when the gunshot erupted from inside the house.
Part of Theresa Herrera’s head disappeared, and she slumped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The front door swung inward. Inside the foyer of dim light and crouching behind the door was an older woman dressed in a fur coat. He caught a glimpse of her face, the odd, horse-like grin looking at him from across a 9-mm handgun.
The first shot, fired from less than a foot away, hit him dead centre in the chest.
Fletcher staggered backwards from the sudden impact. He spun awkwardly, tumbling back against the wrought-iron railing. The woman fired again. The round hit him in the abdomen, and he slipped on the snowcovered landing and tumbled down the short set of brick steps.
Fletcher landed face first against the walkway. He immediately rolled on to his side, hissing back the pain, snow stinging his face.
The woman fired again. The shot kicked up a clump of dirt and dead grass dangerously close to his head. Fletcher moved to his back and brought up his weapon, about to fire when the shooter threw the front door shut.
Theresa Herrera’s limp arm hung over the threshold. The door hit it and bounced back. Fletcher caught a flash of the dark fur coat retreating down the foyer.
Fletcher staggered to his feet. The lightweight ceramic armour plating woven inside the bulletproof vest had prevented the two rounds from piercing his body, but the impact had cracked at least one rib, sending his muscles into spasms.
The bullet had removed most of Theresa Herrera’s head, killing her instantly.
A spent shell caught his attention. Well studied in ballistics, he immediately registered what it was.
A door slammed open from the back of the house. Struggling to breathe, the cold air sharp with the odour of cordite, he stumbled across the front lawn towards the left side of the house — a task made more difficult in his shoes, as they offered no traction in the snow.
One shot. All he needed was one clear shot to take the woman down.
Fletcher stuck close to the side of the house. When it ended, he turned the corner, bringing up his SIG.
The garden, wide and long, was partially lit by the light shining through the back windows. A back door hung open; it led to a deck of pressure-treated wood. Through the falling snow he saw a clear set of footprints near the deck’s bottom step. He followed them across the garden until they vanished inside a black forest of tall pines. In the far distance and glowing like eyes in the night were the windows of a half-dozen homes.
He saw no sign of the woman. Had no idea if she was running or hiding somewhere, waiting for him.
Fletcher might have given pursuit if she didn’t already have a good lead on him. In his current physical condition, there was no way he could bridge the gap.
A more practical and urgent consideration, however, made him immediately turn and move back to the front: the police. One or more nearby neighbours had no doubt heard the multiple
gunshots and called 911.
The front door hung wide open. Fletcher clutched the railing as he moved up the front steps. Snow blew inside the house, coating the foyer and Theresa Herrera’s small, still body in a fine layer of white. She lay face down in a twisted heap on the brown tile. Blood had pooled around her and dripped over the threshold, staining the snow a bright red.
Fletcher dropped to his knees, his ribs screaming in protest, and looked at the entry wound. It was tattooed with black powder. The size of the wound and amount of gunpowder confirmed the gun had been fired from a close distance — a few feet away from the door, to his right. The shooter had stood there, but she couldn’t have seen him — couldn’t have seen him drawing his weapon. There were no windows installed around the door, no nearby windows that looked on to the front landing. So why had she suddenly panicked and shot Theresa?
Wary of destroying potential latent fingerprints, he used a pen to pick up the casing from the floor. Fletcher dropped it inside one of the small evidence bags he kept tucked inside his back pocket, sealing it shut on his way back to the car.
9
Fletcher backed up and drove away, the car tyres slipping and skidding on the snow until they found purchase. Everywhere he looked he saw home windows bright with light. He caught more than one face pressed against the glass, examining the street for the source of the gunshots. They couldn’t see him; he was hidden behind the Audi’s tinted windows.
But they could see his car.
During his early years as a fugitive, Fletcher had invested his considerable savings in the stock market. Through careful management, he had amassed a small fortune, which had allowed him to purchase a number of safe houses under the names of various well-crafted identities and corporations. The closest home was in Sturgis, South Dakota — a small ranch house with a private garage holding a Honda Accord.
The townhouse in Chicago, however, had a custom-made Jaguar stored in the small garage. Armoured and bulletproof, the car contained other useful features that would be beneficial during the course of his investigation.
Fletcher cracked open the windows and listened to the cold night.
Two minutes passed with no sirens.
Ten minutes passed and he saw no police cruisers.
The city snowploughs, however, were out in full force, busy clearing the roads. Their numbers suggested a major snowstorm was about to descend upon central Colorado.
It was only when he reached the highway that he allowed himself to turn his attention inward to examine what had happened at the Herrera home.
Fletcher started at the beginning, seeing each frame with remarkable clarity, as though it had been filmed. He ran the movie forward and backward, sometimes pausing to study a particular frame.
He kept wondering if his actions — or lack thereof — had contributed to Theresa Herrera’s death.
It was clear the moment the petite woman cracked opened the door that something was wrong. The fringe of her short blonde hair was matted across her damp forehead. Her face was pale, her bloodshot eyes wide with terror. She had dark rings of sweat underneath the arms and collar of her long-sleeved grey T-shirt. I’ve got that rotten stomach flu that’s going around, she’d told him.
A logical explanation, and one he might have believed if she hadn’t told him the reason why she and her husband had decided to forgo Ali Karim’s investigative services at the last minute: Finances. We simply couldn’t afford Mr Karim’s fee.
Karim, Fletcher knew, hadn’t charged the Herrera family for his services. He didn’t charge anyone.
Karim, a former CIA operative, had left the Agency at a relatively young age. Instead of entering the lucrative private sector, he established his own security company in Midtown Manhattan. Having recently divorced, and with his ex-wife taking their only child, their son, Jason, back to live in her family home in London, Karim put his time and energy into his business.
In less than a decade, he had opened additional offices in several major US cities. Then, with the explosive growth of the Internet during the nineties, Karim’s careful and well-timed investments had allowed him to expand his business and purchase several private forensic companies in the United States and abroad. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, Ali Karim was the owner of a global security empire — and one of the nation’s richest men. Karim devoted his considerable wealth, talents and resources to providing pro bono investigative services for the victims of crime.
When Theresa Herrera said she couldn’t afford Karim’s fee, Fletcher thought the woman was trying to warn him — about what, he had no idea. He had drawn his weapon, wanting to be prepared, and he saw her relief before she looked sideways and held her gaze where the shooter was hiding, watching and listening. He was about to grab Theresa Herrera and take her to the safety of his car when the woman in the fur coat fired.
Still, he wondered if there was something he could have done to change the outcome. If he had acted
