Free Fallout (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 2) by Lila Beckham Page B

ordered. Rodrigo stood. Joshua’s six-foot frame towered over the smaller man.
    “Are you Avellino Rodrigo?” Joshua asked. The smaller man nodded his head.
    “Can you speak English?” Joshua asked. Rodrigo nodded his head. Joshua waited for him to say something, but he never spoke nor did he attempt to.
    “I thought you said you could speak English; well, can you?” he asked.
    Rodrigo shook his head this time.
    “You just said that you could speak it, so speak it,” Joshua said gruffly.
    Rodrigo glared up at Joshua and opened his mouth wide; the man had half a tongue!
    “What happened to your tongue?”
    Rodrigo squatted, grabbed a stick, and began writing in the dirt. Joshua waited until he finished and then read what the man had written.
    It said. ‘Policía cortaron la lengua’ Joshua knew that Policia was Spanish for police, but he did not know what the rest meant.
    “I don’t read Spanish, can you write in English?”
    Rodrigo nodded his head. Then he wrote in English that the police had cut out his tongue.
    Joshua asked him why the police would do that.
    Rodrigo wrote that he was having sex with a woman; he did not know that her husband was a ‘patrulla fronteriza,’ a border patrolman. The man had not killed him; instead, he cut his balls off and his tongue out so that he could never have sex with a woman again. Joshua felt sorry for the man.
    “Are you from Mexico?” Joshua asked, wondering about the affair with the border patrolman’s wife.
    Rodrigo shook his head then wrote - El Paso.
    “So, you were raised on this side of the border?” Rodrigo nodded, and poked his stick at the word El Paso.
    “I’m sorry I bothered you, Mr. Rodrigo. I just needed to find out why you did not speak. Rodrigo wrote in the dirt ‘no problema’ and ‘no one had ever asked.’ Joshua walked back to where Curtis was sitting eating a sandwich.
    “I would offer you a sandwich, Sheriff, but I only brought one.”
    “Don’t worry about it; I’ll grab something when I leave here.”
    “Did you find out what you needed to know?”
    “Yep, the fellow doesn’t have a tongue. A border patrolman cut it out, but, he can write in English.” Joshua decided not to say anything about his being castrated.
    “No wonder he looks so grumpy. That’s bad in more ways than one…”
    “Yes, it is. I appreciate the time, Curtis, and I am glad that you are staying out of trouble,” Curtis nodded. They shook hands and then Joshua turned and headed toward his cruiser. He was ready for some lunch himself.

7
Time in a Bottle
    Joshua got into his vehicle and then lit a cigarette. When he cranked the car, the radio blared loudly. He had not realized that he had it that loud as he drove in. Actually, he did not remember even listening to it at all after he had put in the Steppenwolf tape. He had turned off the radio. He’d had so much on his mind that he had not paid any attention to the music. The fact that the radio was playing instead of the 8-track player bothered Joshua. He decided to listen to it to see if maybe there was a reason for that to happen. Joshua believed spirits sometimes helped the living by guiding them in the right direction; his recent visits had made him aware of that. Maybe he was getting a little hint from the spirit world.
    He followed the narrow road along the tree line back to the main highway, and then turned left to go to Uncle Joe’s Café. So far, the morning had not produced much information at all as far as finding Jesse and Ola’s killer.
    A song came on just as he pulled out onto the highway… The song and the singer were unfamiliar to Joshua, but the tune and the singer’s voice was soothing.
    ‘ If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do, is to save everyday til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you ’ sung the singer. He thought about the words of the song and that it would be nice if he could bottle the good times of his life to have for all of