Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(12)

*

After they finished eating Josie offered to start her car while Otto paid. She tried to hand him a ten-dollar bill but he refused to take it.

“You pay tomorrow,” he said.

Josie went outside to start her jeep and waited for Otto to join her, but the car was still blazing hot during the three-minute trip across town to the Trauma Center. She left her jeep running outside the emergency room entrance while they both went inside to check on Cassidy.

The Trauma Center’s wing included a nurse’s station and patient waiting area, two small examination rooms that also served as patient rooms, and a surprisingly well-equipped surgery unit. Vie Blessing was bent over a computer at the nurse’s station talking into a phone and staring intently at something on the monitor below her. She glanced up and waved, then went back to her conversation. Otto and Josie wandered over to the TV mounted on the wall in the waiting room. A woman from the Weather Channel was discussing the forecast for heavy rain across northern Mexico and into Texas and Arizona.

Vie hung the phone up and called out, “Sorry. We’re so understaffed it’s ridiculous. There are two of us on duty in the center today. Not because someone called off. Because we’re it!” She walked over to them, crossed her arms over her chest, and huffed in frustration. “Someday this town will face a lawsuit because they have a registered nurse serving in the capacity of a doctor about fifty percent of the time.”

Otto said, “Want the truth? If I was in bad shape, I’d take you over most doctors any day of the week.”

Vie winked at Otto and patted his arm. “You big suck-up. Are you here about the Harper girl?”

“How’s she doing?” Josie asked.

“She’ll be fine. Her temperature was down below one hundred when I checked about ten minutes ago. She’s a lucky girl, though. If you hadn’t picked her up when you did, she’d be dead by now. She knows it too. She’s pretty shook up.”

“Anyone been to see her?” Josie asked.

“No. She told me about finding the body. I told her she needs to talk to you. Tell you what she knows, but I don’t expect you’ll get much from her.”

“Did she give you any details?” Josie asked.

“No, nothing like that. She looks scared to death, though.”

“Any idea where the boyfriend is?” Otto asked.

“Nope.”

Vie pointed and they all walked down the hallway. She stopped in front of Cassidy’s room with her hand on the door. “I told her we need to keep her under observation until supper time.”

Josie nodded and looked at Otto. “Good. That’ll give us a chance to check her car out before she leaves.”

Vie pushed the door open into a dimly lit room with two patient beds in the middle of various monitors and pieces of medical apparatus. In the first bed, Cassidy lay flat on her back staring up at the ceiling. Her face and arms were sunburnt, and her pretty red ringlets were matted around her head. She looked far older than her twenty-two years. She turned her head slowly in their direction.

Josie approached her first. “Vie tells us you’re going to be okay. You had us pretty scared for a while.”

Cassidy lifted the corner of her lip in a weak attempt at a smile.

“Do you remember us carrying you out?” Josie asked, trying to get her to relax.

Cassidy shook her head no, and then her attention shifted to Otto, who folded the flap back on his notebook and clicked a pen open.

Otto noticed her watching him. “It’s okay, kid. We just need to ask you a few questions about this afternoon.”

“What were you doing out in the desert in this kind of heat?” Josie asked. She kept her tone kind rather than accusatory.

Another shoulder shrug.

“Were you hiking?”

Cassidy looked at Josie as if deciding how to answer. “Not really. I just wanted to be outside.” Her tone was soft and timid.

“How did you end up off Scratchgravel?” Josie asked.

She shrugged again, and when Josie continued to wait for an answer she finally said, “It just looked like an okay spot.”

“For what?”

Cassidy looked confused for a moment. “For being outside.”

“Couldn’t you have gone outside at your own home?”

“Not really. We live in town. We don’t really have a yard. It’s—” She hesitated. “The grass is all dead. It isn’t very pretty.”

“How did you find the body?” Josie asked.

A shrug. “I just saw it. I was walking and I smelled something. It was awful, then I saw something behind a bush. When I saw the body, I got dizzy. Then I don’t remember anything. I guess I blacked out.”

Josie glanced back at Otto, who nodded to let her know he was getting everything. “You’re saying you were just out walking in the desert on a day supposed to hit 104 degrees?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

She shrugged.

Josie tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Do you know who the man was?”

Cassidy opened her mouth slightly as if she couldn’t believe the question. “You couldn’t even tell who he was. He was—” She stopped and shuddered, then closed her eyes and turned her head away.

Josie adjusted her gunbelt and stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed. “Cassidy, I’m trying to understand why I found you lying beside a dead body. Can you help me out here?”