“What the hell are we going to do?” she said.
“Take it to the prosecutor,” Otto said.
“I think I owe the mayor a conversation about this first.”
Otto frowned. “I don’t think that’s wise. He may be involved, for all we know.”
“Come on, Otto. His wife is a political barracuda. She comes from money and power, and she’s hungry for it. She wants her husband in the senate. But the mayor? I don’t like the man, but I don’t see him in this. Not at all.”
“Okay. Let’s just assume she does rake in two hundred thousand dollars a year, or even fifty thousand. You think she could be making that much money and he doesn’t know about it? Even if she only did it once, she can’t just hide that kind of cash.” His tone was incredulous and he was looking at her with a smile, as if he couldn’t believe her explanation.
“Of course she could hide that kind of cash! Spouses have bank accounts their partners don’t know about. You aren’t that na?ve.”
“You sound like you’re taking up for him.”
“Otto, he’s my boss. It has nothing to do with taking up for him. I just think I owe him the professional courtesy of telling him what we’re going to the prosecutor about. I’d do the same for you.”
He laughed and looked at Marta, who shrugged in response, like she wasn’t getting involved.
“What happens if you tell him and he does something stupid? What if he tells her and she takes off? We lose the person who’s behind all of this.”
“Come on. You know she’s not a flight risk. She’s too public, too proud. She’d fight to defend her name before she ever ran.”
Otto finally threw his hands up to concede the fight. “I think you’re making a mistake, but I’ve said my piece. You do what you have to do.”
The meeting broke up and Josie filed the paperwork with the judge to subpoena the phone records and to get a warrant to access the Web site payment information for John Davis. When she was finally alone in the office that evening she pondered Otto’s comments for some time, and tried to put herself in the mayor’s position. As much as she disliked him, she thought he deserved to hear this from someone other than the Marfa public radio station.
*
When Josie arrived home that night it was almost eleven o’clock and Nick was lying on the couch watching a rerun of some show about living in the Alaskan outback. He sat up when she walked in and patted the seat next to him.
“You look whipped,” he said.
“It was one hell of a day,” she said.
“Want to talk about it?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “I figured as much. Why don’t you go put on something comfortable. I have something to show you.”
Josie kissed him on the cheek and got up, thinking how nice it was to come home to someone who understood she didn’t want to talk through a nightmare most nights. Occasionally, talking helped. Other times, it made a bad day worse.
After she put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, she walked through the living room, then the kitchen, and finally found Nick bent over a dozen candles he was lighting on the back porch. She walked outside and he handed her a tumbler of bourbon.
“Woodford Reserve,” he said.
“Wow. No Old Crow?”
“Only the best for you, baby.”
They clinked glasses and she took several long drinks, enjoying the burn.
They sat on the porch swing and Josie swung her leg over his thigh.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked.
“You are.”
She smiled and realized it was probably the first time she’d smiled all day.
“Why am I an occasion?”
“You’ve had a tough few days. When I didn’t hear anything from you today I figured things got crazy.”
“Without going into the whole mess, I’ll just tell you that the mayor’s wife is who’s behind the trafficking ring.”
He leaned his head against the back of the swing. “Son of a bitch. The mayor?”
“He doesn’t know yet. We just found this out.”
“Think he’s in on it?”
She shrugged off the question. “We’ll know more tomorrow.”
He nodded slowly. “So, speaking of tomorrow.”
“Yeah?” She looked over at him. She could see his tentative grin in the candlelight. She wondered suddenly if there was more to the candles than her bad day.
“Your mom called me today.”
“Called you?”
“When she didn’t hear from you this evening, she called Lou and got my number.”
Josie frowned. “Lou shouldn’t have done that.”
“Don’t get mad at her. It was your mom she was talking to.”
“What did she want?”
“I think she just wanted some reassurance that things were okay. I checked in with Lou and called her back. It was all good.”
“Thanks for doing that,” she said, feeling guilty that she’d not done it herself.
“She also mentioned that you were really busy. And that she was getting stir-crazy sitting at the motel.”