Midnight Crossing (32 page)

Marta frowned and shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“It wasn’t a big deal at the time. He said the message was about something bad going on in town. He said Helen accidentally deleted it.” Josie found the note in her logbook and looked up at Marta. “He stopped by the office the morning of the day we found the body in the pasture.”

“Why would he say that to you, knowing Caroline was mixed up in this?” Marta said.

“Maybe Moss has been a part of the organization all along. Maybe he was trying to deflect attention.”

She and Marta sat down at the table and stared at the phone records from Big Ben until the numbers blurred. Examining the calls over the past year, they weren’t able to find any other from Mayor Moss, nor did they find any additional calls from Big Ben to the 432 area code.

“Mayor Moss?” Marta said. Her voice was breathy, unbelieving. “Caroline was shock enough.”

“It’s not that he has a high regard for women; he obviously doesn’t. But he defends the law. That’s the part of his personality that always felt genuine to me,” Josie said. “It was the part of his personality that I respected. This is the kind of news that makes you question everyone.”

“What do we do now?” Marta said.

Josie looked at her watch. It was almost eight p.m. She wanted to call Otto, but refrained. “Holder told me to stand down while he turns the investigation over to the FBI. I want to go home and think on this tonight. I’ll wait until morning to turn Holder’s world upside down.”

TWENTY-ONE

Josie drove home, fed the dog but skipped her own supper, and then climbed into bed at nine o’clock, where she lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Her mind flitted from Nick sleeping in Mexico, to her mom driving back to Indiana, to five women traveling from Guatemala, to Josh Mooney in lockup, until she finally got out of bed and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt to take Chester outside for a walk.

Behind the house, Chester hit on a scent and zigzagged around the backyard sniffing out a jackrabbit or some other little animal. Josie decided she didn’t have the energy for a walk, so she took advantage of the bright moonlight and sat on the ground with her back against a large rock to watch Chester scout out the yard.

She allowed her gaze to travel out across Dell’s pasture and wondered how long it would take her to view the field with the same sense of serenity she’d once had. A day spent working with twisted dopers like Josh and Macey Mooney slipped out of her mind when she and Chester took off into the desert, looking for nothing but interesting rocks and glimpses of wildlife or a bright blooming flower thriving in the midst of sand and dust. Now she looked into the pasture and the vivid image of two young women fleeing for their lives from men intent on capturing or killing them ran like a movie through her brain.

Josie thought back to the night she’d gone to town for the water meeting. The night the killers obviously knew she wouldn’t be at home. The killer who knew she had an interest in the county water supply. As a cop with limited resources, she didn’t own enough ground to be personally affected, but her neighbor Dell sure as hell did, and the killer had to have known that. The meeting was about the amount of water allowed to be pumped from an individual’s well, and the use of meters to determine depleting groundwater usage. The meeting became heated on both sides, from water conservationists to ranchers trying to save fragile crops and livestock. Josie watched men and women who had been friends and neighbors for years face off against each other in a battle that would end friendships before it was over. She ran through her mind the various people she had seen at the meeting, people who had stood at the microphone to speak from handwritten notes they’d carefully prepared, to the hotheads in the back of the room catcalling. Then she wondered who wasn’t at the meeting. Who was missing that should have been there? Who might have skipped the meeting in order to hunt down and kill a woman?

She felt the blood drain from her face as she mentally checked off the list of speakers that night. Who was the one person in town who lived for moments in the spotlight? Who loved controversy and the chance to stand as a voice of reason in troubled times? And he hadn’t spoken that night. Josie realized she hadn’t seen him at all.

She pulled her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket and checked the time. It was 10:11 p.m., too late to politely call, but she couldn’t wait until morning.

She dialed Smokey Blessings, who had given the opening address at the water meeting, and then introduced the speakers throughout the night. He answered on the second ring.

“Smokey, it’s Josie. I apologize for calling you so late at night.”

“It’s no problem. Everything okay?”

“I’m not sure. I’m trying to piece together a timeline, and I’m hoping you can help me.”

“Sure.”

“Remember back to the night of the water usage meeting?”

“How could I forget?”

“I’m trying to think back to the speakers that evening and I don’t remember Mayor Moss being there that night.”

“Hell, no, he wasn’t there. Why do you think I had to mediate that meeting? I sure as hell didn’t want to. I hate public speaking.”

“Why didn’t he do it? It seems like he’d have wanted to be there.”

“He was supposed to. We’d been planning that event for weeks. And he was going to lead it. Then he calls me at about one o’clock that afternoon and says he and Caroline have to leave for El Paso. Like, right then. Some kind of family emergency came up. He asked me to lead it—despite knowing I hate that kind of thing.”

Josie was quiet for a second, taking in the information. She was certain that she’d seen Caroline’s phone calls for the night of the murder, and they had been placed locally. “Thanks, Smokey. I appreciate it.”

“Sure.”

“And I appreciate you making things right with the media, about my suspension. It meant more to me than you can probably imagine.”

“We’re not done with the mayor,” he said. “But I suspect this conversation may lead to further developments, so we’ll hang tight.”

“I think that’s a wise decision.”

This time, when Josie got Chester situated on his rug, and she flipped the bedside lamp off, she fell asleep within minutes of laying her head on the pillow.

*   *   *

Josie was in the shower at five the next morning, anxious to get to work. When she arrived she fired up her computer and went back to the same phone records she and Marta had left on the conference table the night before. Josie found Caroline’s records and saw that she had placed one call from her cell phone to Mayor Moss’s cell phone the night of the murder at 9:52 p.m., and received one from him at 9:59 p.m. Both calls were listed on the phone record as “voicemail” calls. If they had traveled to El Paso together for a family emergency, wouldn’t they most likely have been together, instead of leaving each other voicemails? She had to find some way to confirm whether the trip to El Paso was a sham.

Josie kept a close eye on her watch, and at exactly seven a.m. she called a representative with West Texas Mobile whom she knew only as Janet. But she knew Janet well enough to know that she worked the seven-to-three-thirty shift, on a Monday-through-Friday schedule.

As the only carrier with a significant number of towers in one of the most remote parts of the country, West Texas Mobile had a monopoly on phone service in Artemis and Arroyo County. It made accessing phone records for local investigations a much easier task to accomplish. And several times in the past, Janet had provided quick access to phone records before a subpoena could be issued and granted. Josie was careful not to abuse the favor the woman provided, but an unsolved homicide was justifiable in Josie’s mind.

“This is Janet. How can I help?”

“Good morning. This is Police Chief Josie Gray. How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine, Chief Gray! And how are you?”

“I’m doing well. I’m actually calling with a question for you.”

“Certainly.”

“I have subpoenaed phone records for three individuals with West Texas Mobile accounts. I’ll be submitting a request for one more set of records today. I wouldn’t ask for your help, but this is involving a murder suspect and we’re closing in on the case.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m wondering if I can give you a phone number, and ask you to tell me what calls were placed during a sixteen-hour period of time.”

“I think I can do that.” Her voice had lowered to just above a whisper.

Josie read off Mayor Moss’s cell phone number and gave her the date and asked for calls between one p.m., the time that the mayor was supposed to have left for El Paso, and six a.m. the next morning.

Janet placed Josie on hold and a few minutes later read her a list of five phone calls that the mayor placed between those hours. Josie wrote down the list of numbers and immediately recognized both Caroline and Josh Mooney’s cell phone numbers.

“Okay. Now for the bigger question. Can you tell me the location of the tower where each of those five calls were placed?”

“Mmmm. I can do that. I’ll need to place you on hold for a bit.” She paused. “And you’re just looking for a verbal. Right? No printed documents?”

“Just a verbal. I need to know where the person was when those calls were placed.”

“Okay. Hang tight.”

Fifteen minutes later Janet came back on the phone. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting so long. Sometimes these computers act like they don’t want to wake up in the morning.”

“You’re doing me a huge favor. No need to apologize. Were you able to get anything?”

“I was. Nothing too complicated. All of the towers were within Arroyo County. The first four calls pinged off the tower located off of Nex Road. Are you familiar with that area?”

“Yes. I know that area of the county. I can find it. And the other call?”

“That call pinged off the tower on River Road. It’s located right down near the border. You know that area?”

Josie knew exactly what tower she was referring to. It was within five miles of her home. And a four-hour drive from El Paso.

*   *   *

When Otto walked into the office at a little before eight that morning, Josie was standing at the whiteboard finishing a chart that detailed the mayor’s calls, the times they were placed, and the geographical location where they were placed. When Josie turned, Otto took one look at her expression and said, “What’s up?”

Josie described her conversation with Janet.

“Hot damn. So who do those numbers belong to?” he asked, pointing to her chart.

Josie pointed to the top four numbers, calls that were most likely made at or near the mayor’s home. “All four of those calls, placed between three in the afternoon and just after eight that night, were to Josh Mooney.”

Otto winced.

“The last call was a return call to Caroline’s number. The return call was placed at 9:59 p.m. Want to guess what cell phone tower that call pinged off?” she asked.

“I’m guessing one in your vicinity?”

Josie took a moment to respond, still so shaken by the realization of what the information meant that she could barely acknowledge it. “The mayor was by my house during the time that Renata was murdered. And he made cell phone contact with Josh Mooney multiple times leading up to that.”

Otto shook his head for some time before responding. “Did Josh make any calls that night that we can trace?”

“No. Nothing. Based on these calls, and what Smokey told me, I think the mayor saw the town meeting about the water tower as his chance to go to my house and take care of the problem of the two women. He knew from Caroline what a mess she was in, so he called Josh Mooney and convinced him to go with him to take care of the job.”

“The question is, who pulled the trigger?” Otto said.

*   *   *

Tyler Holder was driving to San Antonio for a preliminary meeting with the FBI when Josie reached him and explained the latest developments.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Caroline called the mayor at a little before ten the night of the murder. She left a voicemail. He called her back seven minutes later and left a return voicemail for her. That seems odd to me. If she knew a murder was about to take place, would she really have communicated by voicemail?”

“Damn, Josie. Hang on. I’m halfway to San Antonio. I’m turning around.”

“I want to go visit Caroline.”

“Hang on,” he said. “Can you give me a minute to process this?”

“I want to know why she called him. Did she tell him to murder the girl? Did she tell the mayor to go get Josh to help take care of business? Or was she trying to call him off?”

Holder made a noise. “But you said the mayor had talked to Josh several times earlier that day.”

“Maybe the mayor was trying to talk Josh out of doing something rash,” Josie said.

Holder took a second to respond. “I don’t think so. If you were in Josh’s place, if the mayor told you even once to forget it, to let the girls go? You’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“What might take some convincing, and several phone calls, was if the mayor was convincing Josh that he needed to help him catch, or murder, Renata and Isabella.”

“That makes sense to me,” Holder said.

“I want to talk to Caroline. I have a hunch. I saw the look on her face when I confronted her with this. She was overwhelmed with emotion. The mayor was pissed.” Josie thought about the conversation she’d had with Otto and his take on the events. “Maybe she really had convinced herself she was offering a service. Maybe not quite legal, but she’d rationalized for herself that she was doing a good thing. And when things went bad, the mayor tried to fix the problem.”

“And created one hell of a mess.”

“Does this mean I can go grab Caroline?”

“Now hang on. You’re talking about Moss’s phone records. He wasn’t part of the subpoena.”

“That’s true. This is based on a phone call with West Texas Mobile.”

“All right. I’ll get the judge on the phone and get those records ASAP. As soon as I get the approval from him, you get your contact and get those records. Once we have proof his phone was in the vicinity of the murder the night it took place, I’ll submit a search warrant for the gun. I want that done today.”