Devil Sent the Rain Read online

  Dedication

  For Rob Sangster, the “Travelin’ Man”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lisa Turner

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The radio was playing “Blue Skies” when the gun went off.

  She’d been the one driving. They talked about the good times ahead, the wedding, the baby. A fresh start. Then the conversation turned sad. She tuned the radio to an oldies station.

  Let’s not talk about Finn, she said. Not tonight.

  “Blue Skies” came on, her favorite version with Willie Nelson singing the Irving Berlin classic, the perfect song for a cold and rainy November night.

  If the baby was a girl, she’d name her Skye.

  She was only twenty-nine, but her obstetrician had warned this could be a high-risk pregnancy. She might not carry the baby to term if she didn’t stop taking the drugs. No more alcohol. No more stress, the doctor said. Take a sabbatical from your law practice until the baby comes.

  Pregnant. It’s the word that changes everything. Her life had gone from disaster to wedding bells, from hot mess to lollipop dreams in a matter of days. Her mother used to say, “Caroline, you have a talent for picking the wrong men.”

  Not this time, Mom.

  Rain misted the Camaro’s windshield. She flipped on the wipers and pulled the sweater close about her shoulders, glad to have it, a last-minute offering to keep away the chill. It was blue, a sentimental color, perfect for a wedding. She’d left her coat at home not wanting to crush the delicate lace on the sleeves of her dress. French nuns had made the lace a hundred years ago for her great grandmother’s wedding dress. So beautiful and it might bring a touch of luck.

  She turned up the music and glanced over at the passenger side expecting a smile to come to her through the shadows. Instead she was met with the barrel of a gun. The face behind the gun—the one she truly loved—was unrecognizable.

  “Turn here.”

  The voice sounded strange, impersonal. Stunned, she did as she was told, the car’s headlights sliding along the white board fence in the darkness.

  “Pull over.”

  “Why?” she asked, her own voice thin as a child’s.

  “I said pull over.”

  Gravel popped beneath the tires as they dropped off the pavement. Something about the sound made her know that if she stopped the car she was dead.

  “No!” Her hand came off the wheel and knocked the gun away. The car lit with a flash and a deafening bang. Her ears rang. Her foot jammed down on the accelerator. The Camaro leapt forward and smashed into a farm gate then flew into the field and hit with a jolt. The car’s rear end fishtailed in the mud. Dark figures with scarlet eyes and glistening nostrils lumbered past the headlights. The engine raced. The car nose-dived and slammed to a stop. She pushed back off the steering wheel and made a grab for the gun, fighting and twisting the barrel. The gun flashed again. The bullet struck with the force of a punch to the face. She sank into darkness. Paralyzing silence.

  She lost time.

  She felt a warm hand on her arm, fingers stroking her lace sleeve. The sweater lifted from her shoulders. Something heavy fell in her lap. She opened her eyes.

  But you loved me. Why did you do this?

  Her cheek burned. Something warm and wet ran from her nose. The passenger door clicked open. The light was too bright.

  Please don’t leave. The baby.

  The door shut. The light cut off. She closed her eyes. Rain peppered the roof. Willie Nelson sang as she drifted in the dark.

  Blue skies, smiling at me. Nothing but blue skies do I see …

  Chapter 1

  The Ford F-150 pickup rocked along in the dark, spinning up loose gravel on the park’s access road. The old truck, loaned to him by his brother-in-law, had busted struts and seats soaked in defoliants and nicotine. The brakes were shot. Through the hole in the floorboard he could see the asphalt flying by, but he had no complaints. He was headed to work early, 4:00 am, fingernails clipped and his hair slicked back. Roscoe Hanson was lean and clean. The ladies love a clean man, especially a man with tattoos. He had his eye on a young thing working the line, the one with the big tits and soft mouth. She made sure to bump his butt when she passed on her way to the sink.

  The truck’s headlights streamed across the white board fence. Cold night air rolled through the cab window intoxicating his thoughts. The white line dropped off at the farm gate and picked up again. Ten seconds down the road his brain clicked in. He pumped the brakes and backed onto the shoulder to shine his high beams. The aluminum gate was bent in the middle and hanging open, the kind of damage done by a swerving car.

  The herd of bison in that field was the park’s biggest attraction. He didn’t understand why people lined their cars on the road to watch a bunch of fancy damned buffalo at feeding time, but they did. Securing those bison might mean a reward. He leaned across the seat and opened the glove box for the flashlight.

  As he climbed out of the truck, the night around him was black as carbon from the rainstorm that had just passed. He sensed the dark forms ranging through the pasture, disturbed and restless, their padded hooves heavy on the wet grass. No way to know if any of them had escaped to the road. Hit one of them monsters and you’d be road jelly. When he got to the restaurant, he’d call the Shelby Farms office and leave a message saying how he’d kept their animals from crashing into cars on Walnut Grove.

  He used the flashlight to scrounge baling wire from the truck bed. He was wiring the gate shut when a bison somewhere deep in the field must have moved because a slice of red taillight was suddenly visible in the dark. Sumbitch. The car that had smashed the gate was out there. Either the driver walked out and left the gate open, or he was passed out drunk behind the wheel. Give the guy a hand and he might come across with a couple of twenties.

  He unwired the gate, searching the dark for the bison. No matter. Ain’t nothing out there but a herd of cows called by a different name.

  The muck in the field slimed his boots as he made his way to the back of a red 1968 Chevy Camaro Z/28. A gotdamned hot car. The engine was running, exhaust puffing from the tailpipe. He shone the beam over the vanity plate. SPARROW. The flashlight dimmed. He shook it and fanned the light across the car’s interior. A woman was in the driver’s seat. She was alone.
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  “Hey, you. In the car. You all right?” He rapped on the trunk with his knuckles and walked around to the driver’s side. The woman had her head turned away from the window, her blond hair covering the side of her face. He tapped the glass with the rim of the flashlight and shone the light inside.

  “Hey.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He trailed the light over her white dress and down the long skirt she’d piled onto the center console. The beam caught the sparkle of a small handbag in her lap. He got it. This was a bride, a runaway bride. Before the guy could get her out of the dress she’d stolen his car and run the damned thing into the field. Hot damn this was rich. He opened the door. The interior light came on.

  “Wake up, lady.”

  Passed out. Drunk like he’d figured. Weddings will do that. In-laws start fistfights in the parking lot. The groom goes out back of the hall with his buddies and gets ripped then makes a fool of himself on the dance floor. Can’t blame a gal for running off. He touched her hand and snatched back from it. She was cold as lard. Then he saw the blood on the front of her dress.

  Jesus God, she was dead. Been dead awhile. He took a step back, unwilling to be caught with a dead woman when he was four months out on parole and getting his act up and running again. His gaze went to the handbag with little crystals sparkling in the dome light. Hell, she didn’t need it so why not? He grabbed it, opened it. Inside was the usual crap and—Wow!—a silver money clip, its jaws wide around a stack of bills. He stuffed the money in his pocket, wiped his prints off the frame of the bag and flipped it across the woman to the passenger side. Smart move coming here. Time to get out.

  He was backing away when a pounding sound made him swing around and raise the flashlight. The beam struck the eye of a bull charging at him like a battering ram. Shit! He scrambled to put the car between him and the bull and made it as far as the front tire when he knew the bull had him. The massive head hooked upward and sent him flying, his body slamming onto the Camaro’s hood. The bull backed off and bellowed, swung his head, and charged again, ramming the fender so hard the car shuddered. He climbed to his hands and knees. Pain jolted through his shoulder as he flung himself onto the roof. He grabbed his arm. His hand came away bloody.

  The bull stood six feet from the Camaro, shaking his horns and shifting side to side. No phone. No traffic. But there would be. There would be cops.

  He was fucked.

  Chapter 2

  Detective Billy Able fumbled in the dark for his mobile phone vibrating on the nightstand. He checked the screen. Dispatch. A 5:33 am call out.

  “Able,” he answered, his voice rough with sleep. He felt for the water glass on the nightstand and took a swallow.

  “Morning, Detective. A park ranger out at Shelby Farms got himself a dead female in a car. EMS made their run. Perimeter’s set.”

  “What’s the location?”

  “Farm Road at Walnut Grove.”

  Billy visualized the spot where the access road met the busy thoroughfare. Not a high crime area. “Which side of the road?”

  “Not the road. The pasture.”

  He sat up. “Where they keep the bison?”

  “You got it.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Call Malone. Have her meet me there.”

  “By the way, that ranger was pretty shook up,” the dispatcher said. “He kept going on about a wedding dress.”

  Billy hung up and listened for the sound of rain that had pounded the deck outside his porthole all night long. Rain had blown through the city off and on for most of November. The weatherman blamed late tropical storms spinning up from the gulf, but this rain had felt more like retribution than the effects of high and low pressures.

  Awake now, he headed for the bathroom to scrub the back of his neck with a soapy washcloth and give himself a quick shave. A wedding dress. What the hell was that about? First reports were generally unreliable. Probably the ranger’s first dead body.

  Bush-league casework used to drive him crazy when he was coming up in the squad as a hotshot detective wearing shades and thrift store suits. His cocky attitude had worked as long as his partner was the most seasoned cop on the squad. Then his partner offed himself and everything went to hell. But you can’t dwell on that kind of loss. It only makes you cynical.

  Coming out of the bathroom he dressed in a heavy cotton shirt, a fleece vest, and a waterproof Memphis Police Department jacket. He slipped his SIG P250 compact .40 caliber into a concealed holster and patted his badge wallet in his pocket. At thirty-three, he was less of a hothead and more passionate about the work. The job was the thing. He’d given himself over to it.

  He drank two cups of black coffee and ate cheese toast standing over the sink then sat on the sofa to pull on his field boots. Across the room a brand-new Samsung flat screen waited inside the box. He’d planned to install it tomorrow so he could come home and watch the UofM Tigers basketball game on a big screen. From the sound of the call out, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Scooping his keys out of a metal bowl on the counter, he glanced around the living area of his home, a self-propelled barge that had been converted to a rental and docked on the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis. Five years ago a friend had purchased the barge at auction and moved it to a slip in the slack water near the Hernando de Soto Bridge known to Memphians as the new bridge. The friend had the barge refitted as a bar and grill and turned it over to his son to manage. The place went bust inside of two years as bars are known to do. His friend installed a shower and turned the small office into a bedroom. The place was great for a guy who worked downtown and who liked to watch the river traffic and the sunset on the water. Billy had signed a three-year lease.

  Outside in the pre-dawn darkness he turned to lock his door, his breath coming out in puffs beneath the overhead light. The deck felt slick beneath his boots. Rain, rain, rain. The bison field would be trampled to a muddy mess. At the bottom of the ramp, pools of water surrounded his city-issued Dodge Charger parked next to his personal car. He got in and started the engine, trying to recall if anyone had ever been murdered in the park. No, not since he’d been on the squad. Possibly a jogger had a heart attack, but that was it. He texted his partner to confirm she was familiar with the scene’s location. Frankie Malone wasn’t a Memphis girl, and Shelby Farms was at the outer boundary of their jurisdiction.

  She texted back “K.” He dropped the transmission into drive and rolled up the steep cobblestone landing.

  The sky was lightening to a morose gray as he took the Walnut Grove exit to the 4500-acre park. For decades the park had been known as the Shelby County Penal Farm, where low-risk offenders had done their time by farming the acreage for their food and selling the overage for profit. Now Shelby Farms was one of the largest urban parks in the nation.

  At the Farm Road traffic light, an officer waved him past the black-and-white-striped barrier to park at the head of the line of the service vehicles. He noticed an EMT in the back of the ambulance wrapping a man’s arm with gauze. The man was seated and staring out at the road, his face narrow with sunken cheeks and hair combed back off his forehead.

  In the field to Billy’s left, he saw the bison had crowded themselves against the far fence line. Two females moaned. The bull paced in front of them and shook his massive head, wanting an excuse to charge. The activity on the road and the smell of blood must be putting the herd on edge. They were a well-fed, amiable lot, willing to remain behind a fence they could easily smash through, but they were also capable of attacking a man on foot. Could be the reason for the man’s bandaged arm.

  Directly ahead his partner was standing in the road in the flat light of dawn, speaking with a tall guy dressed in a uniform and wearing a Smokey the Bear hat.

  The ranger towered over Frankie’s five-foot-five frame, but her intensity was what drew Billy’s eye. He had requested her as a partner upon his return to the department after a nine-month leave. She’d been new
to the squad, but what she lacked in experience she’d made up with drive, intelligence, and a talent for exhaustive research.

  Her gaze flicked in his direction. She held up a finger to say “hold on” while the ranger recited his notes.

  Billy got out of his car and leaned against the fender to take in the scene beginning with the red Camaro several hundred feet out in the field. He was looking at the rear end of the car, the front of it tilted down in the field’s natural trough. The driver’s door was hanging open, and white fabric spilled over the door frame. That must be the dress the ranger had been going on about.

  He walked the road, taking in the damaged farm gate and the truck parked beside it with rusted-out doors and its back bumper wired on. Officers had already blocked off skid marks on the side of the road with orange cones. He squatted down to inspect the marks. The Camaro had been traveling north, pulled off onto the shoulder, and then accelerated, leaving remnants of rubber scrubbed off on the rises and falls of the asphalt. The driver must have lost control, smacked into the gate, and fishtailed in the mud until the car had come to a stop in the lowlying trough running through the center of the field.

  Too soon to draw conclusions.

  He stood at the sound of shod hooves on the road, two men arriving on horseback to move the herd so they could get out to the Camaro. Frankie was finishing with the park ranger, who handed her a package. They clasped hands and parted.