The Killing House Read Free Page B

glasses with tortoiseshell frames.
    He checked his appearance in the rearview mirror. His beard was neatly trimmed and his black hair, thick and long, had grown out over the ears. For the past five months he had been living in Key West under one of his aliases and his skin was brown from the sun. With his tan, stylish glasses and coloured contacts, he bore no resemblance to his fugitive photos.
    He was, however, the spitting image of the New York licence and passport photographs he carried for Richard Munchel, a self-employed computer-security consultant who occasionally performed work for the global security company Karim Enterprises. Ali Karim had contacted him using the anonymous and encrypted email system they had set up.
    Karim had recently agreed to look into the abduction of a ten-year-old boy from Colorado. Four years had passed with no developments reported by the police, and the mother believed her son was still alive. Karim thought that Fletcher's prior experience as a profiler for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit might possibly uncover a new investigative thread to explore, an overlooked angle or piece of evidence. Fletcheragreed, and Karim scanned and then emailed the police reports. Karim, an old friend and trusted ally, had not only provided him with safe harbour on many occasions over the years; he was also one of a handful of people who knew the truth behind Fletcher's fugitive status.
    Years ago, while employed as a federal agent, Fletcher had uncovered a classified 'black book' research project involving the Behavioral Analysis Unit. While conducting his own covert investigation, three men were dispatched to his home to make him and the evidence disappear. Fletcher escaped with his life but not the evidence; the FBI had confiscated it from his storage facility. The research project was quickly dismantled, the hospitals shut down, every scrap of paper and piece of evidence collected and destroyed. The FBI's bureaucratic powers, having decided he was a liability, fabricated a story for the press: Malcolm Fletcher had attacked and killed three federal agents who had been sent to his home to arrest him in connection with the murders of several serial killers - cases he had worked on while employed as a profiler.
    Fletcher climbed out of the car, pleased to be wearing a suit after these longs months spent under the hot Florida sun. He was a veteran of private schools, where ties and jackets were required, and then later, as a federal agent, he had grown accustomed to good suits and shoes. They were a part of his true identity, the last vestiges of the life he had led before becoming a wanted man.
    His attention turned to the area between the right side of the house and the detached two-car garage - the place where someone had used an outside ladder to climb up to the first-floor window and abduct Rico Herrera from his bed. The intruder had not left behind any fingerprints or trace evidence, but police had recovered a man's size-nine trainer impression from the dirt.
    Fletcher shut the car door and moved up the driveway.

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