The Territory: A Novel (8 page)

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.