Josie started to nod her head slowly and gave him the knowing look of someone who just caught on to the game. “I know what it was. I bet you wanted to talk to me about the two women you transported from Guatemala. Was that it?”
“No! We had nothing to do with that!”
“Macey, help us out here,” Otto said. “We know about the trafficking. We just need some information from you.”
Again, wide-eyed innocence.
“Tell us about those two women. How did they end up here in Artemis?” he said.
“It wasn’t our fault!” she said. Her voice was a high-pitched whine. “You need to go talk to Ryan Needleman. He’s the man you need. Not us.”
“How do you know him?” Otto asked.
“We know him from around town,” Macey said.
“What does he have to do with the women from Guatemala?” he said.
“We just heard he was driving some people up. He asked us to help but we didn’t want to get involved.”
“You mean, you didn’t want to get involved with the woman’s murder?” Otto asked.
“With none of it,” Macey said.
Her facial expression didn’t change at the word murder. Josie had no doubt the two were involved.
Otto stood, moved behind his chair, and gripped the back of it. He scowled angrily at both of them. Josie was always surprised when Otto took this role in an interview. He was such a kind, generous man; to see him turn dark and angry was unsettling.
He stared at one, and then the other, finally landing on Josh. “Let me tell you something.” His voice dropped an octave and landed into a quiet threatening zone. “We found a young woman, shot in the back and left to die. Her friend slept in Chief Gray’s shed for days and is terrified now. I will catch who did this. So you can either stay out of a lot of trouble now and come clean with us, or you can wait and pay full price with jail time later.”
Josh cleared his throat and Macey looked at him in a panic.
“We’ll think about—”
Macey cut him off. “We got nothing to say because we did nothing wrong.”
Josie stood and laid her business card on top of a piece of mail. “You think it over. Our deal stands until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. After that? You’re on your own.”
*
Back outside, Josie motioned for Otto to climb into her jeep instead of taking his own vehicle.
Otto slammed the door and said, “I wish we had something more recent on him. I’d love to take that kid to jail.”
“You know Ryan Needleman?”
“The name’s familiar,” he said.
“He just graduated high school last year. Played sports. He was a hothead, got into trouble for fighting. His dad told me he got thrown out of college the first week of school for beating up some kid in the dorm. Still hard to figure how he’d go from college in August to transporting women from Guatemala to Artemis two months later.”
“How would the Mooneys connect with him?” he asked.
“He probably bought dope off them. Now he’s their scapegoat.”
“You got something in mind?”
“Let’s get to him before somebody tips him off. His dad told me he’s working over at the landscape place,” she said. “Maybe he can give us something on the Mooneys.”
*
Turf and Annuals was a landscaping company that specialized in helping West Texans grow grass and flowers that normally weren’t seen in a desert climate. When the economy tanked, so did its business, but it had started to pick back up again. Josie had been a customer for years and knew the owner, Lisa Spinner, well.
Driving down the gravel lane, Josie pointed to the variety of pine trees on either side.
“Lisa got a research grant and uses some kind of experimental underground irrigation system that taps into groundwater supply.”
“They got a heck of a place here in the middle of the desert,” Otto said.
They parked in a gravel lot that fronted five large greenhouses and a log cabin office. On the other side of the lot, several Bobcats and backhoes were running, scooping mulch and digging trees. Josie parked in front of the office and found Lisa inside on the phone. She told whoever she was talking with to hang on and covered the receiver with her hand. “What can I do for you, Chief?”
“I’m looking for Ryan Needleman. He working today?”
Lisa frowned and drew her eyebrows together. “He is. He in trouble?”
“No. I just have a couple questions. You care if I talk to him for just a minute?”
“Not at all.”
The woman ended her phone call and radioed Ryan to come in off the Bobcat to talk to Josie.
*
Josie and Otto stood outside the office and waited for Ryan. He parked the Bobcat and was wiping his hands on his jeans as he reached them. It was almost four in the afternoon, but the sun was still bright, and he squinted at them. Josie thought he looked wary, like he was waiting for the handcuffs to appear, but she figured it wasn’t often that a uniformed cop pulled you off your work duty simply to talk.
She put her hand out and he shook it as they introduced themselves.
“I talked to your boss, so she knows we’re here to see you. I let her know you aren’t in any trouble. We just have a few questions for you. That okay?”