In the Blood
The author of BLOOD BROTHER returns with a psychological thriller featuring Carson Ryder, the detective with a unique perspective on serial killers – his brother’s one.TV evangelist Reverend Scaler made his fortune from firebrand rhetoric on the sins of modern America. But Scaler has preached his last sermon after being bound and beaten to death in an apparent S&M session.Detective Carson Ryder has his own problems. He's edgy and unpredictable, the crime scene barely seeming to affect him any more than finding an infant abandoned in a boat – nearby, a burnt-out shack, a body and signs of a struggle.Scaler's tangled personal life reveals bizarre connections between the cases. And it seems the baby fighting for its life in hospital has powerful enemies. Ryder can't seem to save himself – but can he save the life of an innocent child?
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In the Blood
J.A. Kerley
To Janine and Duane Eby, always beautifully there
Contents
Dedication
âItâs almost midnight, Anak. Would you stop throwing that goddamn harpoon?â Rebecca Ahn stood on the porch of the tiny, weatherbeaten house, glaring at Anak Jackson.
âIâm bored,â Jackson said. âWhat else is there to do here?â
Bathed in the thin illumination of a lone light on the side of the house, Jackson crunched across the sand to yank the six-foot lance from the scrubby palmetto doubling as his target.
âDr Matthias said to keep a low profile, Anak,â Rebecca said. âNot get noticed. Not yet.â
Jackson stared into the surrounding blackness. There wasnât another dwelling for a half-mile.
âWhoâs gonna complain, Bec? The moon?â
Jackson returned to his former position, lifted the spear to his broad shoulder. He had used true harpoons in his youth, for seals mainly, throwing with respectable accuracy according to the Inuit elders on his motherâs side. And wasnât spear-chucker a derogatory term for blacks? He was doubly blessed. Or cursed.
The spear sliced through thirty feet of sultry night air to thwock into the base of the tree.
Ahn said, âAt least throw that thing during the day.â
âItâs too freakinâ hot,â Jackson complained. But he went inside and returned the lance to a corner of the living room, a display of cheap furniture and mildewed walls. He walked a short hall to a bedroom, tiptoed inside. He returned seconds later.
âIs everything OK back there, Rebec? Have you handled the feeââ
Rebecca pointed to a damp spot on her T-shirt. Jackson smiled and pushed his hand into his jeans pocket, pulling out a candy tin. He popped it open and produced a half-smoked joint. He lit, inhaled deeply and let the smoke dribble out through his nose as he spoke.
âThis doing-nothing shit is making me stir-crazy, babe. The doc promised heâd find us decent jobs, a place to stay in Mobile, right? Then he runs off to the other side of the world to â what did he say? â âdescend staircasesâ. What the hell does descend staircases mean?â
âDr Matthias will do everything he said when he gets back, Anak, he always has.â
âYouâre too trusting, Rebec. Weâve known Matthias for maybe three months. Heâs spooky, too freakinâ weird for me. And if he sticks that goddamn needle in my arm one more time, Iâllâ¦â
âI trust him. Be patient. And donât smoke inside. Itâs not good.â
Jackson started to argue; caught himself. âMy bad. Sorry.â
He rattled open the screen door and stepped into the night. The air smelled of the estuary behind the house, the Gulfâs falling tide exposing dead fish, broken clams, clots of seaweed. The erstwhile neighborhood had been home to shrimpers, but that was before hurricanes shattered the houses and grounded the boats hundreds of yards inland. The house was the sole dwelling standing on jigsaw-cut channels separated by marsh grass and hummocks. Built in the forties of oak and cypress and hand-hewn joists, it survived the winds and water while the shacks and trailers had been blown as far west as Galveston Bay.
Anak took a final hit off the roach. He scratched at his full-face black beard, what Rebecca laughingly called his Rasputin beard, a reminder his blood had once lived in Russia. When they were stoned, Ahn made up fabulous stories about their distant forebearsâ bloodlines traveling the earth to meet, Anakâs originating deep in Russia, taking centuries to cross eastward to China, north to the Bering Strait, into Alaskan Inuit tribes â where it met another traveling strain that had originated in Africa! It was like magic.
Rebeccaâs blood, as she told it, her storytelling voice sweet and musical after sheâd smoked weed, had its genesis in the Middle East, moving through Europe to the US, pausing in the Swede-land of Minnesota, then pushing into Canada. Rebecca joked that Anak carried half the world in his veins, she carried the other half in hers.
Pretty little fairy tales that disappeared at dawn.
A light drew Anakâs eye toward the distant road. The lane to the shack was a hundred yards distant, the turn-off obscured by scrub trees and kudzu. Two sets of lights, two vehicles. The lights stopped by the gate. Went black.
Anak brushed mosquitoes from his eyes and stepped down to the sand. He was jogging up the drive for a closer look when a spotlight blazed from a vehicle. Anak dropped to the ground and watched the stark white beam of a searchlight sweeping the trees, the kind of high-intensity lamp mounted on cop cars, or used by poachers to jacklight deer, freezing them in light to await the bullet.
