Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(4)
Cassidy’s long red hair hung in ringlets around her face. Sweat stung her eyes. Riding a wave of nausea she had a clear vision of her blistered body passed out beside the decaying corpse in front of her. Stray flies buzzed from the corpse toward her face in search of new prey. She watched the sand in front of her begin to move like ocean waves.
*
Josie pushed her sunglasses on to avoid increasing the spray of wrinkles around her eyes. At her age, the desert sun was just beginning to take a toll on her skin. She wore her brown shoulder-length hair straight, usually pulled back into a ponytail, which did nothing to soften her angular cheekbones and jawline. While on duty, Josie wore nothing that would draw attention to her physical appearance or gender.
She turned south onto Scratchgravel Road, toward River Road, which ran a parallel course with the Rio Grande. The river served as the fragile border between West Texas and Mexico. Across the river was Piedra Labrada, Artemis’s sister city. The fifty-mile strip of land on either side of the river was known locally as the territory, a once-quiet area where two cultures had shared their differences peacefully for several hundred years. The cartels had recently chosen Artemis as their route into the United States, a disaster that taxed local law enforcement beyond all available resources. Since the Medrano and La Bestia cartels had begun negotiating over territory and drug routes in the area rather than killing each other over it, her small town of Artemis, Texas, had settled back into an uncomfortable peace. People wanted to believe the brutality was over, but the memories were fresh; the fear still dominated conversations at the diner and gas stations. She knew the peace was nothing more than temporary.
Josie made a habit of climbing the fifty-foot-tall watchtower built alongside the river at least once a week at various times of day and night to keep an eye on several hot spots for illegal crossings. She looked for signs on the ground: trash bags, discarded clothing, empty water bottles—all trash left behind by illegals lightening their load as they made their way across the desert. A shallow bend in the Rio Grande had been a recent crossing point for the Medrano cartel’s gun and drug running, but Josie hoped the entrance point had been shut down with the arrests of several high-ranking leaders.
About a half mile before reaching the watchtower she spotted a light blue economy-sized car parked on the east side of the road. As she approached, she made out Texas plates. The car looked as if it had lost at a game of bumper cars; there were multiple dents, faded paint, a smashed left taillight, and a loose right fender. Josie thought the car looked like Cassidy Harper’s, a girl who had worked as a fill-in janitor at the Artemis Police Department for a few months last year. Josie had liked the girl and had offered her some advice that Cassidy seemed to want but never followed. Josie met Cassidy’s type frequently; many of the people she arrested weren’t bad, they just made horrible choices.
Josie parked behind the vehicle and surveyed the area, scanning for movement. She saw no one. She walked around the car and found all of the windows up and the car doors locked. A woman’s yellow tote bag lay on the backseat and about a dozen music CDs were scattered over the passenger seat in the front. Nothing looked tampered with. It looked as if she had parked and taken off hiking on a day forecast to hit 104 degrees.
Josie called the plate in to Lou and climbed onto the hood of her jeep, and then the roof, to view the area. A quarter mile east of her jeep she saw two shapes that she was certain were not native. The shapes were in the midst of a group of bushes so she was not able to distinguish what they were, but the coloring was off. She could make out bright yellow, and a patch of navy blue, neither of which were colors found in the desert in late July.
Worried the shapes could be people suffering from heat exhaustion, Josie climbed down from her vehicle to grab a small pair of binoculars from her glove box. Lou radioed back confirmation that the car belonged to Cassidy Harper: twenty-two years old, red hair, brown eyes, five foot four, 119 pounds, a resident at 110 River Road in Artemis. Josie told her to send Otto her way for assistance, and then got back up on the roof of her car.
She yelled Cassidy’s name twice, but saw no movement through her binoculars.
With her heart pounding now, Josie climbed back down, slid inside her jeep, and threw it into four-wheel drive. She could think of no rational reason for Cassidy to be outside. She’d lived in Artemis long enough to know this kind of heat killed in a hurry.
Resisting the urge to floor it, she drove slowly into the desert, feeling her way, sensing the movement of the tires in the sand beneath her. There were areas she wouldn’t take the jeep, even in four-wheel drive, because the sand was so soft the tires would get buried. Having never driven off-road in this area, she advanced carefully.
Josie rarely became emotionally tangled with other people’s lives but occasionally her guard slipped. Cassidy had remained in Josie’s thoughts since leaving the department. The girl lived her life by being at the wrong place at the wrong time and Josie often wondered about the situation with her boyfriend. She hoped it hadn’t just ended in tragedy.
About fifty feet from what she was now certain were bodies, Josie felt the sand give way under her tires. Rather than chance getting the jeep buried, she grabbed her water bottle from the center console and opened the door, leaving the jeep and its air conditioner running. She pulled her gun and ran toward the bodies.
As she approached it was obvious she was facing the possibility of two dead. She found Cassidy, lying on her side, her face in the sand. Josie glanced at the body lying ten feet to the left of Cassidy but didn’t bother checking vital signs. The man was already dead: swollen, deteriorating, and smelling rank. He had been there a few days. Even with the decomposition she could tell he was not Cassidy’s boyfriend.