Josie parked her jeep in front of her house and saw Chester loping down the lane from Dell’s house, his ears flying out behind him like a little girl’s pigtails. He tumbled into her, whining and wagging his tail like he’d not seen her in weeks. He followed her inside the house and she went to the pantry to get his rawhide chew, even though it was only lunch and not yet time for a chew. Chester settled onto his rug in the living room, and she slipped it between his paws.
Back in the kitchen pantry, she took off her gun belt and hung it on its designated hook, staring at the hole where her gun should have been holstered. She shut the door and wandered through the house doing all the things she did every day when she came home, but she was operating on autopilot.
In the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror and ran her fingertip over the tiny holes where her badge had pierced her uniform that morning. Who am I if I’m not a cop? she wondered. Otto’s words played through her mind again and again. We got nothing. She realized this went beyond a stupid move on her part, and could end with her losing her job. It was no secret the mayor didn’t think a female should hold the job of chief, and he seemed to especially dislike Josie.
Losing the one constant in her life, the part that gave her a sense of purpose, was unthinkable. Gazing in the mirror, she watched her fingers unbutton the uniform shirt and then she dropped it on the floor. She looked at her weary eyes in the mirror and tried to identify some emotion inside of her that she could latch on to. All she felt was numb. We got nothing.
She finally picked up the shirt and hung it in her bedroom closet. She put on shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of hiking boots. Staying inside wasn’t an option. She’d lose her mind staring at the walls, waiting for Nick to come home from his lunch date with her mother.
*
Chester followed Josie out the front door and out of habit headed back toward the pasture and Dell’s house beyond. She smiled when he realized she wasn’t following him, and he circled back to see what she was doing out by the road.
“Let’s take another route today,” she said, patting his back as they took off walking along the side of the road.
Josie had removed the yellow crime scene tape in the pasture where they had found the murdered woman so that it wouldn’t draw the attention of gawkers looking for a cheap thrill. But she had left the foot-high wooden stakes that had held the tape as a visual for herself until the case was solved. She stopped on the gravel road, in a direct line of sight with the stakes.
Standing on the side of the road now, facing the pasture, she estimated her house was about a quarter of a mile to the east of where she was standing. Dell’s house was straight back down the lane from her house, about a half mile northeast. Josie scanned the path that the women probably took from the toolshed, behind the house, across the lane leading to Dell’s cabin, and into the open pasture.
From the bits and pieces Josie and Marta had collected from Isabella about the night Renata was killed, it sounded as if the women had been hiding in the toolshed. They had been watching through a knothole in the wall as a car drove slowly down the gravel lane, searching for them. Isabella had told Marta that they had heard the car and ran for the pasture, probably thinking they would be safer in case someone came searching for them.
She imagined them running, but realized it would have been far from a run, in the dark. Clumps of prickly pear cactus and Spanish daggers with knife-sharp edges dotted the ground and would have stopped them immediately, causing incredible pain, if they’d run into one. The women would have had no choice but to cross the pasture carefully.
Josie and Nick had found Renata’s body lying prone, with her head facing north toward Dell’s house, instead of the westward direction they had been running. Josie imagined the car might have stopped where she was now standing on the side of the road, next to the pasture. Someone could have jumped out of the car and run into the pasture, causing the women to veer toward Dell’s house, rather than running parallel to the road.
Josie continued walking alongside the road, trying to imagine various scenarios with the two women and the man or men chasing them. About a mile from home, she turned and walked the same route back again, keeping her mind focused on the case while trying to avoid the toxic thoughts about her current suspension. That wound was too raw to touch just yet.
Chester had been walking just in front of her, sniffing along the road, when he paused and lifted his head toward the pasture as if he’d seen something in the distance. Josie stood still, scanning the pasture from the road back to Dell’s cabin, and beyond to the mountain range, but she saw no movement. She walked backward about a dozen steps, and then moved forward again when a glint of silver caught her eye. She took her cell phone out, snapped a quick shot, and took off toward the shiny object, which appeared to be about two hundred feet away from the road.
Ten feet from the object, she stopped, shocked at her discovery.
FOURTEEN
Josie knew better than to process the scene. She called Chester away from the area and got Otto on the phone.
“I found the gun,” she said.
“What gun?” he said.