His hands rose again in a conciliatory gesture. He clearly realized his excuses were getting him in deeper, not providing the alibi he was moving closer to needing.
“I’m just saying that I was at the party with another guy, and the freak brother and sister came up to me. They were like, Hey, we heard you got kicked out of school. You want to earn a few bucks driving a van full of girls from Guatemala to the U.S.? We’ll teach you how to drive the van, and that’s it. The trip should take a week total and you make two thousand bucks.” He shrugged, as if saying, What else was I supposed to say? Easy money.
“So you drove to Guatemala, just like that?” she said.
“Well, no, it was more detailed than that. Macey explained everything a hundred times. Who, what, where, and when. She drilled it into my head. And then she’d say, ‘And you don’t need to know why. MYOB.’ I’d think, Really? Is this junior high? You’re paying me two thousand dollars and telling me to MYOB? Whatever. The money was good and I needed it. That’s all I know.”
“You know a lot more than that,” Josie said. “You transported two women who endured horrific crimes.”
“I don’t know anything about any crimes. I just drove the van.”
“What kind of van?”
“One of those ugly ones with bench seats. Me and Josh took turns driving. We drove sixteen hours a day. Those were the rules. I drove eight and he drove eight.”
“What city did you pick the women up in?”
“I don’t know. All I know is we were in Guatemala. I don’t speak Spanish. I couldn’t read the signs. There were guys driving in trucks with machine guns wearing face masks. It looked like a war zone. It was like nowhere I’ve ever been. And Josh is a complete idiot. I was sure we were all gonna die before we got out of there. I just drove where he told me to.”
“How many people were you transporting?” she asked.
“There were five women. And Josh and me.”
Josie felt nausea well up in her stomach. Five women. So where were the other three?
“Josh drove too?” she asked.
“Yeah, he did! And then he tries to sell me out. The guy is an idiot.”
“So you and Josh were the only men on the trip?” she asked, surprised at the implication of that.
“Yes.”
“Where are the other three women you transported?” she asked.
He put his hands up in the air. “I don’t know. I swear. I drove to Piedra Labrada, and Josh took it from there.”
“Why didn’t you finish the trip with him?” she asked.
“I didn’t have my passport to get back in the country. Josh had it and we got into a fight. He wouldn’t give it back to me, so I just crossed on my own.”
“Help me out here, Ryan. We’re talking about five women. One of those women is dead, the other is traumatized. We need to find out where those other three women are.”
“I swear, I don’t know. When I left, the five women were all with Josh. He was going to get the van across somehow. I don’t even know how. He wouldn’t tell me. I just hiked out of the city and crossed the river by foot on my own.”
There were several issues they could have pushed with Ryan, but she wanted the leverage for later. No sense showing her hand just yet.
Josie held out her card and Ryan took it, seeming shocked that the meeting was ending.
“You go home and think about all of this. You may decide you want to come talk to us before this gets much further. You might do yourself a big favor in the end.”
They walked away at that point, leaving him standing there with Josie’s card, completely unstrung. When they got into Josie’s jeep, she started it but didn’t move.
“That’s a shocker,” Otto said. “I don’t see Josh as a rapist.”
“That just leaves Ryan.”
“You think we ought to take him in now, while he’s nervous? He may get counsel and freeze up,” Otto said.
Josie watched him climb back up on the Bobcat and turn the machine away from them. “I don’t know. It’s a gamble. I’d like to think he may realize the trouble he’s in and offer up Josh. We can play one against the other before the attorneys take over.”
“Or he’ll talk to his parents and get an attorney tonight and we’ll get nothing. We could go over and ask him to take a ride with us to the station, Mirandize him, and hope he talks because he’s so worried about everything.”
“We don’t have anything concrete to bring him in on. The rape? I think it’s a stretch between knowing the dead female was raped, and attaching that to Ryan. Who knows what else may have happened on that trip?” she said. “Maybe Josh brought someone else in to help after Ryan left.”
“We need a statement from Isabella. Immediately.”
“And we need to find out what happened to those other women.”
*