The Territory: A Novel (18 page)

“That doesn’t bother you? Your name on the short list?”

Martínez snorted. “We got our names on shorter lists than that one.”

All right,
she thought,
that’s the way we’re going to play this.

“Otto interviewed Bloster yesterday, in this office, and he punched Fallow in the mouth during the interview. Otto encouraged Fallow to file charges, but he wouldn’t. He’s lucky Fallow is terrified of him.” She paused and Martínez remained silent. “You have a time bomb on your staff.”

Martínez’s expression grew still. “I don’t guess my employees are any of your concern.”

“Let me throw one more at you.” Josie handed him the two invoices that Dillon had showed her the night before. She watched Martínez study the paper, but he said nothing.

“Did you sign for those guns?” Josie asked.

“What is this? You accusing me of running a crooked department?”

“I’m just trying to figure out how you can afford guns when I can’t afford soap for the bathrooms.”

He didn’t smile at her attempt at humor. Josie watched as he studied the invoice and the price of the guns. Finally he looked up at her, his shoulders slumped. “Bloster’s been taking care of bills for the department. I don’t have time to get it all done. You know how undermanned we are. I figured with his short fuse, I’d get him off the road some and put him in charge of accounts.”

“How long has he been taking care of finances?”

Martínez frowned. “Since December, when Stephanie left. I can’t hardly operate without a secretary. Moss wouldn’t let us hire a replacement and suggested I get Bloster to help out. He just helped with some of the bills. Helped me keep things organized.” He looked at Josie, his face aged ten years. “I knew nothing about these guns.” He pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “You know what’s even worse? You found out about these guns by accident. What else has he passed through for payment?”

Josie knew what lay behind his question. If this were more than a onetime occurrence, then Martínez’s job was in serious jeopardy. Bottom line, whether Bloster was the one who’d passed off bad bills or not, it was still the sheriff’s signature that went to the commissioners.

*   *   *

At noon, Josie walked next door to visit Mayor Moss. It was a sunny, blue-sky day with not a cloud overhead. The temperature was in the eighties, no humidity, a slight breeze—the kind of day that made her want to take off in the mountains with Chester and enjoy the outdoors. Instead, her back muscles were in knots up and down her spine as she walked down the hall to Moss’s office. His door was closed, but the secretary rang in to him and Josie was allowed five minutes. It was all she needed.

“I need to know when we’re getting reinforcements for the jail,” she said once she was standing in front of his mammoth mahogany desk. He didn’t gesture for her to sit. “The sheriff and I have other priorities. We can’t take men off the road to guard it. I was serious about the jail coming under attack. We have two Mexican drug cartels with a personal interest in one of our prisoners. They’ll storm it just like they did the Trauma Center.”

Moss’s chin jutted out. His small eyes were dark and focused. He folded his hands on the desk in front of him and stared at Josie as if trying to figure out how to explain something complicated to her. “I’m working with the governor to arrange for help from the National Guard. It takes time. You don’t snap your fingers and get help. You think we’re the only city with troubles?”

“What kind of time frame did they give you?” Josie asked.

“They don’t give time frames, Chief Gray. When I know something, I’ll call you.” He turned back to his computer. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m preparing for a meeting.”

“And your committee? What kind of progress has your committee made in shutting down these cartels? Do you have a time frame for your committee work?”

Moss leaned back in his desk chair and gripped the leather armrests with both hands. “I would like to think that you have more productive things to occupy your time with than harassing me. This conversation is over.”

Josie walked out of his office furious not just with him but also with herself. She had sounded childish and unprofessional. She had to get a grip on her hatred toward him before it began to cloud her ability to run her office effectively. In the meantime, the safety of the officers at the jail was still a major worry.

*   *   *

Josie did not go back to her office. With the nauseating thought of her mother lurking around the department for lunch, she opted to ratchet up the morning with a little Hack Bloster. She called the sheriff’s office and talked to the dispatcher, who said Bloster didn’t come on duty until noon, but gave her his home address.

Josie drove south toward the bend in the Rio where the rock walls grew steeper with each mile. She turned onto a switchback road that zigzagged down a thirty-foot canyon. There was barely enough land to build into the rock. The three houses on the switchback looked like fishing shacks, although their inhabitants were permanent residents.

Hack Bloster’s house was a thirty-foot-by-ten-foot wooden structure built into the face of the rock. To the left of the shack was a gravel area big enough for two cars to park. To the right of the house was a similarly sized garage. A twenty-foot swatch of rocky land covered with clumps of cactus and granite boulders separated the house from the road. On the road’s opposite side, a twenty-foot drop led to the river below. Josie parked beside Bloster’s police car and caught him by surprise when she walked into his open garage. Ted Nugent, blasting from a boom box at his feet, had kept him from hearing her car approach. A window fan on the floor blew air toward him.

He sat on a five-gallon bucket with no shirt on, wearing dusty jeans and cowboy boots. He cradled a red and black rooster in his lap with one leather gloved hand, and held a small instrument in his other hand that appeared to be sharpening the long black talons of the rooster. When he saw Josie, he stood and placed the rooster in a metal cage on a workbench behind him, then turned off the music.

“I hear those fighters run about twenty-five hundred dollars. That true?” Josie asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Bloster said. He pulled a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his face.

“I’ve heard for years there were cockfights out here on Saturday nights, but I’ve never been able to pin one down. There’s supposedly a caliche pit back in here that gets used for cockfights and dog races. You ever hear any rumors like that?” Josie asked.

“Not a one.”

“Word is, it’s by the windmill and water tanks.” Josie gestured behind her where the top of a windmill could be seen over the trees. “Want to take a drive back there and check it out? I’m guessing you have some insider knowledge.” She pointed to three metal cages along the far wall of his garage, each containing a rooster, all sitting idle in the heat of the day.

“You got a warrant to search the land, then go for it. I got no say in the matter. There’s no law against having roosters, so you can take your suspicions elsewhere. You got something else to say to me?”

Josie noted the pocket holster in his front jeans’ pocket and the butt of the pistol in plain view.

“You getting him ready for the fights this weekend?” she asked.

“What do you want with me?” he asked.

“Actually, I came to ask you a few questions about some expenditures you made for the sheriff’s department.”

He said nothing, but he picked up a beer bottle from the floor and took a long drink. He was deeply tanned, with a smooth chest ripped with muscle. Bloster was good looking in an intensely physical, imposing way; he had a dangerous quality that was both appealing and disturbing.

Josie leaned against the doorframe of his garage and took her time continuing. “In looking at Red’s finances, I found some receipts for guns purchased by your department. In fact, two guns totaled almost four thousand dollars. Must be some kind of special guns.”

“Seeing how you work for the city police, and that equipment is for the sheriff’s department, I don’t think it’s any of your concern.”

“Well, Hack, seeing how I’m a taxpayer and those receipts are open for public record, I think they are my concern. I think your little club is selling guns to your department. You’re making a profit all over the place, aren’t you?” she asked.

“You’re out of your jurisdiction. You got no business out here.”

“No? I thought I was doing you a professional courtesy. We can talk at the department. We can even ask the sheriff to join us if that makes you feel better.”

Bloster took two steps toward her and shoved her chest. She fell back against the garage wall, and he drew his fist back as if to throw a punch. She pushed herself off the wall and bent forward, propelling her knee up into his stomach. He stumbled back from her and let his hand slide down to his front pocket toward the gun.

Josie pulled her gun and pointed it toward Bloster’s chest in one swift motion.

His face registered shock. He raised both hands in the air and took a step back, bumping into the workbench.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.

“You’re climbing higher on my list of suspects every day.”

“Don’t come on my property spouting shit you can’t back up, lady.” He pointed a finger directly at the barrel of the gun.

She felt the heat in her face and struggled to keep her voice level. “Then don’t play games with me. You’re a dirty cop, and I will expose you before this is over.”

Bloster brought his hands back down to his sides. Josie kept her gun out but pointed now at the ground.

“I had nothing to do with Red’s death. What purpose would it have? We were members of the same group.”

“He was president of a group that you had no chance of leading while he was alive. Looks to me like there’s a hell of a lot of money to be made off selling those guns. More than you’re making as a deputy,” Josie said.

“This is bullshit. Until you have something hard to charge me with, we’re through.” He turned and walked toward his house, slamming the door behind as Josie stood, breathless.

*   *   *

By the time Josie reached the department, she had calmed down and corralled her anger. As she passed through the lone traffic light and turned left at the courthouse, she called Lou on her cell phone and asked if anyone was waiting for her. Lou said no, her mother hadn’t arrived yet. Josie spotted her mother’s Buick sitting in front of Manny’s Motel, and she pulled her jeep in beside it.

The motel was built like a strip mall with all six rooms opening onto the street. The office sat in the middle of the rooms, its neon light advertising
ROOMS FOR RENT.
At forty-something, Manny had given up a successful Holiday Inn franchise in Arizona to start his own business in Artemis. Since opening the motel twenty years ago, he had put on fifty pounds, let his hair grow into a flyaway halo about his head, shaved once a week, and claimed to smile more often than he had during all his so-called successful years in Phoenix with a bitter, anorexic wife who had spent more than he could ever make.

“Chief Gray!” Manny stood up from the recliner behind the counter and laid his book on the seat.

The office was the size of a small bedroom and painted a nicotine-stained white. There was a four-foot-long counter with a grocery store cash register on top, and a metal lockbox with the word
Keys
written in marker across the lid. Behind the counter sat a tattered leather recliner and table with a reading lamp that altogether looked like a set for an old seventies sitcom.

“Manny, those things are going to kill you.” Josie gestured toward the burning cigarette under a small air purifier that sat on the table next to his chair.

Manny smiled warmly. “Chief, I am a lucky man. I have two passions in life: reading and smoking. I have the good fortune to attend to both of my passions all day long, without measure. How many men do you know that are that lucky? I will continue to enjoy my life with abandon as long as the good Lord allows.”

Josie smiled. “You’re doing all right, then?”

“Couldn’t be better. Steady customers and fifty percent capacity for months. Gets food on the table and the electric bill paid.”

“You hire a maid yet?”

He smiled and rubbed his belly. “No maid. I compromised with the doctor. I took up scrubbing toilets and changing bedsheets for exercise. I refused to go to the wretched gym, so Doc refused to see me. Said I was killing myself in my chair. He doesn’t give a whit about a man’s passions. So, I said fine, I’ll clean the rooms every day whether they need it or not. Two hours’ hard exertion. He bought it, and I got to keep my doctor.”

Josie nodded. “You are definitely a lucky man.”

“Now, what can I do for you? I’m sure you didn’t come to rent one of my extra-clean rooms.”

“Actually, I came by to see what room Beverly Gray is staying in.”

Manny’s smile widened. “She’s a character, that mother of yours! You should bring her around more often. Life of the party, she is!” He laughed openly and pointed at the front first door to his left. “Room number one.”

Josie knocked and entered after hearing her mother yell to come in. She sat on the unmade bed for ten minutes and watched her mother in front of the bathroom mirror, teasing her hair and applying makeup, a scene she had witnessed countless times growing up. It was an odd feeling, the familiarity of family combined with the uneasiness of time and distance.

Her mother chattered about neighborhood friends and classmates as if Josie had left only months before. She seemed to have forgotten any sense of bitterness over Josie’s departure nine years ago. Her mother had always had an amazing ability to unconditionally love, hate, and forgive—all in the space of minutes; the problem was that she expected others to behave the same way, regardless of her own behavior.

After her mother finished primping and stopped by Manny’s office to wish him a good morning, they walked half a block to the Hot Tamale for lunch. The Tamale was a popular lunch-hour diner. Small square tables and chairs were scattered everywhere and were rearranged to fit variously sized groups, depending on if they wanted a quiet corner or a hot spot in the middle to socialize. Josie chose a small table at the front window, positioning her chair with her back against the wall.