The Territory A Novel - By Tricia Fields Page 0,19

craned his neck up in an awkward position and stooped so far forward that his head barely reached Josie’s chest.

“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