necessary by-product of his cause (whatever it was); or, like most psychopaths, his limbic system was defective, rendering him incapable of feeling empathy, fear, guilt and remorse.

Clouzot finished stitching Borgia’s wound and straightened. Fletcher, his eyes nearly closed, could see her boots as they whisked past him. He watched them until they disappeared through the passageway. He was listening to her footfalls when Borgia approached his cage.

Fletcher lay still, waiting, his eyes shut. The footsteps stopped in front of the kennel door. He heard Borgia’s laboured breathing.

‘ Wake up,’ Borgia screamed, and kicked the cage door.

Fletcher didn’t flinch at the sounds; he remained motionless.

Another kick.

‘ Wake up, you son of a bitch. ’ Borgia kicked again.

Again. ‘ Wake up. ’

Clearly Borgia wanted a confrontation, but what would happen if the target of his rage failed to awaken? Would the man have the nerve to remove the padlock and enter the cage? Fletcher hoped the man had a key. Unlock the padlock and come inside, Mr Borgia… No, he’s decided against it. Fletcher heard the man’s footsteps storm away.

Fletcher rolled on to his back. The stench in the room was overpowering; he breathed deeply through his mouth to clear the fog from his head. Eyes opening wide, he stared past the cage’s chain-link ceiling, at the hanging water pipe. It contained sprinkler heads. Was this how they showered the prisoners? He thought about Nathan Santiago, wondering how a seventeen-year-old had wrapped his mind around living inside a chain-link kennel minute after minute, day after day, year after year. How had Santiago and the others kept from going mad?

No, don’t think about that now, Fletcher told himself. A final deep breath and he sat up, groggy, head swimming.

They had removed his overcoat and tactical belt. All he had left was his shirt and trousers, his leather dress belt and boots. They had emptied his pockets. The tranquillizer dart that had hit his thigh had left a small hole and a crust of drying blood on the trouser fabric. He appeared to be uninjured. He swivelled around to examine the rest of the room.

Fletcher had seen many things over the long course of his professional life. He had seen hidden torture chambers used by serial killers, had viewed corpses dumped by roadsides — he had witnessed first hand the ways dark and sinister urges found expression on human skin and bone. But what lay inside this rectangular concrete room of dim light momentarily overloaded his senses: human eyes peeking out from behind chain-link kennels bolted to the walls and floor. The prisoners were young and old, male and female. Some wore threadbare clothing or no clothing at all. Some were slumped against the bars or curled into foetal positions. Some of the victims were missing hands or feet or both. He wondered if they had been surgically hobbled to prevent them from escaping.

They all had IV needles hooked into their arms or necks. Tubes ran out of the crates to plasma bags hanging from the water pipes. An industrial-grade padlock secured each door. He counted eight kennels and all eight were occupied.

A pair of corpses had been dumped in the far corner. Dr Dara Sin had started to bloat.

But not Nathan Santiago. The young man had been stripped of his clothing, and his chest cavity had been cut open to harvest his organs.

The sight crawled through Fletcher’s flesh and shot its way into his bones. He recalled his final words to Nathan: No one will hurt you, I promise.

‘Help me.’

The dry, whispery voice came from the adjoining kennel — a sickly woman dressed in dirty jeans and a roomy dark cotton T-shirt. She sat crossed-legged and was slumped against her chain-link wall, her mouth hanging open, the paper-thin lips cracked and crusted with sores. All of her teeth had fallen out.

Fletcher inched closer to her. ‘Are there others down here? Are there any rooms?’