“The doctor won’t tell us. Patient confidentiality. We’ll have to wait on her to offer that kind of information,” Josie said.
“Cowan also confirmed time of death was what he originally thought. She’d been lying in the desert for two days. The official time of death is now ten p.m., but it’s obviously an estimate.”
Josie raised her eyebrows in surprise. “We had originally thought it happened during the day, and we were surprised Dell hadn’t heard the shots.” She pulled her calendar up on her phone to look at the date. “That was the night of the water meeting. Dell and I had come into town together. It was a special session that everyone in town knew was going to get heated and would probably last for hours. Which it did,” Josie said.
“So maybe the killer is someone who knows you well enough to figure you’d be at that meeting,” Marta said.
“And they took advantage of you and Dell both being gone,” Otto said.
They sat for a moment, trying to decide if the new information changed the course of the investigation. Otto finally moved on. “Was the psychiatrist able to share anything?”
“Her name is Isabella Dagati,” Josie said. “Lou is running a search for her name. We still don’t know where she’s from. She may be bilingual, Spanish and English.”
“That’s more than I thought we’d get today,” he said.
“There’s more,” Josie said. “The doctor said she repeated the words Josie and help multiple times. He interpreted it to mean that she went to my house, seeking help.”
Otto frowned. “Not that you had provided her help at your house, and she was just repeating that you’d helped her?”
“That’s exactly what I thought. The doc said that considering her body language and facial expressions he thought she came to me for help.” Josie paused. “He said she viewed me as a kind of savior.”
Otto’s eyebrows shot up.
“It makes sense to me that she would latch on to you like that,” Marta said. “You were her savior. You finally put an end to the nightmare she’d been living for days. But it seems like a big jump for the psychiatrist to conclude that she was seeking you out specifically, if she can’t even talk much yet.”
“I agree. Without having been in the room, it’s hard to know how he came up with that idea.”
“Brazen is a respected psychiatrist. He works with PTSD. I don’t think he’d make a statement like that if he wasn’t confident in his assessment,” Otto said.
“So let’s take the information at face value. What does that tell us?” Marta said.
“Here’s the way I see it. The women were either traveling with a man or a group, probably held against their will. At least one of the women was raped multiple times. We can assume things got bad enough that the women planned an escape. Someone gave them my name and told them where I live. They crossed the border and came to my house for help. Whoever they were with crossed the border, hunted them down, and killed one of the women. The men came back to the place where they killed her, searching for the one who escaped. That’s when Nick and I heard the car and discovered the woman on my porch.”
Otto nodded and asked, “What about security at the trauma center?”
“I’m working with the sheriff to make sure we have someone posted there twenty-four/seven,” Josie said.
“Someone had to tell the two women who you are, and give them directions. Who would do that?” asked Marta. “If someone locally had found the women, they would have contacted you. They would have helped the women to safety.”
“Maybe somebody helped them from across the border. Someone in Piedra Labrada gave them my name.”
“Could be a human trafficking situation gone bad,” Otto said.
“I met with Jimmy Dixon from Border Patrol earlier today. He said there was a trafficking outfit that moved women from Guatemala through El Paso. It got busted last year. He’s checking into recent activity,” Josie said. “I also talked to Selena Rocha.”
Marta nodded. “The hairdresser from Venezuela. Did she have anything?”
“She said if the girls are truly part of a human trafficking scheme, that this wasn’t the destination. They would have been headed to San Antonio, Houston, Dallas.”
“Sure. Makes sense,” Marta said.
“Maybe the women heard about a female cop and came to you for help,” Otto said, pointing at Josie.
Josie nodded. “It makes sense. I’ll call Sergio and see if he has any ideas.”
Sergio Pando was a Mexican Federales officer who grew up with Marta in Mexico. His wife was killed ten years ago, an innocent bystander caught in the middle of cartel warfare. His life now revolved around his high school–aged daughter, keeping her safe in a world gone crazy.
Josie put her desk phone on speaker. “Sergio, this is Josie Gray.”
“Josie! It’s good to hear from you.”
“How are you? How’s your daughter?”
“I’m good.” He laughed. “And my daughter is a senior in high school now. She has turned into what you call a social butterfly.”