The Territory A Novel - By Tricia Fields Page 0,10

to look at his guns. Show and tell. He was a leech.”

“You’re living in your brother’s trailer?” Josie asked.

“I moved here about three months ago to live with him, but he was gone. He left me a note and said he had to cool off. Couldn’t take the Texas heat anymore. He left me an address to mail the trailer payment each month. That was about it.”

“Think he was in trouble when he left?”

“He’s never been out of trouble.”

* * *

Because the murder was committed outside the city limits, Josie had called the sheriff’s department to pass the case off. Technically, it was their jurisdiction, but dispatch had said all their officers were tied up. Josie agreed to take the case. With a budget so tight it barely covered salaries, the two departments often operated out of jurisdiction in order to cover calls. Considering the territorial drama among agencies in some small towns, she took pride in the relationship the city police and sheriff’s department shared in Artemis. She also worked well with most of the Border Patrol agents, and with the occasional Department of Public Safety officer, though DPS rarely showed up so far out of the city.

Josie followed Winning’s 1980s Cadillac Eldorado to her trailer. The car was the size of a boat with a mottled black and gray paint job. Josie thought it was one of the ugliest cars she had ever seen. She followed Winning down Farm Road 170 west toward Candelaria, a ghost town and dead end for the 170. After the Mexican Revolution ended, the cavalry pulled out and the city had faded. Josie had once talked with an old rancher who raised his family in Candelaria back in the seventies. He said there were no border issues back then. People crossed the river at will and traded basic goods among the small towns. Families were buried on both sides of the river. Josie gazed out across the Chihuahuan Desert and tried to imagine the freedom and lack of fear that families like that once felt.

Winning was living alone in one of the most remote places in the United States, down the lane from Red Goff, a man rumored to have an arsenal of several hundred guns, including high-powered rifles and automatic weapons. Josie had no doubt that Winning knew more than she was telling, but Josie needed to deal with the dead body before the heat destroyed it. Just as important, Goff’s house had to be inventoried and locked before the vultures ransacked it for the rumored arsenal.

As the leader of the Gunners, a right-wing group of Second Amendment nuts who thought guns would solve the world’s ills, Red was known throughout West Texas. He was an arrogant hothead. Before he turned into a hermit, Josie would occasionally roust him from various Democratic rallies for shouting obscenities and causing a public disturbance. Josie had gathered intelligence on Red’s organization, the Gunners, for years. They had too much firepower to let it get into the wrong hands.

Ten minutes outside Artemis, Josie followed Winning down Davis Pass, a gravel road prone to washouts. The drive stirred up a thick layer of white desert dirt that recoated the ocotillo and prickly pear cactus that dotted the roadside. Large boulders, gray green agave, juniper, and Spanish daggers marked the white, sandy foothills for miles. The Chinati Peak could be seen in the distance, a grand backdrop to the ramshackle trailer propped up on two dozen cinder blocks in the rocky dirt. Josie wondered what kept the trailer from washing away in a heavy downpour.

Otto’s Artemis PD jeep was parked out front, the navy blue paint barely visible under the nearly permanent layer of dust. The jeeps were a perk of the job: four-wheel drive, no-frills, stripped-down retired army models capable of driving anywhere, on road or off. Otto stepped out of the trailer as Pegasus parked her Eldorado beside the jeep and got out of her car looking angry and hot. Her car windows were down, and Josie figured she had no air-conditioning.

“It’s Red Goff in there, sure enough,” Otto said with a frown as Josie stood and slammed her door shut.

He smoothed down the flyaway gray hair on top of his head. Otto weighed forty pounds over the department limit for patrol work, but it had never been an issue. He had served as chief of police for twelve years before giving it up for a slower pace. He was still an excellent officer, slow and