Scratchgravel Road: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, and hung up.

  She stared at the white sheets on the bed wondering how her life had collapsed in such a miserable heap in just one day. She leaned back into the pillow to get the weight of her body off the burnt arm, closed her eyes, and began to cry.

  The door to the room opened and the nurse bustled inside wearing her white starched uniform and carrying a tray full of medical supplies. Cassidy willed the nurse to turn around and leave the room, but she didn’t. She approached the bed and reached out for Cassidy’s wrist. The nurse placed her fingertips on the inside of her arm and pressed into her flesh. After a moment she wrote numbers on her clipboard and laid it on the bedside table.

  She grabbed a tissue from the box next to her clipboard and handed it to Cassidy, who sniffed and wiped her eyes. The nurse found a tube of ointment in the cabinet and unscrewed the cap as she walked back to the bed. Her expression was kind but worried.

  “How’s your pain?” Vie asked.

  “It’s okay.”

  “You want me to call your mother? A friend maybe? Someone who can come sit with you?”

  Cassidy shut her eyes and tried to stop the flow of tears as the nurse began to gently rub the cream into her arms.

  FOUR

  After Cassidy Harper’s car was towed to the county garage, Otto and Josie both drove home to shower and change into fresh uniforms. Josie was struggling to keep the images of the lesions on the dead man’s arms out of her mind, and hoped that whatever killed him wasn’t now invading her own bloodstream. It would be a frustrating waiting game until the coroner came back with his results.

  Driving back to the Artemis Police Department, she turned her jeep onto River Road, hugging a curve that followed the natural path of the Rio Grande on her right. From the high point in the road she could see downtown Artemis, a couple dozen businesses surrounding the courthouse in an orderly grid, and a spray of middle-income housing and shabby apartments on all four sides. She thought about the considerable risk that Macon Drench had taken when he developed Artemis, for a second time, back in the early seventies. Fed up with the excesses of the city, he had used a good portion of his oil fortune to purchase the West Texas ghost town and remake it into a place where hard work and an independent spirit could pull a family through even the roughest of times. Josie had asked him several months ago if he considered his desert experiment a success. In reply, he had said that his vision was a town where crime was nonexistent.

  “Considering the nightmare across the border, and the tough economic times, I’d say you’ve succeeded,” she said.

  Drench had frowned. “Napoleon Bonaparte said, ‘The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.’” He had rubbed a finger along the brim of his cowboy hat and studied Josie for a moment. “You keep that in mind. Once those bastards infect our town with their drugs and violence we’ll never get them out. They’ll infiltrate every corner, just like they’ve done all over Mexico.”

  Driving down the straight stretch of River Road into Artemis, Josie thought about Drench’s words. She stared out at the rugged low-lying mountains of the Chihuahuan Desert running haphazardly on either side of the Rio, and thought it was a small miracle that anyone could settle a land that could be so unforgiving. She agreed with Drench completely, and had to force herself not to obsess over the problems when she was away from work. She would give everything she had to keep the cartels across the river, and that obsession sometimes took precedence over everything else in her life.

  The cell phone in her breast pocket vibrated and startled her.

  “Where are you?” Otto asked.

  “Just outside of town,” she said.

  “I’m pulling up to the Tamale. I’ll order your usual.”

  The Artemis Police Department sat between the Gun Club and the Artemis City Office across the street from the courthouse. Catty-cornered to the PD was the Hot Tamale, Josie and Otto’s favorite spot to eat. Josie pulled her jeep beside Otto’s and parked in front of the restaurant. On the front of the building a newly painted sign read The Hot Tamale: Quick Service, Authentic Recipes, and the Most Accurate Gossip in Texas. Josie smiled at the sign. She wasn’t sure if the gossip was accurate, but it was abundant.

  She walked inside and found the waitresses wiping down tables and preparing for the supper crowd. The tables and chairs were up for grabs and were moved to fit whatever configuration the current group of customers cared to arrange. The waitresses wove their way through the jumble and typically knew every customer by their first name, as well as their daily order. Josie found Otto at their customary spot in the front corner of the diner, at a table with a clear view out the large window facing the courthouse.

  She sat down and discovered a Coke already waiting for her.

  “You look refreshed,” she said to Otto.

  “Lucy special-ordered dill kraut to go with my bologna. The woman is a saint.” He smiled and shook his head, obviously touched by her effort. “Do you know how hard it is to get quality bologna in West Texas? Let alone dill kraut!”

  Lucy Ramone, owner and head cook of the Tamale, doted over Otto shamelessly. Josie wondered if Otto’s wife, Delores, realized Otto had an admirer.

  “How long has it been since you and Delores went back to Poland?” Josie asked.

  “Ten years. Since our parents both passed we haven’t made the effort. We need to, though.” He leaned forward in his chair and propped his arms on the table, his expression pensive. “Sometimes I physically ache for the food from my childhood. The pierogi and gnocchi, the kraut and sausage. My mother would cook for hours for Sunday dinners.”

  “Delores is a great cook,” Josie said.

  He sighed as if talking to an amateur. “She is, of course. But a pierogi constructed in a Polish kitchen is comfort food like no other.”

  Lucy ambled out from the kitchen and pulled up a chair. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead and sighed dramatically. “You missed it. Every table filled. A madhouse in here for lunch today.”

  Josie smiled and leaned back in her chair.

  Lucy was not from Mexico, but she spoke a fair amount of Spanish, and she had developed an authentic-sounding accent over her twenty years of running the Hot Tamale. She was a squat woman with black hair and dark eyes that fit the Mexican persona she affected.

  Lucy leaned in to the table conspiratorially. “So? Everyone talked dead bodies today at lunch.”

  Otto looked at Lucy in disbelief. “Who spreads this stuff?”

  “I never reveal my sources,” Lucy said. She smoothed her white apron across her thighs. “Now, fess up.”

  “Lou stopped in, didn’t she?” Otto asked.

  Lucy smiled, her lips pressed tightly together.

  Sarah, who did double duty as short-order cook and waitress, yelled from the kitchen, “Bologna sandwich and a cold tamale?”

  Josie looked up and saw her standing behind the pass-through window in the kitchen and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Five minutes!” Sarah yelled, and turned back to the kitchen.

  “One body,” Josie said. “Singular.”

  “I heard multiple,” Lucy said.

  Josie held up a finger. “One dead body.”

  Lucy considered the answer. “Okay. How many live bodies?”

  Josie looked at Otto and smiled, then looked back to Lucy. “We found one dead body, and a local woman who passed out, probably from heat exhaustion. Know anything about it?”

  “An illegal?” she asked, ignoring Josie’s question.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Who was the local?”

  “Cassidy Harper. You know her?” Josie asked.

  “Vaguely. Doesn’t come in here much. Her boyfriend does, though.”

  “What do you know about him?” Otto asked.

  “I know he’s a lousy tipper. A loner. Always sits by himself. Looks ready to slash his wrists most of the time.”

  Sarah brought
their plates out and set them down, along with a bottle of Tabasco sauce. She was in her late twenties, and wore the unofficial Hot Tamale uniform: shorts, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She wore her blond hair in a short bob and was covered in freckles from head to toe. Josie pointed at a button pinned to the pocket of her apron that showed her son holding a T-ball bat, a proud smile revealing two missing front teeth.

  “Cute kid,” Josie said.

  Sarah grinned. “You should see him hit that ball and run like the wind. He’s amazing.” She sat their drink refills on the table and hustled back to the kitchen.

  Lucy stood to leave. “The monsoons are supposed to start tonight. Forecaster says it’s the hundred-year flood. Calling for a foot of rain over the next couple days.” She pointed a finger at Otto, then Josie. “Mark my words. Things are about to get bad.”

  * * *

  After they finished eating Josie offered to start her car while Otto paid. She tried to hand him a ten-dollar bill but he refused to take it.

  “You pay tomorrow,” he said.

  Josie went outside to start her jeep and waited for Otto to join her, but the car was still blazing hot during the three-minute trip across town to the Trauma Center. She left her jeep running outside the emergency room entrance while they both went inside to check on Cassidy.

  The Trauma Center’s wing included a nurse’s station and patient waiting area, two small examination rooms that also served as patient rooms, and a surprisingly well-equipped surgery unit. Vie Blessing was bent over a computer at the nurse’s station talking into a phone and staring intently at something on the monitor below her. She glanced up and waved, then went back to her conversation. Otto and Josie wandered over to the TV mounted on the wall in the waiting room. A woman from the Weather Channel was discussing the forecast for heavy rain across northern Mexico and into Texas and Arizona.

  Vie hung the phone up and called out, “Sorry. We’re so understaffed it’s ridiculous. There are two of us on duty in the center today. Not because someone called off. Because we’re it!” She walked over to them, crossed her arms over her chest, and huffed in frustration. “Someday this town will face a lawsuit because they have a registered nurse serving in the capacity of a doctor about fifty percent of the time.”

  Otto said, “Want the truth? If I was in bad shape, I’d take you over most doctors any day of the week.”

  Vie winked at Otto and patted his arm. “You big suck-up. Are you here about the Harper girl?”

  “How’s she doing?” Josie asked.

  “She’ll be fine. Her temperature was down below one hundred when I checked about ten minutes ago. She’s a lucky girl, though. If you hadn’t picked her up when you did, she’d be dead by now. She knows it too. She’s pretty shook up.”

  “Anyone been to see her?” Josie asked.

  “No. She told me about finding the body. I told her she needs to talk to you. Tell you what she knows, but I don’t expect you’ll get much from her.”

  “Did she give you any details?” Josie asked.

  “No, nothing like that. She looks scared to death, though.”

  “Any idea where the boyfriend is?” Otto asked.

  “Nope.”

  Vie pointed and they all walked down the hallway. She stopped in front of Cassidy’s room with her hand on the door. “I told her we need to keep her under observation until supper time.”

  Josie nodded and looked at Otto. “Good. That’ll give us a chance to check her car out before she leaves.”

  Vie pushed the door open into a dimly lit room with two patient beds in the middle of various monitors and pieces of medical apparatus. In the first bed, Cassidy lay flat on her back staring up at the ceiling. Her face and arms were sunburnt, and her pretty red ringlets were matted around her head. She looked far older than her twenty-two years. She turned her head slowly in their direction.

  Josie approached her first. “Vie tells us you’re going to be okay. You had us pretty scared for a while.”

  Cassidy lifted the corner of her lip in a weak attempt at a smile.

  “Do you remember us carrying you out?” Josie asked, trying to get her to relax.

  Cassidy shook her head no, and then her attention shifted to Otto, who folded the flap back on his notebook and clicked a pen open.

  Otto noticed her watching him. “It’s okay, kid. We just need to ask you a few questions about this afternoon.”

  “What were you doing out in the desert in this kind of heat?” Josie asked. She kept her tone kind rather than accusatory.

  Another shoulder shrug.

  “Were you hiking?”

  Cassidy looked at Josie as if deciding how to answer. “Not really. I just wanted to be outside.” Her tone was soft and timid.

  “How did you end up off Scratchgravel?” Josie asked.

  She shrugged again, and when Josie continued to wait for an answer she finally said, “It just looked like an okay spot.”

  “For what?”

  Cassidy looked confused for a moment. “For being outside.”

  “Couldn’t you have gone outside at your own home?”

  “Not really. We live in town. We don’t really have a yard. It’s—” She hesitated. “The grass is all dead. It isn’t very pretty.”

  “How did you find the body?” Josie asked.

  A shrug. “I just saw it. I was walking and I smelled something. It was awful, then I saw something behind a bush. When I saw the body, I got dizzy. Then I don’t remember anything. I guess I blacked out.”

  Josie glanced back at Otto, who nodded to let her know he was getting everything. “You’re saying you were just out walking in the desert on a day supposed to hit 104 degrees?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged.

  Josie tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Do you know who the man was?”

  Cassidy opened her mouth slightly as if she couldn’t believe the question. “You couldn’t even tell who he was. He was—” She stopped and shuddered, then closed her eyes and turned her head away.

  Josie adjusted her gunbelt and stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed. “Cassidy, I’m trying to understand why I found you lying beside a dead body. Can you help me out here?”

  She opened her eyes again but kept her head turned. “I told you. I just went for a walk and I found him there. It’s not like I wanted to find him.”

  “Did you touch the body?”

  Cassidy’s jaw dropped and she turned to Josie. “Are you kidding? He was disgusting! Why would I touch him?” She shuddered.

  Josie turned to look at Otto, who jerked his thumb toward the door.

  “If you remember anything, or come across any information about the man or why he might have been out there, promise me you’ll call?”

  Cassidy nodded and Josie placed a business card on the hospital table.

  “We had your car towed to the county garage to get it off the side of the road. We’d like to take a look inside it. Get some fingerprints around your doors. Are you okay with that?” Josie asked.

  “I don’t care.”

  Otto had a consent form and pen ready and approached the bed. “We just need you to sign a consent form. Make it all official.”

  Cassidy pressed the remote on her bedside table to raise the bed and used the table to sign the paper. Josie noted that she didn’t give much thought to the paper or the idea of having her car searched. She seemed more concerned with the pain of bending her arms and the sunburn.

  Cassidy pointed to a folded pile of clothes atop a bureau across the room. “Keys ought to be in my front shorts pocket.”

  Josie felt a piece of paper in the first pocket she looked in and resisted the urge to unfold it and read it. She found the car keys in the second pocket and took them instead. She and Otto thanked Vie and left for the garage.

  * * *

  The county garage was located on the east side of town, beside the Arroyo County Jail. The dark green m
etal garage was eighty feet long by thirty feet wide and had a poured concrete floor. Inside were several bays where the county four-wheel-drive pickup and two ancient plow trucks were parked and maintained. The plows were used to clean the roads after the monsoon hit each summer. They had been purchased by Macon Drench at a Houston auction several years ago. Before the plows were bought, the town had to rely on locals with pickup trucks and push-blades to clean up the roads. Drench had also paid for the construction of the garage himself rather than raising taxes. Josie wondered what would happen to the town if Drench ever tired of his desert experiment and headed back to the city.

  Josie and Otto rode together in Josie’s car and parked just inside the open garage door. Industrial-sized fans pulled air in one side of the garage and out the other. The air movement and shade from the brutal afternoon sun made the job they were facing still miserable, but tolerable.

  Danny was in charge of the garage and maintenance on the trucks. The garage typically closed at five, but Danny had offered to keep it open as late as necessary so they could examine Cassidy’s car. When Josie shut her jeep off, Danny appeared from behind the engine of one of the plows, wiping his hands on a rag. He smiled widely and flipped his rag to hang over his shoulder like a dish towel. His coworker, Mitch Wilson, walked behind Danny and waved hello. He was a lanky, heavily tattooed Harley rider who had served several tours in the second Iraq war as an explosives expert with the army. With his laid-back disposition it was hard for Josie to imagine him using explosives in a war zone.

  “How’s tricks?” Otto called.

  “Trying to get these old rust buckets ready for the epic rains,” Danny said.

  “We appreciate your help today,” Josie said.

  “No problem.”

  “Cassidy doing okay?” Mitch asked.

  “She’ll be fine. She got lucky, though.” Josie looked back at Danny. “You and Cowan get the body unloaded at the morgue?”

  He shook his head slowly. “That was some nasty business.”

  He pointed to Cassidy Harper’s car, parked directly behind them in an open area on the concrete pad. “Mitch and I unhooked her from the tow truck. Car’s ready for you. We didn’t touch any of the door handles. Didn’t get inside the car.”