Firebreak: A Mystery (23 page)

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After a quick lunch with Josie at the Hot Tamale, Otto left to meet with the principal at the elementary school. Chris Conroy had called and said a teacher in his building had found a bottle of Vicodin in a fourth-grade student’s backpack when she was searching for a missing permission slip. While Otto interviewed the student and the boy’s mother, Josie drove to the trauma center to meet Glenda Crosley, the nurse who had been working the night Billy died in the park behind the building.

Josie entered the trauma center through the emergency room door and found a flurry of activity. A receptionist was checking in several patients, and the nurse that Josie had come to see had just entered the waiting room to retrieve a patient. She saw Josie and glanced at the clock on the wall. She put both hands in the air and mouthed the words
Ten minutes
. Josie gave her a thumbs-up and the woman disappeared.

Josie sat down in one of the dozen plastic molded chairs and pulled her cell phone out of her shirt pocket. It was 5:30. It was time to go home. Time to eat dinner. She tried to think of something that sounded good to eat. She was sick of ramen soup, canned chili, and peanut butter sandwiches. Nothing sounded good. She resigned herself to a bag of microwave popcorn and one juice glass of bourbon to settle the demons in her head.

Ten minutes stretched into thirty minutes. Josie watched a young mother come in carrying a baby in a carriage seat, holding the hand of a toddler while she tried not to let a diaper bag and a purse slip down her shoulder. The little girl hopped and then stepped, repeating “Mommy, Mommy” to get her mother to watch her walk while the baby screamed—ear-piercing wails. She gathered the kids and bags around her and sat down in front of the woman at the reception desk. Her face held a combination of worry, irritation, exhaustion, and love, all in one frazzled package, and Josie realized that the combination, that of a parent in the grips of exhausted caregiving, was one she had never experienced. An emptiness gnawed away at the pit of her stomach. One that she thought nothing could fill but her own child.

The nurse, Glenda Crosley, poked her head out of the door that led back into the examination rooms. “Josie?” she called.

Josie stood, suddenly feeling self-conscious, as if her private thoughts had been broadcast throughout the waiting room.

She followed Glenda back into the nurses’ area, a wide-open space that looked a bit like a command center. The nurses’ desk was half-moon-shaped and was large enough behind the counter for five or six medical staff members to work together comfortably. Across from the desk, several patient rooms and other offices and storage rooms fanned out around it.

“I hope you don’t mind sitting back here to talk?” Glenda asked.

“Not at all.”

“Sorry it took so long. We’ve been swamped today. You just never know.”

“No problem. This won’t take long. Before we get started, have you talked to Vie and Smokey since they found out about losing their house?”

Her shoulders slumped. “Isn’t it just horrible? I talked to Vie last night. She’s a mess. You know how Vie is. We call her the governor here at work. She’s always in control. But with the house? It’s like she’s come undone.” The nurse put her hand up as if to stop Josie from saying anything. “Don’t get me wrong, I would be devastated too! It’s just such a shock to see Vie so messed up.”

“Have you talked to Smokey?”

“No. He and Donny were over at the house sifting through the mess, trying to find anything they could salvage. Vie was at the hotel when I talked to her. She said she couldn’t stand to go back. She said Smokey’s already talking about rebuilding but she just can’t think about it.”

Josie sighed. “Do they have temporary housing?”

“That’s the little bit of good news. The Ferrarios have a rental. They’ll start moving in tomorrow.”

“Let me know when they’re ready to start setting up the house. Food and furniture. We’ll all want to pitch in at the police department.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks.”

Josie opened up her notepad and took her pen out of her pocket. “I want to talk for a few minutes about your shift, night before last. The night Billy Nix passed away in the park behind the center?”

“Yeah, of course. Wednesday night. I was the only nurse on duty that night. We had a rotating ER doc on-site too. He’d driven from Fort Stockton after a ten-hour shift at their ER, so he was asleep in one of the patient rooms from about nine o’clock on. We were dead that night. I had two patients come in. One with a bad migraine wanting pain pills, and the other, a man who’d run out of insulin. Both were routine. Billy never came inside the center. I would have remembered. My husband and I watched Outlaws shows every chance we got. So sad.”

“Did you go outside during your shift that night? Notice anything odd at all?”

She frowned and shook her head. “No, I brought my supper with me. I didn’t go anywhere.” Her expression changed slightly. “I did go outside around midnight to get my Diet Coke out of my car. I was tired and figured a shot of caffeine might get me through the last hour.”

“Were you parked behind the building?” The park was just behind the parking lot.

“Yeah. It made me sad to think about it when I heard about Billy. I mean, I got off my shift at one in the morning. If I had known he was there I could have saved his life maybe. Who knows.”

“Were there any other cars parked in the lot when you went outside to get your Diet Coke?”

Glenda made a humming noise as she thought. “I was parked in the back of the lot, right next to the doc’s car. I drive a crappy old minivan and his is a silver Lexus. I know those were the only two in the lot.” She looked at Josie carefully, her eyes squinted in concentration. “But I’m pretty sure there was a pickup truck parked along the street. Just on the other side of the park.”

Josie was quiet, letting her think through the details.

“It’s funny. I didn’t think a thing about it at the time. But there’s no houses across the street. I’m not sure what a truck would have been doing there at that time of night.”

“Do you remember the color?”

“I’m pretty sure it was dark, dark blue or black. One of the big four-doors. I remember now because it crossed my mind that that’s what kind of truck David, my husband, wants. I think he’s crazy because the gas mileage is a killer.”

EIGHTEEN

All three officers were scheduled off for the day. They rotated weekends with the sheriff’s department to ensure that at least one car was on the road at all hours. But days off did not take precedence during a murder investigation. This Saturday, all three members of the police department came in to debrief about the Ferris Sinclair murder, and Billy Nix’s apparent suicide. There were no homicide detectives to take the case, just an understaffed, underfunded department of three. After the debriefing, Josie would dole out the work assignments for the day.

She arrived early and started the coffee. Having skipped breakfast, she was happy to see Marta enter the office with a large baking dish.

“Coffee cake fresh from the oven,” Marta said.

Otto entered directly behind her. “The woman is a saint. Delores made oatmeal this morning and got mad when I added butter and sugar. How is a man supposed to suffer through a bowl of oatmeal with no flavor? She’ll kill me in the process of saving me.”

Josie carried paper plates and cups to the conference table. By eight o’clock they had all enjoyed a warm breakfast and were caught up on each other’s personal lives. Josie counted herself lucky to work with such good people.

Marta covered up her casserole dish with tinfoil and said, “Okay. Bring me up to speed.”

“The big news yesterday was the video surveillance tape that Turner, the Nixes’ attorney, provided. The surveillance tape was captured on a camera in Sonora and shows the Nixes entering the store at nine thirty the night Ferris was killed. Sonora is about three and a half hours from the Nixes’ house. If they left the Hell-Bent at six, drove home to kill Ferris, and started the fire, the absolute earliest they could have left the house would have been seven fifteen. Even if they left at seven, that puts them in Sonora at ten at the earliest.”

“And we have time of death as seven thirty-eight. That’s when the watch stopped on Ferris’s watch, and the clock in the kitchen. The timing just doesn’t work,” Otto said.

“So, what you’re saying is that the Nixes didn’t kill Ferris,” Marta said.

“I don’t see how,” Josie said. “The other surprise we received yesterday was the report from the fire marshal out of Odessa. He came in and worked with Doug Free and me. He claims the house fire was started outside the front door that leads into the living room, most likely with kerosene.”

“Isn’t that what you already expected?” Marta said.

“We did, but it was good confirmation. He also found a syringe located underneath the couch where Ferris Sinclair was found.”

“So Ferris was shooting up and overdosed? Committed suicide?” Marta asked. “Or someone used the syringe to kill him?”

“I can’t imagine Ferris would shoot up with heroin and then tuck the needle under the couch for Brenda to find later. I think there’s a good chance that whatever is in the needle killed Ferris. The fire marshal has rushed the toxicology on the syringe. I’m hoping we’ll know by Monday.”

Otto said, “Remember too that a Zaner was discharged. This was no suicide.”

Josie stood and walked to her desk, where she retrieved a two-gallon plastic evidence bag containing an empty whiskey bottle. She set down the bag in the middle of the table for Marta to see. “Cowan has another bag that contains three pills. He’s testing them, but they appear to be a combination of OxyContin and Ambien. If Billy ate a bagful of those mixed with that bottle of Jack Daniel’s?”

“So it’s a suicide?” Marta asked.

“Except that Brenda claims Billy never takes pills. She admitted to searching his bags while they were in the hotel room together. She says he couldn’t have had anything on him when he left the hotel room the night he died.”

Marta made a dismissive gesture. “It’s not like a guy couldn’t score a bagful of pills.”

“Cowan is supposed to call today with results on the autopsy. It looked like a suicide, but I’m not convinced yet. There’s one other piece. I talked to the nurse who was on duty the night Billy died behind the trauma center. She said there was a dark-colored truck parked on the side street that runs next to the park. On the east side of it. There’s no houses there, so she couldn’t imagine what a truck would be doing there at that time of night.”

“You know how many dark-colored trucks there are in Artemis?” Otto said.

“She also said it was a four-door, one of the big gas guzzlers. She remembers because it’s what her husband wants.”

Marta made a face. “How do we track that down?”

“I had a brainstorm at about three o’clock this morning,” Josie said. “I woke up thinking about Billy’s memorial service that Hank said they would hold at the Hell-Bent tonight.”

“Ah,” Marta said. “Let me guess. I’m third shift. You want me in the parking lot taking license-plate numbers on any dark-colored four-door truck.”

Josie grinned.

“What did I tell you?” Otto said. “She’s a saint.”

Marta smirked. “If Billy didn’t kill Ferris, why would he commit suicide? Was he that distraught over Ferris’s death?”

“That’s the question of the day,” Otto said. “I can’t figure out if he was having an affair with Ferris, or if Ferris was a nuisance fan who was bothering Billy and screwing up his marriage. It depends on who you talk to.”

Josie tilted her head. “I just wonder if Ferris provided Billy with something he didn’t have in his life. We keep hearing how Brenda spent all her time trying to make Billy as good as he could be. Maybe Ferris just accepted him for who he was. Ferris thought Billy was already brilliant. Maybe Billy just needed the boost that Ferris gave his ego.”

“You’re changing your mind? You think it’s plausible that Billy committed suicide over Ferris’s death?” Otto asked.

“I suppose I do,” she said. “But it bothers me that we don’t know how Billy came up with the pills that he mixed with the alcohol.”

“Or who wanted Ferris dead,” Marta said.

“My plan is to meet Deputy Susan Spears at Ferris’s house in Presidio this morning. She’s got a search warrant approved. She agreed to help me search the house. Hopefully we’ll find something to help us figure that out.”

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The drive from Artemis to Presidio took Josie down a twenty-mile stretch of tan-colored desert dotted with patches of deep green mesquite bushes. The occasional hills and curves that snugged up to the Rio Grande broke the scenic monotony with glimpses of the muddy brown water. At ten o’clock in the morning, with the temperature pushing ninety, she drove with the windows down, letting the warm air blow the dust and sand around the old jeep. Radio stations faded in and out, so she dug through the glove compartment to find a tape for the ancient cassette player. She popped in one of Dillon’s old Elton John tapes and turned “Benny and the Jets” up as loud as the speakers would take. She smiled and sang, enjoying the sun and the wind and the freedom of the open road.

In a police department so remote, with so little funding, department perks were rare. Her retired-army jeep, vintage 1995, somewhat made up for the lack of modern radio and radar equipment. The four-wheel-drive could take her almost anywhere: the jeep had been built for military use, so she drove it as the job required, and occasionally as the road called to her, through rocky creeks, narrow mountain passes, and tight arroyos that an SUV or pickup truck couldn’t handle.

Thirty minutes after leaving Artemis, Josie parallel parked in front of the small brick home that Junior Daggy had referred to as the Winferd station house. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, maybe something cobbled together by other people’s hand-me-downs, but what she found was a tastefully landscaped brick home with long narrow windows and curved limestone lintels. A cobblestone pathway led through a well-kept garden and up to a large wooden entrance door with heavy wrought-iron hardware.