Midnight Crossing (Josie Gray Mysteries #5)(92)

“What the hell are you talking about? I told you, I didn’t even know that woman died until days later! I didn’t shoot that gun!”

Josie finished reading his Miranda rights over his protests, and then asked him to stand and follow her to the booking room.

He sat in his chair, unmoving, staring at Otto as if waiting for him to help. “Tell her! Tell her this is ridiculous!”

“I need you to stand. If you refuse to walk with us we’ll have to use handcuffs, and I don’t think you want that right now,” Otto said.

The mayor finally stood and Josie led him down the hallway. He didn’t say another word. She’d never seen anyone look so completely baffled during their booking. A female jailer who was in the booking room when they entered avoided eye contact. Josie figured the sheriff had filled the staff in on the situation, trying to control the drama.

Josie held each of his fingers and rolled them in the ink. She printed each finger on the card and then handed him off to the female jailer, who nodded and placed her hand around his upper arm to lead him toward a cell.

Josie found Otto resetting the recording equipment in the interrogation room. When he was finished they walked down the hall to collect their next suspect, and Otto said, “This is one of the most bizarre days of my career.”

*

Josie and Otto sat across the table from Josh Mooney and Oliver Greene. Josh was still wearing his orange jumpsuit but had fortunately showered. They quickly recapped the mayor’s story and got the explosion they expected.

“That frickin’ scumbag! That is exactly the opposite of how it happened. And you know what? I knew that lifelong rat-faced liar would do this. So you know what I did? I outsmarted the mighty mayor!” Josh’s face was bright red and his eyes were bulging with anger.

“How’d you do that?” Otto said. His tone gave the impression that he didn’t believe a word of it.

“When the mayor got back in my car he shoved the gun under the passenger seat and told me to get rid of it. He told me to clean it, wrap it up, to put it in a garbage bag, and to put the garbage bag in a dumpster downtown.”

“What did you do with it?” Otto asked.

Josh leaned into the table and Josie could see the veins in his neck popping. “I left it there! He shot the gun. So his fingerprints are all over it. Not mine! Go look under the passenger seat. And then let me out of this frickin’ jail cell before I go out of my mind!”

*

Josh’s car had been seized and impounded by Jimmy’s Wrecker Service when he was arrested. The car had been the least of their worries and no one had touched it since the impounding. Josie called Holder on the way to the lot and he approved searching the car without a warrant, since it had been properly impounded.

Josie and Otto drove to the lot and had Jimmy unlock the chain-link fence to allow them access to the car.

Jimmy went into his office to make a phone call while Josie unlocked the passenger-side door. She shone her flashlight under the seat.

“What do you have?” Otto called.

“A murder weapon,” Josie said. “Hopefully covered in fingerprints.”

*

On their drive back to the jail with the gun in an evidence bag on Otto’s lap, Josie told Otto, “You’re better at lifting prints. You take the gun and run the prints. I’ll check with the intake officer and get the mayor’s fingerprint card we took earlier tonight.

By the time Josie carried the card into the booking room where Otto was working, he’d already pulled several prints.

“Beautiful, full-pad print on the side of the gun, and on the butt,” Otto said, grinning at his work. “I just got off the phone with Ernie Mays at the crime scene lab. You know Ernie?”

“Sure. He checked the gun and bullet for us.”

“He’s the one. He agreed to match the prints for us if we’ll get them delivered to him in the morning.”

Josie patted Otto on the back. “I believe the mayor’s accessory to commit murder just turned into first-degree homicide.”





TWENTY-THREE

The feds subpoenaed Steve and Caroline Moss’s bank records and computer and home files, and compiled a yearlong timeline of human trafficking that would allow full prosecution under the law. The town was in shock: two pillars in the community, a husband-and-wife team, arrested for charges involving trafficking, rape, and murder. The local radio and newspaper ran little else for weeks, and the Hot Tamale was too consumed with gossip for Josie to even enter for a lunch burrito.

Selena Gomez organized a local fund-raising drive to pay transportation expenses for the four women to receive safe passage back to Guatemala. Selena was establishing herself as a local leader for grassroots mission efforts. The work she was completing had a different focus than the highbrow work of Caroline Moss, and Josie was curious to see how the change might affect the town.

Four weeks after the Mosses’ arrest, Smokey Blessings came to the police department and asked to speak with Josie and Otto. They sat with mugs of coffee around the conference table and talked about the cold weather driving down from the north that was threatening a December frost that night. The change of season seemed appropriate to the conversation when Smokey finally got down to business.

“I’ve come with a huge favor to ask, both personally and as an elected official for the community.” He looked directly at Otto. “With the trial looming ahead of us for months, and maybe even years, we won’t be able to heal and move forward until we have a new mayor in place. The city council believes you are the perfect person to step in as the interim mayor. You’re the former police chief, a longtime respected member of the community, and you’ve served on a dozen different community boards through the years. You’re the right choice.”