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