for a month, and even the massive oak trees that ringed the courthouse looked faded to Josie.
Martínez leaned against the hood of his sheriff’s car and stroked his mustache. “You still shook up over the shooting?” he asked.
Josie stared at the pavement and considered the question. She respected and liked Martínez as a person. She was a foot shorter, but he never tried to overpower her with his physical presence, a tactic he used often—and effectively—with others. Josie stood at a thin five feet seven and carried herself with assurance. Most people had no doubt when looking at Chief Gray that she was capable and in charge, but that afternoon, she had begun to worry for the first time in her career that the criminals were getting the upper hand.
She pointed in the direction of the clinic, just a block away from the courthouse and police department, and stared at the yellow police tape that surrounded the building. “I kneeled on that floor, waiting for a hundred bullets to spray across the room. I’m thinking, these three people are lying there and looking to me for answers. For safety. But I felt like a caged animal locked in that room. I basically waited for us to die. What do you do when you have no options left?”
“You got them on the floor and offered protection. Wasn’t much else you could do,” Martínez said.
“I keep hearing Vie praying in my head. I swear I could hear her voice above the bullets.” Josie paused for a minute and finally nodded toward the courthouse. “I can’t take another meeting with that guy.”
“He’s an idiot. Don’t sweat the idiots.”
“The idiot makes statements in the newspaper about the lack of law enforcement in his great town. I look at the guy, and I want to throw a punch. He doesn’t even need to speak, and I want to snap his arrogant—”
Martínez slapped Josie on the back and opened his car door. “He’s scared to death and has no idea how to solve the problem. He sees his reelection floating down the Rio. And when you don’t have solutions, all you have left is blame.”
TWO
The Artemis Police Department faced the courthouse square from across the street, couched between the City Office and the Gun Club. The brick buildings surrounding the square were a mixture of one- and two-story flat-roofed structures, most with plate glass windows on either side of a glass entrance door. Several buildings sat empty while others were in need of a fresh coat of paint or a good scrub. Josie had noticed that downtown had begun to suffer over the past few years. The economy was tough, jobs were scarce, and people had bigger issues to deal with than keeping up appearances.
Josie walked into the PD and felt the welcome blast of stale cold air.
Dispatcher Lou Hagerty sat behind the dispatcher’s desk and slammed her phone down. She scooted her rolling chair back to get Josie’s full attention. “You’d think the gates of hell just opened into Artemis. The phone’s ringing off the hook!” After forty years of Marlboro Lights, Lou’s strained voice came out in a raspy whisper, but her irritation carried with no effort. “I’ve had half of Artemis on the phone today. Old Man Collier called and said Armageddon was on us. I believed him for a while there.” She handed Josie a stack of pink papers with phone messages written in Lou’s scrawling hand. “Jim Hankins, over at Big Bend Sentinel, wants a phone call ASAP. He’s got the paper going to print, and he wants an update.”
Josie stood at the front counter and sorted through her messages, asking Lou to clarify some of her notes. She passed several slips back to Lou and asked her to make follow-up phone calls, and then she called Jim. The Sentinel newspaper was located in Marfa, but it supplied news for several border towns, including Artemis. Jim provided a good pulse on local border issues, and his reporting was fair and accurate. He was a slight man with a ponytail and a limp earned during the Vietnam War. She gave him a brief explanation of what she knew as fact: Hector Medrano, the leader of the Medrano cartel, had been shot by a member of the La Bestia drug cartel during surgery in the Artemis Trauma Center. Gunfights took place in Piedra Labrada throughout the night, and thirteen people were confirmed dead. Jim thanked her and promised to keep her informed if