The Territory: A Novel (19 page)

After a half hour lunch of chicken salad and chips, and more small talk dominated by her mother, Josie asked what her immediate plans were.

“I’m thinking about moving here. Thought I’d come scout it out first.”

Josie was stunned. “Why?”

“All my family’s gone in Indiana. Claudia got married and moved to Maine. Uncle Larry’s dead.”

“Are you sick?”

Her mother laughed—too loudly, Josie thought.

“No, I’m not sick. Don’t you get lonely for family, living out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Josie shrugged. She didn’t give it much thought. She had learned long ago that life was easier if she just let things go. She spent the holidays working overtime, read voraciously, and hiked when the walls started closing in. Dell and Otto were as close to family as she needed.

Her mother pushed her fork through a patch of uneaten chicken salad, and Josie wondered if she was seeing real emotion or yet another con. Had she been evicted, lost a job, lost her latest man?

“You got a spare bedroom I could stay in for a couple weeks? Just somewhere while I scout out the territory? I’ll chip in on food.”

It was Josie’s turn to drag her fork around her plate. It would never work; there was no doubt in her mind. Josie had moved two thousand miles from her mother for good reason; to suddenly share a house, a bathroom in the morning, a kitchen to wash dishes. The thought of it made her sweat.

“I have only one bedroom. The house is really small.” She looked up from her plate. “You better give this some thought first anyway. The only family you have in Texas is me, and it’s not like we communicate very well. The heat is unbearable and you’ll miss the snow and the trees. Jobs are hard to come by, too.”

Her mom flipped her hand out, as if dismissing Josie’s concerns. The conversation turned to banter: Josie detailing why it would not work, her mother responding why it would. Behind each of Josie’s responses lay the real reason that clenched at her chest, but that she refused to speak. Her mother had not been there for her as a child. She had no rights to Josie’s time, attention, or money as an adult. Josie had figured out adulthood on her own, and it was time her mother did the same.

*   *   *

At nine o’clock that evening, Josie threw her overnight bag over her shoulders, attached her bedroll and foam mat to straps behind her back, and began the fifty-foot climb up the watchtower. At the top, bugs scurried as she shone her flashlight around the interior room before placing her bags on the map table while she lit the two lanterns. She unfolded an army cot that had been left by some other visitor and laid her mat and sleeping bag out for the night.

She took one of the folding camp chairs and her department-issued binoculars outside on the observation deck and breathed deep. The desert had a different smell from that height. The sand and grit that permeated everything below was nonexistent, and the air was clean and dry. The silence was broken by a soft wind that curled around the deck, pushing through the rafters below to create a low whistling like a far-off train. Josie fixed her gaze on the Texas side for several minutes, away from the drama to the south, and raised her arms, allowing the breeze to lift her T-shirt off her skin. Goose bumps, a rarity in July, covered her stomach and arms. She smiled and wished Dillon were standing beside her.

She opened a package of cheese crackers and popped the top on a V8, her concession to good health. She propped her forearms on the wood railing and spilt open a cheese cracker, eating first the plain cracker, saving the best for last, then washing it all down with the vegetable juice. Marta fussed at her continually for her diet of junk food that was balanced, at least in Josie’s own mind, by healthy cans and jars of vegetables and fruits. Fresh was out of the question. It spoiled in her refrigerator and wasted money. Marta gave her fruit baskets for Christmas and made vegetable casseroles for her birthday, all appreciated but largely uneaten. Of the countless ways she had seen and read about people dying, she figured a lack of fresh produce was the least of her worries.

On the back side of the observation deck, Piedra Labrada was heating up. Cars were streaming by strip clubs and bars that were lit up with neon signs flashing
NO COVER CHARGE
in both Spanish and English. Streetlights were visible only on the downtown streets in the newer area of town. The small industrial edge of the city was now quiet and dark, as was the old section of town, with the businesses that centered around the Central Plaza now dark and locked up for the night. Josie stood at the railing and looked through binoculars at the activity across the river and wondered at the human race, at its propensity to gather and rule, to divide and conquer. The smallness of people always struck her from atop the watchtower. Race, religion, sex, nationality: they all boiled down to the need to control, for the need to prove one man superior to another.

Josie spent several hours ruminating as she watched the traffic down below. It wasn’t until one in the morning that something happened to draw her attention away from the city. Three cars trailed by a pickup truck had left Piedra Labrada and drove parallel to the Rio for about a mile west of the city. At that point, the road veered south, away from the river, but Josie watched the caravan turn right and drive through a half mile of scrub and rock to reach the river. From her distance, she couldn’t identify people or even the size or make of the cars, other than the truck.

Josie thought it might be high school kids partying at first, and then suspected coyotes transporting smugglers across the river, but the scheme was more involved than that. She watched the lights of the pickup turn and face toward land as the truck backed up to the edge of the water. It was a bright night with a sky full of stars and a full moon just beginning to wane, but even through her binoculars, she was too far from the action to tell exactly what they were doing. Then a dim light appeared to travel slowly across the river, and another set of car lights appeared on a vehicle that she hadn’t realized was waiting on the U.S. side of the river. She called the details in to Border Patrol but knew they couldn’t get there fast enough. She had already been told they were undermanned that night.

It took about thirty minutes for the entire operation to take place. It looked to Josie as if the pickup truck unloaded its cargo, either people or contraband, onto a small boat that quickly moved across the water, unloaded, and came back again to be loaded onto the back of the truck, which quickly left the area. She watched the car on the U.S. side travel along River Road and then turn right on Scratchgravel Road, where another pair of headlights came on and followed the car north toward town. It was a smooth transaction, which Josie was certain had happened before and would likely happen again.

NINE

At noon on Friday, Pegasus stood, draining a can of off-brand tuna fish that smelled like metal into her kitchen sink. Tuna and split pea with ham soup were the only cans left in the cupboard. She planned to slip a couple cans of stew and a better-tasting soup into her purse that night at work. Shoplifting went against her moral code, such as it was, but she had to eat.

She scraped the tuna into a bowl and squeezed a fast-food package of mayonnaise on top of it. She heard cars coming up the gravel drive and stepped quickly to the window in the kitchen door to watch three black cars buzz by her trailer on their way to Red’s. Through the haze of dust they left in their wake, she watched them park in front of Red’s house. One man in a suit, white shirt, and tie got out and appeared to bang on Red’s door, even though it was still crisscrossed with yellow police tape. Several similarly dressed men stood and faced her trailer, where she watched from her living room’s back window.

She opened the coffee table drawer and pulled out the Smith & Wesson and the fully loaded magazine lying beside it. Keeping her eyes on the men, she slid the magazine in the gun and forced a bullet into the chamber. She practiced extending her arms, raising the gun, and slipping her finger down onto the trigger, aiming at the door, where she had hung a red piece of paper at exactly five feet from the ground, the approximate height a man’s chest would be if he came through her front door. She had listened to the cop and had begun locking her door at all hours, although a swift kick would gain a man entrance.

Within a few minutes, the man banging on Red’s sliding glass door quit and the convoy left without stopping at her trailer. Pegasus wondered where her brother was. She had not seen him since her last gun lesson and wasn’t sure if he was even still in town. Maybe this was what he was preparing her for.

*   *   *

Josie fed and watered Chester and let him outside to run while she caught a few hours of sleep in her own bed. She logged on for duty at noon to work a second shift with Otto. They drove a half mile past the watchtower and parked. Under a steamy noonday sun, they walked a path covered in scrub grass and salt cedar, scouting out vehicle access to the river. About a quarter mile from Josie’s jeep, they spotted fresh tire tracks coming straight out of the river, near where Josie had seen the boat.

Thirty minutes later, Jimmy Dare, a twenty-year veteran with the Marfa Border Patrol, responded to Josie’s call. Josie and Otto met him by the edge of the road, where he parked his white and green SUV.

“How the hell are you, darling?” Jimmy smiled wide and came at Josie with an arm thrown out for a handshake. He was a fit, five feet ten inches with a military haircut and precise movements. He wore the customary olive green cargo pants and shirt with a yellow name patch declaring him as part of Border Patrol. A .40-caliber pistol hung from a clip at his side, and he looked like a man who could use it if the situation demanded it. Josie had once watched him commandeer a van full of eight illegal aliens attempting entry, three of whom were armed. She had used him as a reliable source on border issues since she had taken the job as chief.

After they caught up on old acquaintances, Jimmy grew serious. “What are you guys doing down here to fire up the Mexicans so bad? Word is, the Bishop wants your head on a shiny platter, Chief Gray.”

Josie gave Otto a grim look. She had expected that information, but hearing it spoken from another law enforcement agent was sobering.

“You do not want to make light of this. That man is scary mean, and when he levels a threat, it’s usually carried out.”

“Actually, the Bishop’s why I called you. I have a hunch Medrano has targeted Artemis for easy access. Marfa Sector patrols what, five hundred miles of riverfront on the Rio?”

“You got it,” Jimmy said.

“Your focus has never been this area. It’s remote. No big cities to get lost in. Correct?”

Jimmy nodded.

“I was on the watchtower last night, looking for action, and saw four cars drive right down to the river, Mexican side.” She pointed behind her to the crossing and the tire tracks in the dirt. “They launched a boat, moved the cargo, and returned the boat all within thirty minutes.”

He shook his head. “We could have ten times the number of agents we have now, and they’d still find a way. What were they transporting?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I called you. We need help. I’ve got three officers, including myself. Sheriff’s department is no better. We’ve got Gutiérrez in the county jail, on top of the La Bestia member that I fatally shot. I’m very concerned either Medrano or La Bestia are going to rip us up one night soon.”

“You know who the American link is?” Jimmy asked.

“We had a local gun fanatic murdered a few nights ago. Several hundred guns were stolen from his house as well. Red Goff?”

Jimmy nodded acknowledgment. “I know him.”

“I think Red was running guns with the Mexicans. Probably Medrano. I don’t know if drugs were involved. I haven’t made that connection. This is strictly between us, but I suspect a local sheriff’s deputy may have stolen Red’s guns and sold them to Medrano.”

Jimmy scowled. “You got yourself a regular mess.”

Josie kicked at the gravel. “It’s a lot of conjecture and not much to back it up. If you can make an arrest down here, it sure would help move things along. I just don’t have the manpower to make it happen.”

Jimmy nodded and rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “I heard your calls for help the other night when the Trauma Center got shot up. I was working a mess myself. We stopped a van with fifteen illegals, one of the ladies in childbirth, trying to hold the baby back until they reached their destination.” He shook his head at the memory. “I did everything I could to get you help that night.”

Josie nodded. She didn’t doubt it.

“Sanchez and I are working the watchtower tonight,” Dixon said.

“Officer Marta Cruz will be working with you. I’ll take the tower tomorrow night.”

“I’ll get the captain to commit to a week if I can. Then at least if you have trouble at the jail, we’ll be close at hand. If things get bad, you call me personally.”

*   *   *

On the way back to the department, Otto suggested they stop by Red’s place.

“There are a lot of people that don’t know those guns were stolen. I don’t like that young Winning girl out there all by herself. She’s a sitting duck, and she doesn’t seem concerned a bit about her safety.”

Josie nodded, did a U-turn on River Road, and turned her car toward Scratchgravel Road. She pulled onto Winning’s road and drove up the gravel lane to her trailer and stopped. “I’ll check in with her.”

Pegasus Winning answered the door dressed in shorts and an oversized man’s T-shirt from a Harley shop. “You just missed them,” she said, looking surprised to see Josie.

“Missed who?” Josie asked.

“There were three carloads of men nosing around Red’s place this afternoon. I saw a couple guys get out and check his door. They snooped around the garage, in front of his house.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Josie asked.

She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip. It was the same body language she had used with Josie ever since she first showed up at the police department. “I didn’t know it was a requirement.”