Josie drove home, fed the dog but skipped her own supper, and then climbed into bed at nine o’clock, where she lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Her mind flitted from Nick sleeping in Mexico, to her mom driving back to Indiana, to five women traveling from Guatemala, to Josh Mooney in lockup, until she finally got out of bed and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt to take Chester outside for a walk.
Behind the house, Chester hit on a scent and zigzagged around the backyard sniffing out a jackrabbit or some other little animal. Josie decided she didn’t have the energy for a walk, so she took advantage of the bright moonlight and sat on the ground with her back against a large rock to watch Chester scout out the yard.
She allowed her gaze to travel out across Dell’s pasture and wondered how long it would take her to view the field with the same sense of serenity she’d once had. A day spent working with twisted dopers like Josh and Macey Mooney slipped out of her mind when she and Chester took off into the desert, looking for nothing but interesting rocks and glimpses of wildlife or a bright blooming flower thriving in the midst of sand and dust. Now she looked into the pasture and the vivid image of two young women fleeing for their lives from men intent on capturing or killing them ran like a movie through her brain.
Josie thought back to the night she’d gone to town for the water meeting. The night the killers obviously knew she wouldn’t be at home. The killer who knew she had an interest in the county water supply. As a cop with limited resources, she didn’t own enough ground to be personally affected, but her neighbor Dell sure as hell did, and the killer had to have known that. The meeting was about the amount of water allowed to be pumped from an individual’s well, and the use of meters to determine depleting groundwater usage. The meeting became heated on both sides, from water conservationists to ranchers trying to save fragile crops and livestock. Josie watched men and women who had been friends and neighbors for years face off against each other in a battle that would end friendships before it was over. She ran through her mind the various people she had seen at the meeting, people who had stood at the microphone to speak from handwritten notes they’d carefully prepared, to the hotheads in the back of the room catcalling. Then she wondered who wasn’t at the meeting. Who was missing that should have been there? Who might have skipped the meeting in order to hunt down and kill a woman?
She felt the blood drain from her face as she mentally checked off the list of speakers that night. Who was the one person in town who lived for moments in the spotlight? Who loved controversy and the chance to stand as a voice of reason in troubled times? And he hadn’t spoken that night. Josie realized she hadn’t seen him at all.
She pulled her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket and checked the time. It was 10:11 p.m., too late to politely call, but she couldn’t wait until morning.
She dialed Smokey Blessings, who had given the opening address at the water meeting, and then introduced the speakers throughout the night. He answered on the second ring.
“Smokey, it’s Josie. I apologize for calling you so late at night.”
“It’s no problem. Everything okay?”
“I’m not sure. I’m trying to piece together a timeline, and I’m hoping you can help me.”
“Sure.”
“Remember back to the night of the water usage meeting?”
“How could I forget?”
“I’m trying to think back to the speakers that evening and I don’t remember Mayor Moss being there that night.”
“Hell, no, he wasn’t there. Why do you think I had to mediate that meeting? I sure as hell didn’t want to. I hate public speaking.”
“Why didn’t he do it? It seems like he’d have wanted to be there.”
“He was supposed to. We’d been planning that event for weeks. And he was going to lead it. Then he calls me at about one o’clock that afternoon and says he and Caroline have to leave for El Paso. Like, right then. Some kind of family emergency came up. He asked me to lead it—despite knowing I hate that kind of thing.”
Josie was quiet for a second, taking in the information. She was certain that she’d seen Caroline’s phone calls for the night of the murder, and they had been placed locally. “Thanks, Smokey. I appreciate it.”
“Sure.”
“And I appreciate you making things right with the media, about my suspension. It meant more to me than you can probably imagine.”
“We’re not done with the mayor,” he said. “But I suspect this conversation may lead to further developments, so we’ll hang tight.”
“I think that’s a wise decision.”
This time, when Josie got Chester situated on his rug, and she flipped the bedside lamp off, she fell asleep within minutes of laying her head on the pillow.