Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(21)
The tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly and he nodded as if he understood and needed to sit back and listen.
“Did she talk with you about what happened yesterday?” Otto asked.
“No.”
Otto pulled his notebook and pen out of his chest pocket. “Here’s the situation. You know Chief Gray?”
Mark nodded. “Sure. Cassidy worked at the police department for a while.”
“Chief Gray saw Cassidy’s car along the side of the road yesterday and stopped to check. She located her about a quarter mile from the road. Found her passed out in the sand, suffering from heat exhaustion.”
Mark’s eyes widened and his face reddened in anger. “What was she doing in the desert? It was over a hundred degrees yesterday!”
“That’s not so much the issue. We found her lying beside a dead body.”
“What?” His expression was incredulous.
Otto put a hand up again. “We don’t think she had anything to do with the man’s death. Apparently she took a walk at a random location on the side of the road. She smelled something, looked around, and saw a body. She passed out. That’s when Josie found her. We carried her out and got her into an ambulance and to the Trauma Center. She’s fine now.”
He paused, allowing Mark a second to consider what he’d heard.
Mark rested both hands loosely in his lap, and stared at Otto, his eyes not blinking. “This is my punishment. This is God making me pay for the grief I gave my own parents.”
He stared for a moment more and Otto sat quietly waiting for the story he was sure would come.
Mark finally leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, avoiding eye contact with Otto. “Pam and I were young when we met. We had Cassidy right away. We experimented with various things—some drugs, alternative lifestyle. Nothing too bad, just trying to figure out life. My family got this crazy idea we were worshiping the devil. We got tired of the BS so we moved to Florida to start over. We finally grew up and decided we were tired of raising Cassidy in poverty. We wanted a better life. She was eight by then, and she’d lived all over the place.” He looked up, his expression pained. “She didn’t exactly have a stable upbringing. Pam and I blame ourselves. It’s like she floats through life with no grounding.”
“Cassidy’s a good kid. Some just take longer to grow up than others.”
“Point taken.” Mark smiled weakly. “But who hikes in the desert on a hundred-degree day and finds a dead body? It’s like—” He gave up, at a loss for words.
“We had the same thought. What bothered us was that she couldn’t answer that question either. It’s the reason I came here today,” Otto said. “I’ve got some concerns about her boyfriend. Nothing I can put my finger on, but I wanted to get your thoughts.”
Otto did not need an answer. Mark had sat up suddenly, and the look on his face was answer enough. “I hate that kid. I wasn’t going to bring him up. I’ve never blamed Cassidy’s bad behavior on her friends. She’s got her own mind. She needs to use it. But, that kid, that man, is not right.”
“Give me an example of not right.”
“In his own mind, he’s brilliant. I guess he was a science professor at Texas A&M before he got fired for sleeping with his students.”
Otto looked surprised. “Cassidy told Josie he got laid off.”
Mark cocked an eyebrow. “Cassidy can believe what she wants, but I know the truth.”
“What’s he do for money meantime?”
Mark’s face reddened again. “My daughter is supporting him. She works as a cashier at the Family Value Store so he can sit on his lazy butt and watch cartoons.”
“You think he might be involved in something illegal? Organized crime, drug running?”
“Hell no, Otto. He’s too lazy to organize anything. Besides, he’s got a girlfriend paying his bills now. What more does he need?”
*
Josie’s morning meeting with Smokey and Sheriff Martínez was canceled. Smokey and the sheriff were helping a tow truck driver pull a stranded pickup truck out of a ditch that was flowing like a river. Martínez told her they had it under control so Josie took the opportunity to stop by the Arroyo County Jail, where Mitchell Cowan’s office was located.
As Josie pulled into the paved parking lot she could barely make out the shape of the brown cinderblock-and-brick building due to the rain pelting her windshield. She parked as close to the entrance as she could and pushed the car door open. She popped her umbrella up, but by the time she reached the awning and pressed the button to be buzzed inside, her uniform pants were soaked.
She walked into a small lobby area furnished with two chairs and a framed picture of the Pledge of Allegiance. A buzzer sounded and a second set of doors opened into a central hub where Maria Santiago, intake officer, smiled warmly and waved hello. The room was octagonal, with Maria in the center surrounded by a bank of desks filled with baskets of paperwork, several phones, and computers—cluttered but organized and neat. The large room was well lit and painted a deep blue with white trim. Several doors led to different areas of the jail such as the booking room, interrogation room, and the prisoner pods. Josie chatted with Maria about the weather for a few minutes before Maria buzzed her through another set of doors to the coroner’s office. Josie walked down a hallway toward the back end of the jail by the basketball court, past several offices and storage rooms to her right.