her watching him. “It’s okay, kid. We just need to ask you a few questions about this afternoon.”
“What were you doing out in the desert in this kind of heat?” Josie asked. She kept her tone kind rather than accusatory.
Another shoulder shrug.
“Were you hiking?”
Cassidy looked at Josie as if deciding how to answer. “Not really. I just wanted to be outside.” Her tone was soft and timid.
“How did you end up off Scratchgravel?” Josie asked.
She shrugged again, and when Josie continued to wait for an answer she finally said, “It just looked like an okay spot.”
“For what?”
Cassidy looked confused for a moment. “For being outside.”
“Couldn’t you have gone outside at your own home?”
“Not really. We live in town. We don’t really have a yard. It’s—” She hesitated. “The grass is all dead. It isn’t very pretty.”
“How did you find the body?” Josie asked.
A shrug. “I just saw it. I was walking and I smelled something. It was awful, then I saw something behind a bush. When I saw the body, I got dizzy. Then I don’t remember anything. I guess I blacked out.”
Josie glanced back at Otto, who nodded to let her know he was getting everything. “You’re saying you were just out walking in the desert on a day supposed to hit 104 degrees?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
She shrugged.
Josie tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Do you know who the man was?”
Cassidy opened her mouth slightly as if she couldn’t believe the question. “You couldn’t even tell who he was. He was—” She stopped and shuddered, then closed her eyes and turned her head away.
Josie adjusted her gunbelt and stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed. “Cassidy, I’m trying to understand why I found you lying beside a dead body. Can you help me out here?”
She opened her eyes again but kept her head turned. “I told you. I just went for a walk and I found him there. It’s not like I wanted to find him.”
“Did you touch the body?”
Cassidy’s jaw dropped and she turned to Josie. “Are you kidding? He was disgusting! Why would I touch him?” She shuddered.
Josie turned to look at Otto, who jerked his thumb toward the door.
“If you remember anything, or come across any information about the man or why he might have been out there, promise me you’ll call?”
Cassidy nodded and Josie placed a business card on the hospital table.
“We had your car towed to the county garage to get it off the side of the road. We’d like to take a look inside it. Get some fingerprints around your doors. Are you okay with that?” Josie asked.
“I don’t care.”
Otto had a consent form and pen ready and approached the bed. “We just need you to sign a consent form. Make it all official.”
Cassidy pressed the remote on her bedside table to raise the bed and used the table to sign the paper. Josie noted that she didn’t give much thought to the paper or the idea of having her car searched. She seemed more concerned with the pain of bending her arms and the sunburn.
Cassidy pointed to a folded pile of clothes atop a bureau across the room. “Keys ought to be in my front shorts pocket.”
Josie felt a piece of paper in the first pocket she looked in and resisted the urge to unfold it and read it. She found the car keys in the second pocket and took them instead. She and Otto thanked Vie and left for the garage.
* * *
The county garage was located on the east side of town, beside the Arroyo County Jail. The dark green metal garage was eighty feet long by thirty feet wide and had a poured concrete floor. Inside were several bays where the county four-wheel-drive pickup and two ancient plow trucks were parked and maintained. The plows were used to clean the roads after the monsoon hit each summer. They had been purchased by Macon Drench at a Houston auction several years ago. Before the plows were bought, the town had to rely on locals with pickup trucks and push-blades to clean up the roads. Drench had also paid for the construction of the garage himself rather than raising taxes. Josie wondered what would happen to the town if Drench ever tired of his desert experiment and headed back to the city.
Josie and Otto rode together in Josie’s car and parked just inside the open garage door. Industrial-sized fans pulled air in one side of the garage