Joe Court

Detective Mary Joe Court sleeps with a shotgun beside her bed and a lovable bull mastiff at her feet. For the past 12 years, she’s hidden from a nightmarish past, but with every passing day, her scars fade, and her heart grows lighter. Now, for the first time in her life, she looks forward to her future. She’s happy. Then she finds the body. Someone shot the victim in her chest and left her to die in a cheap motel. Joe knew her well. She grew up with her. They were sisters, of a sort.

A volunteer found the body while searching the Missouri backwoods for a pair of missing teenagers. The victim was murdered and dumped at a camp site deep in the woods. It’s tornado season in central Missouri. The air is still. The sky is dark green. There’s a wall cloud to the west. A nasty storm is coming…Detective Joe Court knows her team shouldn’t be out there, but they need to collect the evidence before it’s destroyed.

Detective Mary Joe Court’s home is her sanctuary. It’s the one place she can let her guard down and be herself. And her home has one rule: No murder allowed. That means no pictures from murder scenes, no interview notes, no files, no death in her home. For years, that rule has worked out well. But now death is knocking on her door. A serial killer the local news has dubbed the Apostate has already taken twelve young people. To stop him, Joe must dig deep into her town’s sordid and forgotten past. But even that might not be enough.

When Detective Joe Court walks into the house for the first time, she already knows who the killer is: her department’s newest hire, Detective Reuben Terepocki. He claims he shot in self-defense, but Joe isn’t sure.