The Killing Game
Page 30
“You there!” a voice yelled. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
I snapped from my alien fantasy to see a woman striding toward me, her eyes a human version of death beams. Her black hair was tucked beneath a blue ballcap. Her open white lab coat whisked as she homed in like an angry missile.
“Where’s your ID?” she said, pointing at a naked space on my chest where I assumed an identification should reside. “You can’t be here without an—”
“Yo, Morningstar!” a male voice cut in. “Don’t kill him, he’s on our side.”
I looked up and saw Roy McDermott step from the far side of the column. The woman’s thumb jerked at me.
“Him? This?”
“He’s the new guy I told you about, Ryder.”
The woman I now knew as Morningstar turned the death rays on Roy. “I’m in charge of scene, Roy. I want everyone to have a site ID.”
Roy patted dust from his hands as he approached, a grin on his huge round face and the ever-present cowlick rising from the crown of semi-tamed haybright hair. He called to mind an insane Jack O’Lantern.
“I’ll have someone make him a temporary tag, Vivian. You folks bring any crayons?”
Morningstar’s eyes narrowed. “Condescension fits you, Roy. It’s juvenile.”
Roy climbed the steps from the pit and affected apologetic sincerity. “I forgot his clearance, Vivian. I’m sorry. All we have time for now is introductions. Carson, this is Vivian Morningstar, our local pathologist and—”
“I’m the Chief Forensic Examiner for the Southern Region, Roy.”
“Carson, this is the Examining Chief Region of the – shit, whatever. And this, Vivian, is Carson Ryder. We’re still figuring out his title.”
Morningstar and I brushed fingertips in an approximation of a handshake, though it was more like the gesture of two boxers. Roy took my arm and swung me toward the pit. We stepped down on hastily constructed stairs, the wood creaking beneath us.
“Now to get serious,” Roy said. “Damndest thing I’ve seen in twenty years in the biz.”
Three techs stepped aside as we walked to the object, stopping two paces distant. Seemingly made of concrete, it resembled a carved column from a temple in ancient Egypt, its surface jagged and pitted with hollows, as though the sculptor had been called away before completion.
“More light,” Roy said.
The techs had been working with focused illumination. One of them widened the lighting, bringing the entire object into hard-edged relief.
A woman began screaming.
I didn’t hear the scream, I saw it. Pressing from the concrete was a woman’s face, eyes wide and mouth open in an expression of ultimate horror. She was swimming toward me, face breaking the surface of the concrete, one gray and lithic hand above, the other below, as if frozen in the act of stroking. The scenic was so graphic and lifelike that I gasped and felt my knees loosen.
Roy stepped toward me and I held my hand up, I’m fine, it lied. I caught my breath, saw ripples of concrete-encrusted fabric, and within its folds a rock-hard foot. I moved to the side and saw another gray face peering from the concrete, the eyes replaced with sand and cement, bone peeking through shredded skin that appeared to have petrified on the cheeks. One temple was missing.
My hand rose unbidden to the shattered face.
“Don’t think of touching it,” Morningstar said.
My hand went to my pocket. I circled the frieze of despair: two more heads staring from the stone, surrounding them a jumble of broken body parts, hands, knees, shoulders. Broken bones stood out like studs.
My hands ached to touch the column, as if that might help me to understand whatever had happened. But I thrust them deeper into my pockets and finished my circle, ending up at the screaming woman, her dead face still alive in her terror.
“Fill me in,” I told Roy. “Everything.”
About the Author
J.A. Kerley worked in advertising and teaching before becoming a full-time novelist. He lives in Newport, Kentucky, but also spends a good deal of time in Southern Alabama, the setting for his Carson Ryder series, starting with The Hundredth Man. He is married with two children.
Also by J.A. Kerley
The Hundredth Man
The Death Collectors
The Broken Souls
Little Girls Lost
Blood Brother
In the Blood
Buried Alive
Her Last Scream
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Copyright © Jack Kerley 2013
Excerpt from The Death Box © Jack Kerley 2013
Cover photographs © Kenneth Hope / Arcangel Images (axe); Shutterstock.com (background)
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Jack Kerley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007328239
Ebook Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9780007328260
Version 1
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, downloaded, 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.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com