“The body was identified as Gregory Winters,” Jacob told her. Once again, he was sitting at her small table, the two of them having their little update.
Joule shook her head. The name didn't mean anything to her. Her phone buzzed with another update from Kayla and Ivy. They should be here in the next several hours.
But she put her focus back on Jacob who was saying, “Also known as Marry Me Maribel.”
“Oh.” Joule felt her mouth go round. That name she recognized. There had been pictures in the missing persons report. “He was one of the two who went missing last winter. The two sex workers?”
“The family said she preferred ‘she.’ The cause of death was a bullet wound.”
Joule hadn't seen one. But it hadn't been daylight and honestly she hadn't even recognized that it was a body when she first approached it. The sand had blown up against it. The clothing had draped over oddly from the wind. She hadn't been expecting a body.
“That's not good news,” she said, and Jacob didn't counter her. “If the people reported missing are turning up dead . . .” she didn't want to finish the thought.
“It's a shitty thing,” Jacob added, tapping at the folder. “But I suspect she didn't fit neatly into what they needed. So, they disposed of her.”
She sounded like a napkin, Joule thought, or a used bag instead of a person. That made her heart break. All of it was wrong. So wrong.
“Maribel was vulnerable in the first place because of the work she did.” Her words came out with force behind them, anger at the general unfairness of the world.
Jacob nodded.
“And Misty Avington, who went missing with her?”
“She still hasn’t been found.” He sighed, and it occurred to Joule that this was her life, but it was his work. Hopefully her ordeal would be over soon, but he would inherit another one. “We put extra patrols in the areas where they work.”
“Have more gone missing?”
He pointed once again to the files he seemed to always carry with him now. “Obviously, but none from that group.”
Small comfort, Joule thought.
She looked over the autopsy paperwork, reading that a large caliber bullet was lodged near her spine. She didn't even think to question whether she should be allowed to read these reports, just went through them. The clothing appeared to be Maribel’s own. She wore no shoes, though when she'd gone missing, she’d been in platform heels. She was one of the more recent disappearances. “She . . . mummified that quickly?”
He nodded. “The desert is harsh. Hot and dry.”
Joule flipped through and began to put more pieces together. “How often do the cartels trade territories?”
“It can happen at any time.” But Jacob seemed to understand where she was going. “But, given the timeframe, this was probably the same one that’s still there now.”
He didn't say “the same one that still has your brother, and Sarah, and Aurora.”
Joule could only hope that they still had them, that they weren't dead and left to rot in the desert. Like Maribel. That they hadn't been traded or sold to some other place where they would be that much harder to find.
For a moment, she could imagine herself beating the information out of someone in an interrogation room. It was a thoroughly fantastical thought. It would never happen. She'd never be allowed into the interrogation room with her rage.
It was time to come clean to Jacob. What was done was done, and he couldn't stop where she'd already been. “I went out last night with Gretchen Mueller.”
Though she'd learned a handful of names of the others, she gave none of them. Gretchen was already a known quantity. Using her name did nothing.
“Did you now?” He closed the file, placed his fingers on top of it, as if he were trying to hold himself back from saying more.
“We put out water and food.” She didn't offer anything else, didn't mention how shocked she'd been at the birth control. That she’d learned up to ninety percent of the women expected to be raped at some point along the path.
She sat with that today, because they still went.
“We found a duffel bag,” she finally told him.
“You didn’t touch it.” Not a question. A statement that he clearly didn’t quite believe.
“Not with my fingers, no.”
From the way his brows pulled together and his jaw ticked, that was not the answer he was looking for.
“Do you want to know what was in it?” she asked.
“Did you take it?” This time he sounded incredulous.
“No. I left it where it was. I never budged it. I used a twig to pull back the zipper. I looked inside, did not touch it with my fingers. Then used the twig to pull the zipper back into place.”
“I hope no one saw you,” he said, but he sounded as though he didn’t quite believe that either. His tone was stern and dire.
“Me, too.” It was the only answer she could give. “Do you want to know what was in it?”
He sighed. His head dropping into one open palm. “Of course, I do.”
“It was animal body parts.” She dropped it on him the way it had hit her. With no warning, nothing to stop the churn in her gut at even just the thought of it. Just mentioning it had her feeling the revulsion again.
“What?” But he didn’t need her to repeat it, he was just processing the incredulity of what she’d said. Then he took a deep breath. “Oh, fuck.”