The Territory A Novel - By Tricia Fields Page 0,33

drug paraphernalia lay beneath it.

“When’s the last time you talked with your dad?” Josie asked. She pulled a small notepad out of her shirt pocket and sat on the couch opposite Colt, who had pulled over a chair from the kitchen table.

“About two weeks ago. He stopped by my apartment to tell me my ex-boyfriend, Jessup Lamey, got picked up in El Paso. Thrown in the pokey for possession. It was a sweet conversation. Very loving, as you can imagine.” She rolled her eyes and lifted the newspaper high enough to pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Do you have any idea who might have killed your dad?” Josie asked.

“Anyone with a gun and half a brain.”

“A little more specific.”

“It’s not like we ran with the same crowd.”

“You don’t know of anyone specifically who would want to see your father killed?”

She cocked her head and pursed her lips with a forefinger on her temple. “Let’s see. Me. My ex. The mayor. The people he called his friends. The people he called his enemies. You.” She gave Josie a half smile. “Because, let’s face it. You don’t mind Red’s gone, do you? He was a pain in the proverbial ass.”

“Can you tell me where you were yesterday from about eight in the morning through dinnertime?”

“Here.”

“Don’t you work at the library?”

“Not yesterday. I was home sick.”

“Did you go to the doctor, talk to anyone throughout the day who can verify your whereabouts?”

“Nope.”

Josie stood from the couch and considered her a moment. “I’ll give you some advice from someone who grew up with a difficult parent. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. It took me a long time to realize that, for the most part, people don’t judge me based upon my mother’s actions. I have no control over her, and I don’t owe anyone an explanation for her actions.”

The girl’s expression faltered for the first time. “You get my name, right? He named me for a gun. What kind of father names a newborn baby after a gun?”

Josie could think of no adequate response.

“I was nothing but a nuisance to him growing up. I didn’t kill my father, but I’m not going to pretend I’m sad he’s dead.”

FIVE

Dawn came slowly with the sun hidden behind a thick wall of clouds. The gray sky faded into the desert floor with no horizon line. Looking out her kitchen window that morning, Josie thought the day could have passed for January instead of mid-July. Clouds billowed around Chimiso Peak, causing the slow sloping mountain to appear massive. Josie let her gaze drift from the window to the small framed black-and-white photograph sitting on the kitchen counter: the only picture she had of her family. The photo was taken on a boat, with her mom and dad sitting on the backseat, Josie sitting on her father’s lap, both his hands resting on her shoulders. All three smiled widely at the camera, squinting into the sun. Josie couldn’t remember the day, but she loved the idea that she had once been part of a happy family.

Her father had been shot during a routine traffic stop after just five years as a trooper with the Indiana State Police. Josie had been eight. At twenty-seven, her mom had lost her protector and provider. She never took over that role herself.

Josie picked the photo up and placed it facedown in the kitchen drawer. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she didn’t want her mother coming to her home and seeing the picture on display. She dreaded the visit but had resigned herself to the fact that it would happen.

Josie twisted the can opener and poured out half a can of peaches into a bowl. As she ate her breakfast standing at the counter, she opened her cell phone and dialed Macon Drench, got him out of bed, and asked if she could stop by his home on her way to work.

Josie used her cell phone to clock in with Lou and drove the back roads past the mudflats, a long-ago dried-up lake bed that turned to mud during the summer monsoon season, then through the craggy Chinati Mountain pass north of town. The mountains in Arroyo County appeared larger and more imposing because the land between them was completely flat, with only spare sections of native grass and occasional patches of trees and scrub brush. The land looked to Josie as if a giant mountain range had split and separated, like the continental drift on a smaller