The Territory A Novel

THREE



Josie pointed her jeep toward the sun, just a red bump on the darkening horizon, and drove with all four windows down, listening to Johnny Cash sing a live version of “Folsom Prison Blues.” She attempted to focus her thoughts on the winding gravel road that led to her house in the foothills of the Chinati Mountains, but the image of Vie Blessings praying on the hospital floor imprinted like a watermark over everything. The wind would not clear the vision of the young surgeon, still in his blood-splattered scrubs, crying into his hands outside the clinic after it was over. And she could not erase the thought that she knew would invade every nightmare for the next month: We are losing our town to mercenary killers.

As Josie was cresting a hill sloping into a patchy field of prairie grass and mesquite, her eyes were drawn to her home ahead. Its pink stucco walls glowed each night at sunset. The house was a simple rectangle with a deep front porch held aloft by hand-hewn pecan timbers. Two low-slung chairs, one for her neighbor, Dell Seapus, and one for her, faced the panoramic view of the endless Chihuahuan Desert that stretched out beyond the Rio and deep into Mexico. Behind her house, the Chimiso Peak, a rocky crag in the midst of the Chinati Mountain range, was visible.

Chester, a brown and tan bloodhound, lay on the porch in front of her door, head on his front paws, his ears draped across the floor like a head scarf. Josie knew he would not raise his head until she stood in front of him, hand outstretched to scratch behind his velvet ears. She smiled, rolled her windows up, and shut the jeep off. She’d asked Dell to stop in and feed the dog last night while she was away from home. Dell would never admit it, but he loved the dog as much as Josie did.

She unlocked the front door and followed the hound inside to a living room painted a buttery yellow and filled with rustic Southwestern furniture, Navajo Indian blankets, and more benches and chairs that Dell had carved from fallen cedar and pecan trees off his ten-thousand-acre ranch. The seventy-year-old bachelor’s ranch was tucked into the foothills behind her house. Josie had come to know Dell shortly after joining the police department nine years ago. He had been robbed at gunpoint in his barn, where two horse thieves had loaded five of Dell’s prized Appaloosas onto a trailer and taken off. After a four-week investigation, Josie tracked the men to New Mexico and returned the horses unharmed. Her detective work had established her as a first-rate cop in town and won her a loyal friend in Dell.

Josie had spent quite a bit of time at Dell’s ranch over the course of the investigation and fell in love with the desert. Dell deeded her ten acres of land on the front end of his property, and she built her home with the trust money she had received as a child when her father was killed in a line-of-duty accident. She moved from Indiana at the age of twenty-four to escape her mother and begin a new life. A year after moving to Artemis, she moved into the first place that had ever felt like home to her. Dell claimed to always have her back, and she did not doubt him.

Josie unstrapped her uniform belt and hung it on a hook just inside her pantry door, stuck a bag of popcorn in the microwave for dinner, and walked back to the house’s only bedroom, barely large enough to hold her queen-sized bed, dresser, and nightstand. She hung her uniform and bulletproof vest in the closet, then dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. She exhaled deeply, rubbing the small of her back, and looked at her empty bed, the white sheets and cotton blanket in a jumble. Her thoughts strayed to Dillon Reese, but she turned and left the room, unwilling to wander down that lonely road.

Josie laid her watch on the bathroom counter and noticed her tired eyes in the mirror. Her skin had the permanent tan of a desert dweller, and fine wrinkles radiated from the corners of her eyes from too many hours squinting into the bright afternoon light. She didn’t consider herself vain, although the lines around her eyes bothered her occasionally. She wondered if she had enough to show in her life for the age that had started to accumulate on her face. When Josie was growing up, her mom had often told her she might be pretty if she would smile once in a while. She envied others who smiled often and laughed easily. She wished she could loosen up, laugh at simple things, and see the humor in life. She had tried to develop that trait in herself through the years, but she had found there were few things more uncomfortable than forced laughter.

In the kitchen, she poured a double shot of warm bourbon, dumped salt into a microwaved popcorn bag, and slumped into the couch. After two hours of CNN had done little to still her racing thoughts, she washed down two sleeping pills with another shot of bourbon and hoped her brain would grow numb by ten o’clock. She desperately needed a good night’s sleep. When the phone rang and she didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, she picked it up.

“Great god a’mighty, you’re a hard one to track down.”

Josie knew the voice immediately, and in a split second considered begging off as a wrong number.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine, not that it means anything to you.”

Josie listened to her mother inhale deeply on a cigarette, and sadness settled over her like a bad dream she couldn’t shake.

“You ever planning on calling me again?”

“Our phone calls don’t work out so well,” Josie said.

After Josie left Indiana nine years ago, she had called her mom twice a year—once at Christmas and once for her mom’s birthday—until two years ago. Their last conversation had ended in a terrible fight, and Josie quit calling. This was the first time her mother had made the call. Josie figured she needed something.

“The operator. She said this area code was Texas. You still living out there?”

“That’s right.”

“What city you living in?”

Josie closed her eyes and drank, thankful for the heat in her throat. She pictured her mother as she’d seen her last, the night Josie bailed her out of jail on a public intoxication charge. She had gotten drunk and physical with the bartender at the Holiday Inn lounge. Josie had paid the bond, then watched her mother stagger out from lockup, her head down, not from shame, but because she was too drunk and tired to hold it level. Her long red hair had been a wild tangled mess, and she wore a miniskirt and halter top that revealed too much sunbaked skin.

“I’m living in West Texas. You still in the old house?” Josie asked.

“It’s falling in around me, but I’m still here. Nowhere else to go.”

Josie’s mom lived in a small bungalow with a postage stamp–sized lot. Josie figured she had done little to maintain the house, and if she didn’t currently have a man around to take care of her, she was in trouble, either physically or financially.

“I’ve been looking for my long-lost daughter for years. I finally tracked you down, and I aim to visit. That’s why I’m calling.”

Her words slurred together, and Josie could only hope her mother would lose the phone number before she was sober enough to use it again.

“How about Aunt Jean? Is she still in town?”

“Nope. She got married and moved to Florida.”

Beverly gave a rambling update on the few distant family members she still spoke to.

“Are you working anywhere?” Josie asked.

There was silence.

Josie’s mother had no pride. She was a pro at manipulating men: neighbors, teachers, preachers, gas station attendants, anyone who could help her through her current predicament. In her prime, she had been a good-looking woman who could fabricate charm or despair at will. While Josie was growing up, life in their Indiana town was built on lies and deceit: her mother did whatever was necessary, aside from a nine-to-five job, to get food on the table and the rent paid before the eviction notice arrived in the mail. Josie wondered, with her mother turning fifty-five, if she struggled now to stay afloat.

“There’s no work to be had. Jobs are all dried up. You got work out there an old woman could get?”

Josie’s stomach knotted. “Unemployment’s worse out here. There’s no work to find.”

“You going to invite me down for a visit, or do I have to invite myself?”

She hesitated, tried to come up with a decent excuse, and gave up. “Now isn’t a great time.”

“You don’t visit in how long? Now you can’t be bothered to see me when I need you?” Her words were getting louder.

“You know it will end in a fight. You might as well save yourself the money and the grief.”

“You don’t want to invite me? That’s fine, Josie Jean. But you are my daughter, and I aim to find you. I got the area code. How hard can it be to track down a policewoman named Josie Gray in Texas?”

The line went dead.

* * *

Josie woke with a terrible headache brought on by sleeping pills that hadn’t done their job and bourbon that had made the room spin. She stumbled out of bed to shut off the second alarm clock on the dresser and cursed all the way to the shower. She put her uniform on and, at the small table in her kitchen, doused a bowl of canned fruit cocktail with Tabasco sauce. An old Mexican man told her years ago that hot sauce for breakfast burned off the toxins from alcohol the night before, and she had bought into the theory. She had begun to crave the burn in the small of her stomach, and while she figured her stomach lining was disintegrating, she didn’t care enough to change her habits.

The fifteen-minute drive to Artemis did not improve her mood. The traffic, normally nonexistent in the dead-end border town, was backed up at the one stoplight. A small group of people was gathered around the ten-foot-high set of bleachers in back of the courthouse. Mayor Moss had them erected when he came to office ten years ago. He liked to gather community members once a month for a Rally Round the Square. It was his opportunity to boast about his service and ensure reelection. Roughly twenty people had gathered this morning, and Josie wondered what Moss had done to gather a group so quickly and so early. She watched him approach the bleachers holding a portable microphone.

Josie parked her car in the chief’s reserved spot in front of the Artemis Police Department. She started to head inside to tell Dispatcher Lou Hagerty that she would be a few minutes late until she saw Lou walking across the road to stand with the crowd.

Josie spotted Sheriff Martínez’s brown sheriff’s uniform standing twenty feet away from the bleachers and the gathering townspeople, and she walked over to stand beside him. “What’s going on?”

He turned to face her, and she noticed a light stubble of beard on his jaw and the bags under his eyes. He had black hair and a mustache and what Josie thought of as cop’s eyes.

“How the hell should I know? We’re just supposed to protect this town. Why should Moss bother to fill us in?”

They turned to watch the mayor’s performance. Moss wore Wrangler jeans, a plaid shirt, bolo tie, and fancy stitched cowboy boots that had cost a good seven hundred dollars and would never see a field or a cow.

For the next thirty minutes, the mayor discussed the horrors of the day prior and the fact that he was organizing an investigative team to tackle the problems on the border, as if what they were facing could be reduced to a checklist, a prioritized to-do list. Josie felt her neck and face flush hot with anger.

“You know anything about this team?” Martínez asked Josie.

“Nothing.”

“In closing,” Moss was saying, “I want each and every one of you to rest assured that I will do everything humanly possible to stop these criminals from further terrorizing our town. This will stop on my watch.”

There was a smattering of polite applause, and then a few pockets of people formed to rehash the speech before rushing to work. Old Man Collier appeared out of nowhere, his face puckered, and planted himself in front of Josie. He craned his neck up in an awkward position and stooped so far forward that his head barely reached Josie’s chest.

“My hard-earned tax dollars are paying your salaries. And what good’s it doing me? I got Mexicans in my backyard shooting up my doctor’s office. And the only one seems to care about this is Mayor Moss. Why’s that?”

“I wasn’t hired to make speeches. I was hired to fight crime. That’s exactly what the sheriff and I spent our day doing yesterday, Mr. Collier.”

“You didn’t do a very good job, did you?”

“We don’t have much control over who comes into town. We just have to deal with the aftermath,” Josie said, surprised at her patience.

“You got control.” He pointed a finger to the gun at her side. “Start using that thing before they use ’em on us. Border Patrol won’t stand guard, then you do it. You two candy asses need to buck up and raise a little hell’s what I think.” He raised a hand as if swatting at a fly and turned and left.

* * *

Josie walked into the department before Lou returned to her desk. She was not in the mood for pleasantries or small talk. In the back of the department, she took the stairs to the office she shared with Otto and Marta and unlocked the wooden door, flipped the fluorescent lights on, and listened to their familiar buzz. After filling up the coffeepot from the sink in the back of the office, she filled the coffeemaker and sat down at her desk to flip through phone messages and e-mails, prioritizing which needed an immediate response or could be saved for later, which could be forwarded on to someone else or better yet just deleted.

Josie spent the next hour online and on the phone, tracking down more details of the Medrano cartel and La Bestia. It was grim reading. The people of Mexico appeared to be cowering behind locked doors while the gangbangers skulked around the same street corners where vendors used to peddle fruit and trinkets. She’d been in law enforcement long enough to know that criminal trends were incredibly hard to reverse for the long term. How to get the control back into the hands of the authorities?

At nine o’clock, still trying to block recurring visions of the mayor from her mind, she lay a one-inch white binder in the middle of her desk. In black Magic Marker, someone had written the words THE GUNNERS, and the slogan, FORGET 911—DIAL .357. She and Otto had seized the notebook from Red’s house as evidence. She had found it on top of a desk in a small, messy office just off his kitchen. The first page of the notebook read, “The policies and procedures of The Gunners: Authored by Red Goff.” Approximately twenty pages followed, organized by tabs with labels: POLICY, CASE STUDIES, STATE LAW, FED. LAW, REPEALS, and INVENTORY.

Josie flipped to the first tab, titled POLICY, and read through the mission statement, “… to uphold the Second Amendment at all costs. To fight for both conceal and carry in the State of Texas. And, most importantly, to keep the women and children of Artemis safe in their own homes.” After the mission statement were six pages of poorly written, rambling policy followed by the INVENTORY tab, which proved more interesting. It listed 263 guns, most titled to Red Goff. The guns ranged from a $250 handgun to a $4,000 Colt M4 Commando and a $5,000 shotgun from the former USSR. Each gun on the list included the owner, purchase price, date of purchase, and a serial number. It was a big break. At least they had something to work with in tracking down the guns. At first glance, she figured the collection was worth at least $175,000. Red was a forklift operator at a small manufacturing plant on the outskirts of town. His pay was probably worse than hers, so how could he afford bulletproof glass and the guns to accompany it?

A final section in the notebook was separated from the rest by a red sheet of paper with the words FRIEND OR FOE handwritten in block capital letters. A skull and crossbones had been drawn with a black marker under the title. Following were two pages labeled “Foe,” with forty-seven names written in differing handwriting. Number fourteen was her name. Sheriff Martínez was nineteen. She quickly identified two other state law enforcement officers on the list and then scanned the rest. She recognized at least half the names. Most were either affiliated with government or were well-known local liberals. Josie wondered what Bloster’s motivation was with the Gunners. It wasn’t unusual to collect guns; it was unusual, however, to view the people who were elected and hired to protect you as the enemy. Hack Bloster’s own boss was on the short list.

The last sheet in the book had the word “Friends” written across the top. She felt like she was in grade school again. Eighteen names, including Fallow’s and Bloster’s, were listed. She and Otto would begin interviews that afternoon.

Josie’s phone buzzed and she picked it up.

“Sauly Magson called,” Lou said. “Says he’s found a dead cow in the Rio. Says it’s hung up in a logjam outside his house.”

“Tell him to call Parks and Wildlife.”

“He claims its belly is packed full of cocaine.”

* * *

In 1976, Macon Drench purchased Artemis, Texas, the first of three ghost towns at the end of Farm Road 170 along the Rio Grande, for ten thousand dollars. Drench was an oil baron from Houston, disillusioned with the money and excesses in the city, and in search of a place to live connected to the land. He spent twenty million dollars of his own fortune and installed sewage and water lines, bartered with the phone and electric companies to stretch lines to a town that barely existed, outfitted a police department, built one pole barn to house the first grocery store, and another to serve as the town bank. Working with a city planner from Houston, he designed a central square and laid the downtown area in a grid with main streets leading strategically to major geological formations: the Chinati Mountains north of town and the Rio Grande and Mexico a direct route south. River Road, running parallel to the Rio Grande, was the only marked road that led directly into Artemis, and that was the appeal for Drench and most of the residents.

By 1985, Artemis had more than 1,500 residents. Drench invited family and friends to settle the area, promising nothing but a new experience. Word spread and a unique group of adventurers turned land most thought uninhabitable into a thriving community. Judicious use of water and organized supply runs had made the town a home for people running away from, or running to a new, life.

Sauly Magson was one of the original founders of Artemis. He was a scrawny bald man who typically wore a blue bandanna tied around his neck, a pair of grimy jean shorts, and nothing else. Most of the businesses in town ignored the No shirt, no shoes, no service rule with Sauly. When he had to wear shoes, he wore a pair of leather thongs that provided no more protection than the soles of his own feet. Sauly liked the psychedelics and spent much of his time in a state of wonder at the world around him, but he was as kindhearted as anyone Josie had ever met.

Sauly grew up in northern New Mexico, near the Taos Pueblo Indians in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Josie knew little about him other than that he ran away from home as a teenager and roamed New Mexico until 1976, when he met Drench. Sauly helped settle the area and was known locally as one of the willful independents that turned a windblown speck along the Mexican border into a town.

Josie found him on the edge of the river, about a quarter mile from his house. He lived in a three-story, square grain elevator that he converted himself with parts and pieces he dragged home from the dump or from construction sites he worked on. It was painted a deep purple that contrasted perfectly with the blue sky and desert. A series of fifteen windows appeared to be haphazardly installed over the four sides of the structure, but the satisfying visual effect made it clear that Sauly had an artist’s eye and a carpenter’s skills. She thought the scene looked to be somewhere between an Edward Hopper and a Georgia O’Keeffe painting.

“What’s up?” she called, smiling and waving when he realized she was walking toward him.

He rubbed his smooth head and smiled at her, revealing a handful of teeth. She noticed a small paunch in his wrinkled, dark brown belly, above his jean shorts.

“It’s the dangdest thing I ever seen. I’m straight as an arrow. I swear on my grave. I stared long and hard to prove it, and I’m telling you, that old heifer’s got a bellyful a coke.” He pointed across the river. “I swear it. It’s like some old junkie came down to the river and set up shop.”

Josie’s smile faded as she approached the riverbank. A small brown and white cow lay half submerged in the water, tangled in a mess of tree branches on the other side. Her abdomen had either been ripped open or torn when she got hung up in the branches, but there was definitely a gaping hole filled with something. It looked as if the organs had been removed and replaced with bags of cellophane-wrapped blocks, almost certainly cocaine.

“Did you try any?” she asked Sauly, only half-kidding.

He looked hurt. “Never touch it. Shuts your heart down. I do nothing but nature’s own.”

“How deep is the river here?” she asked.

“Eight feet. Want my kayak?”

Sauly disappeared into a thicket of shoulder-high grass. The area of the river around Sauly’s place was thick with clumps of Carrizo cane grass, willow and cottonwood trees, rangy bushes, and soil so sandy, the banks appeared like a beach. Green patches like this one appeared along the Rio throughout Artemis and provided a welcome relief to the miles of earthy brown and gray desert.

Sauly reemerged from the grass with a small kayak balanced atop his head. He bent at the waist and laid it gently on the ground next to the river. He unclipped a paddle from the side and pulled out a fillet knife that had been duct-taped next to the oblong opening for the seat. He laid them both on the ground and told Josie to check the kayak out.

Josie gave him a wary look.

“You can’t tip it. Trust me. It glides right across the top of the water.” He took his hand and slowly slid it through the air.

Trust me, she thought. Josie bent to unbuckle her police boots and wondered about following the advice of a sixty-year-old stoner. She stood and saw he had taken his bandanna from around his neck and laid it out flat in the dirt beside her boots and socks while she was rolling up her uniform pant legs.

“Lay your gun and badge here. I’ll guard ’em for you till you get done.”

She smiled and thanked him, curled her gun belt and set it down, but kept her gun tucked into the front of her pants. She laid her radio and keys on the bandanna and tugged at her cell phone inside her shirt pocket to make sure it was secured to the Velcro.

Sauly dragged the kayak about thirty feet upstream, where a path had been cleared through the cane. He pointed the front of the boat toward the water, keeping the seat over the sandy bank, and held Josie’s arm to help her climb inside. Once she settled in, he handed her the paddle and gently pushed the boat off with his foot. She glided easily into the river, then after a few shaky strokes, paddled awkwardly to the other side, about twenty feet across the slow-moving current and straight into the logjam. She didn’t need to get out of the boat to get the full picture. The gaping hole in the animal’s abdomen was stuffed with around ten bricks of cocaine, about twenty-five pounds’ worth. Josie clipped the paddle onto the side of the kayak and then hung on to a limb of the fallen tree while she snapped pictures using her cell phone. She knew there was no reception; otherwise, she would have called Border Patrol to get them headed this way. Someone was desperate for a missing load of cocaine, and she was certain they were already scouring the river in search of the dead animal.

She maneuvered her boat next to the cow, gagging at the putrid smell and swatting flies out of her face. She struggled to reach across the carcass to pull out one of the bags without tipping into the river. Josie couldn’t swim, could barely stay afloat treading water. She grabbed hold of a bag, slick with a substance she didn’t want to consider, and set it in the kayak between her legs.

Sauly had already walked downstream and was waiting for her on the bank. She started to push the kayak off from the branches but noticed movement through a clump of salt cedar on the Mexican side of the river, just up and to her left. The grass wasn’t as thick, and the land opened into the wide, rocky Chihuahuan Desert, but Josie couldn’t see much while she was sitting low in the kayak. The salt cedar rustled again, and she spotted two male figures dressed in desert camouflage pants and short-sleeved beige shirts. Josie pushed the kayak backwards, using a limb from the tree that the cow was caught in to move herself back under the overhanging trunk for cover.

She pulled the gun out of the front of her pants and ducked her head behind the trunk. The river was approximately four feet below the bank on this side, which had eroded and caused the large tree to fall. The U.S. side of the river was a gentle slope covered in cane grass that she could have easily disappeared into for cover, but the kayak was a slow-moving target, and she couldn’t risk the twenty feet to cross in open sight. She noted that Sauly had thankfully had the sense to disappear, but so had the two figures. The only noise was the water sliding past her boat and two woodpeckers knocking on trees above her. She had no doubt the men had come for the drugs. If she stayed in the kayak, she would become a target, and the number of men with guns would multiply. She flipped her cell phone open in one last attempt to catch a signal, but it was pointless. She was miles from decent reception, and she wouldn’t risk Sauly’s life to flag him down to go get help.

After tucking the gun back into her pants, she grabbed hold of two massive roots hanging from the tree trunk and used her arms to pull herself up and out of the kayak. She kicked the kayak back out into the river, hoping to distract the two men above her as she climbed the bank. The sandy bank gave way beneath her feet, and she was afraid she was headed down into the water. Struggling to find purchase in the dirt, she used her arms to pull herself up the massive root system and onto the bank. Sweat stung her eyes and ran down the sides of her face. The temperature was in the upper nineties, and humidity hung in the air like a wool blanket.

The kayak, along with probably twenty thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine, had already floated twenty feet down the stream by the time she made it up the bank and on solid ground. The grass wasn’t as thick, but there were still clumps of it for visual cover. She had no doubt the two figures had heard her movement and were hunkering down, waiting for her. She was now breaking multiple federal laws, but an armed fugitive on foreign soil was better than an employed cop dead in the water.

She scouted the area around her, and then, crouching low to the ground, she moved behind another fallen tree for cover. Fortunately she had left her vest on. Bending on one knee, she raised her hands and steadied them on the trunk, her eyes scanning for movement in the brush.

“This is Chief of Police Josie Gray!” she shouted. “Move out into the clearing. Put your hands in the air where I can see them.”

No movement.

“Throw your weapons to the ground and place your hands in the air!”

A gunshot rang out and the water to her left splashed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sauly running toward his house at a sprint. Josie remained still, her eyes focused on the direction the shot had come from, probably thirty feet away and slightly to her right. She heard voices and the rustling of grass and breaking branches, but the sound was moving away from her. Within ten seconds, she heard the doors of a vehicle open and a pickup engine start. Still crouching, she rushed to the edge of the thicket and looked into the clearing in time to see a twenty-year-old two-tone pickup truck take off, following the river east. The truck was too far away to get a license number, but she was betting it had come from the Altagracia Ranch: a seventy-five-thousand-acre working ranch that the Federales had been monitoring closely for ties to the Medrano drug cartel.

Sauly appeared again from the weeds like an apparition, his tanned body and bald head blending in smoothly with his surroundings. He had acquired a shotgun, which hung over his shoulder from a leather strap.

“They’re gone,” she called out.

“Who were they shooting at?” he yelled back.

Josie ignored the question, more worried about getting across the river and getting Border Patrol on-site before two men turned into twenty. “Can you get me back across?”

“Ten minutes!” he yelled.

True to his word, ten minutes later he had rescued the kayak downstream, dragged it back, and paddled deftly across the river, just upstream from the cow, where the bank was slightly more sloped.

“You paddle back. I’ll swim. Slide on down the bank, and I’ll help you in.” Sauly looked up at her with a wide grin, half his teeth rotted out, his eyes bright. Josie cussed, checked that her gun and phone were secure, and started down the sandy bank, hanging on to a skinny tree to keep from sliding into the river. Sauly had already climbed out of the kayak and was waist deep, holding steady. Josie knew the river was about eight feet deep in the center.

“Let’s go, Chief. Have a little faith. I won’t let you get that pretty uniform wet.”

With an arm on Sauly’s shoulder, she managed a quick step into the boat. It rocked back and forth but held steady. Several minutes later, she was safe onshore, where Sauly smiled and handed her the cocaine she had left in the boat.

“You’re a good man,” she said.

While he hid his boat again in the weeds, she contacted the Marfa Border Sector on Sauly’s home phone and talked with a patrol officer.

“I’ve got ten packages. Probably a kilo each. The cow’s abdomen was sliced open. They took her organs out, stuck the coke in, and sewed her back up with what looks to be fishing line. When the cow got hung up, the fishing line snapped and her belly broke open.” The sector agent took off on a cynical rant against the kind of idiots who would route their drugs across the border in a dead cow. Josie didn’t recognize the agent, but he sounded fed up with the job. Josie finally broke in, “The Altagracia Ranch is about two miles upstream from here, Mexican side.” She provided directions to Sauly’s for the agent and said, “Shots were fired. If I hadn’t had a gun pointed in their direction, they’d have been more aggressive. They’ll be back.”

* * *

When Josie arrived back at the police department, a city council member was sitting on the wooden bench out front under the window. Smokey Blessings, married to Nurse Vie Blessings, was thirty-five. Smokey drove a county maintenance truck, and Josie both respected and liked him. A slightly overweight father of two, he had a calm disposition and plenty of common sense. Vie was five years older than Smokey, and ran his life like she did everything else—with bossy efficiency.

He squinted up at Josie and stood as she approached. The noon sun was in his face, and he looked sweaty and nervous. “Chief.”

“Smokey.”

“Can we talk a few minutes?” he asked.

Walking upstairs, they talked about how Vie was handling the stress from the shooting at the Trauma Center.

“I was out at the maintenance barn, and one of the guys came running in. Told me the Trauma Center was under attack. Wanted to know if Vie was working. I said, ‘Hell yes, she’s working!’ She’d just sent me a text saying she couldn’t meet me for lunch. She didn’t bother to mention she’d just lived through a gunfight.”

They reached the top of the stairs, and Josie opened the office door and flipped on the lights. She pulled out chairs at the conference table as Smokey continued.

“I told Frank I was going over there. I was hell-bent on pulling my wife out of that operating room. I knew she wouldn’t do it herself. She’d get herself shot before she walked out on a patient. Frank finally talked sense into me. Told me I’d get in the way. Get myself arrested, if not shot.”

Josie got them both a bottle of water and turned the fan to blow straight at them. The window air conditioner took the edge off, but it didn’t actually cool the room. Smokey sighed and seemed to relax a little.

“I don’t know anyone who handles stress any better than Vie does. She’s a perfect fit for her job. I know yesterday was over the top, but no one could have handled it any better than she did.”

Smokey shook his head. “She brushes that stuff off like lint. Nothing fazes the woman.” He paused and smiled. “Except Donny.”

Josie laughed. Donny was their fifteen-year-old son, who took Vie’s exuberance for life to the next level. Josie didn’t say so, but she was fairly certain she would see Donny in the back of a police car before he graduated high school.

Smokey finally drained his water and grew quiet again, apparently thinking through what he came to say.

“I want to apologize, Josie. About the meeting that the mayor called this morning.”

Josie nodded.

“I had nothing to do with that, but I should have told you and the sheriff about it. When the mayor called me this morning, the whole thing was already done. I was just told to take a seat behind him to support him. All the council was supposed to be up there. I was just the only one that could make it.”

“How did he get the word out?”

“He had a group of volunteers making phone calls last night to get people there. I just figured you and the sheriff already knew about it.”

Josie raised a cynical eyebrow. “The mayor does nothing without an ulterior motive. So, why didn’t he invite the sheriff or me in on his show?”

Smokey shrugged and stroked his chin where the stubble of a goatee was growing in. He cleared his throat but didn’t answer.

“Come on, Smokey. The snub was too obvious and too public. What was his point?”

Smokey tipped his head back and blew air out in frustration. “I asked him why you and Martínez weren’t up there with us. He basically said this is his town. The law officials aren’t doing enough to keep the people safe, so he’s stepping in.”

“I don’t care about sitting on a podium. I care about this town, though. If he has ideas for how the sheriff and I can keep Artemis safer, then he needs to tell us. All he did was undermine what we do.”

“It’s not exactly a secret how you feel about the mayor. I’m not saying what he did was right, but I can’t blame him for not wanting to talk to you about his ideas. You’d have probably shot them all to hell.”

Josie stood and walked to the coffeemaker to pour a cup of burnt coffee and take a deep breath. He was right, and the heat in her face gave her away.

“Josie, I have a lot of respect for you and Martínez both, but you two aren’t helping anything by antagonizing Moss.”

She turned to face him. “His whole persona is designed to antagonize!”

Smokey nodded, his expression weary. “I know that. I just thought you were above it.”

Josie stared, at a loss for words. Her face felt red.

“Look, Josie, you know I support you. I know Moss can be a real jackass. You’re a woman, so to him you’re automatically stupid. Look past that. The man wants the same thing you do. He cares about this town, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to save it. Same as you.”

“I’ve been with this department for nine years, three as chief. I’m tired of proving myself. I need to make decisions based on what’s right, not what’s politically correct.”

“No one’s telling you any different. You have council support, and you have the community’s support. Just don’t jeopardize your job over a petty grudge with the mayor. We need you. Right now more than ever.”

* * *

After Smokey left, she stood at the window in the back of the office and looked out onto a neighborhood of one-story ranch homes, small and shabby, cared for by people who were giving it their best against unbeatable odds. Following her initial move to get away from her mother, it was the people struggling to make it, the underdogs, who made her call Artemis home. She felt as if she’d found a place where she could make a difference to people who needed it.

She had arrived in Artemis as a twenty-four-year-old woman with a past she wanted nothing to do with, barely able to envision a future, and had applied to be an Artemis police officer. Otto had hired Josie at the end of just one forty-five–minute interview. With Josie sitting across the desk from him, he had called her former supervisor with the Indianapolis Police Department and had a brief, positive conversation.

Otto asked her what had drawn her to Artemis. Uncharacteristically, she shared personal information about her family and her desire to start over. Otto had hired her and invited her to dinner that evening to meet his wife, Delores. Aside from her neighbor, Dell, Josie privately considered Otto and Delores her closest family.

Three years ago, Delores convinced Otto he needed to forgo another term as chief in order to reduce stress in his life. Josie was honored that Otto had recommended her to take his place.

Josie heard a chair scoot across the floor and turned to see Otto sitting down at his desk.

“How’s tricks?” he asked. He wore the standard blue and gray police uniform, minus the bulletproof vest that fit over his midsection only when he forced it.

Otto had just logged on for the noon-to-eight-thirty shift. Officer Marta Cruz would come on at four thirty, when Josie’s shift was supposed to end but rarely did. The three worked staggered shifts, but arranged schedules so that once each week they met as a group to discuss current cases and share information. The city police coordinated schedules with the sheriff’s department in an attempt to ensure at least one officer was on duty at all hours, but with vacation schedules, even that was difficult to accomplish.

Josie gave Otto a rundown on the morning. “I talked to the Assessor’s Office. Drench owns the land Winnings’ trailer is on. I’ll go talk to him tomorrow.” She pointed to the opened Gunner’s policy manual that lay in the middle of her desk. “You know how many guns Red had on the inventory he kept?”

“It would appear, too many for his own good.”

“Two hundred sixty-three.”

“I’d think two or three would have been sufficient.”

“Didn’t Hack Bloster make it sound like the whole stash of guns was kept on those hooks in Red’s living room?”

Otto typed in his computer log-in and turned toward Josie, his expression more interested. “That’s the way I took it. But there sure weren’t enough hooks to hold almost three hundred guns.”

“You busy?” Josie picked up her keys.

* * *

Josie left a note on Marta’s desk asking her to set up a meeting with Sergio Pando. Josie valued her personal connection with Sergio, where the intelligence exchange was based upon a friendship instead of on border regulations and politics. The law enforcement and government agencies from the two countries may as well have been from different planets. Information exchange was too often caught up in red tape and bureaucracy, wasting precious time in an investigation. Piedra Labrada had recently undergone a series of brutal assassinations that were attributed to La Bestia, and Josie was certain the assassination at the hospital was linked to them as well. While she hoped the connection between La Bestia and Artemis was only geographic, she feared the violence that had invaded their town would only intensify. She had killed a member of La Bestia at the Trauma Center, wounded another, and then placed him in the Arroyo County Jail. To compound matters, the leader of the rival cartel, Hector Medrano, had been murdered in her Trauma Center. She had no doubt there would be retribution.

* * *

Once the engine in her jeep finally turned over, Josie set the air-conditioning on high in deference to Otto. The bank’s sign read eighty-nine degrees, and it was just past noon. The department uniforms were thick and held heat like insulation, a fact Otto lamented from April through October—although with an average high of 101 degrees in July, everything felt uncomfortable. He walked outside with two cans of Coke and slid into the passenger seat, griping about the heat, his aching knees, and the general decay of society.

Josie drove past the courthouse toward Farm Road 170 to follow the Rio Grande south toward Red’s place, listening to Otto’s running commentary about life. His dim view of the world remained balanced with optimism concerning his wife, Delores, and grown daughter, Mina, who lived in El Paso. After years of working together, Josie and Otto had formed a close friendship, one that had carried them through difficult times both in and out of the office.

Otto opened one of the cans of Coke and handed it to Josie, then pointed out his window to a large group of black buzzards circling what looked to be barren desert.

“Why would any living thing, man or animal, move to a giant blistering sandbox? Fifteen buzzards to one field mouse. Not very good odds,” Otto said.

Josie smiled. “Don’t be such a cynic. Don’t you feel like a winner every night you make it home and realize you pulled it off again?”

“I’m the cynic?”

She pulled the jeep up to Pegasus Winning’s trailer when she saw the Eldorado was parked out front. Josie rolled her window down and heard the air conditioner blowing. She put the jeep in park and jogged up to the trailer and tried the door handle. Otto stared at her as she got back in the car.

“Wondered if the trailer was locked,” Josie said.

“And?”

“It was.”

“There’s something strange about that girl, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Might it be that she found Red Goff dead on her couch?”

“It’s the way she seemed so bored with the dead body. Most women I know would have been bawling their eyes out. She was more worried about missing work.”

Josie shrugged. “Bills have to get paid.” She thought part of Winning’s tough image was an act. She didn’t have the woman figured out yet, but she would bet money she was not the killer.

The crime scene tape was still in place at Red’s, and things appeared undisturbed since their last visit.

Josie put plastic gloves on and unlocked the glass door. The smell of mildew hit them both as she opened it.

Josie and Otto stood at the entrance and scanned the living room, the kitchen to the right, and the hallway to the left.

“Where’s that smell coming from? It didn’t smell like this yesterday,” he said.

Josie flipped the light switch on and nothing happened.

“Generator’s off,” she said.

Otto clicked on his flashlight and walked in.

Red Goff lived off the grid, a phenomenon that could be found in pockets across the country, but was more prevalent out West. Red wasn’t connected to the city utilities. He received no electricity, no city water or sewage, no phone lines. The goal was to have no connection to the outside world. It was difficult in West Texas, where growing your own crops meant costly irrigation, but Red managed it as a hobby farm. He had raised cows, which he butchered for his own meat, selling the rest off to the meat-processing plant for profit. He also maintained a garden, where he grew almost all his vegetables. He purchased nonpasteurized dairy products from a farmer in Odessa. The University of Texas used to bring out a group of Environmental Studies students each year to observe his solar operation, but the guns on his walls and the pop-up rants on government control had ended the visits several years ago. Since then, Red had practically vanished from public life, except for his status with the Gunners.

Otto called to Josie from Red’s bedroom. “Look at this!”

Josie found Otto on his hands and knees, looking under a queen-sized bed with a leopard-print comforter and black satin pillows. Josie shuddered at the thought of Red slipping around on satin sheets.

Otto’s voice was muffled as he pulled an area rug out from under the bed. “How many people do you know lay their rugs under the bed instead of beside them?”

Josie took the corner of the rug from Otto and pulled. Otto stood up and they moved the bed out toward the door. The room was about fifteen feet square and contained the bed and an old Scandinavian-style dresser that had been painted black. With the bed moved back against the opposite wall, a trapdoor became visible. Otto smiled.

“Nice work,” Josie said, and bent down to lift the wooden door that lay recessed into the concrete floor. As she lifted the door, the smell of mildew pushed up out of the cellar and became so strong, her eyes watered. A wooden stepladder led down into a black hole.

Otto and Josie stared at each other in the flashlight’s dim beam.

“Isn’t this where you walk down those stairs and find ten mutilated bodies in a freezer?” Otto asked.

“Basements give me the creeps. You want to take this one?” she asked.

Otto shook his head. “I don’t think that ladder will hold me.”

Josie flicked on her own flashlight and shone it down the hole into standing water. “Damn.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Josie was easing herself down the ladder wearing thigh-high rubber boots, a broom in one hand, and a miner’s lamp attached to a band around her forehead. She kept the rubber boots and miner’s lamp in a plastic trunk in the back of her jeep for calls that took her down along the Rio. She found the broom in Red’s kitchen. Josie stood on the bottom rung of the ladder and slowly panned the light around the room. The cellar, about fifteen by twenty feet, appeared to be a supply area containing large cans of peanut butter, green beans, corn, roast beef, and lard. Sleeping bags in plastic lined the top shelf, as did various Coleman lanterns and one-burner stoves. Ten-gallon plastic containers of drinking water were almost submerged around the bottom perimeter of the room.

“It’s high-dollar stuff,” Josie called up to Otto. “He didn’t go to Walmart and stock up. Where’s ole Red getting his money?”

“I studied the list of members yesterday. I knew all the members but one, and there isn’t a sugar daddy in the bunch. A few with money, but nothing significant.”

She took a step off the ladder and into the room. The waders closed in around her legs, the cold water pressing against her. She poked around on the floor with the broom handle and found nothing. On the right-hand side of the room was a pipe that had apparently leaked the water. The pipe appeared to exit the back side of the building and was probably connected to a well. She could see the water pushing into the room where the pipe was submerged. Josie scanned the wall and found a shutoff valve.

She looked up toward the hole in the ceiling and saw Otto bent at the waist and squinting down at her.

“This was intentional,” she said. “That valve was opened completely. I can’t believe the well hasn’t run dry by now.”

“He had to be two feet from hell before he hit water out here,” Otto said.

Josie waded across the far side of the room, where five hundred–gallon plastic trunks lined the floor. The water was just below the lip of three of the trunks. The other two were empty and floating just below the wooden shelf above them. Josie opened both and found black grease stains on the inside and the strong smell of gun oil. She wondered aloud if the missing guns had been stored in the tubs. The other three trunks were full of detonators, frag grenades, explosives, night-vision goggles, tac lights, and scopes.

“There’s enough explosive here to blow up the entire town.”

A small green plastic tub sat on a shoulder-high shelf in the corner. Josie pulled it down and lifted the lid. Inside were approximately a hundred photos and a 35-millimeter camera in a black leather carrying case. Josie didn’t bother to examine the photos but took the tub and handed it up to Otto. She carried the remaining two trunks through the water, up the ladder, and loaded them into the jeep, and left the tubs with explosives for the Department of Public Safety to remove. Then Josie made the final climb out of the rank water and into Red’s bedroom, imagining mold settling into her lungs.

Later that afternoon, Josie and Otto cataloged the six trunks into evidence and then spread the photographs out on the table in the department office upstairs. After a quick scan of the pictures, Josie sat down in disgust and shook two Tums from the bottle that she kept in her desk drawer.

Otto remained standing, hands on his hips, scowling down at the pictures. “I just never figured him for a pervert. That poor girl didn’t have a clue,” Otto said, pointing to a picture of Pegasus Winning in shorts, bare chested, walking across the living room in her trailer. The grainy picture appeared to have been taken by a telephoto lens.

They found around forty pictures of Winning, mostly undressed, getting ready for bed or getting out of the shower. The pictures had obviously been taken on multiple days. One picture particularly bothered Josie. Winning stood completely naked at the kitchen counter, looking toward the window as if she heard a noise, with a shot glass held just up to her lips. Her expression was distant, the look of someone trying to deaden her loneliness through a bottle. Josie wondered what she might look like through a camera lens in the privacy of her own home at night. The thought depressed the hell out of her.

Otto pulled another manila envelope out of the green tub and dumped the pictures onto the table, then laid them out in rows. The photos all appeared to be of Gunner members and various meetings and activities.

He pointed to a picture and leaned closer to the table to examine it. “Those fellas aren’t Gunners. Look at the three men in the background, all wearing desert camouflage.”

Josie picked up the picture and studied it. Two of the men had what appeared to be automatic machine guns strapped over their shoulders, and all three appeared to be Mexican.

“Bingo.” Otto clapped Josie on the back. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”