Midnight Crossing (Josie Gray Mysteries #5)(70)

Meanwhile, they heard a vehicle driving slowly by the house their second night there and feared the people in the vehicle were searching for them. On the third night, Josie wasn’t home yet and a car pulled into the driveway with its headlights on and stopped. Isabella figured it was somewhere between nine and eleven o’clock. It was much earlier than the other nights the car drove by. They heard someone get out of the car. They could see through knotholes in the toolshed that someone was prowling around outside. Isabella grabbed the gun and they snuck out of the toolshed without being heard. They had reached the back of the house, ready to run down the lane toward Dell’s house, when Renata tripped over something and a man shouted both their names. Isabella couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think it was Josh or Ryan’s voice.

The women took off running into the pasture, parallel with the road. A man followed them, yelling their names. There was enough starlight to see to walk carefully, but they were terrified and confused and desperate to get away. Then they noticed headlights moving slowly down the road from behind them. They changed course and turned to run toward the mountain range, directly behind Josie’s house.

A short time later, Isabella said she heard a gunshot from behind her and she flung her arm around and pulled the trigger on the gun, not having any idea if she was going to hit the person, but wanting to scare him. She heard two more gunshots and turned to look behind her and saw Renata stumble and drop into the dirt.

Isabella’s voice turned to a whisper. “I thought Renata was running next to me. I don’t know if it was me that shot her. I don’t know. I thought she was right beside me, and then I turned to see where the shooter was, and there was Renata, stumbling forward, and then she hit the ground, and I turned and moved as fast as I could, tripping over rocks and cactus. It all happened so fast I couldn’t make sense of any of it.” She took a deep breath, obviously forcing herself to continue. “I hid behind rocks at the bottom of the mountain until I was sure they were gone and I went to check on her but she was dead. I threw the gun into the pasture and went back to hide in the toolshed until I could figure out what to do next.”

“It wasn’t you that killed her,” Otto said, feeling a rush of compassion for this young woman. “Renata was shot in the back. If you turned and fired behind you, the bullet would have entered her chest. And we have the bullet that killed Renata. It didn’t come from your gun.”

Her mouth opened and she looked stunned.

“The phone call I just took was from the police lab. Someone else shot Renata. It wasn’t you.”

*

A bullet had pierced the shatterproof glass of the entrance door to the apartment building, leaving a spiderweb of chipped glass. Josie pushed the door open and the smell of backed-up sewage made her wince. Flickering fluorescent lights cast a yellow glow across the stained carpet. The lobby was no more than a hallway that led to an elevator that clearly hadn’t worked in years, a bank of mailboxes that appeared as if someone had taken a baseball bat to them, a stairwell leading both upstairs and down, and at the end of the hallway, a door with the word OFFICE painted in black.

She took a deep breath and wished she knew how to pray. She would have said a prayer. As the chief of police in a small-town city department, working undercover was not her specialty.

She knocked on the door and a man with a gruff voice yelled, “What?”

Josie put her hand on the sticky doorknob and turned. The space was the size of a bathroom and seemed to serve as both a custodian’s supply closet and an office with a small wooden desk. The bald gaunt man with a goatee in a three-piece suit did not fit the voice that had bellowed out at Josie.

“What?” he repeated.

“I need to see Big Ben.”

“Why?”

“I got a delivery.”

“Of what?”

“Women.”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” she asked back.

The corner of his mouth lifted and he rolled his chair away from his desk a bit, finally seeming to take her seriously.

“I’m Big Ben.”

“Well, then I’m Deirdre.”

“Bullshit.”

She let the corner of her mouth lift but said nothing.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“In my van. In the lot.”

“How many?”

“Four.”

“I’m waiting on five.”

She smiled, cocking her head slightly. “Well, now you get four.”

“Deirdre makes five,” he said.

“Deirdre’s getting the hell out of here.”

Josie pitched the manila envelope onto his desk, and Big Ben dumped the contents onto the pile of papers in front of him. He flicked through the documents to find the driver’s licenses, studying each one, mumbling the girls’ names and their weight and eye color, commenting on their appearance. He spoke with a light Mexican accent, drawing out some words, clipping others. He held up one of the licenses and read off the name. “Susita. What’s she like?”

Josie shrugged. “She’s all right. A little attitude.”

A gold tooth glinted when he laughed, giving him the appearance of a cartoon character. “I knew it. I know these mamas before they ever walk into my life, just by their picture.” He tapped the photo on the license. “This little mamacita needs to be trained.”