Chris Mooney - The Killing House

‘Completely unnecessary, but thank you.’

‘It’s the least I can do, since this latest errand almost got you killed.’

Fletcher hung Karim’s coat and hat in the foyer closet, and then motioned to the hall leading to the kitchen.

Karim was believed to be somewhere in his early sixties, but during the three decades Fletcher had known him the man moved like someone who seemed a moment away from collapsing. He shuffled into the kitchen and groaned as he sat in one of the high-backed chairs arranged around the centre island.

‘I believe this is the first time I’ve ever set foot inside one of your pieds-a-terre,’ Karim said. ‘Do you spend a lot of time here?’

‘When I can.’ Fletcher, standing on the opposite side of the kitchen island, picked up the Cafetiere and poured coffee into two white mugs.

‘That oil painting,’ Karim said, pointing to the far wall inside the dining room. ‘Why does it look familiar?’

‘It’s a poor imitation of Monet’s Waterlillies at Giverny. ’

‘So why did you buy it?’

‘I didn’t. I painted it.’ Fletcher slid a plate across the black-speckled marble.

‘What’s this?’

‘Breakfast,’ Fletcher said. ‘More specifically, an omelette.’

Karim prodded it with a fork. ‘Why would you put lettuce in an omelette?’

‘It’s spinach.’

‘Same thing.’ Karim sighed and took a bite. ‘These eggs have no bloody taste.’

‘I made yours with egg whites.’

‘And here I was, thinking we were friends.’

‘The last time we spoke, you were enraged that your physician ordered you to change your diet and lose weight in order to decrease your soaring cholesterol levels.’ He glanced at Karim’s considerable paunch and added, ‘Either you’re carrying triplets, which I highly doubt, or nothing has changed.’

Karim picked up his coffee mug. ‘Cream?’

‘No cream, no sugar. It’s coffee, Ali. Not candy.’

‘You’ll make some lucky man a wonderful wife, Malcolm. You’ve got the nagging part down.’

Karim put down the cup and pushed aside the plate. Then, in an act of defiance, he lit a cigarette. He had the courtesy, however, to tilt his head back and blow the smoke up at the ceiling.

Fletcher opened a manila folder. ‘This is the woman who shot me,’ he said, and placed the sketch in front of Karim. ‘Do you recognize her?’

‘No. I would have remembered seeing a face like that. Is that really her smile?’

Fletcher nodded as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter. ‘She grinned at me just before she started shooting,’ he said, and picked up his fork. ‘I take it you’ve spoken with the Colorado police.’

‘Rather, they spoke to me. They pulled Theresa’s phone records, saw my name and started dialling. I told them the truth — leaving your name out of it, of course.’

Karim flicked cigarette ash on to his plate. ‘I also spoke with my contact at the Applewood police station — the homicide detective who referred Theresa Herrera to me. No one saw your face, but two people reported seeing what they believed was a black car with tinted windows leaving the house. No licence plate, thank God.’

‘They wouldn’t have found anything.’ The address listed for the licence belonged to an apartment complex in Queens, New York.

Fletcher forked the last bite of his omelette. ‘What about our shooter?’

‘The woman in the fur coat? What about her?’

‘Did anyone see her?’

‘My contact didn’t mention anything, and he’s involved in the investigation. Then again, he’s not looking for her.’ Karim inhaled deeply from his cigarette.

‘What about the crime scene?’ Fletcher asked.

Karim peered at him through the smoke. ‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘There is no crime scene, Malcolm. The house is gone.’

‘I assumed you’d heard it on the news or read about it on the Internet,’ Karim said.

Fletcher shook his head. He had taken few breaks on his journey from Colorado to Chicago, and these had been spent processing the information he’d collected, forming possible theories about the Herrera family, the female shooter and what had been occurring inside the house before he showed up.

‘What happened?’

‘An explosion took down most of Theresa Herrera’s house,’ Karim said. ‘It happened before the police arrived. The shock wave shattered the windows of nearby homes, and the falling debris caused significant property damage. No casualties, thank God, just minor injuries from the exploding glass and the usual trauma one experiences in such things.’ Karim flicked his ash on the plate. ‘The Applewood police station is small, and since they’re ill-equipped to deal with something like this, they called on their brothers in blue in Denver for assistance. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, incidentally, has a field office in Denver, so they too were summoned.

‘The preliminary theory is that the bomb was placed on the first floor. The blast pattern suggests dynamite. You didn’t hear it go off?’

‘No,’ Fletcher said. ‘And I doubt the shooter returned to the house to plant the bomb, so it was detonated either by a timer or remotely by a beeper or a cell phone.’

‘Why plant a bomb?’

‘To destroy evidence. Is there any evidence?’

Karim let loose a dark chuckle. ‘The storm dumped almost two feet of snow by the time it tapered off late yesterday afternoon. It’s going to be quite some time before the police find anything of value — it will be weeks before any information trickles my way.’

‘From your source.’

‘ Sources. Now that the ATF is in play, the agent I know there will discreetly send me copies of the reports once they’ve been filed. The Colorado homicide detective has agreed to keep me in the loop. He knows that, when the time is right, I’ll give him the information he needs to make an arrest. These sort of high-profile cases come around once in a lifetime. They can make or break a career.’

‘So you intend on pursuing this.’

‘Why wouldn’t I? I gave my word to Theresa Herrera that I’d look into her son’s abduction.’

‘And now her murder.’

‘And now her murder,’ Karim repeated softly. ‘There’s also a personal reason.’

‘Which is?’

‘Like you, I don’t enjoy loose ends — or mysteries. I want to find this woman.’ Karim tapped a finger against the sketch. ‘I want to know what she was doing inside Theresa Herrera’s house.’

‘And you don’t believe Colorado is up to the task.’

Karim shrugged. ‘Who’s to say? You know how it goes with small-town police departments. The best talent moves on to greener and more lucrative pastures, and what’s left behind is more often than not a midlevel offering of people who are constantly being threatened by yet another round of budget cuts, bureaucratic red-tape and superiors who are more concerned about advancing up the career ladder than rolling up their sleeves and doing actual work.’

‘Denver is assisting them.’

‘But that will last for only so long. Denver has its own problems, and as for the ATF… When it comes to bureaucracies, it’s been my experience that shit always floats to the top. I saw it happen at the Agency, and I know you witnessed it at the FBI. I’ve learned not to place my trust in such things.’

Fletcher drank some of his coffee.

‘Theresa Herrera told me her husband had gone out that night with a friend. Has he shown up?’

‘The police have been unable to locate him,’ Karim said. ‘At the moment they have him listed as a “person of interest”. Until they find him — or what’s left of him, if he was inside the house when it exploded — they’re obligated to investigate the theory that he planted the bomb, which only benefits us. While they’re chasing their straw man, we can pursue this mystery woman who shot you without them looking over our shoulders.’