Midnight Crossing (Josie Gray Mysteries #5)(52)

The title at the top of the Web page read Jobs Without Borders. Underneath the title was a rotating banner of glitzy photographs of young women dressed in stylish clothes smiling and laughing, dancing, eating in fancy restaurants, holding the hands of well-dressed men. Underneath the photos was a paragraph that started with, “The United States is more than the land of opportunity. It is the land of wealth and happiness. It is the land of hope and the land of unlimited prospects. The hotel services industry in the United States is a booming industry in need of young women from across the globe looking for excitement and a new life!”

Marta mumbled something under her breath and clicked on the menu tab “Contact.” There were no phone numbers or addresses, just a form to fill out with a promise that someone would respond within forty-eight hours.

Josie went over to her desk and started her own computer. “I’ll call DPS and see if we can work with their cybercrimes unit. Maybe they can track down the domain address to a city.”

“There aren’t enough typos or grammatical errors for me to think that was written by someone in Guatemala,” Otto said. “It sounds like it was written by an English major.”

Josie talked with one of the cybercrimes techs at the Computer Information Technology and Electronic Crimes Unit, referred to as CITEC. A technician named Josh pulled up the Web site. He offered to do some digging, and within thirty minutes he called back and said he had some “unofficial” information.

“Let’s have it,” Josie said.

“This won’t be admissible in court. We need to go through proper channels,” the tech said.

“Absolutely. Just get me started and then I’ll file the paperwork.”

“The domain is registered by a U.S.-owned Web hosting company. A John Davis registered the company four years ago as a private company. The name is not associated publicly with the Web site, and it’s probably a fake name. However, file the paperwork to get the records for payment. If you find out how John Davis paid to register the domain name, you might find out who owns the site.”

“I got it. I’ll file with the judge.”

*

Josie hung up the phone, summarized the call, and stared across the conference table at Otto and Marta.

“What the hell are we going to do?” she said.

“Take it to the prosecutor,” Otto said.

“I think I owe the mayor a conversation about this first.”

Otto frowned. “I don’t think that’s wise. He may be involved, for all we know.”

“Come on, Otto. His wife is a political barracuda. She comes from money and power, and she’s hungry for it. She wants her husband in the senate. But the mayor? I don’t like the man, but I don’t see him in this. Not at all.”

“Okay. Let’s just assume she does rake in two hundred thousand dollars a year, or even fifty thousand. You think she could be making that much money and he doesn’t know about it? Even if she only did it once, she can’t just hide that kind of cash.” His tone was incredulous and he was looking at her with a smile, as if he couldn’t believe her explanation.

“Of course she could hide that kind of cash! Spouses have bank accounts their partners don’t know about. You aren’t that na?ve.”

“You sound like you’re taking up for him.”

“Otto, he’s my boss. It has nothing to do with taking up for him. I just think I owe him the professional courtesy of telling him what we’re going to the prosecutor about. I’d do the same for you.”

He laughed and looked at Marta, who shrugged in response, like she wasn’t getting involved.

“What happens if you tell him and he does something stupid? What if he tells her and she takes off? We lose the person who’s behind all of this.”

“Come on. You know she’s not a flight risk. She’s too public, too proud. She’d fight to defend her name before she ever ran.”

Otto finally threw his hands up to concede the fight. “I think you’re making a mistake, but I’ve said my piece. You do what you have to do.”

The meeting broke up and Josie filed the paperwork with the judge to subpoena the phone records and to get a warrant to access the Web site payment information for John Davis. When she was finally alone in the office that evening she pondered Otto’s comments for some time, and tried to put herself in the mayor’s position. As much as she disliked him, she thought he deserved to hear this from someone other than the Marfa public radio station.

*

When Josie arrived home that night it was almost eleven o’clock and Nick was lying on the couch watching a rerun of some show about living in the Alaskan outback. He sat up when she walked in and patted the seat next to him.

“You look whipped,” he said.

“It was one hell of a day,” she said.

“Want to talk about it?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

He nodded. “I figured as much. Why don’t you go put on something comfortable. I have something to show you.”

Josie kissed him on the cheek and got up, thinking how nice it was to come home to someone who understood she didn’t want to talk through a nightmare most nights. Occasionally, talking helped. Other times, it made a bad day worse.

After she put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, she walked through the living room, then the kitchen, and finally found Nick bent over a dozen candles he was lighting on the back porch. She walked outside and he handed her a tumbler of bourbon.