“Mr. Johnson, just go home tonight and think about our conversation. If you think of anything that might help us find Red’s killer, you give me a call. Even if it seems insignificant, call me anyway.”
Fred Grant arrived shortly after Johnson left. Grant owned a small cattle ranch north of town and drove a four-wheel-drive pickup with monster-sized wheels and no muffler. He strolled into the department wearing an untucked flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, blue jeans, and dusty boots.
When Otto turned the questioning to Red’s involvement with the cartels, Grant raised his voice in anger. “I don’t know who’s feeding you that nonsense, but they’re flat-out lying. The Mexicans killed his dad! He formed the Gunners to protect our town. He would never turn on us like that.”
“Mr. Grant, I have invoices that show Red was selling guns south of the border.”
“So what? There’s a big difference between south of the border and selling to the cartels. I’d lay my life on the fact that Red Goff never did business with the cartels.”
“What do you know about Hack Bloster and Red selling guns together?”
He gave an exaggerated shrug. “And? Big deal! They sold guns.”
“We suspect they were selling guns to the Medrano cartel,” Otto said.
Grant looked away as if disgusted. “They sold guns to make money for the Gunners.” He looked back at Otto, his eyes squinted, shaking his head in disbelief. “Have you forgotten that Red was murdered? Don’t go trying to turn him into the bad guy because you can’t figure out who killed him.”
“Were you selling guns with them?”
“This is ridiculous. I’m through talking to you. You got anything else to ask, do it through my lawyer.”
Otto got nothing out of Grant. He suspected Grant had more to tell, but he also didn’t think involving an attorney at this point would garner any new information.
The last member of the Gunners he talked with was a truck driver named Jerry Irons. Otto had known Jerry for years, and he and Delores occasionally had dinner with Jerry and his wife, Sandy. Jerry was a level-headed man with right-wing political leanings that he kept to himself unless asked. He and his wife were transplants from Vermont who moved to the desert for the warmer climate.
After several minutes of small talk about the wives and weather, Otto asked Jerry to discuss his thoughts about Red’s murder.
“It’s scary, Otto. What’s happening to our town? I know Red had enemies. He was arrogant, and a lot of people didn’t like him, but murdered? Shot in the head?”
Otto nodded. He had his own fears about the safety of his family. “Jerry, can you give me anything? Any gossip, any worries you have about various members? Bad relationships Red had with someone that might have led to his death?”
Jerry scooted his chair back, crossed one leg over the other, and rubbed at a smudge on his boot as he considered the question. “That’s tough. It just doesn’t look like something local. I guess that sounds naïve, but it just doesn’t play out like a hate killing. Why kill him and then drag his body back inside that girl’s trailer? You asked about the Gunners. I don’t see anyone in the group killing him in that manner. Just doesn’t work for me.”
Otto finally signed off duty with the night dispatcher, feeling exhausted and frustrated. So far, it appeared the only Gunners with a connection to cartel members were Fallow, Bloster, and Red. Now one of them was dead, and the other two weren’t talking. He called Delores on his cell phone to tell her what time he would be home. Fifteen minutes later, he pulled down his lane. The Podowski ranch lay about ten miles north of the river, and consisted of sixty-five acres of pasture that held a small herd of milk goats. A split-rail fence surrounded a small three-bedroom bungalow covered in white aluminum siding with a deep brick porch on the front of the house. Mangy thirty-year-old bushes lined the front of the house with little else in the way of plantings. Otto drew great satisfaction feeding and watering the goats, clearing the fence rows of brush, battling the invading prickly pear, yucca and cholla, and tinkering on a tractor that spent more hours torn down than up and running. Otherwise, landscaping didn’t interest him, and Delores claimed a black thumb, but the woman could cook like no other.
Each night as he drove home from work, Otto anticipated the smells from his kitchen: sausage, apples, onions, garlic, kraut, meatballs—an endless tribute to Polish tradition. As she did most nights, Delores met him at the door, an apron over her calico-print housedress, her silver hair pulled up into a neat bun behind her head. She smiled, her blue eyes surrounded by wrinkles, and pushed the screen door open for him. After a quick peck on her lips, Otto walked through the living room and into the kitchen, dragging his briefcase. Delores followed on his heels.
“What’s for supper?” he asked.
“I could feel it in my bones. I knew it was a bad one. Apple dumplings with fresh whipping cream. Sit down at the table.” Delores took his briefcase from him and scooted a chair out at the kitchen table. He felt like a boy, a feeling she had nurtured in him since their first date forty years ago. He was perfectly happy letting Delores take over.
“Sit down, sit down,” she said, ushering him to the chair before pouring him a glass of milk.
The smell of cinnamon and cream and butter made him dizzy. He sat at the table and watched her hovering over the stove, his perfectly capable wife, her body soft and inviting. All his life, he had seen other men chasing skinny women in high heels with hard stomachs and hard breasts, and the idea made him shudder. How could anything compare to the vision of Delores on her way to the table with a platter of steaming apple dumplings?
“So, tell me,” she said.
“Not so much to tell as there should be. The man shot at the Trauma Center was killed by rival gang members from Mexico. How do we tackle that? And Josie thinks Red was killed trading guns to the Mexicans. How do we tackle that one, too?”
Delores set the platter of dumplings on the table and stood for a moment, hands on her hips. “You said, ‘Josie thinks.’ Does that mean you don’t?”
“What’s the gossip on the street about Red Goff and the Gunners?” he asked.
“The girls think the Gunners club is a drug cartel, no different from the Mexican versions,” she said.
Otto smiled at her reference to the girls. It was a group of eleven old women who gathered once a week and called themselves the Homemakers. Delores was one of the younger ones at fifty-seven. They rotated homes for meetings, brought food to sample, created a craft project each week, and quilted baby blankets for foster babies. They were a nice group of ladies, but girls they were not.
“For a bunch of old women, you’re on target more than you aren’t.”
She smiled, pleased. “Helen claims her husband buys guns off Red all the time. Claims his prices are better than Walmart.”
“You said drug cartel. What do drugs have to do with it?” he asked.
Delores wove an intricate tale of he said/she said and so-and-so is related to so-and-so, who was arrested for some odd thing. When she talked gossip like this, his attention faded. He nodded and forked another dumpling into his mouth, his teeth sinking into the sweet dough, his tongue distinguishing the subtle differences among the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in the rich sauce. He washed his bite down and said, “In the middle of all this mess, Josie’s mother showed up today from Indiana.”
Delores sat across from Otto with her own plate and glass of milk. “What did she look like?”
Otto’s eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t know. Like a floozy. Josie had a date with Dillon Reese tonight, and her mother showed up out of the blue, demanding attention.”
“Maybe you should invite Josie and her mother over for dinner this week. Help her out a little.”
Otto ignored the idea. As much as he liked Josie, he’d heard enough about Beverly Gray from her to know that he did not want to spend an evening entertaining the woman. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and asked, “No meat tonight?”
* * *
At midnight, Josie walked Dillon to his car. The air was soft on her skin, and a billion stars and a fat white moon lit up the night. Dillon leaned against his car door instead of getting inside and put his arms out to her. He pulled her toward him, rested his hands on her hips, and offered a half grin that she couldn’t read.
“Nothing’s changed, Josie, but I can’t stay away any longer.”
She felt the familiarity of a fight coming on. “I’ve tried to explain…”
He put a finger up to her lips and shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not passing judgment. I just miss you. I need to be around you. You make me smile, and I want to make you smile. You have this gigantic heart that’s locked up inside you that I want to open up.”
She took a step back. “Don’t speak in metaphors! What does that mean—I have a heart locked up? If I need to change, then give it to me in black and white.”
He laughed at her anger and pulled her back in again, kissed her to shut her up, then kissed her again, soft and long, his hands down her back pulling goose bumps up her arms. He finally kissed her forehead and cradled her face in his hands. She had a perfect heart, he told her, that needed sleep. Then, he drove off down the dusty road toward town.
EIGHT
After a shower in an open-air bath off the main dressing area, the Bishop sat for morning breakfast on the veranda. He watched as two light-skinned teenage girls laid out his clothes for the day in his room: white linen slacks and a light linen-blend white shirt, huarache sandals and a Cuban Exo cigar. He had stopped smoking ten years ago but found he missed the roll of the cigar between his fingers and the taste of the tobacco on his lips more than the act of smoking. So he had switched to carrying a fresh cigar with him throughout the day.
He watched the girls through the glass wall that separated his bedroom from the veranda, looking with pride as they snapped a fresh white sheet and tucked it under the mattress. They laughed and slipped quietly out, so unself-conscious, they never realized he had been watching.
He had overseen every detail of the construction of his estate, and he was proud of the outcome. The house was built five years ago to represent his family’s wealth and status, and it had achieved that goal. Reminiscent of an M. C. Escher print, the three-story white stucco home held mysterious passageways, arches, and twisting stairs. Hand-carved teak lintels and moldings had been waxed to an ancient sheen, giving the home a substantial old-world feel that he prized. Outside the home, terraced desert landscaping wrapped all sides of the house and created quiet retreats.
The Bishop reclined slightly in his chair and breathed deeply, forcing a calm exterior that he did not feel. The damp morning air was infused with what he thought of as the smells of earth: mesquite, creosote bush, and juniper. In the midst of family or business crisis—and in fact, they were often both—he retreated outdoors. The smells, the solitude, the heat and space gave him the calm he required to make the life-and-death decisions demanded of him daily. He looked across the sprawling desert and took deep breaths to control the rage that once again was threatening to overcome him. He imagined his father’s dead body, shot up beyond recognition by a man whom he had once loved as family. He wanted to destroy his cousin and every member of La Bestia: personally shove the knife through each beating heart. But he could not afford to react out of emotion or grief. Revenge was justified and expected, but revenge unplanned was inexcusable.
The Bishop’s influences in life were twofold. A mother whose entire being centered on perfection: her children were fastidiously clean, neurotically prepared for life’s little problems, and taught the manners of the upper class. And a father whose devotion to family and obsessive need to control had led to a dynasty feared and respected throughout Mexico. Hector Medrano gave his oldest son the nickname “the Bishop” on his twenty-fourth birthday. As the Bishop, Marco ruled the family business, organizing the leaders of the narcotics, firearms, and money-laundering divisions to carry out the missions that his own father had given him: Control the drug routes through the northern states of Mexico. A simple idea but an incredibly complex task.
The media perpetuated the myth of the Bishop as a ruthless killer with no respect for life, a fact those close to him understood was untrue, pure myth. The killings were just a necessary part of his business, no different from a priest assigning penance, a boss firing dead weight, or the presidente firebombing a cocaine factory: all necessary parts of the bigger picture to be undertaken with integrity and fortitude.
The Bishop smiled at the young woman who had appeared to place a carafe of fresh coffee on the table. She wore her hair in long, oiled cornrows that hung behind her back, and had a perfect chocolate-colored complexion. She stole a look at him, smiled in return, and then left, her head lowered in deference.
The Bishop watched her walk away and thought of the arrogant policewoman who had interrogated his cousin through marriage, Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez, in the American jail. After the interview with the police chief, Gutiérrez talked with an attorney provided by La Bestia. The Bishop paid a large sum of money to the rival attorney to receive the confidential details of the meeting. The attorney claimed the woman called Gutiérrez a pedophile, said he would rot in her filthy jail with the perverts and degenerates until he gave up information about the business. She had taken on a cause bigger than her abilities.
The Medranos had been collecting information on the Artemis law enforcement agencies for years as they planned and set up transportation across the border. Chief Gray had been a target of concern. He opened the manila file folder that sat on the table beside the carafe. He picked up a black-and-white photo of an attractive female dressed in a police uniform. She was in her early thirties with long hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She was looking off in the distance, her expression proud and brooding, gauging the world through a personal lens of justice; right and wrong were hers to decide, and for that he both despised and admired her.
A second photo showed her leaning into a man bent over a car hood with his hands in cuffs behind his back. She grasped his T-shirt in a bunch with one hand, her other hand planted on the hood, and talked to him with her lips close to his ear as a larger male officer stood behind her, looking away from the scene.
The last photo was a head shot, telephoto from straight on, as she looked just to the right of the shot. She was the rare woman who wore her sexuality unself-consciously. She was stunning. Her complexion was like cream, her cheeks pronounced, almost gaunt, adding to the severity of her expression.
The Americans would use threats and intimidation, torture if necessary, to gain information about the business. He would not allow his own traitorous blood to jeopardize his family. The Bishop looked over the knee-high stone wall that surrounded the veranda, across the lap pool, and into the great Chihuahua Desert. He vowed to do whatever was necessary to bring his cousin home within the week. He would see justice served by himself, not by the Americans. Not by this woman. It was no longer business. It had become personal. I will enjoy every detail of her death, he thought.
* * *
Josie stopped at the bakery on the way to work that morning and bought a dozen chocolate iced doughnuts and a half gallon of milk for her and Lou and Otto. She smiled at Lou and placed three doughnuts on a napkin beside her computer. Lou thanked her, and Josie smiled all the way up the stairs to the office. She had just heard the weatherman on Lou’s radio announce that the monthlong heat wave was about to give way to eighty-five-degree temperatures for a few days. The rain had not materialized, but at least the heat had broken. Josie looked at her watch as she logged on to her computer. She had four hours to enjoy a good day before her mother ruined it.
Her first order of business was to study a packet of photos of missing persons mailed to her every two weeks from a Mexican human rights group supported by t
he U.S. Consulate in Mexico. Over the past six months, an average of thirty-three kidnappings each month took place along the border, most of them along the migrant routes. A host of cottage industry kidnapping schemes had spread throughout Mexico and into the United States, most recently into Phoenix. Thousands of virtual kidnappings were made every day; an unsuspecting parent receives a phone call demanding money be wired to an account before their family member, heard screaming in the background, is killed. The parent is too terrified to check into the claim and pays the ransom before realizing their family member is fine. The cell phone call, made from Mexico, is not traceable and goes undetected.
Another racket, express kidnappings, were popular in bigger cities. A person hails a taxi, the driver picks them up, drives a block, picks up two additional men who force the passenger to withdraw money from ATM machines all over town. The person is typically then robbed and left on the street with nothing.
But in Josie’s mind, parents were the easiest target of all. She and Sheriff Martínez had led a series of town meetings on Situational Awareness to make parents more aware of their surroundings and dangers their children could be in. Josie was always surprised by how unaware most parents were of their environment, especially in terms of their kids’ safety. She was certain it would be an unhealthy obsession with her when she became a parent. Although she wouldn’t let herself give up on the idea of having kids, there were days when the dangers of raising a child seemed to outweigh the joys.
Josie looked through the stack of black-and-white photos of dozens of Mexican and American children, most smiling into the camera from family and school pictures, unaware of the horror they were about to endure.
She set the pictures aside after one photograph started to blend into another. She read through Marta’s report from the previous night. Marta had interviewed three local drug informants about the continuing violence between La Bestia and the Medrano cartel. The general consensus was that La Bestia had moved into Piedra Labrada, where the Medranos already operated, in order to focus on a transportation route directly through Artemis.
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