“She’s been admitted to the trauma center for now. They’ll treat her for PTSD, I guess. We don’t have any kind of victims’ assistance here in Artemis, so we’ll have to work with one of the bigger cities to see if she can get help. See if we can find her a place to stay so we can keep tabs on her.” Otto suddenly felt irritable and realized his lack of sleep was catching up with him. “I don’t know. It’s not a good situation.”
“Let her stay here. We’ve got a spare bedroom,” she said.
He sighed and stifled a yawn. “However unlikely, she’s still a suspect in a murder investigation.”
“That’s awfully coldhearted to say, after what she’s been through.”
“Delores, you’ve been married to a cop for too many years to make comments like that. You know very well we can’t take this woman into our home right now.”
“Fine, then. If you won’t let me help this woman, then I’ll be helping out that poor starving cat.”
Otto scooted his chair back and stood. He kissed Delores on the head, thanked her for breakfast—or brunch—and headed down the hallway to drop into bed for a few hours’ sleep. People thought he was married to the sweetest lady in Arroyo County, but she was awfully bossy for someone so sweet.
FIVE
Later that afternoon, after several hours of slogging through paperwork, Josie told Lou she was headed to Marfa to meet with Jimmy Dixon, a Border Patrol Agent with the Big Bend Sector. Agents in the Big Bend Sector were responsible for the entire state of Oklahoma, as well as seventy-seven Texas counties, which included over four hundred miles of the Rio Grande border. While making the thirty minute drive to Marfa, Josie scanned the vast desert that spread out in all directions and thought about the hundreds of miles of unsecured border. Considering the incredible cartel violence in Juárez, Mexico, located just a few hours from Artemis, she marveled that the crime had primarily remained across the border. But she also wondered, as remote as the area was, how much drug smuggling and gunrunning went on completely undetected.
Dixon was standing under the shade of a massive live oak tree on the courthouse lawn talking on his cell phone. He was in his mid-forties, wearing the standard olive-green BP uniform. Jimmy was trim and well turned out: brass polished, uniform starched, and boots shiny. She liked Jimmy, and respected him as a competent officer. He’d asked her out to dinner a few times through the years, but she’d been in a relationship with Dillon Reese. With Dillon out of her life, she hoped Jimmy wouldn’t pursue it. He was attractive and a good guy, but his manic intensity wore her out. She couldn’t handle his energy more than a few hours at a time.
He saw Josie get out of her jeep and waved.
She reached him as he was slipping his phone in the holder on his belt. She held her hand out and they shook. “How’s it going, Josie?” he asked. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too, Jimmy. How’s life in Marfa?”
He motioned toward the park bench under the tree and they both sat down. She listened to his story about a two-hundred-pound load of marijuana they’d confiscated a week ago, and the ensuing chase through the river that brought down the smugglers. Josie laughed at his retelling, full of drama and mishaps.
He finally asked what she’d learned about the body that had shown up in Artemis.
“Did you hear we found the body in the pasture beside my house?” she asked.
He looked shocked. “No kidding?”
Jimmy had been part of the investigating team when the Medrano Cartel had shot up Josie’s bedroom several years ago over a cartel homicide that took place in Artemis.
“What about the other woman that survived?” he asked.
“I found her cowering on my front porch. I suspect she’d been there a day or two.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She lifted her hands. “I know. It sounds absurd. I searched outside this morning when I got home. She’d been staying in the toolshed on the side of my house. I haven’t been in there in a week or so. I don’t know what she was going to do when I finally opened the door and found her.”
“You think she ended up at your house by coincidence?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me,” she said.
Jimmy settled back against the bench and then turned slightly to face Josie without addressing her comment. “You have any leads yet?”
“Nothing. The woman who survived hasn’t spoken a word and neither woman had any identification. Marta is trying to track down the clothing brands to see if we can narrow down a country of origin, but beyond that I’m at a loss. Prints didn’t show up anywhere, and the missing persons databases haven’t matched with two females traveling together.”
“They could have been crossing the border with a larger group too. Gotten separated,” he said.
“I keep going back to the illegal immigrant idea and it just doesn’t fit.” Josie described the vehicle that had been driving by her house the two nights before they discovered the women.
Jimmy nodded as she finished describing the turn of events. “You’re thinking a coyote transporting these women across the border isn’t going to come back for them.”