The Territory: A Novel (3 page)

The trauma room echoed with the pounding of fists on the door and shouts in Spanish, but Josie couldn’t shoot without knowing who stood beyond the wall. With her gun trained on the door, she thought of Otto in the front of the building and hoped he hadn’t been hit. She shoved the image from her mind, forcing herself to keep focus.

The cries of the young nurse on the floor turned to sobs.

Bullets hit the door, ringed the handle, and the door flew open with a kick. Three gunmen screamed as they opened fire on the man lying on the table. Josie fired her pistol, hit one man in the chest, then a second in his upper arm. The first man stumbled backwards into the hallway; the second man fell back against the wall as the third man turned and fled, still yelling as he ran down the hall, spraying the walls with bullets.

She heard the clinic’s back door slam and tires blow gravel through the parking lot. Josie leaped from her crouched position on the floor, yelling at the injured man to drop his weapon. He leaned against the wall, holding the other hand over the bleeding wound, the automatic rifle at his feet.

Josie pushed him to the floor, kneeled on his back. He cried out in pain as she pulled his arms back and snapped handcuffs on him. Stepping into the hallway, she pushed at the gunman lying on his back on the floor. From the chest wound, she was certain he was dead. She put her backup weapon inside the concealed holster under her shirt and carried his AK-47 with her. Otto ran down the hallway to the back entrance as Josie stood, leaving the wounded man moaning on the floor. The two nurses and doctor stared up at her from the floor.

“Anyone hit?” she asked them.

They began to pull themselves up into sitting positions, still too shocked to know if they were hurt. They all appeared fine to her, and she told them to stay down. She glanced at Medrano on the operating table. He was no longer recognizable.

With her back pressed against the wall in the hallway, she moved quickly toward the rear entrance. Otto rushed back inside, sweat dripping down his face, his coloring so red, she worried he might be having a heart attack.

“It’s clear. No one back there, no cars or people in the parking lot or in the yards across the street.”

“You okay?” Josie asked. Her voice echoed in her head as if in a box, and the smell of gunpowder burnt her nose.

Otto wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “Jesus, I thought you were all dead. The staff okay?”

“They got the patient. That’s it.”

The two stood in the silence of the hallway, ears still ringing in pain from the gunfire.

*   *   *

Eight hours later, Josie sat in the mayor’s office, along with Moss and Sheriff Roy Martínez. Moss had requested a debriefing to discuss the shooting. His office was located in the Artemis City Building, which was connected to the left side of the police department in downtown Artemis. The mayor’s office was located in the back of the long, narrow building, and was walled in brown 1970s-style wood paneling and beige shag carpeting. The conference table, large enough for eight people to sit around, dominated the office. A mahogany desk the size of a twin bed took up the space in the back. Josie could smell the cigar smoke on Moss’s clothing from across the table as he plugged a laptop cord into a wall socket.

Built like a linebacker, with wide shoulders and a squat stance, the mayor held himself in great esteem and was not shy about sharing that opinion with anyone who would listen. Three years ago, when Josie applied for the position of chief of police, she had the support of the city council, the other officers in the department, and Sheriff Martínez. Moss was the hold-up. He had told her to take her name out of the running, that she did not belong, that she was not strong enough mentally or physically for the rigors of the job. It wasn’t personal, he said, but women were not “built” for police work. She had ignored his demand and was appointed shortly thereafter. Josie had never learned who put the political pressure on Moss to hire her, but she knew he resented her presence and would relish her dismissal.

Josie connected her digital camera to the mayor’s laptop, downloaded the images, and clicked through the set as she provided a description of the pictures she had taken, inside and out at the Trauma Center, as the Artemis PD and Texas Department of Public Safety officers processed the crime scene. She explained that she had hit one of the gunmen in the chest and he had died at the scene.

Moss interrupted her. “That is not good. Not good at all.” His eyebrows furrowed, and he stared hard at Josie.

She ignored the comment and pointed to a picture of the gunman she had shot in the arm being loaded into an ambulance. “The Arroyo County Sheriff’s Department took this man, the second gunman, into custody and transported him to the Arroyo County Hospital. The bullet was removed and the wound dressed. He was transported to the jail about an hour ago.” She made eye contact with the mayor. “Our jail. The surgeon said the man needed to remain in the hospital overnight.” She gestured to the sheriff sitting across the table from her. “Martínez fought and won.”

Roy Martínez said, “After the hit on the Trauma Center, I won’t risk another unsecured situation.” Martínez shifted in his chair. A burly former marine, he was a large, muscular man who barely fit between the arms of the wooden captain’s chair. He often looked uncomfortable in his uniform, as if he needed more space to breathe. He cleared his throat and said, “There’s a nurse outside his cell to keep track of his medical needs. He’s a Mexican citizen, so we’ll have to figure out who’s going to pay for this mess.”

“We can’t afford the phone bill, let alone the medical bills for a fugitive,” the mayor said.

Josie pressed the space bar on the laptop and showed the last picture, a wide-angle shot of the operating room. The gurney and body had been removed, but blood splatter remained on the walls and floor. Yellow stickers, numbered one through fifty-eight, were scattered about the room near pockmarks and holes in the white cinder block.

“Fifty-eight bullets used to kill a man who was already half-dead,” Josie said. “It’s a miracle we didn’t lose the entire medical staff.”

Moss stood and walked to the window, then turned to face them. “This has to stop. I will not allow my town to be overrun by terrorists.”

Sheriff Martínez cleared his throat and pushed a finger in between his neck and his brown uniform collar and tugged. He leaned forward in his chair toward the mayor. “Allow? You think the law officials in this town are allowing these people to shoot up the town?”

Moss stared back at Martínez and didn’t speak. His expression changed, as if he were recalculating his next move.

“The city police department has three officers, including myself. The sheriff’s department has four, and they have to run the jail,” Josie said. “You have drug cartels across the border with million-dollar arsenals. You patch one hole in the border, and they just blow through another. They dig under the fence, they go over it in biplanes, they scramble the radar. We’re in their line of traffic right now. And we don’t have a tenth of the officers we need to fight back.”

“Then patch the crack. Blow their asses down the border. I don’t really give a damn, but I don’t want them here,” Moss said.

“Then don’t allow medical transports across the border!” Josie said.

“Do you understand what kind of political hell we’d get if he died because we wouldn’t allow him access to a surgeon?” Moss asked. “A U.S. citizen? The media would eat me alive!”

“We have two thousand miles of border with Mexico, and only a third of it is controlled. I just read a briefing last week from Homeland Security stating that West Texas was put on the national watchlist for high-intensity drug trafficking. We’re a designated port for weapons transportation and terrorist entry.” She let her words sink in. “We need more officers.”

“Whose paycheck do you plan on squeezing? Yours?” He pointed directly at Josie. “I’m telling you, either get a grip on this situation, or I will find someone else who can.”

Martínez interrupted. “I don’t like your threat or your tone of voice. You don’t have the power to replace me or her, so knock off the meaningless bully tactics.”

Moss’s eyes bulged in anger. He looked at Martínez. “That’s fine! Let the voters deal with you. But the commissioners and I can and will run her out of town if she isn’t doing her job.”

“You need to be reminded of your place.” Martínez leaned forward in his chair toward Moss. “You’re a figurehead who can be voted out. You have absolutely no support to remove Chief Gray. And if you try, I’ll personally run a campaign against you like this town has never seen.”

*   *   *

After thirty minutes of talk that left everyone angrier, the mayor dismissed both officers with a wave of his hand and a vague order to catch the sons of bitches. Josie and Martínez exited his office and walked across the street to his car, which was parked in front of the courthouse. It was six o’clock, and the smoldering July sun intensified the misery. The grass around the courthouse lawn had been brown for a month, and even the massive oak trees that ringed the courthouse looked faded to Josie.

Martínez leaned against the hood of his sheriff’s car and stroked his mustache. “You still shook up over the shooting?” he asked.

Josie stared at the pavement and considered the question. She respected and liked Martínez as a person. She was a foot shorter, but he never tried to overpower her with his physical presence, a tactic he used often—and effectively—with others. Josie stood at a thin five feet seven and carried herself with assurance. Most people had no doubt when looking at Chief Gray that she was capable and in charge, but that afternoon, she had begun to worry for the first time in her career that the criminals were getting the upper hand.

She pointed in the direction of the clinic, just a block away from the courthouse and police department, and stared at the yellow police tape that surrounded the building. “I kneeled on that floor, waiting for a hundred bullets to spray across the room. I’m thinking, these three people are lying there and looking to me for answers. For safety. But I felt like a caged animal locked in that room. I basically waited for us to die. What do you do when you have no options left?”

“You got them on the floor and offered protection. Wasn’t much else you could do,” Martínez said.

“I keep hearing Vie praying in my head. I swear I could hear her voice above the bullets.” Josie paused for a minute and finally nodded toward the courthouse. “I can’t take another meeting with that guy.”

“He’s an idiot. Don’t sweat the idiots.”

“The idiot makes statements in the newspaper about the lack of law enforcement in his great town. I look at the guy, and I want to throw a punch. He doesn’t even need to speak, and I want to snap his arrogant—”

Martínez slapped Josie on the back and opened his car door. “He’s scared to death and has no idea how to solve the problem. He sees his reelection floating down the Rio. And when you don’t have solutions, all you have left is blame.”

TWO

The Artemis Police Department faced the courthouse square from across the street, couched between the City Office and the Gun Club. The brick buildings surrounding the square were a mixture of one- and two-story flat-roofed structures, most with plate glass windows on either side of a glass entrance door. Several buildings sat empty while others were in need of a fresh coat of paint or a good scrub. Josie had noticed that downtown had begun to suffer over the past few years. The economy was tough, jobs were scarce, and people had bigger issues to deal with than keeping up appearances.

Josie walked into the PD and felt the welcome blast of stale cold air.

Dispatcher Lou Hagerty sat behind the dispatcher’s desk and slammed her phone down. She scooted her rolling chair back to get Josie’s full attention. “You’d think the gates of hell just opened into Artemis. The phone’s ringing off the hook!” After forty years of Marlboro Lights, Lou’s strained voice came out in a raspy whisper, but her irritation carried with no effort. “I’ve had half of Artemis on the phone today. Old Man Collier called and said Armageddon was on us. I believed him for a while there.” She handed Josie a stack of pink papers with phone messages written in Lou’s scrawling hand. “Jim Hankins, over at
Big Bend Sentinel
, wants a phone call ASAP. He’s got the paper going to print, and he wants an update.”

Josie stood at the front counter and sorted through her messages, asking Lou to clarify some of her notes. She passed several slips back to Lou and asked her to make follow-up phone calls, and then she called Jim. The
Sentinel
newspaper was located in Marfa, but it supplied news for several border towns, including Artemis. Jim provided a good pulse on local border issues, and his reporting was fair and accurate. He was a slight man with a ponytail and a limp earned during the Vietnam War. She gave him a brief explanation of what she knew as fact: Hector Medrano, the leader of the Medrano cartel, had been shot by a member of the La Bestia drug cartel during surgery in the Artemis Trauma Center. Gunfights took place in Piedra Labrada throughout the night, and thirteen people were confirmed dead. Jim thanked her and promised to keep her informed if he heard any local scuttlebutt on the cartels.

Josie hung up with Jim and grabbed a stack of file folders from Lou and walked toward the back of the office. The dispatcher and intake computer were located downstairs behind the front lobby area. The officers’ desks were upstairs in a large shared space with a long oak conference table used for interviews. Beyond the table were three metal desks used by Josie, Otto, and Marta Cruz. Marta was the third-shift officer for the city police department and had been out of town during the shooting at the Trauma Center.

Before Josie could reach the stairs, the bell on the front door rang and she turned back to see a tall woman who looked to be in her early thirties. She wore a spaghetti strap tank top, cut-off jean shorts that revealed long tanned legs, and flip-flops. Long brown hair hung in tangles around her shoulders as if she had just been riding a motorcycle with no helmet.