The Territory: A Novel (7 page)

“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.