“I just don’t have much intel about this area. Houston, San Antonio, and occasionally El Paso, sure. But not Artemis, out in the middle of nowhere.”
Otto passed a card across the table. “Make sure you give me a call if you hear anything that might help us out.”
Dan nodded and stuffed the card in a wallet packed full of business cards. He was a typical cop, Otto thought—his wallet packed with more work-related notes than payment options.
*
Josie found Lou at her computer, her arms crossed at her chest. “You will not believe this.” It was two o’clock and Lou had just buzzed her desk and said to come down.
“Did you track down the caller?”
“I did.”
Josie waved her hand for Lou to get on with it.
“Josh Mooney.”
Josie pulled back at the name, smiling like she’d heard wrong. “Seriously?”
“Josh Mooney wanted to know your schedule for the week. Told me he was a law officer. And we have it on tape.”
“You are a saint.”
*
Back in the office, she called Otto and explained Lou’s findings.
“That’s the creep that hangs out with his sister all the time?” he asked.
“That’s him. Macey is his sister’s name. We busted them for meth about three years ago.”
Otto laughed. “Oh, hell. I remember that bust. We found both of them in a house trailer. With an afternoon soap opera blaring on the TV.”
“While they were cooking up a batch of meth in the kitchen,” she said.
“Matching Mickey Mouse pajamas.”
“I was afraid to touch anything, even with gloves on. A hazmat suit was in order.”
“How much time they serve?” Otto asked. “Two years?”
“Probably half that.”
He shook his head, obviously disgusted. “You headed to Mooney’s house now?”
“Can you meet me?”
“Yep.”
“I checked the address. They’re renting from Cici Gomez. They’re living above the pawnshop.”
“Well, there’s a shocker. See you there in ten minutes.”
*
Josie drove two blocks to the San Salbo Pawn Shop, located next to the Family Value Store. The pawnshop was owned by Cici Gomez, a longtime drug dealer with multiple arrests on his record for a variety of offenses. Josie had arrested him several years ago for abusing his elderly grandfather, a sweet old Navajo with a heart too tender for his own good. He had refused to press charges against his grandson because of an intense family loyalty that Josie had found maddening. Regardless, she thought Cici was a piece of crap; he’d been out of jail for less than six months and was most likely already up to no good. She wasn’t surprised to hear he had a brother/sister meth duo living above his shop. There were people who were literally too stupid to deserve a place on the planet. She’d probably fry in hell for thinking that way, but it’s how she felt when she had to deal with people like the Mooneys.
The San Salbo Pawn Shop looked like a cheap version of an old western movie set from the fifties, including a fence out front to tie the horses to and a wooden porch with rocking chairs.
But Cici’s good-ole-boy image was nothing more than that. Cici knew the game; he knew how to move in and out of places without being seen. When she thought about Cici, the line in the old Scarface movie with Al Pacino came to mind, the scene when he calls someone a cock-a-roach. That’s how she imagined Cici, crawling along the floorboards in the dirt.
And now Josh and Macey Mooney were running game above Cici’s shop. Parked in front of the store was a banged-up eighties-era orange Chevy Camaro that she recognized as Josh’s drugmobile.
Otto pulled up beside Josie and she got out of her jeep. She felt for the latex gloves in her back pocket, a precaution against whatever nastiness the Mooneys might have inside their apartment.
“Any good news from Dan?” she asked.
“News, yes. Not sure if it’s good yet.” He explained the geography of the transport from Guatemala to West Texas.
“Remember, that’s what Selena said too. She said there wouldn’t be any reason to bring trafficked victims here. And the BP says there’s no reason to even drive through here.”
“So why would the transporters bring the two women on a five-hundred-mile detour from the major cities in Texas to travel through this part of Texas? This doesn’t work as an efficient route,” he said.
“I don’t know. Let’s go jack up Josh and Macey. See why Josh wanted my work schedule.”
“You don’t think they’re out working? At two-thirty on a bright sunny afternoon in the middle of the week?”
“Your sarcasm is getting worse, Otto.”
“Hazard of the job. It’s sarcasm or wild women. I have to get rid of the stress somehow, and you know Delores wouldn’t put up with wild women.”
*