The Killing House

49

Karim pointed the remote at the windows. The light-blocking shades began to lower and the office grew dark.

But not the walls. Made of high-tech plasma screens, they glowed a bright white.

‘I found twenty-three men living in Maryland with either the first or last name of Jenner,’ Karim said.

Fletcher got to his feet. ‘I’m interested in a white male, late forties to early sixties.’

Karim clicked away on his keyboard.

Minutes later, the brightness dissolved away in a series of pixels. Digital pictures started to fill the blackness — three rows of Maryland driver’s licences, fifteen in total.

Fletcher found him in the middle of the third row: there was the man he’d seen leave the home in Dickeyville and enter the back of the Lincoln.

Fletcher tapped the licence. Karim enlarged it and the others disappeared.

William S. Jenner was fifty-eight, five foot ten and 220 pounds. He lived in Baltimore, at No. 922 Black Oak Road.

Karim went back to typing and clicking, using the number printed on the Baltimore driver’s licence to unlock William Jenner’s social-security number, the master key in the digital kingdom. Fletcher entered the anteroom and helped himself to a bowl of fruit set up on the wet bar’s polished countertop.

His thoughts turned to Nathan Santiago. Abducted at seventeen and found eight years later, a 25-year-old man with a bony frame and malnourished skin bruised with needle marks, and with a raw and infected horse-shaped incision from a kidney removal.

Eight years.

Fletcher recalled the moment when he had pulled back on to the highway, on his way to Karim’s home in Cape May. Santiago had collapsed into himself, wailing, refusing to speak. Did he know his mother had also been abducted? Had she been imprisoned with him?

The child is taken first, Fletcher thought. Years pass as the parents live moment to moment on a bridge suspended between hope and reality — hope that their child might yet still be found alive, while the overwhelming reality suggests that their son or daughter is most likely dead, never to come home.

Why take the child first?

Psychological torture.

Years pass and then a single parent is abducted, the spouse killed. Why?

Payback.

Revenge.

And what happened to the abducted parent? Was he or she brought to the place where their missing child was being held?

Santiago had been found tied to a bed. He had been washed and in clean clothing. Why? Was he on display for the dinner guests, the people who had flown in to collect organs? Had Nathan Santiago been scheduled for the operating slab?

Fletcher saw the closet again, with its garment bags and human ashes tucked behind the footwear. The woman in the fur coat and her male partner had erected a private sanctuary inside their killing house. They had collected — so far — eleven garment bags for eleven victims. Eleven adults, and each one had a child who had been abducted. Each child had been missing for years and then a parent was abducted.

Fletcher marvelled at the predation at work here, the cunning sophistication and ruthless patience required to pull off such a feat. The feeling didn’t repulse him. As a profiler, he had learned to view deplorable acts as works of art. It was the only way to decipher the meaning behind the brushstrokes.

Karim called for him. Fletcher returned to the office.

‘Here’s what I found during my initial pass,’ Karim said. ‘William Jenner worked as a patrolman for the city of Baltimore until early ’98, when he and his partner, Marcus De Luca, responded to a 911 call from a woman who said her ex-boyfriend had come to her house and threatened to kill her. The woman later claimed that both cops had raped her.’

Lovely, Fletcher thought.

‘Because the woman was mentally ill — a paranoid schizophrenic, according to a doctor’s testimony — and because there was no forensic evidence to back up her accusation, the jury dismissed the charges,’ Karim said. ‘Interestingly, both Jenner and De Luca retired from the force after the trial. Now take a look at this.’

Karim turned back to his computer. William Jenner’s licence disappeared from the wall, to be replaced by a silent video clip of a well-dressed newsreader with stylish glasses for Baltimore’s ABC2 news. The woman spoke wordlessly for a moment; she was then followed by a video montage of firefighters battling an early-morning blaze.

‘That would be William Jenner’s house,’ Karim said. ‘The address matches the one on his licence.’

Fletcher wondered if Jenner had been killed, his body dumped inside his house — or cremated at the funeral home.

‘I also checked Gary Corrigan’s house,’ Karim said. ‘That too had been set on fire. There’s no doubt our lady shooter and her male friend are closing down shop and getting ready to leave. I need to share this information with my Baltimore contact and make some additional phone calls. Let’s reconvene here in, say, two hours. Take a shower and relax.’

Fletcher took his netbook and left the office to collect a fresh set of clothes from the Jaguar. He also retrieved the forensic unit holding the data downloaded from Corrigan’s iPhone.

There are three others. At least, Corrigan had told him.

They’re alive, Corrigan had said.

If you don’t take me with you, you’ll never find them.

Fletcher thought of the three homes that had been set on fire and wished he had taken Corrigan up on his offer.

Fletcher entered Karim’s private basement apartment. He did not take a shower, and he did not relax.

The spacious bedroom contained a small desk. He placed the netbook and forensic device on its top and turned on both items. Dust swarmed inside the milky columns of light pouring through the pair of ground-level windows. He could hear the busy Manhattan traffic, the rapid click of shoes and heels moving fast across the pavement, people talking to one another, in person or on phones.

Fletcher connected the forensic device to the netbook. He transferred the data and rubbed the fatigue from his eyes.

Would Nathan Santiago survive his septic infection, or would he die?

Fletcher felt his heart racing. The question had triggered the lizard part of his brain, the prefrontal cortex area housing useless emotions — anxiety, apprehension and fear. Adrenalin coursed through his system, the hormones and neurotransmitters already beginning their savage attack on his central nervous system. Fail to stop it now and his rational mind, already vulnerable in his fatigued state, would gallop away. But fighting it by trying to tighten the reins only fuelled the irrationality, making the brain nearly impossible to control.

Long ago and through much practice, Fletcher had learned how to subvert the disruptive chemical process through transcendental meditation. He didn’t have time right now. He needed to see if Corrigan’s phone contained any information on the possible whereabouts of Santiago. He shelved his concern for the moment, about to get to work, when there was a knock on the apartment door.

He heard it open and then Emma White spoke to him from the adjoining room.

‘Forgive the intrusion,’ M said, ‘but Mr Karim sent me. He needs you straightaway. He’s waiting for you in the garage.’