Midnight Crossing: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  Josie stood, intending to walk out. Talking the situation through was obviously not an option at this point.

  “Give me your badge and your gun,” he said. He spoke so quietly that she barely heard his words.

  It was Josie’s turn to look shocked. “Excuse me?”

  He tapped his desk with his fingertip. “Right here. I want your badge, and I want your gun. You are officially on administrative leave until further notice.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” she said.

  He threw his arm out and pointed toward the door. “I will have your job over this. Now get the hell out of my office!”

  Josie glanced down, unclasped the badge that was pinned above the pocket of her uniform, and pitched it onto his desk. She pulled the gun from her holster, checked the safety, and placed it on his desk, averting her eyes from him. Without another word, she walked out of his office and past Helen, who was standing in the hallway with a hand over her mouth.

  THIRTEEN

  Lou started to speak and then stopped after seeing Josie’s clenched jaw as she stepped into the PD. She walked into the office and found Otto typing on his computer. He turned when he heard her enter and sighed when he saw her expression.

  “Damn it, Josie. You went to talk to him, didn’t you?” He noticed the bare spot above her breast pocket and his eyebrows rose in shock. “Did he strip you of your badge?”

  “I’ve been suspended until further notice.”

  “Damn it. I told you not to talk to him!”

  “That’s not helpful right now.”

  He stood and pointed to the conference table. “I’m sorry. Sit down.”

  Josie sat and Otto went to the back of the office and poured them both a mug of coffee.

  “I’ll go talk to him,” he said, sliding the mug across the table to her.

  “Why? So we can all be suspended together?” She sipped the coffee and considered him for a long time. “He’s wrong, Otto. I know it. Caroline is guilty. I was trying to give him a heads-up so that he wasn’t blindsided when this breaks open.”

  “Guilty people walk free every day. If we can’t tie her to the crime that took place? You’re screwed. I’m sorry, but it’s a fact you need to face.”

  “She’s the one who paid for the Web site! She founded the group that transported those five women to Artemis,” she said. “One of the transporters not only fingered her, but is a close family friend.”

  “Big deal! Just because she paid a bill for a Web site doesn’t mean that she knew it was to be used for human trafficking. Any defense attorney could prove that. And it doesn’t mean Caroline killed that woman. It doesn’t mean she had any knowledge of the rapes. Even if she paid Ryan to go pick those women up, unless there’s physical proof, a check or paperwork, it’s his word against hers. And once she gets ahold of him, you think he’ll stick with the story he told us?” Otto made a face. “Not a chance. We got nothing, Josie.”

  Lou appeared in the door of the office. She rarely left the front office unattended; instead she would push the conference button and call upstairs if she needed someone. But here she was, standing at the door, obviously shaken.

  “What happened over in the mayor’s office?” Lou said.

  “What do you mean?” Otto asked.

  “I just got a news release emailed to me saying that Chief Gray has been suspended without pay until further notice for breach of contract. What’s going on?”

  Blood rushed to Josie’s face.

  “This just happened ten minutes ago!” Otto said.

  Josie rose and moved to the back of the office. It would be all over Artemis in a matter of hours. Suspended. She heard Otto’s words replay in her head. We got nothing.

  Josie heard Otto sigh and a chair scoot across the floor behind her. “Have a seat,” he told Lou.

  Josie’s chest tightened as she listened to Otto recount their conversation with Ryan Needleman, and Josie’s decision to tell the mayor about his wife before going to the prosecutor.

  Josie liked to think of herself as someone whose core values propelled all of the major decisions in her life. If people in the community wanted to believe whatever trash the mayor wanted to sling, then screw them all. But now, faced with the public humiliation of getting stripped of her badge, she realized she cared a great deal about what people thought. Without a doubt, even if she was completely exonerated, there would be those who would use the suspension to question her ability to lead. Her reputation would be forever tarnished over someone else’s crime.

  The blood inside her body seemed to be pooling in her legs, leaving her light-headed. Perspiration covered her forehead and she felt as if the room were closing in around her. She turned from the window and grabbed her car keys from her desk as she walked to the door.

  “I’m going home,” she said, and opened the door to leave.

  “Josie. Come sit down so we can talk this through,” Otto said. His tone of voice was calm and reasonable. “Breach of contract? How does that even apply to this situation? We’ll call the county attorney and get some guidance. It’s not as bad as it seems.”

  With her hand still on the door, she wasn’t able to turn and face him. “I’m going home.”

  * * *

  Nick parked his SUV in front of Manny’s Motel and found Beverly Gray sitting on the wooden bench with her purse in her lap. She smiled and waved as Nick watched her approach, trying to see Josie in her mom. Where Josie was tall and agile, her mom was short and thin, with a careful way of walking, like she was prone to falling. Josie’s expression was guarded, while her mom’s face was a wide-open smile. She opened the door and climbed in, already chattering about her day, and Nick grinned, amazed at how different the two women were.

  “Good gracious,” she said, pointing at the onboard computer. “Looks like an airplane cockpit in here.”

  “Helps me track the bad guys.”

  She buckled her seat belt and turned to face him. “Where you taking me?” she asked.

  “I thought we’d drive over to Marfa. I’ll take you the back roads, if you want slow driving but amazing scenery, or we can take the faster route on the highway.”

  “Faster! I had enough scenery on the drive from Indiana to Texas to last me a lifetime. Get me some shopping!”

  Nick laughed and drove away from the curb. Josie would have said back roads and avoided shopping at all cost. “You know, we’re not known for shopping around here. We got the basics and that’s about it.”

  “So what’s the appeal?” she said. “I can’t figure out how Josie ended up out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Nick glanced at her and saw she was serious. Josie had lived in Artemis for more than ten years. He found it hard to believe that they’d never had that conversation.

  “Most people either love the desert or they hate it. If you love it, once you settle here, it’s hard to leave,” he said.

  “But why settle here in the first place? How the hell did she even find this town? It’s just a speck on the map.”

  “That’s the appeal. That’s what Josie was looking for. She looked for law enforcement jobs out West. She told me it was the ghost towns at the end of the road that travels through Artemis that convinced her to move. She wanted to be away from people.”

  “Well, that’s what she got.”

  Nick pulled onto River Road and waved his hand out in front of him. “See all that wide-open desert land? You can breathe here without other people getting into your space.”

  “There’s no trees. And the ones you have look like dwarfs.”

  He grinned and pointed to a grove of cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande. “There’s trees. But there’s enough space between them so that you can see for miles on end. It opens your mind up.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t get it,” she said. “When she left, I knew she hated me. But I figured, lots of young people hate their parents. Right? It’s part of growing up. But I never figured it’d last this long.�
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  Nick held himself back from reassuring her. He was inclined to say that Josie didn’t hate her, but he didn’t really know what Josie felt.

  “She’s pretty independent,” Nick said, hoping to move to safer territory.

  Beverly let the conversation go and they spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and talking about whatever random topics seemed to pop up. At lunchtime, Nick took her to his favorite lunchtime hangout in Marfa, the Food Shark. She’d never heard of falafel, so he ordered them each a different variation and they ate at picnic tables under a giant awning. Nick got a kick out of her candor, and the idea that no question was off-limits, a trait he figured drove Josie crazy.

  On the way back to Artemis, she peppered him with questions about West Texas and adapting to the desert environment. It became clear to Nick that she was seriously considering moving to Artemis. When he pulled in front of the motel to drop her off she said, “You think Josie could get used to me living here?”

  He grinned at the question, but saw the worry lines on Beverly’s forehead.

  “I’ve been with Josie long enough to know I’d better not answer for her. That’s a question you’ll have to ask her yourself.”

  * * *

  Josie parked her jeep in front of her house and saw Chester loping down the lane from Dell’s house, his ears flying out behind him like a little girl’s pigtails. He tumbled into her, whining and wagging his tail like he’d not seen her in weeks. He followed her inside the house and she went to the pantry to get his rawhide chew, even though it was only lunch and not yet time for a chew. Chester settled onto his rug in the living room, and she slipped it between his paws.

  Back in the kitchen pantry, she took off her gun belt and hung it on its designated hook, staring at the hole where her gun should have been holstered. She shut the door and wandered through the house doing all the things she did every day when she came home, but she was operating on autopilot.

  In the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror and ran her fingertip over the tiny holes where her badge had pierced her uniform that morning. Who am I if I’m not a cop? she wondered. Otto’s words played through her mind again and again. We got nothing. She realized this went beyond a stupid move on her part, and could end with her losing her job. It was no secret the mayor didn’t think a female should hold the job of chief, and he seemed to especially dislike Josie.

  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.