Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(58)
“I think it was the midnight car ride that did it,” Josie said. She turned to Otto. “So, fill us in on the Santiago investigation.”
“I called Cowan yesterday to let him know we think we have the victim’s ID. I told him Santiago’s work records indicate he was forty-four years old. Remember, Cowan first estimated he was closer to sixty. He reexamined everything, including internal organs, and discovered some were decomposing at a faster rate than others.”
Marta frowned. “How does that happen?”
“Cowan thinks he ingested something that ate up his insides,” he said.
“How does that connect with the open sores on his arms?” Josie asked.
“That’s what I wanted to know. Sounds like he got nuked,” he said.
“Like he was over-radiated?” Josie said.
Otto shrugged, his expression skeptical. “Cowan says medical records need to be subpoenaed, but we don’t even know where to start. Our best bet is tracking down his family to see if he was getting chemo or radiation. He claims cancer patients can get sores that won’t heal sometimes.”
Marta winced and shuddered.
“He’s got a call in to Centers for Disease Control this morning,” Otto said. “I have to give him credit. Cowan’s working overtime on this one.”
“Is Lou running down family?” Josie asked.
“Yep. The Feed Plant didn’t have any records outside of his address here in Artemis. Lou’s tracked back a Juan Santiago to four cities in northern Mexico. She’s starting with those families first. See if she can get a match and notify the family. Then she’ll go for medical records.” Otto opened the shoebox in front of him. “I found these at Santiago’s place. His wife’s name is Abella. That’ll help Lou make the connection.”
“That’s great,” Josie said.
“He hasn’t been at his apartment for days. No surprise there. The only thing I found of interest was this box full of letters.” He looked at Marta. “They’re all in Spanish. I can get the gist of the letters, but I’ll need your help.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll get them in order for you first.”
Josie took notes as she talked. “You didn’t find any money? No stash he was hiding to send home?”
“Nothing.”
“Might give us a motive,” Marta said.
Otto shook his head. “That doesn’t work with the body in the desert and the wallet with twenty-four dollars left in Cassidy Harper’s car,” he said.
Josie switched tracks. “I also want to get Dillon to dig up what he can on Diego Paiva. See what kind of records he can find on Beacon.”
“That Paiva seems like a shady character,” Otto said.
“Why? Because he’s smooth and polished?” Josie said.
He considered Josie for a moment, obviously annoyed by her question. “Disingenuous was more what I was thinking. I’m just not sure we can trust him as a reliable source at this point.”
Josie stopped herself from commenting further. Otto was typically a good judge of character, but sometimes he jumped to conclusions about people, and Josie thought he was sometimes led astray by his initial judgment.
SIXTEEN
Otto picked up the shoebox full of letters he had obtained from Santiago’s apartment and sat down at the conference table with a pencil and tablet of paper to take notes. The envelopes were not present, so he was hoping to find mention of cities that would help them find Santiago’s home and family. Otto opened each letter and stacked them on top of each other in the same order they had been inside the box. About half the letters had dates noted in the upper right-hand corner of the paper. The sequence of dates made it obvious that Santiago kept the letters organized, the most recent on top. With Otto’s rudimentary ability to read Spanish he was able to discern that the majority of the letters appeared to have been written by the man’s wife, Abella. Otto pulled the photographs from the bottom of the box and found the black-and-white picture of Santiago and his wife, the sides of their heads touching, squinting and smiling toward the camera. The edges of the photograph were worn from being handled so often. Otto imagined Santiago lying on his back in bed, staring at those pretty smiling eyes, wishing for the day he could return home.
Otto understood the pain of leaving one’s family. When he and Delores left Poland as young newlyweds, he’d been assigned a simple task: attend school in America, become a doctor, and return to the family village a trained physician. At nineteen years of age, with no preparation, no training, no travel experience outside of Poland, and no understanding of the process for acceptance into even the most mediocre of medical schools in America, Otto learned within six months the task his parents had given him was unachievable. He and Delores discovered their limitations together, learned of the betrayal their families felt at their failure, felt the same intense guilt at the shameful waste of their parents’ hard-earned savings, and realized that they had little more in life than their love for each other. They fast learned the lessons of poverty: that life isn’t a journey with options, but rather a ladder to climb day after day, methodically taking one rung at a time.
Otto stared at the photo in his hands and pictured the couch in his comfortable living room, neat and tidy with Delores’s personality touching each pillow and needlepoint and rug, creating a cocoon of warmth he never took for granted. He realized that he’d climbed off the ladder, the one he’d visualized for so many of his younger years, and he’d found his place to rest. And it saddened him that this family would never find that same peace.