Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(18)

He took a deep breath and blew it out in frustration. “What were you doing on Scratchgravel Road, in the middle of nowhere, passed out by some dead guy? That deserves an answer.”

Her attention remained on the rain. Numbness ran through her entire body. She felt it all the way to the middle of her brain. He had to know that she knew about his conversation the other night. Or, maybe he suspected she knew much more than she did. She wondered if her own life was in danger. She forced words out of her mouth. “I felt like getting out and walking. I just took a walk.”

“And ended up by a dead man.”

She didn’t respond.

Leo slammed on the brakes. Cassidy’s body jerked forward and she threw her hands out to keep from hitting the dash. The car fishtailed on the wet pavement and stopped in the middle of the road. She looked forward and backward and saw no other cars, but she knew it wouldn’t have bothered Leo if there were.

He turned his body toward her and squeezed her sunburned arm. She cried out in pain.

“What the hell is wrong with you! I won’t put up with this shit. I don’t like it when I can’t trust you.”

Tears stung her eyes. They were a defense she used with him that often worked. Now she cried openly, swearing to him that she just went outside to walk.

A car slowed to ask if they needed assistance, and Leo waved them on. He let go of her arm and started toward home again, leaving his questions unanswered. Cassidy’s head throbbed, and she wondered how she could force herself to climb into the same bed with him that night.

*

A glass entrance door opened between two large windows in the front of the Artemis Police Department. Inside, the brown-paneled office was narrow and deep. The receptionist/dispatcher area snugged in behind a waist-high counter that kept the general public just out of reach. Behind the dispatcher and her computer and radios were two metal desks used for officer intakes and interviews. Beyond the desks were a dozen filing cabinets against the wall on either side of the room, and the flags of the United States, Texas, and Artemis in the rear corner. A set of stairs in the back led upstairs to one small unused room and a large classroom-sized room that held desks for the two officers and the chief of police. A wooden conference table was located in front of the entrance to the office. When Josie became chief she declined the use of the small private office in favor of working in the same room as Otto and Marta.

Josie and Otto arrived back at the police department at eight o’clock that night. Otto stayed downstairs to discuss information Lou had for him on an ongoing burglary investigation. Josie found Marta at her desk upstairs. She was on the phone, but turned and waved hello at Josie when she entered.

Josie hung her dripping rain slicker on a hook in the back of the office and poured a cup of burnt coffee. A small table with a coffeemaker and condiments sat under one of the large plate-glass windows. The view from upstairs was one of her favorite lookouts in Artemis. Even on a gloomy rainy night she could picture the neighborhood behind the police department, lined with colorful small adobe homes with postage-stamp lawns filled with tricycles and toys and plastic swimming pools. On most spring and summer days kids bicycled endless laps around the block while men worked under the hoods of cars and women tended to small backyard gardens, fussing at the kids and gossiping with friends over the fence. As a girl, growing up without a father, Josie had imagined herself in a home just like the ones she stared at; she had imagined herself married with two kids by this point in her life, but the happily-ever-after had proven elusive.

Josie sat at her desk and watched Marta finish her phone conversation. She looked bad; her eyes were tired and her cheeks sagged. Marta wiped perspiration from her forehead as she hung up the phone even though the room was cool and damp from the rain.

She opened the notepad in front of her and flipped through a few pages of notes. “I called Border Patrol. Talked to Jimmy Dare. He doesn’t know anyone using that area as a crossing point right now. And no missing persons fit the victim’s description.”

Josie nodded. “I don’t think he was crossing the border.”

Otto entered the office and said hello to Marta, then sat down at his computer and hit the power button.

Josie continued, “It’s an odd one. The body was already decomposing, but we should still get a decent autopsy. Cowan’s guessing he was in his sixties. Hispanic. Nicely dressed. Western shirt and nice belt, jeans, and work boots. Expensive knife in his pocket. No luggage or extra bags. He had some money in his wallet, but his wallet was gone.”

“How do you know there was money if the wallet was gone?” Marta asked.

“Guess where we found the wallet?” Otto asked.

“No clue.”

“In the backseat of Cassidy Harper’s car,” he said.

Marta groaned.

Josie nodded and sat down at her desk. “Doesn’t know how the wallet got into her car.”

“And the boyfriend doesn’t want her talking to the police,” Otto said.

“She claims she went hiking because she wanted to be outside. She just happened to find a dead man. Then we search her locked car and find a man’s wallet lying on the floor of her backseat,” Josie said.

“She says she’s never seen it,” Otto said.

Marta rolled her eyes. “Of course not.”

Josie pitched her pen on her desk, frustrated with Cassidy’s unwillingness to help herself.