Midnight Crossing: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  “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.”

  “That’s great. Now hear me out on Caroline. After seeing her reaction the day I confronted her at home, I suspect she started this mess and lost control. I don’t think I have anything to lose by going and talking to her.”

  He didn’t respond and she continued. “The chance of flight for the Mosses is about zero. They’re too public.”

  “This is sketchy,” Holder said. “This investigation has been turned over to the FBI. It’s a federal case.”

  “But the murder is local. The FBI is investigating a human trafficking case. We’re looking at a murder.”

  Holder cursed and Josie heard him bang on something repeatedly. He finally relented. “What are you going to do if the mayor is there?”

  “He should be at work. If he’s at home, I’ll ask to speak with her in private. I’ll just take it one step at a time.”

  Holder was silent for a minute. “You take another officer with you. And you let me know the minute you’re done with her.”

  * * *

  Josie hung up and saw Otto staring at her intently. “I heard,” he said. He walked to the back of the office and looked out the window to the spot where the mayor parked his pickup truck every day and gave Josie a thumbs-up. “He’s here.”

  “Let’s go.”

 
; Otto drove and they said little on their way to the Mosses’ house. When they pulled into the driveway she said, “I think I should talk to her alone. You can stay here and watch for the mayor. If you see him headed this way, come on inside. I feel like she’d open up easier to me, so it doesn’t feel like an ambush.”

  Otto nodded. “Agreed. I’ll post outside the front door where I’ve got a good view of the road.”

  * * *

  Caroline answered the door wearing an outfit similar to what she’d worn last time Josie visited, but her appearance was strikingly different. Her hair hung limp around her face, and her eyes flashed anger when she saw it was Josie.

  “I have nothing to talk to you about,” she said, and started to shut the door.

  Josie put her hand out to stop it. “Caroline, please. Give me five minutes.”

  “I’m calling my attorney,” she said, but she stopped short of closing the door.

  “Caroline, this is important. I’d like to hear your side of things. You may be able to clear things up before this gets out of hand,” Josie said, knowing that was a lie.

  Caroline stared at Josie for a long moment, obviously weighing her options, and finally walked back into the house, leaving the door open for Josie to enter. Caroline didn’t take her outside onto the veranda, or offer drinks; they sat in the front room in club chairs facing each other.

  “I need to explain new evidence that we’ve found. Things have turned very serious. For both you and the mayor. We have a clear picture about how your business runs. We understand how the transportation route works, the money, the people involved, and so on. Over the past twenty-four hours we’ve also put together a clear picture about how the murder took place. We have phone records that link the killer to the location of the murder.”

  Caroline sat with her arms crossed over her chest, but when Josie mentioned the killer she squeezed her arms even closer to her body.

  “The night of the water meeting in town, why did Mayor Moss tell Smokey that you and he had to leave town for El Paso?”

  Caroline’s eyebrows drew up in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “The mayor said he couldn’t lead the meeting because you were leaving for El Paso that afternoon. For a family emergency.”

  She opened her mouth as if to speak and then closed it again, staring at Josie as if she didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know. It’s been months since we’ve been to El Paso. Steve has a brother there, but he’s fine.”

  “You or the mayor didn’t travel to El Paso any time over the past two weeks?”

  “No.”

  “Can you imagine why the mayor would have told Smokey that?”

  “I have no idea. And I don’t understand what you’re saying about the meeting. He was there.”

  “The mayor?” Josie asked.

  “Yes. He told me he’d be late, but when he wasn’t home by ten o’clock I called to find out when he’d be home.”

  “And did you talk to him?” Josie asked.

  “No. I left a voice message. He called back a few minutes later and said that he’d be late. That he was getting together with a few ranchers after the meeting to finish the discussion.” She looked lost in thought, as if trying to replay the conversation. “I probably have the message on my phone still. I had left my phone on the bed and gone out to the kitchen to write myself a note, and I missed his call.”

  “Why wouldn’t you use your home phone?”

  She looked annoyed with the question. “I don’t know. We don’t even need it. We almost always use our cell phones. When I listened to the voice message, he said he was going back to the office after the meeting, and that I shouldn’t wait up for him. So he was definitely at the meeting.”

  “He wasn’t at the meeting, Caroline. Mayor Moss called Smokey at one o’clock that afternoon and canceled. I attended. He wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “How much does the mayor know about the transportation of the women from Guatemala? Has he been involved all along, or did he just get involved when the two women disappeared and threatened to expose the trafficking ring?”

  “I’m calling my lawyer,” she said. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

  “You can either discuss it now with me, or later when this blows up into a nightmare for both of you.” Josie was banking on Caroline’s natural desire to know what the police understood about the case.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The mayor called Josh Mooney multiple times the afternoon and evening of the murder.”

  A dark look passed over her face but she said nothing.

  “When the mayor called you back and left the voice message at just after ten o’clock? His cell phone connected with the tower located just a few miles from my house. If he had been in town, at his office, or at the water meeting like he told you, his signal would have bounced off a different tower.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Two people were involved in the murder that took place in the pasture beside my home. Your husband was there, and I believe Josh Mooney was with him. One of them killed a woman that night and tried to track down another woman but lost her.”

  Caroline broke down and cried openly. Josie spotted a box of tissues across the room and handed them to her. She sat quietly for several minutes as Caroline cried herself out. “I’ll get you a drink of water,” Josie said.

  She walked into the kitchen, found drinking glasses in the cabinet, and filled one from the refrigerator water dispenser. When she handed the glass to Caroline she sipped the water until she had calmed somewhat. Josie sat down and decided to remain quiet for a while to see where Caroline wanted to go with the information she’d just heard. She finally set the glass on the table beside her and leaned back into the chair.

  “I’ve spent the last year watching my life transform from a life to be proud of to a hideous mockery. I sit here looking at you now, and I have no idea how to move forward. I would like to say that I have no idea how I got to this point, but I do. I tell you now, I wanted to help. I wanted to come up with a way to help women in terrible situations. But it’s all so twisted and turned so horrible.”

  “But you accepted money from women, and then got them a job that’s little better than modern-day slavery. How was that ever good?” Josie asked. She knew she was allowing her personal feelings to interfere, and she took a mental step back to refocus.

  “I had to take money! Especially in the beginning. It was an expensive venture, helping those women move across the country, across an international border. And I did my best to connect with reputable employers.”

  Josie couldn’t imagine how Big Ben would ever be considered reputable, but she let it slide.

  “I understand,” Josie said, nodding, trying to redirect the conversation. “Was the mayor involved with this from the beginning?”

  She shook her head no, her expression forceful. “No. I wanted to do this on my own. It was my project.”

  “When did he get involved?”

  “When things fell apart. The other deliveries went fine. The girls experienced a smooth trip, they had jobs waiting for them when they arrived. Then my lead driver moved to the East Coast unexpectedly, and I was stuck trying to find a new driver. And that put Josh as the lead. Obviously that was a disaster.”

  “When did you ask the mayor for help?” Josie asked.

  “When Josh called from Piedra Labrada to tell me two of the women had escaped. I had no choice but to ask Steve for help.”

  Josie noted her use of the word escaped. How could Caroline use that word if she’d viewed what she was doing as humane?

  “And how did he help?”

  Caroline’s expression changed. She considered Josie again, as if realizing who she was talking to. She took a moment to respond. “I don’t think I should continue this conversation,” she said. Her voice had grown quiet and Josie knew her welco
me had just ended.

  She stood and placed her business card on the table beside her chair. “My cell phone number is on the card. If you’d like to talk, give me a call.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  After a morning and afternoon spent coordinating with Sheriff Roy Martinez and two Texas state troopers who served the Arroyo County area, Josie finally received the phone call she’d been waiting for.

  “The search warrant is approved,” Holder said. “I just called the mayor’s office and he’s still there. You get your team out to the house. I’m going to tell the mayor in person. That’ll give you a few minutes to get out there and set up with Caroline before the mayor comes in ready to blow. I’ll warn him that we will arrest him for interfering with a lawful investigation if he gives us the slightest provocation. But I’d plan on him giving you grief.”

  * * *

  Josie and Otto rode in her jeep, two sheriff’s cars followed, and two state DPS cars followed them. They filled the mayor’s driveway. Josie and the sheriff approached the front door together and presented Caroline with the documentation and explained that they were there to search for the weapon used in Renata Carrillo’s murder. Caroline looked stunned.

  “The mayor isn’t here,” she said, grabbing the doorframe as if she needed help standing. “I’m calling my attorney.”

  “Prosecutor Holder is talking with the mayor now,” Josie said. “For now, we’ll ask you to have a seat in the kitchen while we go about our business. You’re welcome to call your attorney from the kitchen.”

  They wasted no time. Six officers carried out the search while a sheriff’s deputy remained stationed in the kitchen to keep an eye on Caroline and to watch for the mayor.

  Josie and Otto were both in the home office when the mayor arrived. They ignored the raised voices and continued the search, knowing the sheriff’s deputy would take care of the mayor if need be.