The Killing House by Chris Mooney

Author:Chris Mooney [Mooney, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9780141961675
Google: tvhNcNjJV_UC
Amazon: B008HI6TIO
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2012-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

46

Fletcher reached Midtown Manhattan a few minutes shy of 7 a.m., dry-eyed and weary. A cold and milky predawn light had broken across the streets and buildings of Fifth Avenue, the setting of Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence. The horse-drawn carriages that had once dominated this area over a century ago had been replaced by hustling delivery vans, taxis and limousines. Joggers, dog-walkers, and early risers off to work paced the streets, while doormen in garish uniforms poised like sentries guarded gold-plated gateways leading to luxury kingdoms owned by the new century’s robber barons.

Karim lived and conducted his day-to-day business operations from inside a historic five-floor neo-Italian Renaissance mansion commissioned in 1922 by a wealthy German merchant and designed by one of the city’s most prominent architects at the time, C. P. H. Gilbert. Karim did not employ a doorman, driver, maid or chef. With the exception of Boyd Paulson – and now, the mercurial Emma White – Fletcher did not know the names of the employees who worked out of the man’s home. Every time Fletcher visited, Karim sent his people to the company’s main office in Downtown Manhattan.

Snaking his way towards his destination, Fletcher saw a businessman step over a vagrant passed out in the middle of the pavement. A patrolman directing street traffic turned his back on a young woman repeatedly slapping her child. Seeing the common ugliness on display beyond the Jaguar’s tinted glass made him long for a hot shower, followed by an even longer, uninterrupted sleep.

He turned left and drove up the short ramp leading to Karim’s private garage. The metal gate was closed. A pair of security cameras watched him.

The gate rose a moment later and Fletcher entered an underground garage. Four high-end luxury vehicles were parked to the far left. Fletcher drove straight on and parked in a space near a set of concrete steps leading up to an elevator. Security cameras, each positioned in a corner, were fixed on the entire area. He knew they had been turned off, as Karim did not want any recorded video footage of a wanted fugitive entering his home.

Fletcher traded his leather gloves for latex. He insisted on wearing them when visiting the man’s home. Netbook in hand, he removed the evidence bag from the trunk, stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors closed and the ancient piece of machinery, one of the few items Karim had not replaced or updated, waited as if deciding whether or not it wanted to move. Finally, it rose, slowly and unsteadily, the gears creaking.

The elevator doors opened to a long hall of cream-coloured walls and a hardwood floor covered by a Turkish rug. Fletcher walked across it, passing by a side table holding stacks of mail and a bouquet of orchids arranged in a vase, and stepped into an anteroom designed to resemble an old English library. The tall space held several leather armchairs and sofas, a pair of antique secretarial desks and folio stands.

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