The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(48)
On the back side of the observation deck, Piedra Labrada was heating up. Cars were streaming by strip clubs and bars that were lit up with neon signs flashing NO COVER CHARGE in both Spanish and English. Streetlights were visible only on the downtown streets in the newer area of town. The small industrial edge of the city was now quiet and dark, as was the old section of town, with the businesses that centered around the Central Plaza now dark and locked up for the night. Josie stood at the railing and looked through binoculars at the activity across the river and wondered at the human race, at its propensity to gather and rule, to divide and conquer. The smallness of people always struck her from atop the watchtower. Race, religion, sex, nationality: they all boiled down to the need to control, for the need to prove one man superior to another.
Josie spent several hours ruminating as she watched the traffic down below. It wasn’t until one in the morning that something happened to draw her attention away from the city. Three cars trailed by a pickup truck had left Piedra Labrada and drove parallel to the Rio for about a mile west of the city. At that point, the road veered south, away from the river, but Josie watched the caravan turn right and drive through a half mile of scrub and rock to reach the river. From her distance, she couldn’t identify people or even the size or make of the cars, other than the truck.
Josie thought it might be high school kids partying at first, and then suspected coyotes transporting smugglers across the river, but the scheme was more involved than that. She watched the lights of the pickup turn and face toward land as the truck backed up to the edge of the water. It was a bright night with a sky full of stars and a full moon just beginning to wane, but even through her binoculars, she was too far from the action to tell exactly what they were doing. Then a dim light appeared to travel slowly across the river, and another set of car lights appeared on a vehicle that she hadn’t realized was waiting on the U.S. side of the river. She called the details in to Border Patrol but knew they couldn’t get there fast enough. She had already been told they were undermanned that night.
It took about thirty minutes for the entire operation to take place. It looked to Josie as if the pickup truck unloaded its cargo, either people or contraband, onto a small boat that quickly moved across the water, unloaded, and came back again to be loaded onto the back of the truck, which quickly left the area. She watched the car on the U.S. side travel along River Road and then turn right on Scratchgravel Road, where another pair of headlights came on and followed the car north toward town. It was a smooth transaction, which Josie was certain had happened before and would likely happen again.
NINE
At noon on Friday, Pegasus stood, draining a can of off-brand tuna fish that smelled like metal into her kitchen sink. Tuna and split pea with ham soup were the only cans left in the cupboard. She planned to slip a couple cans of stew and a better-tasting soup into her purse that night at work. Shoplifting went against her moral code, such as it was, but she had to eat.
She scraped the tuna into a bowl and squeezed a fast-food package of mayonnaise on top of it. She heard cars coming up the gravel drive and stepped quickly to the window in the kitchen door to watch three black cars buzz by her trailer on their way to Red’s. Through the haze of dust they left in their wake, she watched them park in front of Red’s house. One man in a suit, white shirt, and tie got out and appeared to bang on Red’s door, even though it was still crisscrossed with yellow police tape. Several similarly dressed men stood and faced her trailer, where she watched from her living room’s back window.
She opened the coffee table drawer and pulled out the Smith & Wesson and the fully loaded magazine lying beside it. Keeping her eyes on the men, she slid the magazine in the gun and forced a bullet into the chamber. She practiced extending her arms, raising the gun, and slipping her finger down onto the trigger, aiming at the door, where she had hung a red piece of paper at exactly five feet from the ground, the approximate height a man’s chest would be if he came through her front door. She had listened to the cop and had begun locking her door at all hours, although a swift kick would gain a man entrance.
Within a few minutes, the man banging on Red’s sliding glass door quit and the convoy left without stopping at her trailer. Pegasus wondered where her brother was. She had not seen him since her last gun lesson and wasn’t sure if he was even still in town. Maybe this was what he was preparing her for.
*
Josie fed and watered Chester and let him outside to run while she caught a few hours of sleep in her own bed. She logged on for duty at noon to work a second shift with Otto. They drove a half mile past the watchtower and parked. Under a steamy noonday sun, they walked a path covered in scrub grass and salt cedar, scouting out vehicle access to the river. About a quarter mile from Josie’s jeep, they spotted fresh tire tracks coming straight out of the river, near where Josie had seen the boat.
Thirty minutes later, Jimmy Dare, a twenty-year veteran with the Marfa Border Patrol, responded to Josie’s call. Josie and Otto met him by the edge of the road, where he parked his white and green SUV.
“How the hell are you, darling?” Jimmy smiled wide and came at Josie with an arm thrown out for a handshake. He was a fit, five feet ten inches with a military haircut and precise movements. He wore the customary olive green cargo pants and shirt with a yellow name patch declaring him as part of Border Patrol. A .40-caliber pistol hung from a clip at his side, and he looked like a man who could use it if the situation demanded it. Josie had once watched him commandeer a van full of eight illegal aliens attempting entry, three of whom were armed. She had used him as a reliable source on border issues since she had taken the job as chief.