The Apostle
From the bestselling author of Her Last Scream, a chilling tale of ritual murder and corruption, featuring Detective Carson Ryder.The Reverend Honus Schrum, a nationally renowned minister and owner of a broadcasting empire, tells the media he has come home to Key West to die. Meanwhile, Detective Carson Ryder is investigating the ritualistic murders of young women with chequered pasts, discovering the killings have religious overtones.Simultaneously, a newly retired Harry Nautilus takes a job as a driver/bodyguard for Richard Owsley, an ambitious pastor in Mobile. They come to Florida, where Owsley meets with Schrum and is enlisted to complete a special and mysterious ‘project’ Schrum has promised a billionaire benefactor.As Carson digs deeper into the murders, Harry, interest piqued by all the hush-hush goings-on of his new employer, begins to covertly investigate the strange project. Their independent investigations begin to converge, and Carson and Harry uncover a horrifying connection between the cases…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Jack Kerley 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover design and typography © Blacksheep-uk.com
Cover photographs © David Wile/PlainPicture.com (Main Image): (Bible) © iStock.com: (candles) © Francois Dion/Gettyimages.com
Jack Kerley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007493692
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007493708
Version: 2014-11-29
Contents
Miami, April
âIâm putting in the last of Christâs blood.â
Raoul Herrera studied the slender needle for a long moment, assured himself it was the right choice, then bent forward, his skilled fingers guiding the needle into flesh, adding a bright highlight to a plump drop of red dripping from a thorn. Herrera dabbed a cotton ball in antiseptic, blotted his clientâs scapula, then leaned back and studied his work.
âDone,â he said.
Herrera flicked off the instrument and admired the most fantastic tattoo heâd ever created, a masterwork of detail that had stretched his talent to its limits, making him develop new ways of adding depth to color, motion to stillness, beauty to horror.
Yet all the tattoo consisted of was the back of a head. Not inked on the back of a head, an illustration of the back of a head.
The client had entered Skin Art by Raoul six weeks ago. The tattoo artist was alone in the back room, sanitizing equipment and preparing to close for the evening when heâd walked into the reception area. Though the door rang when opened, the bell had not sounded. Yet a man stood in the center of the Oriental carpet, utterly still, eyes staring into Herreraâs eyes, as if knowing the precise space the tattooist would occupy.
Herreraâs heartbeats accelerated. There was nothing but night outside his window and the neighborhood was dangerous in the dark. He kept a .38 pistol in back and Herrera mentally measured his steps to the gun.
âIâm closed,â he said.
The man seemed not to hear. He looked in his mid-thirties, hard-traveled years, lines etched into his angular face, his eyes tight and crinkled, as though heâd spent a lifetime squinting into sunlight. He was small in stature, wearing battered Levis and a faded Western-style shirt with sleeves rolled up over iron-hard forearms. His face was small and flat and centered by a nose broken at least once, the hair a tight cap of coiled brown that fell low on his forehead and gave a simian cast to his features. His eyes were the color of spent briquettes of charcoal.
âI said Iâm done for the day, man,â Herrera repeated. âCome back tomorrow.â
Again, the man seemed deaf to Herreraâs words. Work-hardened hands unfolded a sheet of paper and held up a richly detailed illustration of Jesus inked into a manâs bicep, a work by Herrera that had been featured in a tattoo artistsâ publication.
âDid you do this?â the man said. âDo you claim it yours?â
âItâs my work. Why?â
âIt ainât quite real yet, is it?â
Despite his uneasiness, Herrera felt his ability challenged. âYou wonât find better, mister. Not that I figure you could afford it.â
The man balled the page and tossed it to the floor. âIt ainât there yet. It looks like Him. But He ainât in it.â
