Midnight Crossing (Josie Gray Mysteries #5)(83)

He grinned. “Or not.”

“Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

*

At five o’clock the next evening Holder reached Josie on her cell phone as she was driving back to the police department from a child welfare call. A mother had scalded her little girl’s hands as punishment for eating candy when she’d been told not to. Josie was angry and she had a headache.

“Yes, sir?” she answered when his number showed on her cell phone.

“I’ve got an update on Caroline Moss.”

“I hope it’s good news,” she said. “I could use some.”

“It depends on how you look at it.”

“Hmm. Go ahead,” Josie said, knowing already that it wouldn’t be good news.

“I’m turning the case over to the FBI.”

“Now?”

“Josie. Think about the case. This isn’t just a human trafficking case taking place in Artemis. Not only does it cross an international border, but it now crosses into New Mexico and Oklahoma. This is a federal crime. They can help us track down the phone connection between Caroline and Lilith. This isn’t something for local law enforcement to handle.”

She bristled at the comment but said nothing.

“Obviously it’s not that you haven’t done an excellent job with the investigation, but we’ve got three different states involved, as well as Mexico and Guatemala. I don’t need to tell you what kind of hell goes into working with two foreign countries during a criminal investigation. This goes beyond me. We need help. And I don’t want to screw this up. Agreed?”

Josie unclenched her jaw and forced a reply. “That’s fine. Just let me know what I need to do on my end.”

“Good enough. I appreciate it. I’ll be in touch.”

Josie hung up and banged the steering wheel. She called Otto.

“We lost the case,” she said.

“FBI?”

“Holder passed it off.”

“Damn, Josie. I know we saw this coming, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t think we’d lose it this fast. And I’m pissed off. I was suspended from duty over this case, and I don’t even have the satisfaction of bringing it to a close.”

“We’re not done. We have an unsolved murder.”

Josie blew out a rush of air. “I know that, Otto.”

“Okay. Well. It’s after five. I’m tired and you’re grumpy. So I’m going home before Delores threatens mandatory retirement again. Okay?”

“All right. See you in the morning.”

Josie hung up and continued her drive back to the department. Her anger fired her adrenaline, so she maintained her course to the PD. She pulled in front of the department and texted Nick. She’d lost track of his schedule and couldn’t remember if he was going to be at her house that night.

Working late. Where are you? She paused before she clicked send. It seemed like a pathetic question to ask someone you cared about, but one of the positives with Nick was that he took her for the mess that she was.

Ten seconds later he texted back. In Mexico. Surveillance tonight. Remember?

Now I do. Love you.

Love you too. Enjoy that warm bed. I’ll be sitting by a trash can in an alley.

She smiled, imagining him crouched down in an alleyway, wearing his black Kevlar and ski mask for disguise and warmth. He could be scary as hell when he wanted to be, and she had to admit, she liked that about him.

Josie waved hello to the night dispatcher, Brian Moore.

He was on the phone, so he passed a stack of mail to Josie as she walked by and mouthed a silent hello. When she got to the office she found Marta working on a case report at her desk.

Josie opened a pull-top can of fruit cocktail and poured it into a bowl. She drank the juice and ate the fruit for her dinner as she filled Marta in on the latest from Holder.

“Sorry to hear that,” Marta said. “Why don’t you go home and give your brain a rest. Get a good night’s sleep and start fresh tomorrow.”

“I can’t. I’m too pissed.”

Josie finished off a package of cheese and peanut butter crackers and spread the phone documents out across the conference table, on top of the phone diagram, and stared at the numbers and the timeline of phone calls for a long time.

She went back to the night of the murder and examined Josh’s calls. He had not placed a call to Lilith that night. And Lilith had not called anyone after three that afternoon. She hadn’t talked to any of the other suspects that day, or since then.

Josh had placed several local calls the day of the murder, and received several from Macey earlier in the day. The last call he received that day had been at 6:37 p.m., from a local number Josie didn’t recognize. Josie typed the number into a search engine but got nothing in return.

Next, she pulled out Big Ben’s phone records and studied them again. He had placed and received hundreds of calls on his cell phone over the past month, most of them with the area code for Albuquerque, New Mexico. Josie ran her finger down the list of area codes and stopped at 432, a West Texas number. She checked the number against Josh’s, Macey’s, Ryan’s, and Caroline’s numbers, but it didn’t match up. That meant Ben had been called by another person in West Texas.