Midnight Crossing: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  Each of the officers walked into the night, aware that something horrific had happened to the woman sitting in Josie’s house, and that someone, possibly multiple people, had come back to finish the job. Flashlights were necessary to check the pasture for evidence or clues to the woman’s terror, but the light also broadcast their presence to anyone who might be out there, waiting to strike.

  THREE

  Marta carried a cup of hot tea and a bowl of canned pineapple chunks into the living room. She’d dug around in Josie’s refrigerator and cabinets and marveled at the lack of food. No wonder she stays so thin, she thought.

  Marta placed the food on the coffee table and sat back down beside the woman on the couch to study her. She was hardly a woman, probably just beyond her teenage years. She no longer sat in a rigid ball, but had collapsed into a puddle at the end of the couch, her head lying on the armrest as her eyes stared at the opposite wall.

  The woman had warmed up to Marta, and no longer seemed afraid. She sat up and hungrily ate the fruit and sipped at the warm tea flavored with milk and sugar. Marta tried to get her to carry on a conversation, to simply answer a question with a yes or no, but she wouldn’t speak or even shake her head. Her face was void of any expression, as if she had lost her ability to experience anything beyond fulfilling her basic needs.

  When whimpering and scratching noises came from somewhere at the back of the house, the girl looked at Marta in alarm. Marta smiled and patted her leg as she walked past her and to the hallway where the sound was coming from. “It’s Chester,” she said, keeping her voice cheerful. “He’s a good dog. No worries.”

  Marta stopped at the closed door at the end of the hallway and opened it a few inches. Chester poked his nose out. He was a gentle giant, and Marta thought he might be a good distraction for the woman. She reached her hand around the door and held tight to his collar as she let him out. He walked into the hallway, his tail wagging and his hind end shaking back and forth.

  When they reached the couch the woman sat up and smiled at the dog, which was trying to lick her face and nuzzle his nose against her arm. She petted his head and stroked his back. A few minutes later he was lying down on the rug directly underneath her curled-up body on the couch. She rested her hand on his belly, watching it rise and fall as she cried quietly. The sight made Marta want to cry with her.

  Marta’s own daughter was a freshman at Texas A&M in Corpus Christi. When she’d helped Teresa unpack her belongings in her dorm room just a few months ago, it had seemed like she’d moved her daughter to a different country, not just across the state. Nine hours separated her from Teresa, who was now living on the Gulf Coast. Her daughter’s dream was to study marine biology, a funny choice for a kid who’d spent her life in the desert, but Teresa had always wanted what seemed out of reach: a sober father, money to spare, a mother who wasn’t overprotective.

  Since childhood Teresa had been Marta’s supreme joy and greatest anxiety, causing her countless nights of hand-wringing and praying. Now Marta looked at this young woman lying on Josie’s couch and wondered if there were similarities between the two. Maybe this young woman shared Teresa’s impulsive need to strike out on her own and declare her independence. And maybe it had even caused her to land here, in a strange person’s home, devastated over something Marta dreaded to uncover. She wondered what the young woman’s mother was thinking at that moment. Did she know her daughter was gone? Did she care?

  * * *

  Josie’s house sat back approximately two hundred feet from Schenck Road. Dell’s driveway, located to the left of her house, was a half-mile-long lane that led straight back through pasture to his barn and home. To the left of Dell’s lane were several thousand acres of wide-open pasture, small groves of piñon pine, and a small mountain range that ran through the middle of Dell’s ranch. Josie planned to search the area between the road and Dell’s house where the car had stopped earlier that night.

  The four officers lined up in a row parallel with the road, with Nick on the far left, farthest from Josie’s house, then Josie, then Otto, and finally Roy, who walked alongside Dell’s driveway. With their flashlights, they swept the land in front of them, looking for any tracks or sign of crossing.

  Just a few hundred feet from the road Josie held her flashlight steady and quietly called Nick’s name. He jogged over to where her beam of light was trained.

  “Jesus,” Nick muttered under his breath.

  Josie’s heart clenched in her chest at the sight of a young woman lying flat on her stomach, her arms thrown out to the side, a bullet hole in her back.

  Worried that someone else might be hiding in the distance, she called Otto on her cell phone rather than holler for him. “You find something?” he asked.

  “There’s a body,” she said. “A female, probably the same age as the woman inside the house. Let Roy know. Then you’d better keep going. Check the barn and outside Dell’s house. I’ll call Cowan and start processing the scene.”

  “You’ll let Dell know we’re checking his barn? Make sure he stays inside?”

  “I’ll call him now.”

  Josie called Dell and told him they were surrounding his house, and he agreed to remain indoors until further notice. She wouldn’t tell him about the body until she knew more details. He was probably already worried enough. At seventy-plus years, Dell was in good physical condition, and a self-proclaimed hard-ass, but he’d suffered a heart attack a few years back during a nightmare ride in her police car that involved a chase through the desert with the Medrano Cartel. She would do everything in her power to protect him now. She couldn’t imagine losing Dell.

  * * *

  Nick had served as a police officer for years. Now, as a kidnapping negotiator, he was forced to investigate crime scenes as horrific as anything a cop would see. Josie trusted he knew the protocol and the necessity of looking carefully for evidence while not disturbing the crime scene. While she started scouting the area directly around the body, he walked to her jeep and brought her evidence kit back with him to the pasture. He established a thirty-square-foot perimeter around the body with the crime scene tape and small tent stakes while Josie updated Border Patrol. Next, she called the coroner, Mitchell Cowan.

  * * *

  Cowan was in his late forties, never married, with a solemn demeanor and awkward social manners. He didn’t get cop humor, rarely smiled, and had a difficult time participating in conversations that didn’t involve dead bodies. He considered himself a physician for the dead. He had confided to Josie that he’d tried his hand at private practice, but the social aspect of practicing medicine for the living made him miserable. He’d said he was better equipped to work for dead people. She respected his self-awareness and had wondered if she was that aware of her own shortcomings.

  Many of the police officers, especially Otto, found Cowan to be overbearing and unfriendly, but Josie had always liked him. He was a man who cared deeply about the job he performed, and she appreciated that.

  Cowan answered his phone, but just barely. The line was connected, but it was several seconds before he spoke, and his hoarse voice sounded confused. If she hadn’t already known Cowan didn’t believe in what he called “imbibing,” she’d have guessed he’d gone to bed drunk.

  “Yeah, yes,” he said. “Who is this?”

  “Cowan, this is Josie. I’m sorry to wake you like this. We’ve got a dead body.”

  He cleared his throat, and after another moment he finally said, “What’s happened?”

  Josie gave him a brief summary and asked how long it would take him to arrive on scene.

  “Give me thirty minutes.”

  * * *

  Training the lights from her jeep between the road and where the body was found, Josie and Nick slowly walked a twenty-foot section of pasture from the body to the road, searching for evidence, including tracks or footprints, but found nothing.

  Next, Josie took photos of the area surrounding the girl and again noted there wer
e no footprints. Nick walked concentric circles, searching with his flashlight for anything the killers may have dropped. Josie began photographing the scene from various angles. This was all part of the initial walk-through. The body wouldn’t be touched until the scene had been documented with video and photographs.

  Next, she knelt beside the body and examined her clothing for signs that it had been torn in a scuffle, or even removed and the girl later re-dressed, as might be the case with a rape victim. She studied all sides of the body and found nothing to dispute what appeared to be the obvious cause of death: a gunshot between her shoulder blades.

  Josie used a ballpoint pen to lift the girl’s long black hair away from her face and grimaced at the swollen discolored sight. She took close-up shots of her face and neck before she stood, turning her back on the body and taking a deep breath.

  After Josie had graduated from the police academy, she worked for the Indianapolis Police Department for three years before moving to Texas. Initially, her intent had been to work CSI, but her roommate had been a crime scene specialist for the PD, and she’d come to understand the stress the techs endure. Josie had watched her roommate go from a well-adjusted new recruit to a woman suffering from nightmares and relying on prescription sleep aids and vodka shots to erase the visions from her head long enough to sleep a few hours each night. After the horrors of what her roommate had experienced—the smell of blood and death, touching the flesh of a dead body, being at the scene with the dead victim long after everyone else had left—Josie had changed her mind. Now, in a small-town department without the funds to pay a crime scene tech, the job fell to her anyway. The TV shows were far from reality. There was nothing exhilarating about lifting a dead girl’s hair to view her bloated face. Only sorrow.

  Josie’s thoughts returned to her roommate and she wondered if she still worked in law enforcement. Josie contemplated when she would hit a wall and no longer be able to face the nightmarish scenes that occasionally accompanied her job.

  “Josie,” Nick called.

  She turned and saw Nick on his hands and knees, staring down at the ground. “I found a casing.”

  Josie counted her steps off. The spent case lay on the ground approximately twenty-three feet from the body. “Maybe she was gaining ground on them. They gave up the chase and shot her.”

  Nick stood and brushed off his hands on his pants. He looked tired at the sight of one more statistic to log in his memory. “The sad thing is, she’s probably better off now than if she’d been caught.”

  Josie took a photo of the casing and its relationship to the body. She then took measurements and drew them on a crime scene template that she would later log into her computer using a drawing program. As she was getting the location of the body oriented to the position of the road behind her, she saw a car traveling down Schenck Road toward her house. She and Nick both turned off their flashlights as a precaution. Otto and Roy were in the barn where they couldn’t be seen. She radioed Phillips. “That’s probably Cowan. Tell him to leave the hearse on the side of the road. The tires will get hung up in this sand.”

  “Will do.”

  * * *

  While Cowan made his way over to the body, Josie called the mayor to fill him in. In the past he’d made it clear that he should be called in the event of any major crime that could affect public safety. She wasn’t sure this crime fit that description, but better safe than sorry. He didn’t answer his cell phone, so she left a message and said she’d call later with an update. She’d begun to wonder if the anonymous call left on the mayor’s answering machine could have something to do with the body.

  Cowan joined Nick and Josie. “Good morning,” he said, sounding surprisingly energetic for four in the morning.

  He wore a white short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into polyester pants held up with a wide black belt. A large canvas bag was slung over one shoulder and a camera bag over the other. The walk had clearly winded him and he dropped his bags onto the ground with a huff. He had a wide midsection that made his bald head and narrow shoulders seem out of proportion.

  Cowan unzipped his duffel, pulled out a blue tarp, and laid it on the ground. He then moved his bags onto the tarp and began pulling out the various pieces of equipment he would need for the exam. When he stood again, he turned to Josie. “You’ve gotten the photos and measurements you need?”

  She nodded. “I’m done with her until we can roll her over. I’m anxious to determine the time of death. I’d be shocked to discover it happened at night. I’d have heard the gunshot.”

  “Wouldn’t Dell have heard the shot during the day?” Nick asked.

  Josie tilted her head to concede the point.

  Nick stood beside her. “Hard to imagine the girl running in the daytime, getting fatally shot, and then the killers coming back at night to search for her.”

  “More likely the killers were coming back for the girl who was hiding on my front porch.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Nick said. “Which means they’ll be back again.”

  “It’s a shame we couldn’t keep this quiet for a day or two,” she said. “We could watch the area and hope the car returned.”

  “Why can’t you?” Nick asked.

  “I called it in to dispatch. Border Patrol has been notified, plus the coroner call. I’m sure some of the local cop junkies already picked it up on the scanner. Rumors will be running like water through the Hot Tamale by breakfast.”

  “If the car’s from Mexico, the driver may not be aware the body’s been found. As a precaution, I’d like to put a man outside your house for twenty-four hours,” Nick said.

  Josie gave him a skeptical look. “When you say ‘put a man,’ you mean one of your men? Because I can’t afford to lose an officer out here for a full day.”

  He gave her a half smile. “I got you covered. At least through tomorrow morning.”

  “That would be great,” she said. “I’ll take all the help I can get.”

  * * *

  Otto and Roy both arrived back on the scene with nothing to show for their walk. They stood outside the area cordoned off with crime scene tape, and Josie and Nick walked over to fill them in. Several minutes later Cowan finally joined the conversation.

  “Given the color in her skin, the passage of rigor mortis, and so on, I’d estimate she’s been lying here for a full two days. The bullet entry point is consistent with the casing Nick found. I’ll take the body back for an autopsy, but I don’t expect any major surprises.”

  “That ought to be on every cop’s headstone,” Roy said. “He didn’t expect any major surprises.”

  “I’m ready to transport,” Cowan said, ignoring Roy. “I’ve got a new body bag, better for decomposing bodies with fluid. But we’ll need to get her out to the hearse. Josie, can we load her into the back of your jeep?”

  Josie winced.

  “I got the department SUV. It’s bigger. We can put the seats down and drive it over here.” Roy looked at Cowan. “You sure that bag won’t bust?”

  “It’s designed not to.”

  Roy sighed and headed back to the road where his vehicle was parked. As they watched him walk away, they saw a vehicle flying down Schenck Road. Lit up by the other headlights, they recognized it to be Mayor Steve Moss’s black pickup truck as it pulled off onto the side of the road. Otto groaned beside Josie.

  Moss walked quickly toward Josie and Otto. He glanced over at the body and then turned to Josie. “You find anything yet? Local newsies already got wind. They want a story.”

  She pointed toward the body. “Just what I told you in my message. We’re ready to transport the body. Cowan will start on the autopsy today.”

  “What did I tell you? You don’t take me serious, and what happens? A dead body in your backyard is what happens. What the hell is going on here, Josie?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mayor.”

  He swore loudly. “Your phone message said two women? What the
hell does that mean?”

  “We found a second woman hiding on my front porch. She’s the reason we went looking in the pasture and found the body. She’s fine physically, but she’s not talking.”

  “What are two women doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Hiding at your house?”

  “The other woman hasn’t talked. I called the trauma center and they’re going to take her in, see if they can stabilize her so we can talk with her.”

  He squinted at her. “Any ID on either one of them?”

  “Nothing. We’re estimating they’re in their late teens or early twenties, and of Latin American origin.” She paused as he continued squinting at her. “Have you heard any other gossip about something going on in town?”

  He scowled, looking at Josie as if he didn’t like what he saw. “This have something to do with your involvement with the Medrano Cartel?” he said, ignoring her question.

  She looked at him dumbfounded. “I’m not involved with the Medranos. That’s a ridiculous thing to say.”

  “Well, hell, yes, you are! Your boyfriend sure was!”

  “Look. They committed a crime against Dillon that took place over a year ago. That doesn’t make me involved. Please don’t use that expression. And, no, I don’t think the two crimes are related. At this point, it’s safe to speculate that this could be an illegal immigration issue. Beyond that, when you talk to the media, tell them this is an ongoing investigation and the police aren’t ready to comment further.”

  “You’d better be ready to answer some tough questions come tomorrow. The media’s going to be all over this. And they’re going to wonder how you’re involved with a dead girl beside your home and another hiding at your house.”

  “I’ll call you later today with an update,” she said, turning from him. She crossed the crime scene tape, aware that she’d rather stand next to a corpse than her boss.

  She heard Otto and the mayor talking for a few minutes and after the mayor left Otto approached her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I’ve never understood his beef with you, other than you’re a female.”