The Killing House

6

When the Clouzot woman saw the headlights flash across the closed blinds, she shut off the bedroom lights. Theresa didn’t put up a fight when the woman grabbed her arm and, with a surprising strength, marched her swiftly across the room to the windows facing the street.

Theresa was standing there now, with her face mashed against the window’s crown moulding and the gun’s muzzle digging into her left temple, Clouzot behind her. As instructed, Theresa had pulled back the side of the wooden blinds just enough to allow Clouzot to see the driveway.

Theresa could see too. The man who stepped out of the black Audi had long, dark hair and wore a dark overcoat. This has to be the man Ali Karim said would be coming by tonight to talk about Rico, she thought. The man experienced in abduction cases.

Clouzot leaned in closer. ‘Who is he, and what is he doing here?’

So Barry hadn’t told her about the investigator — or Ali Karim.

Don’t tell her, that pragmatic voice said. If you do — if you tell her this man is an investigator, that he’s here because you hired someone to look into Rico’s case — she might panic and decide to kill you.

Theresa felt Rico watching her from the photographs.

I can’t take it any more. Please, Mom. Please help me.

The doorbell rang.

‘He’s an investigator,’ Theresa said. ‘I don’t know his name.’

‘Police? FBI?’

‘I don’t know. He works for someone else, a man named Ali Karim. Karim owns a security company in New York. Manhattan. I hired him to look into what happened to my son.’

‘Why? What did you find?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You found something, some piece of evidence.’ Clouzot’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but the calm veneer was gone. The woman was scared. ‘Tell me.’

‘Nothing. I just — ’

‘Just what?’

‘I… I couldn’t live with it any more, not knowing what happened to him. To Rico.’

‘Did you tell this Karim person your real name?’

‘No.’

‘What you did back in Philadelphia?’

The doorbell rang again.

‘No,’ Theresa said. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Lie to me and your son dies.’

‘ I’m telling you the truth. I — ’ Theresa cut herself off when she felt the gun muzzle dig deeper into her head.

‘Yell at me again,’ Clouzot said, ‘and I’ll kill you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Clouzot said nothing. Theresa blinked the sweat from her eyes. The wooden blinds rattled in her trembling hand.

A moment later she saw the man move away from the front door. Instead of heading to his car, he walked to the top of the driveway and peered inside one of the garage’s bay windows.

Theresa felt the woman’s rapid breathing against her nape, heard the hitch in her throat when the man turned and made his way back to the house.

‘Let go of the blind,’ Clouzot said.

Theresa did. Clouzot released her grip and backed away. Theresa didn’t dare move.

Two beeps as the woman pressed the keys for a pre-programmed number on her cell and then Clouzot spoke into the phone: ‘If you don’t hear from me within the next five minutes, take Rico away and kill him.’

Fletcher couldn’t see inside the house. The blinds on the nearby windows had been drawn, and the front door, made of solid mahogany, contained no small perimeter windows.

No matter. Both the doctor and his wife were home. Both vehicles were parked in the garage. He rang the doorbell again, about to follow it with repeated knocking, when the heavy door cracked open.