Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(10)
“Hello?” she asked. Her voice barely registered.
“Hey, it’s me. What’s going on?”
She closed her eyes, relieved to hear Leo’s voice, but dreading the inevitable questions.
“I passed out from heat exhaustion. I spent too long outside.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Got a bad sunburn, that’s all.”
“What were you doing outside?”
“I was just out for a walk.”
There was silence for a moment. “What do you mean you were out for a walk? It’s like an incinerator out there.”
She forced the words out, clenching her eyes shut. “I found a dead man.”
The line was silent for a beat too long. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I was over by the river, just hiking, and I came across a body. I passed out and Chief Gray found me.”
“Where were you?” he asked.
“I don’t know, over by the river.”
“What do you mean over by the river? Where?”
“I don’t know. Just out in the desert.”
He blew air out in frustration. “Why can’t you just give a straight answer?”
She closed her eyes against the anger in Leo’s voice.
“What was wrong with the guy?”
Cassidy opened her eyes and stared at the computer monitor attached to an arm that connected to the wall. She stared at the blank screen as Leo’s question replayed in her mind.
“What was wrong with him?” Leo repeated.
She wanted to hurl her own questions back at him. Why were you talking about Scratchgravel Road to someone at one in the morning? Why did you leave in the middle of the night without a word to me?
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he was an illegal, crossing over, and the heat got to him.”
“Can you come home tonight?”
“You can come get me. I’ll pick up my car tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, and hung up.
She stared at the white sheets on the bed wondering how her life had collapsed in such a miserable heap in just one day. She leaned back into the pillow to get the weight of her body off the burnt arm, closed her eyes, and began to cry.
The door to the room opened and the nurse bustled inside wearing her white starched uniform and carrying a tray full of medical supplies. Cassidy willed the nurse to turn around and leave the room, but she didn’t. She approached the bed and reached out for Cassidy’s wrist. The nurse placed her fingertips on the inside of her arm and pressed into her flesh. After a moment she wrote numbers on her clipboard and laid it on the bedside table.
She grabbed a tissue from the box next to her clipboard and handed it to Cassidy, who sniffed and wiped her eyes. The nurse found a tube of ointment in the cabinet and unscrewed the cap as she walked back to the bed. Her expression was kind but worried.
“How’s your pain?” Vie asked.
“It’s okay.”
“You want me to call your mother? A friend maybe? Someone who can come sit with you?”
Cassidy shut her eyes and tried to stop the flow of tears as the nurse began to gently rub the cream into her arms.
FOUR
After Cassidy Harper’s car was towed to the county garage, Otto and Josie both drove home to shower and change into fresh uniforms. Josie was struggling to keep the images of the lesions on the dead man’s arms out of her mind, and hoped that whatever killed him wasn’t now invading her own bloodstream. It would be a frustrating waiting game until the coroner came back with his results.
Driving back to the Artemis Police Department, she turned her jeep onto River Road, hugging a curve that followed the natural path of the Rio Grande on her right. From the high point in the road she could see downtown Artemis, a couple dozen businesses surrounding the courthouse in an orderly grid, and a spray of middle-income housing and shabby apartments on all four sides. She thought about the considerable risk that Macon Drench had taken when he developed Artemis, for a second time, back in the early seventies. Fed up with the excesses of the city, he had used a good portion of his oil fortune to purchase the West Texas ghost town and remake it into a place where hard work and an independent spirit could pull a family through even the roughest of times. Josie had asked him several months ago if he considered his desert experiment a success. In reply, he had said that his vision was a town where crime was nonexistent.
“Considering the nightmare across the border, and the tough economic times, I’d say you’ve succeeded,” she said.
Drench had frowned. “Napoleon Bonaparte said, ‘The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.’” He had rubbed a finger along the brim of his cowboy hat and studied Josie for a moment. “You keep that in mind. Once those bastards infect our town with their drugs and violence we’ll never get them out. They’ll infiltrate every corner, just like they’ve done all over Mexico.”
Driving down the straight stretch of River Road into Artemis, Josie thought about Drench’s words. She stared out at the rugged lowlying mountains of the Chihuahuan Desert running haphazardly on either side of the Rio, and thought it was a small miracle that anyone could settle a land that could be so unforgiving. She agreed with Drench completely, and had to force herself not to obsess over the problems when she was away from work. She would give everything she had to keep the cartels across the river, and that obsession sometimes took precedence over everything else in her life.