The Territory A Novel

SEVENTEEN



Josie and Otto drove separately and met in the parking lot of the Loan to Own at 11 P.M. The business was located in a white cinder block building surrounded by a large paved parking lot and half a dozen trailers and storage units. Cammie Brown, the owner’s daughter, pulled into the lot after them, driving a bright blue Mustang and got out of the car wearing flannel pajama pants imprinted with big red hearts and a matching sweatshirt, her hair in a ponytail tied neatly with a white ribbon.

Josie shook Cammie’s hand and introduced Otto.

“Did you notice my lights? Everything is working perfect. And I just got my license plate renewed.” She flashed a bright smile and bounced into the store to retrieve the paperwork and the keys to the unit. She gave everything to Josie, who thanked her and said she could leave.

“Why don’t you let me go back out to the field and check the trailer out? That way you can talk with Fallow and we can be sure he won’t show up. Tell him we’re confiscating his belongings and see what he gives you. If I find the guns in the trailer, I’ll call you,” Josie said.

* * *

After leaving the rental store, Otto stopped by the police station and grabbed the policy manual for the Gunners. He pulled into Paul Fallow’s driveway at midnight. All the lights in the house were off. He rang the doorbell, hoping to wake Mrs. Fallow as well. Otto had not talked with her yet, and he was curious what she would say about her husband’s trailer rental. After ringing the doorbell a second time, he watched through the side window beside the front door as both Fallow and his wife walked down the stairway together wearing two-piece burgundy-colored pajamas. Mrs. Fallow was cinching a matching floor-length robe around her waist as Fallow looked through the window. He recognized Otto under the porch light, deprogrammed the alarm, and unlocked the door.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Fallow asked.

“Dr. Fallow, I apologize for waking you, but I have police business I need to discuss with you.”

“It can’t wait until morning?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

He stepped back, his eyebrows knit together in worry, and introduced Otto to his wife, Karen. Otto nodded hello. Scowling, Mrs. Fallow wrapped her hands around her arms as if she were cold and walked into the formal living room. Otto followed her and sank into a puffy beige couch facing her. Otto leaned forward and set the Gunners’ binder on the glass coffee table.

“What’s this about?” Fallow asked.

“I’m sure you’ve heard that Hack Bloster was arrested.”

He nodded. Karen sneered.

“That puts you in a special place,” Otto said.

Fallow wrinkled his forehead, looking confused.

“With Red out of the picture, and Hack in jail, that means you take over the business.”

“I have no desire to take over the Gunners.” He glanced at his wife. “I’m through with the Gunners.”

“He should have never joined them to begin with. Bunch of grown men acting like animals.” Karen squeezed her arms tighter.

“It’s not the organization or the men’s club I’m referring to. It’s the business.”

Fallow looked to his wife, then Otto, his expression still confused.

Otto sighed. “Dr. Fallow, we found the trailer you rented behind Goff’s house. Your belongings are being confiscated as we speak. Parking the trailer on federal land wasn’t a good idea.”

His eyes were wide now, and he sat down on the couch by his wife as if his legs had given out from under him. “What in the world are you talking about?”

Otto looked between the two of them. Karen’s expression turned from confusion to anger. Her lips were thin, pressed tightly together. “So help me, if you bought more guns, or gave more money to that group without my knowledge, we are through. Finished, Paul.”

He looked at his wife but pointed at Otto. “I don’t know what he’s talking about!”

Otto opened the binder on the coffee table and handed a piece of paper that lay on top over to Fallow. “Here’s a copy of the rental agreement for the U-Haul trailer. There’s your name.”

Fallow grabbed the paper and studied it, his face turning pale.

“You son of a bitch.” Karen’s voice was low and steady. Her eyes were filled with rage, and it made Otto remember her serene expression during her yoga pose.

Otto pointed to a list on the front page of the binder. “Here’s the hierarchy, Mr. Fallow, right in your manual. Number one, Red’s gone. Number two, Hack’s gone. You’re next. Number three man on the totem pole. That gun-trading business with the Medrano cartel? You take the reins, now the others are out of the way. I’d say that’s pretty good motive for murder.”

Fallow stared at Otto, then down at the manual, then back at Otto. “Where did you get this?”

“This is the Gunners’ manual we confiscated from Red’s house.”

“No! That’s not right!” His look of confusion had turned frantic. Fallow stood and walked quickly from the room.

“Dr. Fallow. Fallow!” Otto yelled after him. He and Karen both stood and ran after him. Otto pulled his gun. He’d misjudged Fallow. Accusing a murderer at night alone? He suddenly felt stupid.

The doctor walked down the hall and into a small office area, where he pulled a binder off a bookshelf that sat next to a messy desk.

Fallow’s eyes were wide and unfocused. He opened the binder to the front page and held it up to Otto. “See! This is the hierarchy you’re talking about! That manual you have is wrong. We never changed it after Kenny left. Bloster refused to move me up the list.”

Otto leaned in and read. It was a typed list, not the handwritten one they had. The list read:

1. Red Goff

2. Hack Bloster

3. Kenny Winning

4. Paul Fallow

Otto felt his pulse begin to race. “Why didn’t you tell me Kenny was a member of the Gunners?”

Fallow’s mouth opened. “You didn’t ask! Why would I tell you that? He’s not participated for the past few months because he moved out of town. He and Red got into it over something.”

Otto grabbed the manual from Fallow, ran down the hall, and picked up the manual he brought with him, then left the house, making a run for his car. When he got inside, he called Josie’s cell. She didn’t pick up. It was probably silenced. He had to reach her before she connected with Kenny.

* * *

Josie parked her car at Vie and Smokey Blessings’s house and walked toward Fallow’s campsite. She could see the dim light from one lantern, and the thuds and bangs convinced Josie he was packing up camp. She had hoped he would be home and the campsite empty. Josie wondered if Fallow hadn’t been thrown out of the house and taken up residence at the campsite. She figured Otto could talk with Mrs. Fallow while she confronted the doctor at the campsite.

Moving cautiously through the grass, Josie spotted someone removing armloads of guns from the storage unit and putting them into the pop-up camper. But it wasn’t Fallow. It was Kenny Winning. He was moving quickly, not worrying about careful packaging, obviously trying to make a quick escape. After Winning dumped a load of guns onto the camper floor and started making his way back over to the trailer for another load, Josie took several quick steps into the dim light of the campsite.

“Stop right there, and put your hands in the air where I can see them!”

Kenny didn’t even turn to look at her. He ran half a dozen steps to the trailer and jumped through the open door. Fortunately, the door was held open with a chain and he couldn’t pull it shut, but he moved to the right of the door, inside the trailer and out of her line of sight.

“Kenny, this is Chief Gray. You need to give it up and come out of the trailer with your hands held in the air. You won’t get out of this one.” She stopped talking and heard nothing from inside the trailer. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. Step slowly outside the trailer.” Josie stood with both feet planted firmly, her arms extended, gun aimed on the trailer. The amount of ammunition in the campsite was staggering to consider, and it reminded her of the rattlesnakes roiling around under her feet at Dell’s place, waiting to strike if provoked.

A hand extended about twelve inches into the open doorframe, and Josie realized Winning was holding an explosive device.

“I want you out of here now!” he said, his voice loud and angry. “I want your gun and gun belt on the ground as well as your cell phone. Throw them down now or I’ll throw this and six others just like it! I will blow you to pieces!”

Josie moved just outside of the lantern’s light and opened her cell phone, noting that she’d missed several calls from Otto. She found Pegasus Winning’s cell phone number in her contacts and was surprised when Winning answered.

Josie whispered who she was and asked if Winning knew where her brother’s campsite was located.

“He has a trailer set up straight back from Red’s place. You need to get down here. He’s got a trailer full of guns and he’s talking crazy. Drive down here and talk sense into him before we all get blown up.” Josie hung up without waiting for a reply.

“Kenny, you know we aren’t going to do that. You’re outnumbered here.”

“Bullshit! You can’t come near me without getting blown to pieces, so don’t tell me I’m outnumbered!”

She tried to reason with him, trying to stall. “Kenny, you can’t do this to your sister. You’re all the family she’s got.”

“Don’t bring her into this! She has nothing to do with this!”

“Kenny, if you’re thrown in jail for killing a police officer, you’ll never see her again. Whatever has happened to this point, we can work through it. Just come out here so we can talk.”

Josie noticed the Eldorado driving through the grass toward the campsite.

Pegasus parked and jumped out of the car, shouting Kenny’s name. Josie put her hands up in the air to slow her down. She pointed toward the trailer.

Pegasus called her brother’s name, softer now, and approached the trailer. He said nothing. She stopped just outside the door.

“Kenny? What are you thinking?”

* * *

Pegasus tentatively looked inside and found him sitting on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him, each hand holding a grenade. Kenny’s head was leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed.

She stepped inside quietly, not wanting to startle him, terrified by what she saw. The dim light from the lantern cast angular shadows across the guns piled three and four deep on the floor in the back of the trailer, most of them large, most likely automatic. A box of explosives lay to Kenny’s right side. She winced at the smell of gun oil and sweat.

“Kenny,” she whispered, and sat beside him, careful not to touch him yet. “What are you doing, buddy?”

He turned his head toward her and opened bloodshot eyes. “It’s all turned to shit.”

“Are these the missing guns from Red’s place?”

“I wanted to get us out of this wasteland. Just enough to get a start somewhere else. Vermont or Montana. Start a bait-and-tackle shop. Anything but this.” He threw his hands into the air as if this was what his life had become.

Pegasus wiped sweat off her forehead and tried to stall the feeling of desperation that was starting to take over. “Did you steal Red’s guns from his house?”

Kenny had always been in charge; now he looked at her as if she was supposed to come up with the solution. “I messed up, sis. I did it good this time.”

“Who were you going to sell them to?” she asked, still trying to make some sense of her brother surrounded by guns.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter! The owner of those guns is dead! You don’t mess with people like that.”

“I was going to get us out of this hellhole. I could have made enough money to move us anywhere.”

Pegasus leaned across him and took both grenades out of his hands. “I love you, Kenny. I love you for trying. But you have to stop now. It’s over.”

* * *

Otto finally reached Josie on her cell phone on his way out to the campsite. Josie had Kenny handcuffed and was leading him to her jeep. Otto arrived as she reached the road. She loaded Kenny in the back of his jeep, and he transported Winning to the Arroyo County Jail. It was after three in the morning before he was booked and sitting in an interrogation room. Josie sat across the metal table from Kenny and slid him a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Otto set a cup of instant coffee in front of him and stood in the back of the room. Kenny still wore just a ripped black T-shirt and jeans. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

After the preliminary information, Josie asked him to explain in detail how he came up with Red’s guns. Kenny had lost the angry martyr persona and looked as if he were coming down off a three-day high. His eyes remained bloodshot and unfocused, his words slightly slurred.

“Not much detail to give. I found Red dead on my couch. I figured somebody was going to get the guns, may as well be me. He probably stole the guns to begin with. Turnabout.”

“You found Red’s body and didn’t bother to report it?”

He shrugged.

“You left a dead body in the trailer while your sister lay in the bedroom sleeping?”

He shrugged again. “The guy was dead. Wasn’t like he was going to get up and do something to her. I could tell he was dead, so I left to think. That’s when I decided to go back to Red’s and load the guns in my camper. It was already parked behind Red’s place. Why not take something bad and turn it? I rented the storage unit later that day. Check the records.”

Josie already knew the records Cammie gave her verified his story.

“Why use Paul Fallow’s name?”

“Because Paul Fallow is an ass. He’s an arrogant jerk who deserves whatever he gets.”

“Did you change the front page in Red’s policy manual? Did you take your name off the list to keep us from viewing you as a suspect?”

He lifted a shoulder and sipped at the coffee.

“What makes the most sense to me,” Josie said, “is that you shot Red for the guns and then stole them. You took your name out of the manual and added Fallow’s name to the rental information to throw suspicion away from you.”

“Why would I shoot Red, and then drag his bloody body into my own trailer?”

“Maybe you stuck him on the couch to get the body hidden while you ransacked his house.”

“This is stupid. I want a lawyer.”

* * *

After finishing the paperwork with the intake officer, Josie found Otto looking out the door into the lobby area at the front of the jail.

“What’s up?” she asked.

He turned to face Josie, and she couldn’t read his expression. He looked lost. “It’s my wife. Delores is sitting on the bench with Pegasus Winning. She has a box of Kleenex in one hand and the girl’s hand in her other. I’m quite sure my wife has just invited the girl to stay at our house.”

Josie smiled and patted Otto on the back. “You’re a lucky man. Actually, she’s pretty lucky, too.”

“Oh, no. I’m not in the same league as that woman.” He shook his head as if trying to puzzle out how he had ever married a woman that good.

They watched for a few minutes until Pegasus stood, hugged Delores, and left the building by herself. Josie followed Otto into the waiting room.

“Wouldn’t come home with you?” Otto asked his tearful wife.

“I tried. She said she might come to church with us on Sunday. I said we’d be by her house to pick her up at a quarter to ten.”

Josie smiled and hoped Delores’s optimism paid off.

Otto tried to shoo his wife out the door. “Let’s go home. You did what you could.”

Delores ignored Otto and turned to Josie. “What is it with you young women? Is it such a crime to let someone help you every once in a while?”

* * *

Josie stopped by the gas station on the way home and picked up two cups of diced fruit for a combined supper and breakfast. Standing in her kitchen, she doused the fruit with hot sauce, took two quick shots of bourbon, and ate standing at the sink. By 2 A.M., she decided she was sufficiently tired to try going to bed. She let Chester out to walk the perimeter of the house and then lured him back inside with a dog cookie. She double-locked the front and back doors and stood in her bedroom doorway, debating whether she could do it.

She changed into her nightshirt, washed her face and brushed her teeth, and slid between the clean white sheets with her bedside lamp on. She considered the bourbon again but decided she was stronger than that. She thought of calling Dillon but knew the problem was hers to solve alone. One night, she thought. I’ll take it one night at a time.