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The Apostle
J. A. Kerley
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…
Copyright (#ulink_e4711b57-50a0-5088-a105-9ac5dd81dbf0)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
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 (http://Blacksheep-uk.com)
Cover photographs © David Wile/PlainPicture.com (Main Image): (Bible) © iStock.com (http://iStock.com): (candles) © Francois Dion/Gettyimages.com (http://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 author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007493692
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007493708
Version: 2014-11-29
Dedication (#ulink_c6c59b80-ca81-57a7-8283-6f51a15f4e43)
To Floyd and Addie Richardson –
And the house where the trains rolled by
Contents
Cover (#u89489e95-1e00-58a6-a4f5-fab5f7238af7)
Title Page (#u298de9af-c4f1-54d9-9427-7fc34b72a9d0)
Copyright (#u8d43bcd9-1e43-5f62-b2b4-1ee7b1eb8b20)
Dedication (#ud2b37d1a-a1bc-5824-bfd5-38d1316671cb)
Chapter 1 (#u286ec2f3-32c0-50e6-b63e-7a3abca75d32)
Chapter 2 (#ubdc54453-5e70-51af-adb6-5dd1b2ee83e5)
Chapter 3 (#u385b63a0-62cd-5273-8030-73e7e4180283)
Chapter 4 (#u06e27f0e-0ab7-5fbc-826e-ca1cac739966)
Chapter 5 (#u0a4ba689-729e-59cc-b2c4-74bdbe3a963c)
Chapter 6 (#u1d0bb717-6e5c-5771-bbe0-24a5202e4337)
Chapter 7 (#u56dc67a7-8182-5c53-befe-534a5a9aa360)
Chapter 8 (#ud4051261-dcc9-5b4d-af06-c6ebdb9b5e1a)
Chapter 9 (#u01a36f28-c7f7-51e3-97b6-933cf4cd0f39)
Chapter 10 (#u01ebb54a-52a9-5bec-b775-7f8294cd1bbd)
Chapter 11 (#u470fc2f7-3edd-5e8c-9c24-365931d147e3)
Chapter 12 (#u079d4f67-541b-5ea1-9d46-39a415aaac6a)
Chapter 13 (#uecdb77a8-acdc-5f37-90f1-661665c0273f)
Chapter 14 (#u238f60de-a856-541f-8c2b-53cb672f6324)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by J.A. Kerley (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#ulink_df59bfc8-703a-5a8e-906b-e15978af5c90)
Miami, April
“I’m putting in the last of Christ’s blood.”
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 client’s scapula, then leaned back and studied his work.
“Done,” he said.
Herrera flicked off the instrument and admired the most fantastic tattoo he’d 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.
