Midnight Crossing (22 page)

Losing the one constant in her life, the part that gave her a sense of purpose, was unthinkable. Gazing in the mirror, she watched her fingers unbutton the uniform shirt and then she dropped it on the floor. She looked at her weary eyes in the mirror and tried to identify some emotion inside of her that she could latch on to. All she felt was numb.
We got nothing
.

She finally picked up the shirt and hung it in her bedroom closet. She put on shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of hiking boots. Staying inside wasn’t an option. She’d lose her mind staring at the walls, waiting for Nick to come home from his lunch date with her mother.

*   *   *

Chester followed Josie out the front door and out of habit headed back toward the pasture and Dell’s house beyond. She smiled when he realized she wasn’t following him, and he circled back to see what she was doing out by the road.

“Let’s take another route today,” she said, patting his back as they took off walking along the side of the road.

Josie had removed the yellow crime scene tape in the pasture where they had found the murdered woman so that it wouldn’t draw the attention of gawkers looking for a cheap thrill. But she had left the foot-high wooden stakes that had held the tape as a visual for herself until the case was solved. She stopped on the gravel road, in a direct line of sight with the stakes.

Standing on the side of the road now, facing the pasture, she estimated her house was about a quarter of a mile to the east of where she was standing. Dell’s house was straight back down the lane from her house, about a half mile northeast. Josie scanned the path that the women probably took from the toolshed, behind the house, across the lane leading to Dell’s cabin, and into the open pasture.

From the bits and pieces Josie and Marta had collected from Isabella about the night Renata was killed, it sounded as if the women had been hiding in the toolshed. They had been watching through a knothole in the wall as a car drove slowly down the gravel lane, searching for them. Isabella had told Marta that they had heard the car and ran for the pasture, probably thinking they would be safer in case someone came searching for them.

She imagined them running, but realized it would have been far from a run, in the dark. Clumps of prickly pear cactus and Spanish daggers with knife-sharp edges dotted the ground and would have stopped them immediately, causing incredible pain, if they’d run into one. The women would have had no choice but to cross the pasture carefully.

Josie and Nick had found Renata’s body lying prone, with her head facing north toward Dell’s house, instead of the westward direction they had been running. Josie imagined the car might have stopped where she was now standing on the side of the road, next to the pasture. Someone could have jumped out of the car and run into the pasture, causing the women to veer toward Dell’s house, rather than running parallel to the road.

Josie continued walking alongside the road, trying to imagine various scenarios with the two women and the man or men chasing them. About a mile from home, she turned and walked the same route back again, keeping her mind focused on the case while trying to avoid the toxic thoughts about her current suspension. That wound was too raw to touch just yet.

Chester had been walking just in front of her, sniffing along the road, when he paused and lifted his head toward the pasture as if he’d seen something in the distance. Josie stood still, scanning the pasture from the road back to Dell’s cabin, and beyond to the mountain range, but she saw no movement. She walked backward about a dozen steps, and then moved forward again when a glint of silver caught her eye. She took her cell phone out, snapped a quick shot, and took off toward the shiny object, which appeared to be about two hundred feet away from the road.

Ten feet from the object, she stopped, shocked at her discovery.

FOURTEEN

Josie knew better than to process the scene. She called Chester away from the area and got Otto on the phone.

“I found the gun,” she said.

“What gun?” he said.

“I’m in the pasture beside my house, so most likely it’s the gun used to kill Renata.”

“I’m on my way,” he said. “Don’t touch anything until I get there.”

Josie sighed into the phone, annoyed at the remark.

“Sorry. Give me ten minutes.”

Josie walked slow concentric circles around the gun, starting at ten feet and moving out to about fifty, checking for anything else that might have been missed. Ten minutes later, Otto met her in the pasture. She described her theory that the women were hiding in the shed when the car stopped in front of Josie’s house and someone got out to search for them.

“I think the women took off running and the person either got back into the car and drove down the road farther to catch up with them, or what makes more sense is a second person in the car.”

He pointed across the pasture to the toolshed behind Josie’s house. “So the driver stops the car and a passenger gets out. The person is walking around, searching for the women. Maybe the women see a flashlight getting closer to the toolshed, and they panic. They leave the toolshed and take off running behind your house toward the pasture. The driver moves down the road to directly where we’re standing in the pasture and stops. Maybe even turns the car to point the headlights into the pasture here, trying to illuminate the women.”

“Exactly. So they stop running parallel to the road, and they take off toward Dell’s place,” she said.

“And Renata is shot in the back,” Otto said.

“Isabella hears the gunshot and runs out of the beam of the headlights and escapes into the night.” Josie scanned the pasture, pointing to the stakes where the dead body was. “Then the shooter freaks out and wants to get rid of the gun immediately. He flings it as far as he can and it lands here.”

“Pretty stupid move,” he said.

“Look at our suspects. Assuming we have two people, we’re looking at Josh and Ryan. One’s basically a kid, and the other an idiot.”

Otto cocked his head. “Ryan said he only went one time. Maybe he was telling the truth. It could have been Josh and Macey.”

Josie nodded. “I like it. Macey’s the driver. I can see Josh flinging the gun in a panic.”

“What did Isabella say when Marta asked her about what happened out here?” he said.

“She’d just opened up at the trauma center. She hadn’t provided a lot of details. Marta planned on talking to her again. And then Josh took off with her.”

“So we need to get back with Isabella again.”

“Assuming she’ll talk with us. We didn’t exactly provide the security that we told her she’d get,” she said.

For a few more minutes, they threw around ideas about other ways the shooting could have gone down, but Josh and Ryan, or Josh and Macey, made the most sense.

Josie walked Otto back out to the road where his jeep was parked. He got inside and talked to her through the open window.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Right now I’m going to hope like hell you and Marta can connect those two morons to Caroline Moss and get me out of this mess.”

He offered a slight smile. “I’d like to go talk to the mayor. I think I can get him to reconsider.”

“I don’t want you to do that. I’ll work from behind the scenes for a day or so and see what shakes out. For now, get the prints from the gun and the ballistics and keep me posted.”

“You got it, Chief.” He waved good-bye and took off.

*   *   *

Josie retrieved a pair of creek shoes from the back of her jeep and whistled for Chester, who ambled off the porch where he’d been napping away the hottest part of the day. He followed her across the road and they walked on public land for a quarter mile and then down to the Rio Grande, where she took off her boots and slipped on the mesh creek shoes to protect her feet. She kept her pistol in her shorts pocket. She’d given her duty gun to Moss, but her backup pistol was her own property.

She waded into the river with Chester, who was happy to cool his paws and belly. Josie walked along the rocky side of the river in thigh-high water scouting for signs of illegal crossing, keeping Nick’s admonition to be watchful in her mind. She thought about the kayaks that she and Nick had found a few miles upriver. The Mexicans had clearly been using them to cross into Texas. She and Nick had found trash and pop cans along the bank on the U.S. side, and followed foot tracks up to the paved road. That had been several months ago. Since then, Josie had kept a closer eye on the area. The Medrano Cartel had a vast network of narcos who would stop at nothing in their efforts to push their cocaine, heroin, pot, and meth northward.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket with a text from Nick saying he was on his way home from town and did she need anything. She responded,
Nothing but you
, and meant it more than he could have known.

When she and Chester reached the driveway, Nick was already there and pulled her in for a hug and kissed the top of her head. She held on too long, and he finally pulled his head back to get a look at her. His expression changed to worry when he saw the tears in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“It was just a bad day.” She sniffed, embarrassed at her reaction.

“Why are you home so early?”

She took in a chest full of air and blew it out slowly, forcing herself to stop the emotion. Avoiding eye contact, she said, “Mayor Moss took my gun and badge.”

He pulled back from her and placed his hands on her arms. “What happened?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling sick with the memory of the conversation. “I was ready to go to the prosecutor over Caroline. She’s behind the transportation ring that funneled through Artemis. Or she’s at least a major player. I went to Moss to warn him.”

“Why would you go to him about that?” He gave her a look like she’d lost her mind.

“Would you not expect the same treatment? When you’re in law enforcement, you at least have the decency to give your fellow officers a heads-up before you destroy their world. You know how it is for a cop, or a lawyer, or anyone in the public eye. Imagine serving as mayor of the city and finding out after the fact that the local police were going after your wife. People expect anyone in the public eye to be above reproach.”

“He should be above reproach in his position!”

“It was his wife. Imagine hearing about her arrest from the radio station.” Josie sighed. “Look. I don’t know why I’m sticking up for the bastard. I’m just trying to explain why I went to him in the first place. Obviously it was a horrible mistake. But I thought I was doing the right thing.”

He put an arm around her shoulder and they headed toward the house. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you got sacked for trying to be a decent person.”

They sat down on the couch and she turned so she could see him better. She rested her hand on his thigh, glad for his physical presence, and realized suddenly how much she was starting to need him. The thought worried her as much as it made her happy.

“How was my mother?” she asked.

He grinned. “Where do I begin?”

She leaned her head back against the couch and groaned.

“Not in a bad way. She was fine.” He laughed at her expression. “She didn’t say anything that would have embarrassed you.”

“Come on, Nick. Now I know you’re lying to me. My mother doesn’t ever have a conversation without embarrassing me on some level. And you spent all morning with her.”

He laughed again and looked guilty for enjoying her discomfort. “Look. She was your mom. She spent a lot of time trying to figure out your motivation for coming here. To West Texas and Artemis specifically. I don’t think she understands that some people find the desert and the isolation beautiful. It didn’t ring true to her.”

“And did she talk about her motivation for being here?”

He pursed his lips and nodded slowly as if he had an answer that he would rather not share.

“Well?” she said.

“I think she wants to move here. I think she wants to have some sort of relationship with you.” Nick put his hand over the top of hers and squeezed it. “And just to be clear. I gave nothing away. At one point she made an offhand remark about you hating her, and that’s why you moved away. I didn’t correct her. I let it go.”

“I don’t hate her. I feel lousy that I gave you the impression that I might. I just can’t say that I suddenly want to work on a relationship. I feel horrible about that. I have a lot of guilt over it but I have reasons that I don’t want to spend a lot of time with her.”

“You moved two thousand miles away from home. That says something.”

“And now she wants to be neighbors.”

FIFTEEN

Too much was riding on the ballistics evidence to chance anything but a personal delivery. Otto called the state police crime scene lab in Springville to make sure Ernie Mays was working. He wanted to place the gun Josie had found, as well as the bullet from Renata’s body, in Ernie’s hands and beg for quick results if necessary.

Otto found Ernie bent over a microscope. He leaned back a few inches when Otto entered and called hello, but it took Ernie a while to stretch his six-foot body out to its full length. He reached around to rub his lower back and smiled when he realized it was Otto. “Just turned seventy-one this month. And all I’m good for is bending over this blasted desk of mine looking at small stuff.”

“You could retire and fix watches.”

“Better yet, I could retire and do nothing but watch bad TV.” He grinned and winked. “Now. What rates high enough for you to drive all the way here from the hinterlands just to see me?”

“How backlogged are you?”

Ernie snorted. “Weeks. Months.”

“Even for murder cases?”

“That’s what I’m referring to.”

“This case involves a cop, who’s investigating a mayor’s wife, who may be peripherally involved in a murder.”

Ernie raised his eyebrows.

“The cop is now suspended by the mayor.”

“Let me guess. The cop’s a friend. So you’re here asking favors.”

“That’s about it.”