The Memory Killer (36 page)

Authors: J. A. Kerley

“He had money and time. And Gary’s humiliations, which he no doubt shared.”

“Derek Scott was an opportunistic predator who found the perfect opportunity to live the dream, Carson. If he’d kept his anger in check he’d still be out there. But of course …”

I heard Vivian and Ava laughing again. They were swim-suited, sunglassed, and eight feet above us on the boat’s flybridge where they’d been sunning. Jeremy and I sat in the stern. The craft was seventy feet of gleaming Viking motor yacht, hired with captain and three crewmen out of a Key West marina.

Jeremy had wanted to go fishing.

I’d brought about four hundred bucks’ worth of saltwater angling gear. My brother had a dime-store cane pole, the kind we’d used as kids, holding three meters of cheap monofilament with a tiny hook and a shiny red-and-white bobber, the tiny bobber floating astern like a joke.

“Catch us a fish,” Viv called down, nodding to a gas-fueled grill. “We need lunch.”

“It’s problematic,” I called back, pointing at a pair of black triangles cleaving the water two dozen feet from the boat: sharks. They were ten-to-twelve-footers by the looks, and even if I hooked a fish, they’d tear it to shreds in an eyeblink.

“No excuses,” Ava chided. “If you boys can’t catch a fish, we’ll have to eat burgers. We want fish, y’hear?”

I sighed – fish sounded good to me, too – and wandered to the rear where Jeremy’s bobber floated forlornly in the mild chop. I was turning away when the bobber disappeared, reappeared, quivered …

Then zipped beneath the water like a bullet.

“A bite!” I yelled. “You’ve got a fish on!”

Jeremy yawned and picked up the cane pole. It bent in his hands as he pulled up. I watched six pounds of red snapper break the surface and splash to the boat. The women whistled and applauded as lunch flopped on the deck.

I stared at the snapper, a deeper-water fish rarely found near the surface. As the women dug out cameras, I heard splashing and leaned out over the gunwale to look down the hull toward the distant bow. Two of the crewmen were yanking the swim-finned and scuba-masked third crewman up a boarding ladder, the man scrambling aboard like hellhounds were snapping at his heels.

The scenario was clear. The snapper had been caught previously and kept in the yacht’s live well, an aquarium, basically. When my brother had gone inside he’d signaled his need for the fish. I wondered how much Jeremy’d had to pay for someone to swim through shark-infested waters just to hook a fish on his line and give it a yank. I shot a glance at the circling sharks, then quietly studied my brother, doing a doffed-hat bow as the women giggled and cameras clicked.

Jeremy was free. He owned his life. He had scads of money and could do whatever he wished: Endow a charitable foundation, collect Pre-Columbian artifacts … hell, he could even buy rare comic books. Instead, he’d just put another human being at great risk for the sake of personal amusement.

How much had he really changed?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the fine and hard-working folks at the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency and HarperCollins UK – special high-fives to Sarah Hodgson and Anne O’Brien – for again helping to bring another of my stories to fruition. I’m backed by the best.

About the Author

J.A. Kerley spent years as an advertising agency writer and producer before his wife demanded he quit work and write a novel, which he thought a fine idea. The result was
The Hundredth Man
, the first in the Carson Ryder series. An avid angler, canoeist and hiker, Kerley has traveled extensively throughout the South, especially coastal regions such as Mobile, Alabama, the setting for many of his novels, and the Florida Keys. He has a cabin in the Kentucky mountains, which appeared as a setting in
Buried Alive
. He lives in Newport, Kentucky, where he enjoys sitting on the levee and watching the barges rumble up and down the Ohio River.

Also by J.A. Kerley

The Hundredth Man

The Death Collectors

The Broken Souls

Blood Brother

In the Blood

Little Girls Lost

Buried Alive

Her Last Scream

The Killing Game

The Death Box

If you liked THE MEMORY KILLER, try:

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.

Click
here
to buy
The Death Box

THE HUNDREDTH MAN

In Alabama, Detective Carson Ryder is on the hunt for a disturbing killer. Famous for solving a series of crimes the year before, Carson has experience with psychopaths. But he had help with that case – from a past he’s tried to forget. Now he needs it again …

THE DEATH COLLECTORS

The portfolio of a psychopathic artist thirty years dead sends Detective Carson Ryder and his partner Harry Nautilus into the chilling and hidden world of those who collect serial-killer memorabilia …

THE BROKEN SOULS

Carson and his partner Harry are up to their necks in a harrowing investigation, where all clues point to a powerful family whose strange and horrific past is about to engulf everyone around them in a storm of violence and depravity. And Ryder’s right in the middle of it …

BLOOD BROTHER

Detective Carson Ryder has a secret. His brother, Jeremy, is one of America’s most notorious killers – now imprisoned. When Jeremy escapes, he becomes the chief suspect in a series of horrifying slayings in New York – and soon Carson is pulled into a dangerous game of life, death and deceit …

IN THE BLOOD

Detective Carson Ryder must put his personal problems aside when he takes on a bizarre new case involving an abandoned infant, a murdered S&M-loving televangelist, Neo-Nazis and satantic rituals. It seems that the baby fighting for its life has powerful enemies. Can Ryder save the life of an innocent child?

LITTLE GIRLS LOST

Children are disappearing in Mobile, Alabama, the latest snatched from her own bedroom. There are no clues – and, as yet, no bodies. Carson is brought in to the investigation, and discovers that the answers lie closer to home than he could have imagined …

BURIED ALIVE

Carson Ryder’s vacation is interrupted when he’s summoned to a grisly murder scene. With more savage killings, and the FBI inflaming the situation, Ryder sifts through the increasingly bizarre clues. Is there more than one killer involved? And how does Carson’s clinically insane brother, Jeremy, now on the run, fit into the picture?

HER LAST SCREAM

A secret network of crisis centres helps abused women escape their tormentors. But now someone is killing them before they reach safety. Carson and Harry need an undercover cop to pose as a threatened woman, drawing the killer out. Harry’s niece volunteers, but Harry promised to keep Reinetta safe. Suddenly he’s unsure if he can even keep her alive …

THE
KILLING GAME

After a humiliating encounter with a cop, Gregory Nieves launches a vendetta against the Mobile Police Department, Alabama, and one man in particular: Detective Carson Ryder. Carson doesn’t know it yet, but he is caught up in a sadistic game of life and death. And there can only be one victor …

THE
DEATH BOX

A specialist in twisted crimes, Detective Carson Ryder has 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. The case 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. But Ryder’s not the only one chasing the girl. And the others will kill to keep the secret safe.

Copyright

Published by HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Publishers
2013

Cover layout design © HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd 2014
Cover design and typography ©
Blacksheep-uk.com
Cover photographs © Marcus Lindstrom/Getty Images

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: 9780007493678
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007493685

Version: 2014-04-05

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada