The Killing House by Chris Mooney Read Free Book Online Page B

on their marriage. These things often do.'
    Karim, Fletcher knew, had first-hand experience with such matters.
    For years Karim had maintained a rather bonhomie relationship with his ex-wife, Judith, often travelling to England to share holidays with her extended family, who still welcomed him into the fold. Their son had wanted to attend high school in the States, and at age fifteen moved across the pond to live with his father.
    Jason Karim was seventeen years old when he was abducted on his way home from a private Manhattan school. Karim had endured five dreadful, nightmarish days before his son's body turned up in an alley in the Bronx. Karim flew to London to deliver the news to his ex-wife.
    Judith blamed him for their son's murder. Jason should never have been allowed to navigate his way through such a dangerous city, especially at night. Karim acquiesced to his ex-wife's wishes to have their son buried in London. But Judith had attended neither the wake nor the service; she'd suffered a breakdown and was now confined to a private hospital paid for by Karim.
    Karim still made semi-annual pilgrimages to visit Judith, who had retreated to a cocoon of fantasy, telling doctors that her son was alive, travelling the globe as a hedge-fund manager. Despite medication and therapy, she still regularly picked up the phone, dialled an imaginary number and pretended to speak to her imaginary son, his imaginary wife and her two imaginary grandchildren - a boy named Bradley and a girl named Clare.
    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 histrousers 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