The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(30)
“NCIC came through with fingerprints. Sheriff’s got some good information for you,” Santiago said.
“How good?”
“I think he matched your shooter. He gave me a packet to give you. He got called out on a domestic about ten minutes ago,” she said.
Josie smiled. “He’s a saint. You have a room I can use to sort through the paperwork?”
“Interrogation room’s empty. You’re welcome to it.”
Josie nodded thanks. “The shooter still on medical watch?”
Santiago rolled her chair away from her computer to give her full attention to Josie. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve had a nurse here around the clock. The sheriff’s mad as a hornet. A bigwig from the hospital’s already been over here twice to talk with him. Hospital says when they bill the jail for services, they expect payment in thirty days.”
Josie smiled again. “Good luck with that.”
Aside from the bureaucratic nightmare of submitting bills, getting signatures, receiving the appropriate supervisor and board approvals, and general passing of the buck, there was the political nightmare of working cross-border to attempt to retrieve at least some payment for services from Mexican authorities.
“Sheriff Martínez is planning on sending the nurse home tomorrow. The man’s stabilized. You know Dooley Thomas? The day shift guard?”
“Yes.”
“His wife is a nurse. She’s offered to stop by once a day to check his bandages and get his vital signs.”
Josie nodded. “Good. Anybody talked to the prisoner yet?”
“As in interviewed him?”
Josie shrugged. “I know you haven’t done anything formal, but have you heard anything? Has he talked to anyone? Asked for phone calls, lawyers?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t made a peep. I don’t think he speaks English. Sheriff just got the fingerprint confirmation right before he called you. He was all fired up when he left.”
Santiago dug around on her desk through various stacks of envelopes and papers before handing Josie a sealed manila envelope with her name on it.
Josie settled into a typical interrogation room: a sterile, eight-foot-by-eight-foot space with one metal table and two folding chairs sitting opposite each other. She opened the packet and found the first good news of the day. Martínez had left her a handwritten note that stated he fingerprinted the prisoner and ran him through NCIC and the Deportable Alien Control System, or DACS. He found a definite match with a male Hispanic linked to a deportation case from two years ago. Miguel ángel Gutiérrez was picked up for leaving the scene of an accident without a license. He was subsequently linked to a charge for lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor, a twelve-year-old child. He was indicted and deported, supposedly to serve time in a Mexican prison.
Josie stared at the mug shot from two years ago and recognized the man she had shot, although he was now about twenty pounds heavier, with a goatee. She was positive it was the same man. He was a member of La Bestia who had defected from the Medrano cartel. She felt her heart rate increasing and the acid burn ignite in the pit of her stomach. She remembered the case but wanted to confirm the details.
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed Lou at the police department, who gave Josie the phone number for an old friend of hers. Anthony Dixon was a detention and deportation officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She had worked two deportation cases with ICE over the past several years, and Dixon was the case agent both times. Josie reached Dixon on his cell phone as he was driving down the interstate from El Paso to Houston for a federal trial. She gave him the prisoner’s name and a brief summary of the murder at the trauma unit.
“I got your man, Josie. No doubt about it.” Dixon spoke with a slow Western drawl, making every word sound important.
“Is he family?” she asked.
“You bet he is. He’s referred to as ‘Cousin’ by his comrades in La Bestia. You got a nasty one. You better set up some guards outside. That bad boy belongs in maximum.”
Josie laughed. “He’s in the Artemis lockup. We don’t do maximum security.”
“Better figure something out. He’s a cousin to the Bishop, who is second in command in the Medrano clan. Gutiérrez left Medrano after he caught the Bishop having sex with his wife. He killed her, then left the organization.”
“So, not only has he turned his back on the most famous family in Mexico, but he has also brutally murdered the leader.”
“He will be killed. It’s a matter of time and opportunity.”
Dixon went on to explain that Gutiérrez had a relatively short criminal history of gun and drug charges in Mexico. However, intelligence from ICE had recently linked him to La Bestia’s weapons division. No surprise there. He was a suspected recruiter for U.S. cartel surrogates in El Paso and Laredo. Dixon said he would call his secretary and tell her to e-mail Josie several pictures of Gutiérrez with high-ranking gang members in both the Texas Machismo and the Tejana Guard.
Josie thanked Dixon for the information and promised to share the full case file with him at the close of the investigation. Next, she found Maria and asked to borrow a computer to pull up her e-mail account on the jail’s secure server. Maria set her up on a computer that was currently not in use in the booking room. Josie logged on to her account, and as promised, Dixon’s office had e-mailed her two pictures of Cousin Gutiérrez. Josie pulled a picture out of the steno pad she carried with her. It was the picture of Red Goff and the three Mexicans that she and Otto had seized from Red’s basement. She held it up to the computer screen. It was a definite match for Gutiérrez. He stood in the background, just to the left of Red, dressed in a camouflage flak suit, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, staring intently at something beyond the photographer. Josie could tell the photograph was a few years old by the lack of gray in Red’s hair. Gutiérrez had just left the family clan six months ago, so the picture had to have been taken with members of Medrano. The news was an important step forward in the investigation, but it meant trouble for the town.