Midnight Crossing (Josie Gray Mysteries #5)(81)

“We have a search warrant that gives us full access to the contents of this apartment as they relate to the crime.”

Her mouth dropped open and she stared, unblinking. “But it’s my apartment too! They told me you couldn’t search the apartment because it’s half mine!”

“Who’s they?”

“Just somebody I know.”

“Somebody gave you bad information.”

“There’s nothing here you’d want anyway.”

“You can save yourself a lot of time and a lot of mess by getting the gun now and handing it over.”

“Why are you doing this? You really think Josh killed that woman?”

“I do. And I think you were in the car with him that night. I think you drove and Josh got out of the car to find the two missing women. When he couldn’t catch them, he shot one of them, and the other escaped. That makes you an accessory to murder.”

“No! That’s not what happened!”

“Then tell me what did happen.”

“I don’t know. Josh wasn’t there that night. He didn’t have anything to do with it. Go ahead and search this stupid place for the gun. You won’t find it.”

They both turned toward the door when they heard a knock. Josie stood and Macey continued talking behind her.

“He didn’t kill that woman. I swear to you on a stack of Bibles that he didn’t kill her.”

Josie opened the door for Marta to enter and she turned back to Macey. “Did you kill her?”

“No! And I don’t know who did it either. I just know it wasn’t Josh.”

“It’s going to be a long day, Macey. We’re going to have to look through all of your collections. We’ll have to move everything until we find the gun. Unless you give it to me now.”

“I don’t have any gun!” she yelled.

Josie turned to Marta, who was glancing around the apartment looking overwhelmed. “This will take days,” she whispered.

*

When Otto finished at the jail, he joined Marta and Josie to carry out the search warrant. They spent three hours searching the apartment and came away with only one find. The women’s IDs and documentation from Guatemala that were not found in the van the night the police pulled them over on their way to Albuquerque. One more nail in Josh’s case, but nothing to tie it back to Caroline, and no closer to finding the murderer.

*

Back at the office, Marta was called for a burglary while Josie and Otto settled into an afternoon of paperwork. Using the women’s identities on the fake IDs, Josie theorized Renata’s last name was Carrillo and she asked Lou to begin tracking down her family.

Ten minutes later Lou called her.

“Good news. Phone records just arrived. I’ve got the document in my email. You and I were both copied.”

“Thanks, Lou.”

Josie opened the documents on her computer and sighed. “This is huge, Otto. This could take days.”

Otto looked over her shoulder as she scrolled through page after page of phone numbers, sent and received, for each person’s records.

“Break it down. Print off the records for the past month and we’ll start there.”

Josie printed the past four weeks of phone calls and laid the piles on the conference table. Josh and Big Ben had used throwaway phones to conduct their illegal business, but both men’s phones had been seized during their arrests. Josie had found that the foolproof methods criminals used to cover their tracks often sealed the cases against them.

“Okay. We’ve got six sets of records for the past four weeks, leading up to the murder of Renata. We’ve got Caroline Moss’s home phone. And we have the records for the contact in Big Ben’s phone named Lilith, which we assume is Caroline too.”

“Is the number from the Lilith contact registered to a specific person?” Otto asked.

“It’s a throwaway phone, so all we have is the call log, not who it’s registered to. We also have Josh and Macey Mooney’s cell phone records, as well as Ryan’s.” Josie held up another piece of paper she pulled off her desk. “And more good news. Townie faxed this to me today. It’s phone records for the past year for Big Ben. We can start with the past month for him too.”

“Do we actually have proof each of these phones is linked to each person?” he said.

“We seized Josh and Macey’s throwaway phones, so their numbers are confirmed. Ryan’s cell phone was registered in his name because his parents pay for the bill. And Big Ben’s phone was seized. The only phone there’s any question about is Lilith’s, who we think is Caroline.” Josie groaned and reached back to rub her neck. “Basically, it’s a big tangled mess of numbers, but it’s a start.”

Otto pitched a pad of paper on the conference table and used a marker to begin writing down key phone numbers they were looking for. They made a list of known phone numbers for the following people:

Caroline Moss (home phone and cell—registered)

Lilith (cell—throwaway)

Josh Mooney (cell—throwaway)

Macey Mooney (cell—throwaway)

Ryan Needleman (cell—throwaway)

Benjamin Dominguez (Big Ben) (cell—throwaway)

“I’ll export the phone numbers into Excel and search and find the phone numbers over the past year. I’ll highlight the numbers and we’ll get a quick look at who’s calling who. We’ll see if we can connect Lilith to Big Ben for each of the seven trips,” Josie said.