Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(97)
Josie patted Otto on the arm. “We’re close.”
“By the time you finish with Cassidy I’ll have paperwork finished for tonight.” He smiled and sighed. “Home is on the horizon.”
*
The interrogation room smelled of sweat and day-old coffee, and the air-conditioning was on the blink. Josie figured it had to have been close to eighty degrees. Cassidy’s face was bright red from the heat and her lingering sunburn, and the curls around her face had turned to frizz. She looked surprised when Josie entered the room, and Josie figured she was waiting for the hammer to drop. Josie, however, was exhausted and too tired for anything but the truth. She pulled the chair out across the table from Cassidy and sat down.
“I suppose you heard,” Josie said.
“Leo’s in jail.”
“What do you think about that?”
Cassidy lifted a shoulder. “When I went to my parents’ house, after I called you? My dad asked me why I keep hooking up with rejects.”
Josie smiled at her dad’s description, but Cassidy’s expression remained serious.
“I keep thinking about that. It wasn’t that Leo was a bad guy.”
Josie groaned and allowed her head to fall forward in frustration.
Cassidy grinned. “Okay, I didn’t mean it that way. In the beginning he wasn’t bad. He was just miserable. And I thought, I can help him feel better. If he just had someone to believe in him, maybe he could get better. Feel good again. You know?”
Josie stared at her, struggling to remain quiet.
“But it didn’t really matter what I did, he was still miserable. I could make a nice dinner, dress up, or lay on the couch and eat potato chips. It didn’t matter. He could fake it, but I could tell, on the inside he still hated himself. And he probably hated me too.”
“What now?”
“I’ll move back in with my parents. Dad said he’d help me find an apartment as soon as we know Leo’s gone for good.”
“There’s little doubt. Leo is gone. At least for now.”
Cassidy nodded. “My dad’s all worried that he’ll come back for me after he gets out of jail. Like some stalker. I tried to explain to him though, Leo doesn’t care about anyone enough to stalk them. He’d probably be happier being the one stalked.”
Josie smiled and thought it was one of the most perceptive things she’d ever heard Cassidy say. There was hope for her after all.
*
Josie finished with Cassidy and found Otto talking with Maria in the command center.
“You get her straightened out?” he asked.
A tolerant smile spread across Josie’s face. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“What about her withholding information?” Otto asked.
“The prosecutor would never press charges against her. I just hope she learns something out of this mess.”
They fell into silence for a moment.
“Are we done here?” he asked.
Josie gave him a weary smile. “I sure hope so. Let’s go home.”
*
It was ten o’clock before Josie finally clocked off and drove toward home. The air outside was damp with the retreating rain, almost balmy. She rolled the windows down and allowed the night air to blow through the jeep. The forecast claimed the rain would subside for the next forty-eight hours, and she hoped it would be enough to allow the flood level in the Rio to drop. For now, it just felt good to be dry.
She left the radio off, preferring silence, and considered her options for the night. She’d already canceled with Dillon. She could eat popcorn and zone out in front of the TV for an hour. Or, she had a new Harlan Coben book on her bedside table she could start. She briefly considered calling her mother, whom she hadn’t talked to in months, but discounted that idea.
Josie craved time alone, but once she got it, the emptiness closed in around her, and the desire to be alone would be replaced by a deep sense of loneliness. She wondered what a shrink might make of her behavior but decided she really didn’t care to know.
She turned onto Scratchgravel, heading toward Schenck Road, and saw the dark shadow of the watchtower in the distance. As she drove closer she spotted a car parked on the side of the road, in roughly the same place she had found Cassidy Harper’s car a week before. She felt a heaviness overtake her. She was too exhausted to deal with more drama. She pulled her jeep behind the car, her headlights revealing Teresa Cruz’s little white Honda Civic. Josie sighed heavily and turned her jeep’s engine off. She grabbed her flashlight, checked her sidearm, got out of the vehicle, and locked up. She shone her flashlight in and around the car and saw no signs of disturbance, and then picked up a single set of footprints in the wet sand leading out toward the direction the body had been found. A nauseating sense of déjà vu came over her.
Josie called in her location to Brian, the night dispatcher, and took off walking toward the grove of bushes. It occurred to her that Teresa might be visiting the Hollow, the doper hangout, but the kids parked their cars in an off-road arroyo to keep from being seen. If she was partying, Josie assumed Teresa wouldn’t be na?ve enough to park her car on the side of the road.
As she walked toward the bushes she was thinking through the information that had been made public. Very few people knew the location of the body. She couldn’t imagine why Marta would have told her daughter, or what connection Teresa could possibly have had with the dead man.