Deadly Turn, A

By Claire Booth

Branson county sheriff Hank Worth struggles to uncover the truth behind a fatal car crash in this absorbing mystery.







Hank Worth thinks he’s performed a good deed when he pulls over the car of six teens caught speeding on a Saturday night and lets them off with a warning and instructions to go home. When he responds to an urgent call minutes later, he realises he made a fatal error of judgement – every teen is dead.







Struggling to come to terms with his role in the crash, Hank begins to suspect foul play. While notifying the parents of the children involved, his suspicions grow when an unidentified body is discovered in one of their homes and a teenage girl is found after apparently attempting to commit suicide. Hank believes the incidents are connected, but those around him disagree.







Is Hank right, or is his guilt making him search for answers where there are none?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781448301799

Claire Booth

Formerly a crime reporter for daily newspapers such as the Miami Herald and Philadelphia Inquirer, Claire Booth has used this experience to write three mystery novels based on small-town US life. She is also the author of one non-fiction book, The False Prophet: Conspiracy, Extortion and Murder in the Name of God.

Book preview

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 to 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.’

The first crunch was more typical, Dindleton said, like what he was used to hearing. The two men stared at each other and then walked as one to the large rock set at the curve in the road. Beyond it was the last of Dindleton’s fall corn crop. On it was a smear of brown paint and black rubber.

The second sound came so quick that it ran together with the first, Dindleton said, staring down at his boulder. But it was different. It was a crack and a boom and a skid all at once.

‘Like the sky fell … that’s what it was,’ Dindleton said. ‘It fell, and I was too late to catch it.’

He looked at his lowly garden hose and swallowed hard. Hank got dizzy.

A scrape against the asphalt drew their attention to the wreck. The paramedics had brought up another gurney. They watched as Larry helped lift the front seat passenger into a body bag. His name was Gabriel Schattgen. He had been seventeen.

THREE

Dindleton gently steered him up the driveway, his knurled fingers on Hank’s shoulder. He stopped about ten yards from the road.

‘OK, son, let me see your hands. You’re gettin’ blood everywhere.’

Hank stared down at his hands in surprise. The right was covered in red scratches. The left had a gouge near his thumb and another one on the edge of his palm. He jumped back as Dindleton turned on the hose nozzle.

‘Now hold still. You’re bad as a newborn colt.’

Dindleton carefully flushed out the cuts. The cold water in the open wounds hurt and made him glad. It drew his attention away from the pain in his head, and his chest.

‘There,’ Dindleton said, turning off the hose. ‘Feel better?’

He gave Hank a keen look that seemed full of speculation, or of judgment. Hank fought the urge to hang his head and instead forced himself to turn back to the wreckage. He should at least face what he’d done. He saw Sheila striding toward him and walked over to meet her.

‘MCIU is on its way,’ she said, putting her cell back in the pocket of her windbreaker. She was in civilian clothes – T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Apparently it had to be one in the morning before she would forego a uniform.

‘They said they’d have a sergeant here within a half hour, so we need to leave everything as-is until he gets here,’ she continued and then stopped at the look on his face.

‘We can’t leave those kids in there,’ he said. ‘We have to get them out. They can’t stop.’ He flung his arm toward the emergency workers, just in time to see them all step back from the twisted metal. ‘They have to get those kids out of there.’

He realized his voice was rising, but he didn’t care. Sheila did, though. She raised a calming hand. ‘I think that—’

‘Hey, it’s OK,’ Larry interrupted as he loped over to them. ‘We can wait. The rest of the county’s quiet. And I’ve alerted my off-duty guys that they might have to take a call if one comes in. So everything’s fine.’

Everything was not fine.

Sheila’s hand was on his chest. ‘Calm. Down.’

Larry took a step back. ‘Dude. You OK?’

Hank again stated that they couldn’t leave the bodies in the wreckage for that long. Maybe too forcefully, seeing as Larry took another step back. Then his friend shot Sheila a what-the-hell look.

‘I just think,’ Hank said in what he thought was a deliberate tone, but to the others might’ve sounded angry, ‘that we should get the victims out of the car. They need to be … taken care of.’

Larry nodded. ‘I get it. Especially if they end up being as young as those two in the front looked. But to get to them – and we don’t even know how many there are – we have to completely tear the car apart. And that’s not going to do the Major Crash folks much good when they try to reconstruct what happened. You know that.’

Sheila gave Hank the tiniest of shoves. She was communicating that he needed to say something – calmly.

‘You’re right …’ Hank said. ‘I’m just a little wound up about it because … because I pulled them over. That car. Earlier tonight. About twenty minutes before …’ All three turned to look at the bloody wreckage. ‘And there were six of them. Four in the backseat. I made them buckle up and promise me they’d go straight home to their parents. And this …’ he searched for more words and came up empty.

Larry – irrepressible, wise-cracking Larry – could manage only a faint gasp. Finally, he looked at Hank and shook his head. ‘Man …’

They all stood in silence and watched the one person who could continue working. Kurt Gatz was hard to miss, with his camera flash going off repeatedly. The crime scene tech moved methodically around the car, carefully stepping over scattered vehicle parts as he photographed every inch of the wreck.

‘All right,’ Sheila said, slapping her hands together. ‘This inaction isn’t good for anybody.’ By which she clearly meant that it wasn’t good for Hank. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. Larry, you start walking back along the road the way they came. Take these evidence markers and put them wherever you see skid marks. Not on them, just next to them. Got it?’

‘I am not a rookie, Ms Chief Deputy.’ Larry grabbed the stack of yellow A-frame markers, and then flashed her a grin. ‘But you’d better watch me. I might be good enough to make it as a deputy myself. Then you’d never get rid of me.’

‘Oh, hush and get along, you impossible man.’ She waved him off, and then focused on Hank. And sighed.

‘I could’ve done that,’ he said, gesturing toward Larry’s departing back.

‘No way. No long, depressing, solitary walks for you. You’re with me.’

She pulled on plastic gloves and walked over to the boulder, fully expecting Hank to follow. He stayed where he was. He’d already seen it.

She gave him the briefest of glances and turned her flashlight toward the rock to study the scrapes. The rock was more square than round, about two feet high and maybe thirty inches wide. Not huge, by any means, but certainly big enough to inflict some damage on the fenders of cars taking the curve too quickly. She knelt down, balancing on the balls of her feet as she got as close as she could without touching the rough surface. She scrutinized the whole front of the rock and then stood, shaking her head and muttering loudly in Hank’s direction about a dozen different colors of paint and the microscopic analysis that would be needed to figure out exactly what was from the sedan.

She was trying to draw him in, take his mind off the dead kids entombed twenty feet to the left. He didn’t move from his spot at the end of Dindleton’s driveway. She stepped off to the side of the boulder and contemplated it for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, he gave in and joined her. Kurt walked over as well, and his high-wattage flash immediately began lighting up the rock.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

All three of them stopped and turned toward the road, where a Highway Patrolman stood, arm raised accusingly in their direction. Hank couldn’t make out his face in the dark, but based on his posture and his tone, the guy was not in a good mood. Well, neither was he.

‘We’re photographing evidence,’ he said, walking well clear of the boulder and onto the road. ‘And you are?’

The man lowered his arm and stared at Hank. At least Hank thought that was where he was looking. It was hard to tell with his face in shadow and the emergency lights bouncing off his reflective vest.

‘Who the hell do you think I am? I’m Major Crash Investigation. And I want him to follow me, right now.’ He jabbed his finger toward Kurt.

Kurt froze, looking at the patrolman and then to Hank, silently asking what he should do. Hank started to tell him to finish what he was doing because Major Crash could damn well wait two minutes. Then he looked over at the wreckage and swallowed his indignation. He nodded at Kurt, who rose to his feet and was hit with a torrent of orders from the investigator. He hustled his bulky frame away with a backward glance of trepidation.

‘He better be able to handle it,’ the Highway Patrol guy growled. ‘I don’t like people who can’t move effectively around a scene.’

Sheila bristled and started forward. Hank held up a hand, surprised that he was able to stay so calm. Maybe his roiling reservoir of emotion had finally run dry.

‘Kurt is an exemplary crime scene technician and will be able to do whatever you need him to,’ Hank said. ‘His size is not an issue.’

‘It better not be.’ The man spun on his heel and headed for the sedan.

Hank called after him. ‘I didn’t get your name … trooper.’

The man stopped and slowly turned back to Hank. He was now closer to the still flashing emergency lights and finally visible. He had grey hair in a fresh crew cut, a Dudley Do-Right jaw and Tony Soprano eyes.

‘I am a sergeant. You will kindly address me as such. My name is Jenkins.’

Hank knew he had to be well above the starting rank of trooper in order to be assigned to the major crash unit. He could see Sheila grinning out of the corner of his eye as Jenkins strode away. She skirted the boulder and came to stand next to him.

‘That’s just what we need – a total jerk,’ she said.

Hank hadn’t taken his eyes off him. He sighed. ‘Yeah. Just be careful with him, OK? I shouldn’t have done that. No more poking the bear on this one. Just let him do his job and get him gone.’

Sheila gave him a puzzled look and shrugged just as Larry came jogging up the road, still clutching a full stack of evidence markers. He hadn’t found any skid marks. With better lighting, they might be able to find some, he said as he handed the markers at Sheila. But he’d come up empty.

‘Well, except I did find her,’ he said with a smile, pointing at the petite woman in cargo pants walking down the road toward them.

Alice Randall, the sheriff department’s other crime scene tech, rolled her eyes. ‘You did not find me, Larry.’ She turned to Hank. ‘I heard multiple fatalities. Is Major Crash here yet?’

Sheila growled a yes as Jenkins the jerk looked over. Hank quickly stepped in front of Alice.

‘Larry, get over there and distract that guy,’ he said. ‘Keep him away from over here for a while.’

Larry sighed dramatically and walked back toward the wreck. Hank, still shielding Alice from view, told her what photos he wanted taken of the boulder. She quickly started as Hank stood nonchalantly in front of her. He wanted pictures of everything. Because there were no skid marks, and that made no sense. It was a sharp curve, with a boulder that would’ve appeared in the headlight beams. Why hadn’t the driver braked? What had gone on with that car?

‘Whatcha doing?’

Both Hank and Alice froze, and then looked up to see another Highway Patrol official staring at them from the road side of the large rock. This one, however, did not seem to be an asshole, and certainly didn’t appear to be a man.

Hank rose to his feet and stepped clear of the evidence area.

‘We’re just making sure everything gets recorded. Before it can possibly be altered.’

‘Good idea. Because we’re going to need to analyze that rock – paint scrapings, things like that.’ She peered at the boulder and then turned to him. ‘I’m Nina DeRosia, Major Crash Investigation.’

Hank, whose injured hands were in no condition to shake hers, nodded at her and introduced himself. She raised an eyebrow.

‘You’re the actual sheriff, and you’re out here in the middle of the night fully uniformed?’

‘I take a patrol shift every once in a while. That’s what I was doing tonight. I was the first on scene.’

Now both eyebrows rose. She was tall and slim, with what looked like blondish hair pulled back in a bun. She had on the same kind of reflective vest her colleague wore. ‘First on scene? We’re definitely going to want to talk to you, then. But I need to start with what’s going on over there. When you finish with your evidence technician, can you send her over?’

She gave him a smile and walked away.

‘Well, that was like night and day.’ Sheila stood at his shoulder, stripping off her own gloves. She peered up at him. ‘You want to stay here? I can go handle the inter-agency stuff.’

He took a deep breath as Larry fired up the Jaws of Life again. ‘No. I did this. I can’t walk away now.’

FOUR

After a fierce argument they tried to pass off as only a friendly discussion, the two Major Crash sergeants agreed that the lowly sheriff’s deputies, who now included two other officers, could help mark the extensive debris field that had occurred when the sedan crashed. Sheila was thoroughly amused by the whole thing. Hank didn’t think anything would ever amuse him again.

He combed the slope on the far side of the wreck until it was blanketed with yellow evidence markers. He was about ten yards down from the car when the yelling started. Jenkins appeared at the top of the rise and ordered him to come up. Hank complied, slowly.

The second he reached the level ground by the road, the jerk let loose. He hadn’t been told that Hank pulled the car over earlier in the evening. He wasn’t informed that Hank had important information about the passengers in the vehicle. He didn’t know that Hank was essentially a witness and shouldn’t be participating in the investigation. He should’ve been told everything immediately.

Hank stared at him impassively.

‘You didn’t give me a chance to tell you. You walked away.’

‘Oh, you need an invitation? Is that it? You need somebody to hold your hand? What kind of law enforcement officer are you?’

‘I’m the sheriff of Branson County.’ He drew himself up to his full height, which was exactly as tall

Reviews for Deadly Turn, A

[vesper1931 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While on night patrol Branson county sheriff Hank Worth stops a speeding car to find six teenagers inside. He decides to let them off with a warning. Less than thirty minutes later he responses to a call, a car has crashed. But the case gets complicated when another body is found in an apartment, and a seriously hurt girl is discovered. Are these incidents connected.
This is my first Hank Worth book and it can easily be read as a standalone story.
It took me a while to get into the story but it is well-written with a good plot line. The main characters are likeable with some depth. Look forward to reading more from the series.
A NetGalley Book

[ethel55_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a heartbreaking subject, but the characters pull through the story so realistically that it helps dull the pain of the loss of a carload of teenagers at the start of the book. Now Sheriff, Hank still takes on patrolling and other jobs to stay in the game. After letting the teens off with a warning, the emergency calls start coming in and he is plenty close to respond. Hank's a mess, Sam isn't himself yet and Shelia sure earns her Deputy Chief status by trying to keep them all together. There is the usual jockeying over jurisdiction that brings some new characters to the county. And then at home, Hank's father in law's sister has mysteriously turned up, not realizing what a hectic time this is the for the family. Not many light moments here, but I did find the eventual path to the end engrossing.