Devil Sent the Rain

by Lisa Turner

  She walked toward Billy dressed in her Memphis Police Department waterproof jacket that she’d had tailored to fit her petite frame. Under the jacket she wore a turtleneck sweater and dark slacks stuffed inside a pair of Wellington boots. The boots were blue and covered with yellow baby ducks.

  “We have a white female deceased behind the wheel,” she said as she came up to him. “Single gunshot wound to the right cheek. No exit wound. EMTs found the driver’s side door open and the victim DRT, ‘dead right there.’ They ran a strip to confirm absence of heart activity. The bull took a run at them. We’ll have to wait for the herd to be moved before we can evaluate the scene.”

  “Good morning,” he said. “Love the boots.”

  “Don’t make fun. They work.”

  She was the damnedest creature. He’d never met anyone so set on following the rules until she decided to break them.

  Frankie liked to keep fit. She wore her mink-brown hair cut short and minimal makeup, the kind of woman who didn’t need to check herself in every mirror she passed. Standing this close, he could smell her lavender shampoo, which meant she’d showered before making the scene. Her ability to appear wide-awake with her motor constantly running unnerved him.

  “Are you thinking suicide?” he asked.

  “The vic is dressed in a wedding gown, so yeah, suicide crossed my mind.”

  He laughed. She blinked, unaware she’d said something revealing.

  “Do we have a suspect?” He indicated the man seated in the back of the ambulance.

  “Roscoe Hanson. That’s his truck next to the gate. He says he was on his way to work when he noticed the gate was open and stopped to close it. The bull attacked when he entered the field to check the driver. The ranger found him on top of the vehicle hollering his head off. He’ll need stitches. The EMTs have patched him up, so we can chat with him before he’s transported to the MED.”

  She handed over the package made of folded newspaper. “It’s a money clip the ranger found near the car. He figures Hanson took it off the victim and tossed it once he was trapped.”

  Billy studied the sterling clip that secured several one-hundred-dollar bills. “Have an officer drag Hanson’s ass over here.”

  Roscoe Hanson was a wiry specimen around five foot seven with the cagey walk of a man with a progressive criminal record. He had on cowboy boots with stacked heels meant to add two inches to his height and his jeans jacket draped over his shoulders. A splotch of blood had soaked through the gauze on his bandaged right arm.

  Billy nodded at the pickup as Hanson approached. “We should lock you up for that piece of shit you’re driving.”

  Hanson raised his bandaged arm. “Fine by me. The city’s going to buy me a new ride. Nerve damage, post-traumatic stress. Good for a hundred thou easy.”

  “I hear all that. Tell me about the woman in the Camaro.”

  “I don’t know a damned thing.”

  He knew Hanson’s type—a repeater who is wise to the system and knows how to work it.

  “Where were you last night?”

  Hanson smiled. “Out. With buddies.”

  “You got a job?”

  “The Cracker Barrel. I’m a fry cook.”

  “These people you were hanging out with,” he said. “I want names, numbers, and where to find them.”

  Hanson’s eyes shifted.

  “Where you living?” he asked.

  “I got a trailer, back of my sister’s property.”

  Billy held up the money clip between two fingers. “Want to explain this?”

  Hanson scratched the side of his nose. “Never seen it before.”

  “I say we’ll find your prints on this clip and the gun when we find it. You might as well cooperate. Things will go easier.”

  “I never touched that money, and I sure as hell didn’t shoot that woman.”

  The bull bellowed as the horsemen circled the herd. Hanson’s head jerked in that direction. “That bastard nearly tore off my arm.”

  “Okay, stay with me,” Billy said, using a conciliatory tone. A switch in approach sometimes worked. “Here’s how I see it. You found the lady passed out and started to help yourself to her purse. She came to, she pulled a gun. The two of you struggled. Bang.”

  “No sir. I stopped to close the gate and saw taillights in the field. She was dead when I found her.”

  Frankie walked up. “I ran Hanson’s sheet. Two times down. Moved from carjacking to home invasion. He stuck a gun in a drug dealer’s face and threatened his pregnant wife. Pulled eight years. Gated out of Turney Center four months ago.”

  Billy sucked his teeth. “Roscoe, your sheet makes me think, ‘Out of prison and this dude gets himself a gun. He’s capable of doing a lot of damage quickly.’”

  “Now hold on,” Roscoe said.

  “You broke parole, so you’re heading back to—” He turned to Frankie. “Where did you say?”

  “Turney. Down the road from Bucksnort, Tennessee. Maximum security.”

  Billy shook his head. “Too bad. You won’t make bond, so we’ll keep you locked up till we find a way to charge you with murder. At the very least, you’re going back in the program at Turney Center to serve out your sentence.”

  “I ain’t fired no gun.” Roscoe shoved his palms forward. “Run the swabs. Line me up a lawyer. I said all I’m gonna say.”

  Frankie gave Billy an eye roll. They were done with Roscoe for now.

  “You follow through on the residue swabs and run the plates,” he said to her. “I’m going in for a look at the body.”

  Frankie nodded, but he caught the twitch at the side of her mouth. She hated to be ordered around, the same way he’d felt when his old partner had made a point of belittling him.

  “Please and thank you, ma’am,” he added.

  Her mouth curved up, and she clamped a hand on Hanson’s shoulder. “Come on, Roscoe. Let’s find out how dirty your hands are.”

  Chapter 3

  The horsemen move the herd along the fence and toward the gate. Billy circled left to stay out of their way and trudged through the bison flop and soured mud, dropping markers as he went for the CSU crew to follow. Footprints left by the ranger and first responders had mucked up the ground on all sides of the car. Casting impressions was going to be a hell of a job.

  First thing he noticed as he approached the Camaro was the vanity plate on the back. SPARROW. Odd choice for a muscle car. Must be a story there.

  The driver’s side door was open, the victim seated behind the wheel, her left arm hanging at her side. He noted the purple discoloration of her fingertips and the lack of an engagement or wedding ring on her finger. Her body was angled toward the car’s interior, her head falling forward causing a curtain of blond hair to obscure her face. Leaning inside the car, he saw her right hand laying palm up on the console. Her little finger was bruised, possibly broken. Looked like she’d put up a fight.

  The voluminous train of the dress filled the driver’s foot well and overflowed onto the console. The victim had pushed it to one side to access the gearshift. The transmission had remained in Drive. Her foot depressing the brake pedal and frozen there in death was the reason Hanson had seen the taillights burning.

  A wedding gown and no rings. Did Hanson take the rings or had the victim fought with the groom and removed them? Or had she been on her way to be married when she died? He radioed Frankie to have Hanson frisked for the rings before being transported from the scene.

  He walked around the back of the car and put on latex gloves before opening the passenger side door. An evening bag lay on the floor. Frankie could inspect its contents and search the car for a weapon. She was good at that. She never overlooked the details.

  He leaned in, aware of the faint, fetid odor of death. Last night’s low temperature had slowed the degradation of the body, but that would change as the day warmed. The Camaro would never be free of the smell. He scanned the back seat and looked up to see the small rip in the black fabr
ic headliner above the driver’s seat. Possibly a bullet hole. He snapped a photo with his mobile.

  Moving on, he rested his hand on the edge of the seat and leaned in farther for a look at the victim. Beneath the veil of blond hair, he saw where a bullet had entered below her right cheekbone and most likely found a path through the sinuses to the brain. Blood had leaked from her nostrils and dripped onto the front of the dress. Suicides usually aim for the temple, or they eat the barrel. This wound didn’t appear to be self-inflicted.

  He snapped more photos. Despite the dress covering her torso, arms and legs, he could tell the body was already losing muscle shape. The muscles in her jaw had loosened, dropping her mouth open. Lividity appeared only in her reddish earlobes, her fingertips, and the back of her wrist that rested on the console, but full rigor had begun to set in. Life had abandoned this body several hours ago.

  “What happened here, sweetheart?” he murmured and reached across to move the hair draped over her face. Powder tattoo marks speckled her cheek around the wound. The reddish-brown color indicated she’d been alive when she was shot, and the gun had been fired from about a foot away. It takes a particular kind of viciousness to shoot someone in the face at that close range. He looked past the damaged cheek and focused on her features already distorted by gravity—eyelids drooping, bowed mouth drawn down, a tiny beauty mark in the right corner.

  Recognition struck. He stumbled back from the car, swearing. The victim was Caroline Lee. No, maybe not. The deterioration was significant. This woman may only look like her. He forced himself to lean back in and saw on her right wrist a small scar, a scrape from a barbed wire fence. He remembered the day it happened.

  It was Caroline.

  She’d called a few days ago to let him know she was now the attorney of record for his uncle’s will. Before hanging up she’d said, “Good to hear your voice again, Billy.”

  He stood beside the car and wiped away tears. The vanity plate made sense to him now. Sparrow. Her dad used to call her that name. He looked around the vacant field, his breath streaming out in the cold. He wondered if she’d suffered—waiting alone in the dark for help to come.

  He heard the farm gate on the road scrape across gravel as it swung open. Frankie was just starting up the path he’d marked. They would inspect the body together, pick over the scene, open a file, and compile evidence. They would draw conclusions about suspects and write affidavits for warrants. All by the book, all impersonal. Suddenly the business of murder sickened him.

  The ground beneath him seemed to tilt as he walked around the back of the car to intercept Frankie, feeling the need to come between her and Caroline. Rage was building in his gut.

  “Why the hell are you wearing those ridiculous boots?” he barked as she walked up.

  She looked at him hard. “Why do you care?”

  “They’re an insult to the victim.”

  Her lips parted. “What in God’s name is wrong with you?”

  He lifted his chin at her mobile, struggling for control. “Forget it. Did you find anything?”

  Her gaze stayed with him a couple of beats longer than it had to. “Our victim is Caroline Lee, age twenty-nine. She works as an estate attorney at the Lee Law Firm, daughter of Saunders and Rosalyn Lee. That’s as blueblood as you get in this city, right? The car’s registered in her name. Kind of unusual for a society babe to drive a muscle car.”

  He nodded. A hawk was riding the air currents high above the pasture across the road. It folded its wings and dove behind the tree break.

  He wondered if he could hold on.

  Frankie continued. “Her name came up in the Commercial Appeal’s wedding announcement archives. She was to marry a Dr. Raj Sharma five weeks ago.” She frowned, staring at him. “Billy? Are you listening? You should see your face.”

  He had to tell her. She had a right to know. “The Lees have a home in Mississippi. The family used to come by my uncle’s diner. Saunders Lee was my uncle’s attorney. Caroline Lee called a few days ago to tell me she was closing out his will.”

  He searched the sky for the hawk. Instead he saw Caroline’s face close to his, her arms wrapped around his bare neck, her body glued to his. “One, two, three,” she would whisper, and they’d spring from the tree limb that stretched over the lake at the back of her father’s property.

  They would hit the water as one.

  He realized Frankie was studying him.

  “You really think we should work this case?” she asked.

  “I haven’t seen the Lees in years. I’m not a part of my uncle’s will. I’ll inform Middlebrook, but I don’t expect a problem.”

  The hawk lifted in the air from behind the tree break. Something squirmed in its beak.

  His rage returned. He imagined Caroline fighting for her life, the bullet striking, her body shutting down.

  His blood pulsed, pushing out the words. “If I get my hands on the son of a bitch who did this, I’ll kill him.”

  Chapter 4

  Frankie watched her partner fumble in his jacket for a pen. He opened his memo book, wrote a few words, crossed them out and wrote again. His hand was shaking. The media was going to zero in on this scene, and Billy was in no shape to have a microphone stuck in his face.

  “The watch commander is here,” she said. “I’ve contacted Deputy Chief Middlebrook’s office. The chief is doing a grip-and-grin at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Racquet Club. He’ll be here soon as he learns the victim is Saunders Lee’s daughter.”

  Billy blinked a few times as if coming back to himself. “Right. There’s a handbag in the front seat. Check around the car’s interior for a weapon and ejected casings. I’ll search the trunk.”

  She walked around the car and squatted beside the opened passenger’s side door. Tiny crystals sparkled on the handbag resting on the floor inside. She put on gloves and pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket to spread on the mat where she dumped the handbag’s contents—driver’s license, tube of lipstick, a smartphone, and at the bottom of the bag a pearl-handled derringer. She bent and sniffed the barrel. Not recently fired.

  Placing a knee on the seat, she leaned in and used her phone to snap close-ups of the gunshot wound and bruised hand. She backed off for a couple of wide-angle shots then checked the photos. The ruined face and bloody gown made the shots look like a Wes Craven movie poster. Billy obviously cared about this woman. No wonder he was so upset.

  She stepped away for a breath of fresh air, for some reason feeling a connection with this woman. They were close to the same age, both of them at the beginning of their careers. Lives of innocent people can be snatched away in an instant. That’s probably what happened here. She walked around to the driver’s side door. The dress looked like a Pat Kerr original, a Memphis designer who has an international reputation for creating wedding gowns from heirloom lace. Kneeling to bunch the skirt, she peered at the floorboard beneath the victim’s feet. No weapon there.

  Stepping back she noticed the side zipper on the dress was halfway down. Did the victim leave the zipper undone to make getting in and out of the car easier or had she put on weight in the weeks since the final fitting?

  She walked to where Billy was staring inside the open trunk, his hands in his pockets. His color was better. He seemed to have calmed down. Inside the trunk was a small Louis Vuitton suitcase with its lid up. A pink negligee lay on top. Frankie could smell the perfume.

  “The trunk is empty except for this bag,” he said.

  “There’s a derringer in her handbag. It hasn’t been fired.”

  He nodded.

  “You don’t seem surprised the victim was carrying.”

  “Mississippi women carry pistols, even grandmothers. A .32 goes in the purse, a .357 under the car seat.”

  “What are these women afraid of?” she asked.

  “Not a damned thing. You grow up in the country, you’re comfortable with guns.”

  She studied the negligee. “Looks like
she packed for a honeymoon, yet she was supposed to have been married five weeks ago.”

  “And no rings,” he said.

  “No rings. Got any ideas?”

  “First scenario. She was married sometime on Monday. The couple had a fight. She took off. She was texting or maybe she was drunk. She lost control of the car and ended up in the field. She called the guy to come get her. He parked on the road, walked in, and shot her. He walked out and drove away.”

  “That doesn’t explain the bullet hole above her head.”

  “Second idea. She had a passenger. They pulled over, had an argument. He pulled a gun and they struggled. That’s your bullet in the headliner. She hit the gas, ran into the gate, and drove into the field. He killed her with the second shot.”

  “Try this one,” she said. “The zipper on the dress is undone. Someone came to her house, forced her to put on the dress, abducted, and killed her.”

  “That’s possible. And there’s Hanson, but I have a hunch he didn’t do it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s so damned sure of himself. He’s talking about collecting damages from the city, not beating a murder charge. He ripped off the money clip, got trapped on the roof, and realized the clip would send him back to Turney. He wiped his prints and tossed it.”

  She marveled at how Billy relied on gut feeling to solve cases. Logic was her thing. They made a great team, except that she’d begun to feel cramped in her position as his understudy.

  The chop of helicopter blades broke the air as Channel Five Traffic Scan flew south over the stalled traffic on Walnut Grove. It banked north and turned.

  She looked at the line of cruisers and service vehicles on the road. “The pilot knows something’s up. He’s going to do a flyover. They’ll want footage for the morning broadcast.”

  Billy pulled a rag from the trunk and tucked it around the license plate as the chopper approached. “The media will foam at the mouth soon as they know the victim is a Lee. We need a tent. And I want to notify her parents before they see her car on TV.”