Wrecked (Josie Gray Mysteries #3)(5)
She unlocked the wooden door and flipped on the lights to her right. Several rows of fluorescent bulbs hummed to life. Josie shared a space the size of an elementary school classroom with the other two officers in the department: Otto Podowski and Marta Cruz. The office was divided into fourths, with a metal desk, trash can, and two-drawer filing cabinet taking up three of the corners and a large wooden conference table for interviews and department meetings in the remaining one. Windows covered the back wall, letting in the light and a wide view of the desert that Josie loved, as well as the radiant heat that made the room nearly impossible to cool.
Josie’s desk was at the front, next to the conference table. She pitched her keys on her desk and walked to the back of the office for the coffee pot and filter basket, which she then took to the bathroom located off one of the room’s back corners. She washed them out and filled the pot with water, fulfilling her first morning task. As she pulled the lid off the can of Folgers, Otto walked into the office.
“Morning.”
“Morning, Otto.” She watched him lay a plate covered with plastic wrap onto her desk.
“Delores made your favorite. Sticky buns. Still warm from the oven.”
Josie thought about the omelet and toast, and now the sticky bun she would eat. She would need an extra evening at the fitness center that week to make up for it.
“That sounds wonderful. Make sure you tell her thanks.”
Otto patted his stomach. He was at least fifty pounds heavier than the department weight limit allowed. “She tells me I have to lose weight, and then makes the most amazing sweets any man could ever ask for. What am I to do?”
“We’ll order salad for lunch.”
He made a dismissive snort. “I’m headed out. The high school was vandalized last night. School’s out for spring break, so some kid got bored and spray-painted cuss words on the building.” Otto adjusted his gun belt under his midsection. “What time is Marta on?”
Josie looked at the schedule she kept at the corner of her desk. “She comes in at three thirty.”
“Good enough. I’ll be back before lunch.”
Marta Cruz was the third officer in the three-person department. Josie and Otto typically worked the day shift, and Marta worked seconds. They rotated nights on weekends and worked with the sheriff’s department to make sure there was at least one law enforcement vehicle on the road at all times. As they operated in the most isolated county in Texas, manpower and resources were insufficient, often blurring the lines between the Arroyo County Sheriff’s Department and the Artemis Police Department. Sheriff Roy Martínez’s primary concern was running the jail, and he relied on the Artemis Police Department to take a good number of his calls. With a population just over twenty-five hundred, Artemis was still the largest city in the county. Given that the county had an average of only two people per square mile, taking calls on a busy night was often a difficult task.
*
Josie started her day drafting a memo to a group of five police chiefs who served small towns along the West Texas border. The group had been formed two years ago to address the issues that affected the citizens living along the strip of land the locals called the territory. It covered three hundred miles of West Texas border, from El Paso south to the end of Big Bend National Park, and was increasingly serving as a portal into the United States for drug runners. The major players in the drug wars in northern Mexico changed too frequently for local authorities to stay well informed, so the police departments in the region had banded together to share intelligence, and when necessary, resources. It was Josie’s turn to compile an intel briefing, summing up the news she’d learned over the past two weeks.
After another hour finishing up a case report, she determined that Marta had been allowed the requisite eight hours of sleep, and called her for a briefing on the mayor’s story about Roxanne Spar.
“The mayor came by my house this morning before work,” Josie said. “Claims Roxanne Spar came by the PD and filed a report on him last night.”
Marta laughed. “He is unbelievable!”
“He gave me some lame story. Then he asked me to lose the paperwork.”
“There’s no paperwork to lose. Roxanne didn’t file charges.”
“How’d the mayor find out so fast?” Josie asked.
“No idea. Didn’t come from me.”
“So if she didn’t want to file charges, then what was her complaint?”
“She claims the mayor showed up at Whistler’s a month ago, and he’s been several times since. She’s good with that, talks her up all night long. Big tipper. The problem is, he’s followed her home several times. And it’s freaking her out.”
“The mayor claims Roxanne asked him to follow her home the first time. He says he did her a favor.”
“Oh, no,” Marta said. “That’s not her story. And I really can’t imagine why she’d lie about this. She said she doesn’t want him to get into trouble. She doesn’t want people to find out about this. She was adamant we keep this confidential.”
“What did she want then?”
“She wants us to talk to him. Let him know Roxanne wants him to back off,” Marta said.
“We’re not a counseling service.”
“I get that. She’s thinking, because he’s the mayor, he has a lot of pull, knows a lot of people.”