Midnight Crossing (Josie Gray Mysteries #5)(63)
*
An overnight surveillance detail took Nick back to Mexico after dinner, and left Josie sitting on the back porch watching a lonely sundown, sipping a juice glass filled with bourbon, trying not to imagine the next day, trying not to wander around her house considering the odds she was going to get fired. She watched Chester nose around a mesquite bush, most likely on the scent of a jackrabbit. Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her back pocket and saw Otto’s name.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Are you sitting?”
“Yep. Good or bad?”
“I’m not sure. I took the gun, bullet, and casing up to Ernie at the state police lab and called in a favor. He agreed to run ballistics and get me something, hopefully by tomorrow. I also asked him to check for latent prints.”
“Yeah?”
“He just called. He’s not started on the ballistics, but he ran the fingerprints and got an exact match in AFIS.”
“Yeah?”
“Isabella Dagati.”
Josie drew in a sharp breath. The possibility of her being the killer was so remote it hadn’t even registered. She may have been technically a suspect due to her proximity to the body, but she’d never been seriously considered.
“What the hell?”
“That’s about what I said. I’d even forgotten Marta had printed her at the hospital. Ernie said there’s no doubt on the print. He hopes to run the bullet and gun tonight so we’ll have something more conclusive tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Josie said. “Why would Isabella shoot her?”
“You want to bring her in tonight or wait until we get ballistics in the morning?”
She paused. “It’s your case.”
“Come on.”
“If this wasn’t such a screwed-up mess with Caroline and the mayor I’d say get her tonight. But I think we get it all together first and go to Holder with everything.”
“Good enough,” he said. “I coordinated with the sheriff. We still have an officer posted outside the women’s rooms twenty-four/seven. Phillips is there tonight. He has strict orders not to let Isabella leave. I made contact with Homeland Security, but with all the red tape I don’t know what kind of time frame we’re looking at to get the other women sent home. I’m hoping they can continue where they are for now.”
“Any new information about Caroline from the women?”
“Selena Rocha talked to them. She asked if they knew anything about a female running things. The women agreed that Josh and Ryan talked about a woman they called boss lady, but they never mentioned her name. That’s as much as we got about that. Selena also asked Isabella if she could tell her who killed Renata and she broke down. Refused to talk.”
“Damn, Otto. You realize we’re probably going to lose this case before we get it all pulled together?”
Otto said nothing, but she knew he understood.
“We have crimes crossing state and national lines. FBI and Homeland Security will be all over this before we’re through,” she said.
“Then we better work like hell to figure something out before we lose control.”
Josie heard a car coming down her road and walked around to the front of her house, where she saw Smokey Blessings pulling up her driveway. She hung up with Otto and waved as Smokey got out of his truck wearing a Stetson, cowboy boots, and a western shirt. Smokey was married to Vie Blessings, his polar opposite in life. For all the vibrancy she displayed, Smokey showed none of it. The cowboy hat was as splashy as he got, and his demeanor was as low-key as his clothes.
He walked up to Josie to shake her hand and she noticed the worry lines across his forehead. “What the hell’s going on?” He had a slow drawl to his words, which somehow intensified their effect.
Josie didn’t have to ask what he meant. As the city council president, he was elected to work with the mayor to supervise the chief of police. Josie knew that, without the support the council had given her, the mayor would have fired her years ago.
“There’s not much I can tell you,” she said.
“You better tell me something. There’s a group carrying signs outside of the courthouse about police brutality, and another group across the street on the corner with posters, chanting, ‘Save our Chief.’”
She laughed in spite of the subject matter. “Where’d the police brutality come from?”
Smokey looked frustrated. “Hell if I know! The mayor refuses to talk about it. We’ve called an emergency council meeting and demanded answers but he’s stalling. I want you to tell me what the breach of contract is over.”
“I can’t tell you. It concerns an ongoing investigation.”
“I don’t need to know the particulars of the case. I need to know what you did to be considered in breach of contract.”
“I can’t tell you that. You can talk to Otto about the case. He’s the investigator and knows the particulars. It’ll be up to him if he wants to share details.” Josie almost smiled at the irony. She shouldn’t have shared details with the mayor, who was now out to fire her, but she was refraining from telling the person who was most able to help her.
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and tilted his head from side to side as if trying to release tension.