The Apostle (Carson Ryder, Book 12)

by J. A. Kerley

  My phone rang: Harry told me about a girl named Greta, and parties, and men with diminutives for names.

  “Suggestions?” I asked, feeling I was tumbling back in time, the single-word question one I’d asked my senior partner a thousand times before.

  “Put a watch on the motel. Tail the bastards to their hole by East Tohopekaliga lake. It’s about fifteen miles from the park.”

  I established the availability of the chopper, then phoned authorities in Osceola County and told them to set a table for the FCLE tonight.

  “Did you say Osceola County?” Belafonte said when I hung up.

  “Harry thinks Hallelujah Jubilee bigwigs are taking some girls to a party house tonight. Why?”

  “Mr Delmont-Dredd has property in Osceola County, a farm. He also has a house in Jacksonville.”

  “How did you get that info so fast?”

  “Mr Monroe taught me a few things,” she blinked. “Like back-door entries to various state agencies when those agencies are closed.”

  I ran several scenarios through my mind. “It sounds like Osceola County is where the action is tonight. The chopper’s coming for us in minutes. We gotta book fast, a storm’s rolling in from the Gulf.”

  “Chopper for us? Both?”

  “I need someone to supervise a stakeout at a motel and then, hopefully, a bust. Harry can’t, I don’t know the Osceola cops, so you’re in charge, Holly. Better go powder your baton.”

  Lightning from the incoming storm quivered in the western sky by the time we hit the Osceola County Police HQ. Most senior staff were in Atlanta for a convention and we inherited Sergeant Eddie Baskins. He was in his late thirties, a big, baby-faced, loud-voiced good ol’ boy, over six and a half feet tall and belly-centric. I figured he’d once been a standout on the local football team, probably by falling on his opponents.

  I was a bit less certain of his cop credentials. Maybe it was the mother-of-pearl grip on his sidearm and uniform pants tucked into red, hand-tooled cowboy boots. I doubted he wore them when his superiors were in town.

  “Of course we can handle your stakeout, Detective,” Baskins affirmed, tapping the glitzy semi-auto and studying a wall-mounted map of the county. “There’s a team stationed at a park by the lake, extra manpower to assist in the operation. The secondary unit is our SWAT team.”

  He picked up a Dixie cup and spat a saliva-glistening wad of tobacco sludge into it, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Three Osceola officers were in attendance, all in their twenties. One winced, one rolled his eyes, the third stared at the floor. I got the feeling they hoped the Atlanta convention would be brief.

  Belafonte eyed Baskins warily. “Do you think perhaps the SWAT unit is a bit of overkill, Sergeant?”

  Baskins frowned. “I believe I’ll be the judge of that, little lady. Who did you say you were again?”

  “Holly Belafonte,” she said. “I’m handling your stakeout.”

  “She’s handling it?” Baskins said, head snapping to me. “I thought you and him were in the lead.” Baskins jabbed a finger toward Harry, leaning the wall with arms crossed. I’d introduced Harry simply as Detective Nautilus, omitting that Detective was a former title. Another demerit for Baskins, who should have checked Harry’s ID.

  “Detective Nautilus and I are going to Cypress Lake,” I said. “We’d appreciate a couple of your people coming along.”

  Baskins narrowed an eye, like we were city slickers trying to pull something. “First you needed assistance on a stakeout …” he groused. “Now you’re adding things.”

  Belafonte stepped up. “May I inquire if that costs additional?”

  Baskins turned to her. “What?”

  “Like when you get a scoop of ice cream and it’s two dollars,” she said, elegant fingers mimicking dropping sprinkles into ice cream. “But if you add chocolate jimmies, it’s two-fifty.” Belafonte clicked opened her purse and pretended to root around inside. “If it costs more to add an expedition to Cypress Lake, how much will it be?”

  Baskins stared down a foot at Belafonte, sure he was being either used or mocked. “Where the hell are you from, lady?” he challenged. “That stupid accent sure as hell ain’t Miami.”

  “I’m from Bermuda,” Belafonte said, hand still in her purse.

  Here we go, I thought.

  “That’s in South America,” Baskins growled. “What the hell you doing here?”

  In a microsecond the baton was out and extended and whipped an inch under the Sergeant’s nose to thwack the map on the wall.

  “What we are doing here,” Belafonte said softly, “you, me, your officers … is conducting a surveillance operation.” The baton tip repositioned with another thwack. “Here is where we are, and” – thwack – “here is where we are going. That’s what we’re doing here, Sergeant,” she said. “But what I’m doing right this instant is wondering if you’re professional enough to conduct a proper surveillance, and can your people tail another vehicle without DRIVING UP THEIR BLOODY ARSE?”

  The room went as silent as a tomb. Baskins swallowed hard and nodded.

  It was twilight as most of the cops charged off in Belafonte’s wake, Harry and I and two Osceola officers speeding to Andrew Delmont’s southern hideaway. A mile west of the Florida Turnpike by Cypress Lake, it was tucked into several tree-dense acres, a heavy gate barring a gravel lane that snaked into the overgrowth. The Osceola guys were a bit nervous since I had no warrant, but I told them we were just going to ring the doorbell, like bible salespeople.

  The cops pushed the gate open and we headed through, the night now dark and streaked with lightning to the southwest. I smelled rain in the stiffening wind, the treetops dancing as we drove two hundred yards to a pair of buildings in a clearing. The scene was not what I’d have pictured for a successful gospel artist, the house small and gray and desperately needing paint, shutters hanging askew, the sparse grass studded with weeds. There was no light in the house.

  I climbed the steps to the listing porch and pounded the door. “Mr Delmont? Andy Delmont? I’m from the Florida Center for Law Enforcement and I need to ask you some questions.”

  Not so much as a creak of a floorboard inside. I backed away, staring at the house until hearing words from this afternoon, Pastor Tate: “The Dredds were originally from Satsuma, Detective, a broken-down old house on the edge of town.”

  Was Delmont, consciously or subconsciously recreating a childhood home?

  “No one’s here,” I said. “Anything down the lane?”

  The county mounties aimed their headlamps down the dusty trail, revealing a barn in the distance, half sunk into overgrowth. “Might be a place to hide a van,” Harry said.

  I nodded. “Gotta look. Then we’ll head to Delmont’s home in Jacksonville. Bet it’s fancier than this wreck.”

  Harry and I drove the five hundred feet to the barn, the slats of a one-time corral rotting on the ground, connected by tangles of barbed wire. We got to the door as rain started. I heard Harry sniffing the air.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been smelling rain for an hour.”

  “Not rain,” he said. “I smell smoke. And … is that gasoline? Kerosene?”

  I suddenly smelled it, too. “I think it’s naphtha,” I said. The door was unlocked and swung into a wall of black. The smell became overwhelming.

  “There’s gotta be a light,” Harry said, patting at the wall. “There.”

  The barn flooded with sickly yellow illumination. I saw a brown-dirt floor littered with round stones the size of oranges, a stack of torn fabric, and at the far end sat a concrete bench, charred, reeking of oil and naphtha.

  Atop the bench lay a woman, naked, bound by ropes, her bruised head hanging off the side. Dead, but not yet wrapped. I felt sickened as we crossed a floor studded with orange-sized stones. Getting closer, I saw none of the expected tissue damage from being pummeled with rocks. I picked up speed, running the final feet.

  The woman’s eyes flickered open and he
r head turned our way.

  “I never thought I’d be happy to see cops,” she said, her voice a dry rasp as her mouth fought to make a brave smile. “You guys are cops, I hope?”

  “What did Dredd say?” I asked Sparks as she was loaded into the ambulance ten minutes later. She had a hematoma on her thigh and various facial contusions, but seemed in good shape, considering. “Did Dredd tell you where he was going or when he’d be back?”

  The medic handed her a cup of water and Sparks refreshed her voice. “The bastard was screaming about blasphemy and needing to leave, but that he’d be back to kill me. He was real pissed off by something about Pentecost. I mean, even for a lunatic with a rotting dick. It was crazy … like he was yelling into the scar in his chest.”

  “The man in the cowboy garb,” I said, “Delmont. Any idea of his whereabouts?”

  “I heard a car leave. It was still light out.”

  “Just one vehicle?” I asked.

  “It sounded like it. But mostly what I could hear was my heart.”

  “Suggestions?” I asked Harry, twice in one evening.

  “Dredd is a big package of weirdness, Delmont seems a big package of weirdness. The only other weirdness I know is whatever the hell Owsley’s doing in that building behind Hallelujah Jubilee. Maybe the weirdnesses are coming together.”

  57

  The Osceola guys stayed on scene, Harry directing us toward Hallelujah Jubilee as the storm arrived in earnest, low, roiling black clouds delineated in hard flashes of white light. In the distance I saw a cross so tall it seemed more of the sky than the earth, invisible until lightning flashed, then gone.

  Harry cut down a side road and drove a quarter-mile until we came to a locked gate.

  “They just built this. Hang on.”

  Harry had brought his .45 Colt, a big and powerful pistol that looked small in his hand. He blew the lock into component parts, pushed open the bar, and we continued, cutting south and no longer seeing the spectral cross. Instead, I saw a vertically oriented structure about a hundred feet tall, like a square silo, fifty feet a side or thereabouts. It pushed from a long and low two-story structure. The thing looked like it had scales until I realized they were corrugated panels slapped together in willy-nilly fashion.

  Harry pulled to what appeared to be a guardhouse. It was dark.

  “No security types?” I said.

  “I figure the locked gate was supposed to keep folks away. And maybe the fewer eyes, the better.”

  I peered past the guardhouse as shapes resolved against the dark: two large SUV’s and a dark Hummer. The main gate was open.

  Harry nodded at the Hummer. “Owsley’s here.”

  I studied the turf as we exited the car: stacks of construction refuse, battered barrels, upended crates, bales of wire. Two big silver tanks sat side by side against the wall of the building, behind them a big Cat ’dozer with a blade.

  “What’s in the tanks?”

  “Usual construction stuff … water and diesel fuel.”

  I kept up my scan, looking into the flashes of lightning. “Over there,” I said, “parked back in the trees – a van.”

  We trotted that way and peered into the van, Harry shining a penlight. It looked recently cleaned. “Wasn’t Dredd in a white van?” Harry asked.

  “The van was repainted,” I said, looking closer. “Probably with spray paint. Dredd’s around here. What time is it?”

  “Almost midnight. Almost Pentecost.”

  We turned back to the structure as lightning flashed, showing a square cannon pointed at the sky and illuminated in slow strobing. We went to the main door and tried the handle. “Locked,” I said.

  Harry nodded to our left. Another jagged white line sizzled through the rain-smelling air. I looked down the horizontal wing of the building, fifty meters of windowless corrugated metal.

  “Testing,” said an amplified voice inside the structure. Then louder, “Testing!” We heard a fingernail tapping the mic, a squeal of feedback.

  “It’s Owsley,” Harry said.

  “Test …” Owsley said as if in confirmation. “Give me more echo. Test … testing. OK, that’s good.”

  We jogged to the far end of the structure. The door was unlocked and hanging open. We entered a dark cavern, blocked by looming, spectral shapes. Harry flickered his penlight over sections of crane boom, construction timbers, sheets of corrugated metal, spools of cable. We crept forward, dodging and ducking construction equipment, tripping over bolts and wires and other detritus, our sole light the pale circle of Harry’s penlight. I watched it shine over timbers, an acetylene tank, a Bobcat loader … a small face.

  “Hi, Harry,” the face said. “Who’s this?”

  “Rebecca?” Harry hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  The kid slipped out from behind a box large enough to hold a pickup truck. “I wanted to see where Daddy worked. He drove over and I hid in the back.”

  “Dammit, Rebecca,” Harry said. “There may be a dangerous man in here.”

  “Then it’s good I’m with you guys. Are you Carson?”

  “Mr Winkler’s coming,” Owsley said, the enhanced voice booming over the amplification system. “He’s pulling up outside. Places everyone.”

  I said, “What the—”

  Harry grabbed the kid’s hand and we continued forward, the main room a hundred feet distant. We could see nothing of that section of the floor, blocked by a mountain of large rectangular shapes. We heard a door open, the one in front. A light snapped on and we crouched behind a donkey engine and peered forward, seeing a man in a wheelchair whirring into the main room. Someone in the rafters had trained a spotlight over the man, like he was a major celebrity. A dozen steps behind a scowling woman was at the edge of the spotlight, arms crossed, pacing like she’d prefer to be anywhere else. I heard her say, “Give it up, Eliot. Let go.”

  “Welcome, Eliot Winkler,” Owsley’s voice boomed over the PA system, the words echoing in the structure. “It’s a blessed day … A heavenly day!” A dramatic pause before Owsley boomed, “Bring me the animal!”

  We crept forward, stopping behind a huge wooden crate. “These are what the semis were delivering,” Harry whispered. “There must be a half-dozen of the things.”

  “The time approacheth, Eliot,” Owsley’s voice thundered, then shifted to a softer voice, as if reading: “The disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, ‘Children, how hard is it to enter the kingdom of God!’”

  “I know that verse,” Rebecca said, “It’s from Matthew—”

  “Shush,” Harry said. “I’ve got to get you outside.”

  Another spotlight snapped on in the upper reaches of the tower. I looked up and gasped, seeing the top twenty feet of a rocket gleaming in the light.

  “Jesus, Harry. It’s some kind of missile.”

  Another spotlight flared on, aiming high, but below the first, illuminating another twenty feet of tapering missile shaft.

  “What’s that sound?” Rebecca Owsley asked, looking up toward a metallic grinding. “A plane flying over?”

  It was the roof being retracted, gears straining high above as cloud-to-cloud streaks of lightning illuminated the inside of the tower.

  “God’s looking down on us, Eliot!” Owsley roared. “We have his blessing!”

  The roof opened fully to reveal a sky rippling with electrical energy, the clouds boiling black and purple and lit from within.

  A countdown began. “Ten,” called Owsley’s voice.

  “What’s going on?” the kid asked.

  I yanked at Harry’s arm. “They’re going to fire the thing.”

  “Nine,” Owsley intoned, followed by “Awalalcabahalladadamashuasu …”

  “What the hell?”

  “Talking in tongues,” Harry said.

  “Eight …”

  We stumbled ahead as a third spot snapped on, illuminating twenty more feet of gleaming metal thorn. Only the base
remained in the dark. What would happen when the rocket fired?

  “Seven … Ishnohisadocodocaballaha … six …”

  “Maybe it’s a suicide thing,” I said, heart pounding in my chest. “The flames will fry everyone.”

  “Five …”

  Harry tripped over something on the floor and went down.

  “Four …”

  “Come on,” I said, pulling on his arm as the kid ran in to grab the other one. “We gotta run.”

  “Three …”

  Harry yanked at his ankles as Owsley yelled TWO. “I’m wrapped in baling wire or something … Run, Carson … get the kid out the—”

  “One!” Owsley shrieked, followed by … “LET ME BE YOUR VEHICLE OH MIGHTY GOD!”

  Too late. Harry and I froze, bodies tensed against an explosion. Seconds passed with no explosion, no rocket lift-off. Harry stripped the wire from his feet and peered around the final crate into the main room, now lit as bright as daylight.

  He whispered, “I don’t believe it.”

  58

  I followed Harry to his vantage point and saw the object in full, illuminated from tip to base. But the base wasn’t a rocket engine, it was an opening about eight feet high and five wide.

  The object wasn’t a missile, it was a gigantic needle.

  As in sewing.

  It got stranger. I saw Richard Owsley standing at the needle’s base in a snow white suit and holding the tether of a Dromedary camel. Owsley was twitching like he was being jabbed with cattle prods and ranting like a madman into a wireless microphone.

  “Arabacaddahasheem … Thank you for this miracle, oh Lord … Alacacabadelonayamayah.”

  “My God,” Harry whispered. “I understand it now.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “From Mark 10:25,” Rebecca Owsley said. “‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven.’”

  “Baracbadaceemandadada …” Owsley continued. “We implore you ALMIGHTY GOD TO aragagdabenapana …”

  The man in the wheelchair was twenty paces from the base of the needle and in either the throes of ecstasy or madness, arms above his head, twitching and shaking and screaming “THANK YOU, GOD!” almost as loud as the amplified ululations of Owsley and the growing thunder, the storm crossing directly above. The woman was shaking her head in disbelief as Owsley led the camel toward the needle’s eye. Rain poured through the open roof and Owsley’s face turned to meet it.