A Deadly Turn Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Titles by Claire Booth

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Titles by Claire Booth

  A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery

  THE BRANSON BEAUTY

  ANOTHER MAN’S GROUND

  A DEADLY TURN *

  * available from Severn House

  A DEADLY TURN

  Claire Booth

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  First published in the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2018 by Claire Booth.

  The right of Claire Booth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8845-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-969-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0179-9 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For

  Mom and Dad

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  When I finish writing a book, the first place it goes is to my early readers. They’re unflinchingly honest with their feedback and critiques, and I love them dearly for it. Thank you to Kristi Belcamino, Mike Brown, Paige Kneeland, Janelle Weiner, and Carol Adler for making this a better book than it would have been otherwise.

  Many others also helped to bring about this novel. My agent, Jim McCarthy, is the best advocate an author can have. Thanks, Jim. Carl Smith and Kate Lyall Grant at Severn House Publishers are incredibly supportive and have given Hank Worth a terrific new home. And Emma Grundy Haigh polished the manuscript with great copyediting.

  Several people’s expert knowledge added details to this book that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Bruce Robert Coffin helped with law enforcement aspects; Carolyn gave me a much-needed Instagram tutorial; and my dad, whose guitar music was a wonderful constant of my childhood, shared his knowledge and love of the instrument.

  My greatest gratitude goes to my husband and children. Their love and support make it all possible.

  And finally, to all the readers who have found and championed Hank Worth, thank you.

  ONE

  He walked casually up to the car. They’d been going twenty-five miles an hour over the limit. It was a warm night, and all their windows were rolled down. He knew because he could hear the laughter as they sailed by his cruiser, which was hidden behind the newly installed billboard on Highway 248, a few minutes south of the Ozark Mountain Highroad.

  He reached the back of the brown sedan and put on his best stern sheriff face as he took the last steps to the driver’s door. There were six teenagers – two in the front and four wedged in the back. They all stared at him with the panicked look of good kids who had no experience getting into trouble.

  He bent down to get a better look at the driver and did a double take.

  ‘Gabe?’

  The kid in the front passenger seat froze.

  ‘Hi, Mr Worth.’ He swallowed nervously.

  He was a quiet teen who sometimes caught a ride home with his aunt, a secretary in the county government offices next door to the sheriff’s department. Hank had run into him a few times as he practiced his soccer skills in the parking lot.

  Hank gave Gabe a disappointed half-smile and asked to see the license and registration of the driver. That teen dug his wallet out of his back pocket with shaking fingers, and Gabe rooted frantically through the glove box until he found the correct paper. Hank calmly took both documents. And then frowned.

  The address of the sixteen-year-old driver didn’t match the address on the registration. He bent down again so everyone could clearly see his face.

  ‘Whose car is this?’

  A boy in a red-checked flannel shirt sitting directly behind the driver slowly raised his hand.

  ‘My-my mom’s,’ he stuttered.

  And everybody was taking turns at the wheel, Hank figured. He collected all the driver’s licenses and took the stack back to his patrol car. He got in and looked at his watch. He’d give them five minutes to sweat before he went back. He had run the plates before pulling them over, and that data matched the registration paperwork. The car wasn’t stolen, the kids hadn’t been called in as runaways, and no other vehicles were affected. The whole thing was nothing more than a little Saturday night joyriding.

  He made a show of pretending to tap on the laptop and then talk into the mic for a bit. That terrified the girl peeking at him through the back window. He decided to start with her as he walked back to the sedan.

  A petite strawberry blonde, she got her license back and a stern lecture about seatbelts. Then Hank watched as she buckled herself to the much taller brunette also wedged in the middle seat. They were bookended by the car owner’s son
and another boy. Since those two actually were using their seatbelts, they got Hank’s responsible-citizens-don’t-go-along-with-law-breaking-activities speech instead.

  Then Hank returned his attention to the front seat. The driver, a kid with bright blue eyes and a crisp barbershop haircut, looked ready to pass out. Gabe looked ready to vomit. Hank had a feeling that Backseat Boy’s mom wouldn’t appreciate that. He told Gabe to put his head between his knees, and then he opened the driver’s door. He had the driver step out and told backseat boy to do the same.

  ‘I think,’ Hank said, looking at the registered owner’s son, ‘that your mom loaned you her car so you could drive it – not your friends. Right?’

  The kid nodded.

  ‘So should we call her to come out here and straighten things out?’

  The kid let out a strangled groan. It was echoed by the girls in the backseat. Everyone in the car stared at him with a mixture of horror and pleading. Good.

  He switched the two boys’ seats, putting the car owner’s son behind the wheel. He thought for a minute, took another look at Gabe – who still looked sick – and decided to cut them a break.

  ‘You will all go straight home. Right now,’ he said. ‘And if I ever run into any of you again, for any reason, I will be talking to your parents – while you sit in a jail cell.’

  They all gave jerky, frightened nods, and the sedan pulled away with the speed of a tired tortoise. Hank followed them for a mile, slowly dropping back until he was satisfied they would get to the Highroad without incident and continue to obey traffic laws even without his squad car behind them.

  He swung the cruiser into a three-point turn and headed back toward his patrol route, chuckling at the blithe recklessness of the young. He’d done the same thing as a teenager on the dusty country roads of his hometown. In the back of a pickup truck, no less. Lucky he’d lived to reach adulthood, he thought. These kids would, too. Hopefully a little wiser than they were before they borrowed that car.

  He made his way south, turning up the volume on the scanner even though it was silent. Not much going on for a weekend night. He cruised along for several more miles before a call finally came in. Vehicle accident. He read back the location and headed toward it.

  It was a twisted crush of metal and plastic that had rained bits and pieces all over the roadway. Twenty minutes ago, it had been a brown sedan.

  It looked like it had rolled at least once. The roof was caved in and the supports had buckled outward. The impact had bent the hood back and through the windshield.

  Hank ran toward it, his whole body shaking. The driver’s-side doors were wedged shut. He bent down, but couldn’t see through the shattered windows. He hurried to the other side, his boots scrabbling on pebbles of safety glass and shards of hard plastic as he slipped and slid on the dirt slope.

  The front passenger door had crumpled in a way that forced it ajar an inch or two. Hank wedged his hands into the gap and pulled. It didn’t move. He braced a foot against the back door and tried again. The metal started to scream. Or maybe that was him.

  He pulled harder. It started to give. He got it open about a foot before the bent framework made it impossible to go farther. He pulled the flashlight out of his duty belt and aimed the beam inside. Gabe was pinned to his seat by the air bag. It hadn’t been enough to protect him from this kind of impact, though. His head tilted at an impossible angle, and his lifeless eyes stared straight ahead.

  Hank couldn’t make out much of the driver behind his inflated airbag, except for a swatch of red-checked flannel. He turned the flashlight as much toward the back as he could in the narrow door opening. The roof had collapsed so low, he couldn’t see any bodies. Just blood.

  There was no possibility any of them back there were still alive.

  He stepped slowly away from the car. The only sounds were the fading hiss of the engine and his tortured breathing. His vision was turning red at the edges. How, how, how? How had this happened?

  Hank stumbled back around the car. He had to try for the driver again. The kid might still be alive. He hadn’t been able to tell from the other side, not for sure. But the driver’s door still wouldn’t budge. He’d have to get in through the window. He punched the already spider-webbed glass with the butt of his flashlight and was trying to clear it out when a strong hand grabbed his shoulder.

  ‘Hank, come on. We’ll do that. We have equipment.’

  The hand forced Hank to turn away from the car. Larry Alcoate stood there. There were two fire engines and an ambulance behind him. Hank hadn’t even heard the sirens.

  His paramedic friend stared at Hank with a funny look on his face and then pointed off to the side. ‘Go catch your breath. We’ll take it from here.’

  Hank walked until he was clear of the immediate scene. He turned back to see emergency personnel swarming the wreckage, preparing to rip it apart. One paramedic was unfolding body bags.

  Oh, dear God.

  He sank to his knees.

  He should have given them a ticket.

  He should have called their parents.

  He should never have let them go.

  TWO

  He didn’t know how long he knelt there before he forced himself to look up. It was so quiet. He was always amazed at how little sound the hydraulic jaws made. Larry wielded them with expert ease, snipping apart the car as if it were a tin can. Two other guys, communicating with only hand signals, started to peel back the roof. They concentrated on the section over the driver, who was the only one with even a remote chance of survival. Larry started on the door.

  Within seconds, the red flannel shirt was visible and a gurney was wheeled close. Larry stepped back. Hank stopped breathing. The paramedics lifted slowly and carefully. But it didn’t matter. They called it as soon as the kid was on the gurney. He was dead, too. All six, dead.

  Hank gulped in air and dropped his head. He stared at the dirt and tried to control his breathing. Then two running shoes appeared in front of him. They were too small and too pink to be Sam’s. Too small to be anybody’s but …

  ‘What exactly are you doing?’ said Sheila.

  He looked up into the face of his chief deputy. Her jaw dropped and she took a step back.

  ‘Jesus, Hank. What the hell happened? Are you hurt?’

  He shook his head. Why would she ask that? There was a car full of dead kids, and she was asking about him? He raised his hand to wave her away and saw the blood. Oh.

  ‘Stand up. Let me look at you.’ She peered up at his face and then whipped out a tissue. ‘Blow your nose,’ she ordered.

  He obeyed. She eyed him with a mix of puzzlement and concern. It was not like him to lose his composure over an accident scene. He knew that. He knew a lot of things at the moment, none of which were helping him get a grip on himself.

  ‘I’m going to go check in with Larry,’ she said, pivoting toward the car. ‘See if he’s figured out how many victims we’ve got.’

  ‘There are six.’

  She froze, then slowly turned back to him.

  ‘How do you know that? The car is crushed.’

  ‘Because I stopped them. Earlier. Gave them … lectured them … and told them to go straight home. They were just kids … they …’ His voice stopped working.

  All the starch went out of Sheila. ‘Oh, sweet Lord,’ she whispered.

  They stared at each other. Behind Sheila, metal shrieked as more of the roof was peeled away. She thought for a moment and then drew herself up to her full five foot four.

  ‘I’m going to talk to Larry and call in the Major Crash Investigation Unit from the Highway Patrol. You –’ she pointed away from the crash site – ‘are going to go over and take his statement.’

  Hank looked over. He hadn’t even noticed anyone there. A stubbled old man in a bathrobe and galoshes stood at the end of a driveway with a phone in one hand and a garden hose in the other. The man was an unexpected lifeline. Hank grabbed it.

  ‘Sir, I need t
o ask you some questions.’ He walked across the two-lane road, pulling himself together as he pulled his notebook out of the breast pocket of his uniform.

  The man nodded. ‘I expect you do. I was the one that called the 9-1-1.’

  Hank had deduced that. There didn’t appear to be anyone else around for miles.

  ‘Where were you when it happened?’ he asked, although he’d already guessed the answer.

  ‘Inside. All tucked in for the night,’ the man said, gesturing over his shoulder to a little house sitting on a slight hill about twenty yards off the road.

  Ralph Dindleton was a wiry six-footer, with a square jaw that made his skinny neck look even thinner. He’d lived here for round about fifty years now, and he’d just turned off the TV when he heard it. For the first second, he thought it was just another speeder who hadn’t done the curve in the road right. Sometimes they hit the boulder he’d put there at the bend to keep folk from driving right on up into his vegetable garden. That made a noise when it happened, but most times there wasn’t enough damage to stop ’em and they’d drove off by the time he got outside.

  But this was different. Dindleton gestured helplessly at the wreck. Once his poor senses had caught up, he knew. Something awful. Too big a sound. He grabbed his cell phone and called as he run down the driveway. He ended up with the hose, too. Not sure why. He thought maybe it would help. But then he got to where he could see it. And he couldn’t go no further.

  ‘I never seen something so bad. I didn’t know where to start. It’s just … just … a disaster.’

  He turned to Hank. ‘And then you showed up. Right quick. But …’

  Yeah, Hank thought. But it hadn’t mattered.

  He forced himself to focus on Dindleton. What exactly had the impact sounded like? The old man thought about it. Then he dropped the phone in his bathrobe pocket, rubbed the back of his neck, and thought some more. Hank waited patiently. He had a feeling this guy didn’t do anything without a full dose of pondering.

  ‘Well, now,’ Dindleton said slowly, ‘I’m going to hear that sound over and over until my dyin’ day, I think. But that’s not what you’re asking. At first, I thought it was one long sound, but reflecting on it here right now, I’m pretty sure it was two.’ He nodded decisively. ‘Yep. Two sounds.’