Authors: Dean Crawford
Apocalypse
Dean Crawford began writing after his dream of becoming a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force was curtailed when he failed their stringent sight tests. Fusing his interest in
science with a love of fast-paced revelatory thrillers, he soon found a career that he could pursue with as much passion as flying a fighter jet. Now a full-time author, he lives with his partner
and daughter in Surrey.
Also by Dean Crawford
Covenant
Immortal
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS Company
Copyright © Dean Crawford, 2012
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor,
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
B Format ISBN 978-0-85720-475-2
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-85720-474-5
Ebook ISBN 978-0-85720-476-9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For Terry and Carolyn
You can’t own it but you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back. Time is free, but it is
priceless.
Harvey MacKay
1
CORAL GABLES, MIAMI, FLORIDA
June 27, 19:16
‘How many bodies are there?’
Captain Kyle Sears hung one arm out of the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor as it accelerated away from the airport district station. The warm evening breeze rippled the sleeves of his
distinctive taupe uniform, the nearby ocean sparkling as the sun set behind the glassy towers of the city skyline.
The warbled tones of a despatch officer replied to his question across the radio waves.
‘Two victims, both confirmed deceased from gunshot wounds. We got a tip-off from an unknown male caller. A forensics team is on their way and we’ve got a witness on the
scene.’
Sears grimaced behind his sunglasses. The motion twisted his neat gray mustache as he glanced at his fellow officer, Lieutenant José Rodriquez, who shrugged as he drove. ‘A witness
doesn’t necessarily lead to a conviction.’
Sears flicked a switch on the dashboard that sent sirens wailing as they raced along the boulevard, the interceptor’s flashing lights reflecting off the windows of other vehicles that
swerved to get out of the way. Southbound on the Expressway, Sears could see the metallic sprawl of Miami International Airport nearby, the navigation lights of airliners blinking as they climbed
into a spectacular sunset striped with tattered ribbons of black cloud.
Rodriquez, a 30-year-old Latino out of Westchester, turned away from the palms of SW 40th and Ponce de Leon Boulevard and down onto Sistina Avenue, a shady tree-lined residential street where
most all the homes were two-story colonials with manicured lawns. A far cry, Sears recognized, from the usual homicide call-ups on the north side, where ranks of shabby clapperboard houses ringed
with chain-link fences faced sidewalks littered with junk.
‘There it is.’
Half a dozen squad cars lined the street in a blaze of hazard lights outside one of the elaborate homes, police cordons blocking access to the sidewalk and gardens. A television crew from a
local station was already hovering around, a reporter jawing into a camera as she gestured to the mansion behind her. Rodriquez pulled in and killed the engine as Sears climbed out and ducked under
the cordon, flashing his badge at a beat cop who waved him through.
‘Forensics arrived yet?’
‘Inside,’ the cop replied. ‘Got here a few minutes ago.’
Sears strode up to the front door as he donned a set of blue rubber gloves and surveyed the exterior of the property. To his right, a middle-aged woman cradling a small poodle in her arms was
being questioned by two uniformed officers. Sears strolled over and the senior of the two cops, a portly officer with heavy jowls, filled him in.
‘This is Madeleine Ford, Captain,’ the officer informed him. ‘She observed the home-owner leaving the property in a real hurry about two hours ago, a man named Charles Purcell.
We’re just waiting to find out who he is.’
Sears nodded and looked at the woman, her white hair immaculately styled and her movements precise and controlled. Probably retired years before, most likely widowed with nothing better to do
than watch the street outside.
‘What exactly did you see, ma’am?’ he asked with an easy smile as he removed his sunglasses.
Madeleine stroked the dog in her arms and glanced at the television crews nearby with their hefty cameras.
‘Mr. Purcell came through here about two hours ago, officer,’ she said, clearly enjoying the attention. ‘Looked like he was in a real hurry. He went inside, and then about
twenty minutes later he took off in his car like he was fleeing the devil himself.’
Sears nodded.
‘Did you hear any gunshots or any kind of fracas from the home?’
Madeleine shook her head.
‘Not that I recall. They seemed such a nice family, always polite, although he wasn’t about much.’
‘Purcell?’ Rodriquez asked.
‘He was always working out at sea,’ Madeleine replied. ‘Or so his wife said.’
Sears made a mental note and then left Madeleine with the uniforms and strode with Rodriquez toward the Purcell family home.
‘Professional hit?’ Rodriquez hazarded. ‘Silenced weapons?’
‘Maybe,’ Sears replied thoughtfully as they walked into the house.
A bespectacled forensics expert, Hickling, guarded the entrance hall and waved them forward with a nod.
‘The hall’s clear but don’t handle anything. We haven’t dusted down yet.’
Sears headed toward the lounge at the end of a long corridor, where he could see periodic flashes from a crime-scene officer’s camera. He heard a cheerful voice followed by a burst of
laughter and applause, bizarrely out of place at a crime scene. Hickling rested a hand on Sears’ shoulder as he passed.
‘It’s a bad one, Kyle.’
The captain slowed. Despite years of experience, the cautioning hand of a forensics expert was enough to make even Sears apprehensive. He took a breath and walked into the lounge, then paused at
the doorway to take in the scene before him as a tight acidic ball lodged in his throat.
The lounge was large and well organized, two double leather couches lining the back and side walls, both within view of a large plasma screen that dominated the longest wall above a faux
mantelpiece. French doors to his left. Bay windows to his right looking out over the lawns to the street. Sears looked at the plasma screen to see a re-run of
Everybody Loves Raymond
playing, incongruous with the somber mood. He couldn’t see what Raymond was doing because of the thick blood splatter sprayed across the screen.
A woman lay slumped against the mantelpiece. Blond, mid-thirties, and dressed in a beige two-piece power suit. Maybe a lawyer or a banker. Her hair had once been carefully piled high on her
delicate head but was now matted with thick blood, whilst most of the rear of her skull was embedded in chunks in the walls of the lounge and smeared across the mantelpiece beside her. She stared
with her one remaining eye at the lounge door.
‘Surprise attack,’ Rodriquez said. ‘Last thing she saw was her killer.’
Sears moved forward and looked down to his left, where, on one of the couches, lay the second body. The acidic ball in his throat threatened to leap out and he forced himself to keep breathing
as he looked at the second corpse.
A girl, maybe nine years old, like a miniature carbon copy of her mother. Right down to the bloodied cavity where the back of her head had once been. Her hair, delicately swept back on one side
over a tiny ear, lay in thick tresses on the other side across a congealing mass of blood and bone that had stained the couch. Spilled bodily fluids caked her bare legs. What was left of one side
of her face stared up at them, locked in a gruesome rigor of shock.
Rodriquez’s voice was tight as he surveyed the scene.
‘Same MO. She never had a chance to react. Probably saw her mother die before she was shot.’
When it came to homicide, like most all detectives with the Miami-Dade Police Department, Sears had seen it all; fourteen years of shootings, stabbings and poisonings; gangs, drugs and racial
hatred. He had seen corpses sliced, punctured, maimed and decomposed. But every now and again he bore witness to something approaching true evil – a murderer who killed for no other reason
than the goddamn hell of it. If the killer had a beef with the woman, that was one thing. But shooting the kid too?
The flash of the CSI team’s cameras jerked him out of his grim reverie.
‘Any sign of forced entry?’ Sears asked, mastering his rage and revulsion.
‘Nothing,’ came the response. ‘Whoever did this was either a real pro or they walked right in.’
‘Burglary gone wrong?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.
‘You kidding?’ one of the CSI guys responded, a small but studious-looking man who, like Sears, was struggling to contain his rage at the carnage surrounding them.
‘Nothing’s missing that we know of. Matter of fact, there’s no sign the killer even went anywhere else in the house. This was a hit, plain and simple.’