The Killing House (7 page)

Karim had used his personal loss as a turning point. The ghost of Jason Karim was both the inspiration for, and a silent partner in, his father's enterprise of helping fellow victims who called on him for assistance. Each case he solved, each missing child he recovered, provided not only a purpose to his life but also helped him to manage the considerable guilt he dragged like shackles through his days.

'Clearly something has aroused your curiosity,' Karim said. 'Otherwise, you wouldn't have asked me to fly out and personally hand-deliver a portable mass spectrometer.'

Fletcher finished the last of his coffee, thinking about the manila folder in front of him, wondering where he should start.

'Meet me in the dining room,' he said.

13

Fletcher placed the empty cup inside the sink on his way to the foyer.

Mass spectrometry, the method of identifying a substance's chemical composition by separating its gaseous ions, had evolved considerably since its first application in the late 1950s, when it was used to analyse amino acids and peptides. The bulky equipment, which once took up an entire room of a forensics lab, had now been compartmentalized into a single, portable unit that could be carried to crime scenes and used at airports to detect and identify explosives, chemical-warfare agents and environmental toxins.

Fletcher placed the heavy plastic case on the dining-room table. He snapped free the latches and, from the padded foam lining, removed a heavy, rectangular unit, along with a small netbook computer and assorted cables.

As he set up the equipment, Karim hovered close by, peering through his bifocals like an anxious chemistry professor watching a student mixing potentially volatile chemicals.

'Aren't you about due for another cigarette, Ali?'

'What happened to your concern about my health?'

'I value my personal space more. Please, have a seat.' Fletcher retrieved the two evidence bags from his
trousers pocket - the spent cartridge and the slug he'd removed from his vest - and placed them on the table. Then he returned to the foyer and opened the closet door.

Sitting on the top shelf were several small plastic toolboxes holding various forensics supplies. It took him a moment to find what he needed.

'This slug,' Karim said as Fletcher entered the dining room. 'It looks like a 9-mm round.'

'It's been modified.'

'How can you tell?'

Fletcher placed the toolbox next to the MS device. 'The cartridge,' he said, pulling out a chair, 'is a wildcat.'

'I'm not well versed in ballistics, so you'll have to explain it to me.'

'The term refers to a cartridge that isn't mass-produced. More specifically, a wildcat is a cartridge that has been modified in some way in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic such as efficiency or power.'

'So it's a home-made round?'

'That was my initial suspicion, but the components show no evidence of shoddy craftsmanship. In fact, it's quite the opposite.' Fletcher opened his toolbox and continued to speak as he collected his items and placed them on the table. 'While the slug contains a manufacturing stamp I don't recognize, given the superior craftsmanship I'm inclined to believe the round was created by someone who specializes in custom-made ammunition.'

'And the mass spectrometer will show you how the gunpowder was modified.'

Fletcher nodded. 'My hope is that it will give us a unique chemical fingerprint, which will allow us to trace the owner - once we've identified the manufacturer.'

Hands covered in latex and the empty cartridge pinched between his fingers, Fletcher rubbed a cotton swab along the inner brass wall to collect the gunpowder residue. Karim came around the table to watch, then, thinking better of it, lit a fresh cigarette, entered the living room and began to pace across the oriental carpet. Sometimes he paused to examine a painting or charcoal drawing, standing in such a way as to keep Fletcher's progress within his line of vision. Then he resumed his pacing.

Twenty minutes and two cigarettes later, Karim noticed that Fletcher was leaning back in his chair.

'What is it?'

Fletcher didn't answer. He propped an elbow on the table's corner, resting his chin on a thumb as he rubbed his index finger across his bottom lip, staring at the computer screen.

Karim marched back into the dining room and, standing behind Fletcher, bent forward to read the results.

The mass spectrometry software had failed to identify the sample.

'I was told these portable units have a limited library,' Karim said. 'I'll have this sample tested in New York. My forensics people are at my lab right now. The mass
spectrometer we have there is hooked up to a software library that can identify every -'

'That won't be necessary.'

'You know what this is?'

Fletcher nodded.

'Human ash,' he said.

14

A cool silence enveloped the dining room.

Karim broke it a moment later. 'Someone's cremated remains were packed inside that ammo cartridge.' He spoke slowly, as if having trouble finding the correct words. 'That's what you're telling me.'

Fletcher nodded, his gaze fixed on the computer screen. He didn't doubt his findings. Mixed in with the gunshot's chemical components, its primer residues and organic compounds, were the unmistakable chemical signatures of human ash - phosphate, sodium, calcium, chloride, sulphate, silica, potassium and magnesium.

He read them off one by one for Karim's benefit. Karim, however, still seemed unconvinced.

'The concentration levels of each leave no room for debate,' Fletcher said. 'Minute quantities of beryllium and mercury are also present, as well as -'

'I believe you.' Karim drew heavily on his cigarette. 'Could our lady shooter have loaded the ashes herself?'

'If she had the proper tools and the proper knowledge, yes.'

'I can tell by your tone you don't think she did.'

'You have to know exactly what you're doing or you'll risk a misfire. Why risk it when you can hire a company to do it for you?'

'There's a company that performs this ... service?'

'I know of only one. It caters to hunting enthusiasts.'

'You mean gun nuts,' Karim said. 'Is this legal?'

'Perfectly legal.'

'Let me guess: this company is based in the South.'

'Alabama, I believe.'

'Of course,' Karim added in a sour tone. While he had a permit to carry a gun, he rarely did. He detested firearms, believed their availability and the ease with which they could be obtained in the United States - through simplistic forms and substandard background checks, especially in the Southern states, where owning a firearm was as common as carrying a wallet - had directly contributed to the country's rapidly rising crime levels. The notion had been firmly cemented in Karim's mind by his son's murder. Jason Karim, after enduring a savage beating, had been shot to death with seven hollow-point rounds.

'So instead of sprinkling Uncle Bobby's ashes at sea, in a garden or what have you,' Karim said, 'you pay to have his cremated remains stuffed inside shotgun shells so you can go out and, what, shoot yourself a Thanksgiving turkey? Then everyone gathered around the holiday table digs in comforted by the idea of having a tiny part of Uncle Bobby digesting in their bellies, is that it?'

'I'm not debating the merits of such a service, Ali. I'm merely telling you it exists.'

Karim examined the ash dangling from his cigarette. He flicked it into his coffee cup and said, 'I'd thought I'd seen everything. The world we live in now ...'

Karim shook the disgust from his face and looked around the dining room before his gaze settled on a reproduction of Marie-Denise Villers's
Young Woman Drawing
. He stared at the angelic face, at her intense but gentle dark eyes and the golden corkscrew curls dangling across her small shoulders, as though waiting for her to validate his feelings.

'Will the Denver crime lab discover this?'

'Depends on the expertise of the forensics staff,' Fletcher said. 'If someone recognizes the cartridge as a wildcat, he or she may decide to run testing. But they won't find anything.'

'Because the crime scene has been contaminated by the bomb.'

'And the snow. By now it's already washed away the residue needed for testing.' A pause, then Fletcher added, 'You can't extract any DNA from these ashes.'

Karim blinked in surprise at hearing his thought spoken out loud.

'The cremation process destroys the phosphodiester bonds that hold DNA nucleotides together,' Fletcher said. 'All that remain are the chemical signatures listed on the computer screen.'

Karim's cell phone rang. 'Excuse me for a moment,' he said, pulling his BlackBerry from a rumpled pocket.

While Karim conducted a near-silent conversation with the caller on the other end of the line, Fletcher took out his smartphone, connected to the Internet and searched for companies that specialized in placing cremated remains inside ammunition. As he suspected,
there was only one such company, and it was based in Alabama. He clicked on the link for the company website.

Sacred Ashes, based in the town of Dunbar and formed by two former game wardens, billed itself as a cost-effective memorial for the outdoors person. Page after page extolled the benefits of using their service - the virtually non-existent ecological footprint compared to interment; the significant savings that would be made by opting out of purchasing traditional funeral services, casket, burial plot, gravestone or urn. One pound of human ash and a payment of $1,500 provided 250 cartridges for either a shotgun or a pistol. The rifle enthusiast had to make do with 100 cartridges. All the ammunition came in standard calibres. An additional payment of $100 provided the mourner with a finished handcrafted ammunition box that was 'mantel-worthy'.

Fletcher was reading through customer testimonials when Karim returned to the line. 'That was my contact in Colorado,' Karim said. 'They found Barry Herrera - or, more specifically, his head.'

'Where?'

'Sitting on a tree limb about half a mile from the blast site.'

'So the husband was either close to the bomb or right on top of it when it went off.'

Karim nodded. 'At least now we know he was inside the house that night.'

'He was alive when the bomb detonated.'

Karim's brow furrowed. 'You told me you didn't see him.'

'I didn't,' Fletcher said. 'When Theresa Herrera answered the door, she was frightened but composed. She wouldn't have been able to maintain her composure if her husband was dead - or if she knew about the bomb.'

'What I don't understand is why the shooter allowed Herrera to answer the door in the first place. Why not just wait for you to leave?'

'I think the answer lies in the sequence of events,' Fletcher said. 'Let's start when I pulled into the driveway. I saw the lights for one of the upstairs bedrooms turn off. The blinds had been drawn - the blinds for all the windows facing the street had been drawn. That happened before I arrived.

'I rang the doorbell twice, and, when no one answered, I went to the garage. I saw both cars and decided to return to the house. I think the shooter was watching me from the bedroom window. The lights were off, it was dark in there, and she could watch me undetected. The shooter saw me coming back and at some point made the decision to escort Theresa Herrera downstairs to send me away.'

'And now we know the husband was inside the house that night.'

'
And
we know the shooter didn't bring the husband downstairs,' Fletcher said. 'I didn't see or hear him. After she killed Theresa Herrera, after she tried to kill me, she fled out the back. I returned to the front and
picked up the spent cartridge. Again, I didn't see or hear anything to give me an indication the husband was inside the house.'

'And then you drove away.'

Fletcher nodded. 'I didn't hear the bomb go off, so a significant period of time elapsed before it detonated. When it did, Barry Herrera must have been right on top of it or very close to it, for his head to have been thrown such a distance. That suggests a fixed position. That he couldn't move.'

'You think he was tied up somewhere, maybe the upstairs bedroom?'

'And gagged,' Fletcher said. 'Remember, I didn't hear him.'

'What if he was already dead by that point?'

'The woman in the fur coat was inside the house
before
I arrived. If she had killed the husband, why didn't she also kill the wife? Why wait? And if the husband was already dead, why escort the distraught and terrorized wife downstairs to answer the door? Why take the risk?'

'Because something was in progress when you arrived, and you interrupted it.'

Fletcher nodded. 'Whatever was happening inside the house, whatever this woman in the fur coat had planned, it was important enough to risk allowing Theresa Herrera to answer the door. She wanted to send me on my way so she could get back to it.'

'Only Theresa Herrera warned you with that bit about not being able to afford my fee.'

Fletcher nodded again.

'Then the shooter killed Theresa Herrera, tried to kill you and fled the scene.'

'And after she was a safe distance away, she detonated the bomb,' Fletcher said. 'I don't think she came back with it. Too risky - someone might see her. I think she brought it with her to the house, possibly concealed in something inconspicuous, something that wouldn't arouse any suspicion - a handbag, possibly.'

'It must have been one hell of a big handbag.'

'Bringing a bomb to the house ... if her goal was simply to kill Theresa Herrera and her husband, she could have driven up to the house, left the bomb at the front door and detonated it from a safe location any time she wanted.'

'Agreed,' Karim said. 'So why use the bomb? To erase evidence?'

'Using a bomb doesn't completely erase evidence. It only makes the pieces of the puzzle more difficult to put together. I think she used it because she couldn't afford to let anyone know what she was doing inside there - she
needed
to hide what she was doing inside the house.'