The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(9)
Josie followed Winning’s 1980s Cadillac Eldorado to her trailer. The car was the size of a boat with a mottled black and gray paint job. Josie thought it was one of the ugliest cars she had ever seen. She followed Winning down Farm Road 170 west toward Candelaria, a ghost town and dead end for the 170. After the Mexican Revolution ended, the cavalry pulled out and the city had faded. Josie had once talked with an old rancher who raised his family in Candelaria back in the seventies. He said there were no border issues back then. People crossed the river at will and traded basic goods among the small towns. Families were buried on both sides of the river. Josie gazed out across the Chihuahuan Desert and tried to imagine the freedom and lack of fear that families like that once felt.
Winning was living alone in one of the most remote places in the United States, down the lane from Red Goff, a man rumored to have an arsenal of several hundred guns, including high-powered rifles and automatic weapons. Josie had no doubt that Winning knew more than she was telling, but Josie needed to deal with the dead body before the heat destroyed it. Just as important, Goff’s house had to be inventoried and locked before the vultures ransacked it for the rumored arsenal.
As the leader of the Gunners, a right-wing group of Second Amendment nuts who thought guns would solve the world’s ills, Red was known throughout West Texas. He was an arrogant hothead. Before he turned into a hermit, Josie would occasionally roust him from various Democratic rallies for shouting obscenities and causing a public disturbance. Josie had gathered intelligence on Red’s organization, the Gunners, for years. They had too much firepower to let it get into the wrong hands.
Ten minutes outside Artemis, Josie followed Winning down Davis Pass, a gravel road prone to washouts. The drive stirred up a thick layer of white desert dirt that recoated the ocotillo and prickly pear cactus that dotted the roadside. Large boulders, gray green agave, juniper, and Spanish daggers marked the white, sandy foothills for miles. The Chinati Peak could be seen in the distance, a grand backdrop to the ramshackle trailer propped up on two dozen cinder blocks in the rocky dirt. Josie wondered what kept the trailer from washing away in a heavy downpour.
Otto’s Artemis PD jeep was parked out front, the navy blue paint barely visible under the nearly permanent layer of dust. The jeeps were a perk of the job: four-wheel drive, no-frills, stripped-down retired army models capable of driving anywhere, on road or off. Otto stepped out of the trailer as Pegasus parked her Eldorado beside the jeep and got out of her car looking angry and hot. Her car windows were down, and Josie figured she had no air-conditioning.
“It’s Red Goff in there, sure enough,” Otto said with a frown as Josie stood and slammed her door shut.
He smoothed down the flyaway gray hair on top of his head. Otto weighed forty pounds over the department limit for patrol work, but it had never been an issue. He had served as chief of police for twelve years before giving it up for a slower pace. He was still an excellent officer, slow and methodical.
“Murder or suicide?” Josie asked.
“There’s a nice piece of irony,” Otto said. “Gunshot through the head. Unless he’s been moved, angle’s wrong for suicide. Five hundred guns in his closet to save him from the government, and what do you want to bet one of the other gun crazies shot him?”
Josie introduced Otto to Winning, who still looked hot and annoyed.
“Let’s go over this again. What time did you get off work?” Josie asked her.
Winning rolled her eyes. “My shift ended at seven o’clock this morning. I got home at seven fifteen. I took a shower and went to bed.”
“You slept here all day long?” Josie asked.
“Yep.”
“A guy gets shot on your couch and you don’t hear it?” Josie asked.
“Nope.”
“You might want to lose the attitude. You’re a suspect for murder on a pretty short list.”
Winning laughed. “A short list? The guy’s threatened to kill half of Texas, you included. You got more suspects than you can count.”
“Difference is, he’s lying on your couch,” Josie said. “Now, tell me how it is a man gets shot in your trailer and you don’t hear it.”
She scowled and crossed her arms over her chest. “If I knew, I’d tell you. Maybe someone shot him with a silencer. Maybe they shot him while I was in the shower with the music up.”
“You have a stereo in the bathroom?” Josie asked.
Winning walked to the trailer and stepped inside her front door. Josie followed her up the stack of cinder blocks that made for a front stoop and entered the trailer. Otto had propped the door open, but the heat was stifling.
The corpse was lying on the couch with a hole in the center of his forehead and three dried blood rivulets that ran down the side of his nose and right cheek. His face was covered in stubble that matched the gray of the military haircut on his head. Red’s eyes were open and vacant, the old arrogance extinguished.
Red Goff had been a thin man, standing about five feet five inches, but in the heat of the trailer, his face and arms were already beginning to bloat. It gave him a distended look, as if he were reflected in a fun house mirror. He wore black polyester dress pants and a white button-down shirt that was pulled up on one side, exposing a pale, hairy stomach that somehow looked more obscene than the bullet hole through his head.
The couch was up against a wall in the living room, the only room to the left of the front door. To the right was a small dining room and kitchen.