The Killing House

79

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?’

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.