Chris Mooney - The Killing House

The woman didn’t answer. Stringy blonde wisps of hair barely clung to her balding scalp.

Fletcher inched closer and said, ‘What’s your name? How long have you been down here?’

No answer. Fletcher pressed his back against the concrete wall. He sat with his legs tented and his forearms resting on his knees. Adrenalin was coursing through his system now; he needed to manage it, needed to focus and concentrate on the task at hand: escaping.

He was looking around the ceiling, searching for cameras, when he heard footsteps approaching from the passageway — marching, not walking.

Alexander Borgia’s slight frame filled the doorway. In addition to the roomy grey sweatshirt, he wore dark nylon running pants that were too long; the cuffs had been rolled up several times. No shoes or socks, just a pair of flip-flops that were too big for his small feet. The clothes on his short frame gave him the appearance of a boy who had dressed up in his father’s clothing.

Borgia gripped a Glock in one hand. In the other he gripped a cattle prod.

‘Good,’ Borgia said, his voice trembling with rage. ‘You’re awake.’

Fletcher had a hand on his belt buckle, watching as Borgia placed the cattle prod on the operating table.

Borgia approached the cage, the Glock held by his side. It appeared to be a. 45 calibre. Fletcher suspected the clip was loaded with hollow-tipped rounds.

‘Was it worth it? All that money?’

Fletcher straightened his legs. Put his hands on either side of him and lay his palms flat against the floor.

‘My head is rather foggy, Mr Borgia, so I’m afraid I’m at a loss to answer your question.’

Borgia fumbled for something inside his trouser pocket. His hand came back and then he bent forward and rolled something underneath the kennel door.

Fletcher didn’t track the object; his eyes never left Borgia’s face.

‘ Pick it up! ’

The occupant in the next cell flinched. A cry of anguish came from another cage and died, replaced by a chorus of low moaning.

Borgia didn’t register their presence. Looking only at Fletcher, he raised the Glock. ‘ I said pick it up. ’

Fletcher found a vial lying on the floor. It was half full of a clear liquid. Taped to its side was an aged, peeling label stamped with faded red lettering: Namoxin.

Fletcher went cold. Namoxin was the name of the experimental medication used to treat psychotic male patients who had been in the Behavioral Modification Project.

The question jumped out of him. ‘Where did you obtain this?’

‘You failed to destroy all the evidence, Malcolm.’ Borgia grinned in sour triumph. ‘As part of the new task force assigned to find you, I was given access to all sorts of classified files and evidence. I know how you and the other agents from Behavioral Analysis who started the Behavioral Modification Project worked — ’

‘I had nothing to do with that,’ Fletcher said, surprised by the heat in his voice. ‘I was trying to expose it.’

Borgia wasn’t listening. ‘I read the files,’ he said. ‘Your war crimes are all laid out in black and white, everything you and the others did.’ He spoke with great fervour, working himself into a near-religious mania. ‘I know how you all got rich by working in collusion with select pharmaceutical companies developing this miracle vaccine to eliminate male violence. How you picked the test subjects. I know you helped bury the bodies — the ones you didn’t cremate at the psychiatric hospitals — and I even know how you and the others doctored the paperwork.’

‘I tried to expose the project,’ Fletcher said again.

‘Next you’ll try to convince me you didn’t kill the three agents who came to arrest you.’

‘They were CIA operatives, not federal agents. They had been sent to my home to kill me. The FBI retrieved the evidence I collected on the BMP, all the — ’

‘Lie to me all you want, Malcolm. I know the truth.’

‘You mean your truth.’ Fletcher tilted his head to one side, his gaze narrowing. ‘Have you read any patient files? Seen any documentation on the Behavioral Modification Project?’

Borgia didn’t answer.

‘I didn’t think so,’ Fletcher said. ‘You haven’t been able to put your finger on any patient files or any documentation regarding the project because they don’t exist. The FBI destroyed every last shred of documentation to keep the truth from seeing the light of day — and, it appears, conveniently used me as their scapegoat.’

‘If you tell me, I’ll show you mercy.’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Where you buried my brothers and sisters,’ Borgia said.

‘You’re a patient,’ Fletcher said, more curious than surprised. ‘A former patient of the Behavioral Modification Project.’

Borgia’s head craned back. He stared up at the ceiling as though there were a hole up there through which someone was speaking to him.

‘Which hospital?’

‘You tried to save Ali Karim,’ Borgia said. ‘You risked your life and your freedom to keep Ali Karim from dying.’ His head snapped forward, and he looked back through the chain link. ‘You’re capable of empathy.’

‘Unlike you.’ Fletcher motioned with a sweeping hand to the others in the room. ‘How many people have you tortured and killed, Special Agent Borgia? How many children?’

The man blinked, confused. ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he said. ‘All I did was find them.’

‘Them?’

‘The doctors and nurses from the hospital, the ones who helped engineer a private mass murder,’ Borgia said. ‘All those patients who died, and what happened to the doctors and nurses who killed them? They were placed inside witness protection. They were given new identities and new lives and allowed to go back to work in psychiatric facilities all over the country. The Bureau couldn’t let their sins — or yours — become public knowledge, so they did what they did best — sweep everything under the rug.’

Fletcher thought back to Theresa Herrera’s missing medical records. WitSec had expunged them along with any other traces of her former identity when they placed her into witness protection. And the other families he had found — their medical records too had been obliterated.

‘And you found their new identities,’ Fletcher said. ‘And you gave them to Marie Clouzot and Brandon Arkoff.’

A thin, knowing smile and then Borgia added, ‘You did provide me with one piece of inspiration, Malcolm.’

‘Do tell.’

‘You taught me the importance of taking justice into one’s own hands. It’s the only way to mete out a punishment that properly fits the crime.’

‘One difference.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I didn’t dissect innocent children and sell their organs.’

‘I have nothing to do with that. My job was to find out their new identities and make sure they were properly punished.’

‘You mean tortured. I’m assuming your two companions are patients like yourself.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ Borgia said again.

‘Spoken like a true psychopath.’

Borgia pressed himself up against the kennel door. His eyes were hot. Wet.

Was he crying?

He was crying.

‘Don’t you want to clear your conscience?’ Borgia asked. There was no real emotion in his voice, but the manufactured tears continued to spill down his cheeks. ‘Or are you really the soulless psychopath they say you are?’

‘Your name — your real name. We’ll start there.’

Borgia swallowed, his jaw set. ‘Terence Davidson,’ he said. ‘I entered the project when I turned fifteen — the Spaulding Psychiatric Center in Philadelphia.’

‘Why? What happened to you?’