The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(73)
Otto smirked. “Think he’s here to apologize for hanging you out to dry? Probably here to save his hind end before word gets out to his voters.”
Moss flung the door open, knocking it against the wall, then faced Josie and Otto, hands on his hips. “I had the National Guard here! I had everything taken care of! You didn’t have to lift a wretched finger, but you go and get the warden from the federal penitentiary involved. It was a complete embarrassment!”
Josie stared, too shocked to respond.
He pointed a finger at her. “This wasn’t any of his concern. And who the hell gave you the authority to contact him behind my back?”
“You are way out of line,” she said, her voice controlled.
His face grew redder, and he kicked the side of her metal desk. “I’ll have your badge for this. You’ve got us plastered all over the news—again! Farmers sitting on top of their barns with shotguns one day. You killing Mexicans the next. It looks like I don’t have any control over my own damned town!”
Josie took a deep breath and willed her blood flow to slow. “Let me tell you the way I see it.”
Moss ignored her. “How do you expect me to keep this town afloat with this kind of publicity? I got the Town Council on my ass preaching about public relations, and I got you going behind my back starting a war with the Mexican cartels!”
“You had no business arranging security for this town without first consulting the sheriff and me. If you don’t like us, then fire us, but don’t sabotage the job we’re trying to do. Not right now.”
He kicked her desk again, leaving a sizable dent this time, and pointed a finger inches from her face. “Don’t tell me how to run my office!”
Otto stood up from his desk. “You either lower your voice and speak in a respectful manner or you leave this office immediately. Chief Gray doesn’t deserve that kind of talk.”
Moss’s face puckered. He looked ready to throw a punch at Otto, but instead turned and walked to the back of the office and looked out the picture window at the small subdivision and gray desert beyond.
Josie talked to the mayor’s back. “Here’s the way I see it: Two assassins broke into my home while I was asleep and nearly killed me. They destroyed my bedroom and threatened my life. They made it very clear that they were going to kill me if their men weren’t set free. And you knew all this! You knew the danger I was in and yet you allowed these prisoners to stay in our jail even though transport was available through Escobedo.”
He turned from the window and faced her, his expression incredulous. “I had it taken care of! That’s what the Guard was for!”
“We didn’t need to wait for the Guard. We had a better solution available!” Josie said.
“I wasn’t going to request that a National Guard unit come all the way to our town, then turn around and send them away because you got a better deal somewhere else. We needed to at least make use of them for a day,” Moss said. “What happens next time we call for their help? They’d laugh us off.”
Otto looked at Josie and shook his head slowly, trying to signal her to keep her temper in check.
Josie’s voice dropped. She was so angry, her hands were shaking. “You’re telling me that you left four known assassins in our jail as a public relations move? You left them there so you wouldn’t look bad?”
Moss said nothing, but he stared at her as if turning her words over in his mind.
She went on. “It wasn’t just my life at stake. It was every one of the employees walking through that jail yesterday. You saw the catastrophe they sent down on that transport van yesterday. If we hadn’t moved those prisoners when we did, it’s hard telling what kind of disaster you’d be dealing with today.”
Moss shook his head and walked by Otto and Josie without a word. He slammed the door behind him, rattling the glass. They looked at each other, listening to his cowboy boots banging down the stairs.
“What do you do with information like that?” Otto said finally. “The people of this town ought to know the kind of yahoo they elected into office.”
“He operates inside the margins, but just barely.”
“You think he’s mixed up with Red’s death? With Medrano?”
“I don’t know.” Josie shook her head. “Here’s what bothers me, though. We know Deputy Bloster was cooking the books. He was submitting a vague expense summary directly to the commissioners. The sheriff provided Dillon a whole box of receipts and paperwork that Bloster had cooked, but before that, all those doctored receipts never left his own office. They didn’t have to. The commissioners never asked for them. The city police? We have to submit a detailed expense report with receipts attached. Is it that Moss hates me and wants to make my life miserable? He figures a good ole boy like Martínez would never screw the city? Or is Moss in on the scheme?”
FIFTEEN
Standing at the bathroom sink, putting on mascara, Pegasus was thinking about her brother. She wondered if he had left town and was thinking he was a son of a bitch for not calling her first, when she heard banging on the outside of the trailer by the living room door. She put her makeup down and grabbed the pistol she kept by her bedside table. She popped the magazine into the gun and advanced a bullet, then leaned against the wall in the kitchen to peer out the side of the curtains. She saw a man flattened against the side of the trailer beside the door and grinned. Kenny was checking out her response.