“Bastard.”
“I talked to the prosecutor this morning about the subpoena. We’ll get his records.”
Otto parked in front of the office, and Ryan walked out with his head hung low. Lisa stood in the office doorway, arms crossed over her chest, obviously irritated. Josie couldn’t blame her. The cops showing up twice in one week didn’t look good for business.
Standing in the shade of the office building, but out of earshot from Lisa, Josie said, “I thought you were being straight with us last night. That was the deal we made. It’s why we cut you loose. Remember that?”
His eyebrows shot up. “I was! I told you the truth!”
“I don’t think so. I think you left out a big piece of the puzzle for us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You told us Josh set you up for the transporting job.”
“He did. I met him at Cici’s party. Lots of people saw us there together.”
“But he didn’t tell you about the job. Someone else did.”
Ryan became very still. Josie thought how similar people were to animals in the way they reacted to fear, as if remaining motionless might somehow hide their guilt.
“Who told you about the job?” she said.
His gaze shifted across the parking lot to the greenhouses, but he said nothing.
“This is a bad idea,” Otto said. “You cooperated last night and you saved yourself a lot of trouble. You don’t want to hold back now.”
The corner of Ryan’s mouth lifted in a humorless smile and he shook his head slowly. “This all started by somebody offering to help me out. Somebody I thought I could trust.”
“How’d that work out for you?” Josie said.
“Not good.”
“Then you’d better come clean with us before this person takes you down with her.”
He looked at Josie then, and she knew she had him. He’d caught the reference to the female.
“She said she’d destroy me if any of this ever got out. That was the exact word she used. Destroy.”
“She’s a criminal, Ryan. Why do you care what she—”
“She’s not a criminal! That’s why I can’t say anything! No one would believe me anyway.”
“If you’re straight with us, it won’t matter who she is. If this woman is transporting women from Guatemala to Texas for a profit, then she’s clearly breaking the law. It’s that simple,” Otto said.
Ryan glared at him and said, “Caroline Moss.”
Josie felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. The mayor’s wife. The woman voted Citizen of the Year for Arroyo County. The same woman who offered to pay for Isabella’s plane ticket to Guatemala.
“You’re saying that Caroline Moss approached you about driving the van to transport those women?” Otto asked.
“See! You don’t believe me! I told you.”
“This is a serious allegation,” he said.
“No kidding! It was serious when she said she’d destroy me too.”
“Why don’t you back up and start at the beginning. When did she contact you? Where were you? You tell us everything you can think of,” Josie said.
He leaned his head back and groaned. “It doesn’t matter what I do. I am so screwed.”
“What did you just tell me last night? You were going to get your act together. This is how you start.”
He blew out air in frustration and kicked at the dirt before he finally opened up. “I’ve known Caroline since I was a kid. She and the mayor are friends with my mom and dad. They do some wine-tasting thing every month together. We’ve been on vacations with them. So when I got in trouble this fall at school she sent me a card and basically told me to hang in there. That it would all work out.”
“When was this?” Josie said.
“A month or two ago. After I left school. Then she stopped by here one day like she was looking around for plants. But I think she came to see me. She said she knew I was having a bad time, and that she had a way for me to earn some extra money to help pay back my parents. I was like, Yeah, that’d be great. It was weird, though. I could tell she was nervous about talking to me. Then she was like, Listen, if you do this, you can’t tell anyone what you’re doing. She told me to come up with a story about helping a friend of mine to move here from Mexico.” Ryan crossed his arms and leaned against the building, his expression unbelieving. “I thought she was shipping dope from Mexico. Then she says it’s girls. She’s helping these girls from Guatemala who have these terrible lives, and she’s figured out how to help them get jobs here.”
“When she was explaining this, did it surprise you that she would ask something like this from you?” Josie asked.