Chris Mooney - The Killing House

It was too late. Brandon’s phone was ringing. She couldn’t hear it but she saw Brandon reach inside his pocket to shut it off. Fletcher had heard the ringing and she watched in horror as the monster turned the corner and shot Brandon dead. Brandon was dead. She screamed but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the computer screen. The monster picked up Brandon’s gun and removed Brandon’s phone and car keys. Brandon was dead, Alexander was dead, and the monster was creeping down the hall with Jimmy Weeks. If she stayed here she would die. The drums of explosives packed inside the basement would blow this building to smithereens. She couldn’t stop it; the timer had started as soon as Brandon typed the keys to start the fire to incinerate the bodies. Brandon had told her she had fifteen minutes.

Marie didn’t have time to finish dressing. She quickly slid into her coat and grabbed the computer, the wires coming undone as she fled the room. Brandon was dead and oh dear God did it hurt, but if she could beat the monster to the garage she could release the videos stored on Brandon’s computer and then the whole world would know.

As Fletcher crept up the stairwell of dimming light, listening for sounds and watching for shadows, his mind kept replaying the odd white flashes and sparks he’d seen before the fire had started. The answer drifted away, came back: a thermite reaction. The sand-like particles covering his hands, his hair and clothing, were either iron oxide or copper oxide.

When he saw the heavy steel door crashing down and sealing off the room, he knew: the basement chamber had been turned into a crematorium. Gasoline alone couldn’t turn human bones into dry fragments: it could reach a maximum temperature of only 560?°F. Destroying human bones required a temperature of between 1,400?°F and 1,800?°F. Gasoline mixed with a metal powder and a metal oxide, like the one covering his clothing and skin, created extremely high temperatures upwards of 2,500?°F. Such a temperature would also melt most of the medical equipment.

At the moment it was contained — had to be, in order to effectively destroy evidence. Someone intelligent and clever enough to create a home-made crematorium would know that large bones like the femur and thick, dense joints supporting the hip wouldn’t burn away. All the bones needed to be pulverized into ash or they would be discovered. Someone this intelligent would have installed the proper mechanism to ensure no evidence of what had occurred here would ever be found.

Alexander Borgia and the disfigured man, Brandon Arkoff, were dead. That left Marie Clouzot. She had blown up Theresa Herrera’s Colorado home in order to destroy evidence; it stood to reason the same measures had been taken here.

The stairs ended. The teenager bumped up against his back. Fletcher could feel the boy trembling.

Tall windows bordered a large, rectangular-shaped room, and they were dimly lit from the outside streetlights. The windows were cracked and broken and each one was barred with heavy steel grilles. There was enough light for him to make out his surroundings.

To his right, a long, cavernous space that had once been the site for some sort of manufacturing; ancient machinery shrouded in shadows and covered haphazardly with cloth tarps was scattered among waist-high work stations made of wood. Plastic crates were stacked in corners, strewn across the floor. Everywhere he looked Fletcher saw steel drums and wooden pallets used for shipping.

To his left was a half-opened door. There was light beyond it. He opened the door and saw a small passageway leading to a landing that overlooked a garage wide enough to accommodate delivery trucks. Fletcher was moving down the passageway, the teenager clutching his hand, when the garage door started to open.

He reached the landing. Two vehicles were parked in the bay — a vintage black Mercedes and a dark Lincoln Town Car, the one that he had tailed in Baltimore.

Marie Clouzot was running for the Mercedes. She wore the same fur coat he’d seen in Colorado. She was barefoot and clutching a laptop computer.

Fletcher fired.

The first shot hit her high in the shoulder. She dropped the laptop and her car keys as he fired again, a double-tap into the centre of the woman’s back. Marie collapsed face down against the garage floor.

The teenager was shaking violently; he had trouble standing, and he had gone into shock. Fletcher helped him down the steps, reassuring the young man that he was safe. A cold wind inside the garage, and there was still light in the sky.

Fletcher placed the teenager in the back of the Mercedes. He shut the door as Marie Clouzot rolled on to her back. She hadn’t buttoned her coat and, oddly, wore nothing except a pair of white panties. Her long fingers with their dark-painted nails traced the visible scars along her chest and ribs, the tight skin over her breast implants. The scars were thick and wormy, all shapes, sizes and lengths. He knew they had been caused by knives, and by fire. He saw the marred areas where she had been branded with something hot, like a fireplace poker.

The fingers didn’t touch the network of scars along the belly above her penis.

Her eyes were huge and white. ‘They pulled me into alleys and beat me, men like you,’ she croaked. ‘When I fought back, when I kicked them to the ground and made them bleed, men like you arrested me. Men like you judged me.’

Fletcher scooped up the car keys from the floor.

‘Men like you sent me to a psychiatric hospital and injected me with poison because I was different. They tried to kill me and they raped me and I survived it. No matter what men like you did, I survived.’

Fletcher grabbed the laptop and moved to the car.

‘I watched them suffer, every last one,’ she said. ‘I regret nothing. Nothing.’

As Fletcher backed out of the garage, he saw Marie Clouzot pulling something out of her jacket pocket — an ornate gold necklace adorned with jewels of various sizes and colours.

Fletcher took out Brandon Arkoff’s cell phone as he raced around the side of the brick-faced building. It was three-storeys high, weathered and desolate, all the windows covered with security grilles.

The alleyway dumped him into a street of similar brick buildings. They were covered in graffiti, and the windows were broken. He turned left, the tyres spinning, and as he tore across the road he saw a weathered sign hanging from the front of the building: DECKLER amp; SONS PRINTING. He also found a street sign.

He called 911. A police dispatcher for the city of Baltimore picked up. He told the woman on the other end of the line about the bomb and gave her the address and the name of the building. Told her it had been set off by Brandon Arkoff and Marie Clouzot. Told her the bomb was planted most likely somewhere in the basement, told her she should evacuate the area, repeated the address and hung up. There was nothing more he could do. He took solace in the fact that the printing press was located in a desolate area of other vacant buildings. Collateral damage would be minimal, perhaps non-existent. Every street he passed was empty.

Fletcher glanced at his rearview mirror. The teenager was exhibiting the outward physical signs of shock: sweating, rapid breathing and blank stares.

‘I need to contact your parents,’ Fletcher said. ‘What’s your name?’

The teenager’s face was bloodless. He shook violently in shock and fear at what he’d just endured, at the pair of strange, black eyes staring at him from the rearview mirror.

‘Jimmy Weeks. That’s my name. I’m from Petersburg, Pennsylvania.’

Fletcher asked for the boy’s home number. Weeks gave it to him.

Fletcher’s next call was to M. She answered her disposable cell. He told her he couldn’t stay on long, then quickly explained that he’d used this phone to call 911. M didn’t ask questions. She knew any 911 call placed to a police dispatcher anywhere in the country was automatically traced. He figured he had no more than five minutes until Baltimore dispatch triangulated his cell signal.