The Death Box
Detective Carson Ryder faces his most terrifying adversary yet in this nail-biting thriller from the author of Her Last Scream.Carson Ryder thought he’d seen everything …A specialist in twisted crimes, Detective Carson Ryder thought he’d seen the lowest depths of human depravity. But he’s barely started his new job in Miami when called to a horrific scene: a concrete pillar built of human remains, their agony forever frozen in stone.Finding the secret of the pillar drags him into the sordid world of human trafficking, where one terrified girl holds the key to unraveling a web of pain, prostitution and murder. There’s just one problem: Ryder’s not the only one chasing the girl.And the others will kill to keep the secret safe.
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To James Lewinski,
Who showed me Prufrock
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by J.A. Kerley
Copyright
About the Publisher
The stench of rotting flesh filled the box like black fog. Death surrounded Amili Zelaya, the floor a patchwork of clothing bearing the decomposing bodies of seventeen human beings. Amili was alive, barely, staring into the shadowed dark of a shipping container the size of a semi-trailer. Besides the reek of death, there was bone-deep heat and graveyard silence save for waves breaking against a hull far below.
Youâre lucky, the smiling man in Honduras had said before closing the door, ten days and youâll be in Los Estados Unitos, the United States, think of that. Amili had thought of it, grinning at Lucia Belen in the last flash of sunlight before the box slammed shut. Theyâd crouched in the dark thinking their luck was boundless: They were going to America.
âLucia,â Amili rasped. âPlease donât leave me now.â
Luciaâs hand lay motionless in Amiliâs fingers. Then, for the span of a second, the fingers twitched. âFight for life, Lucia,â Amili whispered, her parched tongue so swollen it barely moved. Lucia was from Amiliâs village. Theyâd grown up together â born in the same week eighteen years ago â ragged but happy. Only when fragments of the outside world intruded did they realize the desperate poverty strangling everyone in the village.
âFight for life,â Amili repeated, drifting into unconsciousness. Sometime later Amiliâs mind registered the deep notes of ship horns. The roar and rattle of machinery. Something had changed.
âThe ship has stopped, Lucia,â Amili rasped, holes from popped rivets allowing light to outline the inside of the module, one of thousands on the deck of the container ship bound for Miami, Florida. The illegal human cargo had been repeatedly warned to stay quiet through the journey.
If you reveal yourselves you will be thrown in a gringo prison, raped, beaten ⦠men, women, children, it makes no difference. Never make a sound, understand?
Eventually theyâd feel the ship stop and the box would be offloaded and driven to a hidden location where theyâd receive papers, work assignments, places to live. They had only to perform six months of house-keeping, yard work or light factory labor to relieve the debt of their travel. After that, they owned their lives. A dream beyond belief.
âIt must be Miami, Lucia,â Amili said. âStay with me.â
But their drinking water had leaked away early in the voyage, a split opening in the side of the huge plastic drum, water washing across the floor of the container, pouring out through the seams. No one worried much about the loss, fearing only that escaping liquid would attract attention and theyâd be put in chains to await prison. The ship had been traveling through fierce storms, rainwater dripping into the module from above like a dozen mountain springs. Water was everywhere.
This had been many days back. Before the ship had lumbered into searing summer heat. The rusty water in the bottom of the module was swiftly consumed. For days they ached for water, the inside of the container like an oven. Teresa Maldone prayed until her voice burned away. Pablo Entero drank from the urine pail. Maria Poblana banged on the walls of the box until wrestled to the floor.
She was the first to die.
Amili Zelaya had initially claimed a sitting area by a small hole in the container, hoping to peek out and watch for America. An older and larger woman named Postan Rendoza had bullied Amili away, cursing and slapping her to a far corner by the toilet bucket.
But the module was slightly lower in Amiliâs square meter of squatting room. Rainwater had pooled in the depressed corner, dampening the underside of Amiliâs ragged yellow dress.
When the heat came, Amiliâs secret oasis held water even as others tongued the metal floor for the remaining rain. When no one was looking Amili slipped the hem of her dress to her mouth and squeezed life over her tongue, brown, rusty water sullied by sloshings from the toilet bucket, but enough to keep her insides from shriveling.
