Two Moons felt his chest swell in another way.

He tried to cool himself down, but when Olafson and the couple headed for the exit, he found himself springing forward and blocking them. Thinking this was a bad idea, but unable to stop himself.

Like something had taken him over.

Olafson’s smile faded. “Excuse me.”

“Those pictures of the garden,” said Darrel. “I think they’re good.”

Olafson stroked his white beard. “Do you, now?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then I’m happy for you.”

Two Moons didn’t speak or move. The all-in-black-couple shrank back.

Larry Olafson said, “Now that we’ve had our erudite discussion, would you kindly get out of my way?”

“What’s wrong with them?” said Two Moons. “Why’d you put them down?”

“I didn’t put them down.”

“That’s what you did. I heard you.”

“I’ve got a cell phone,” said the woman. “I’m going to call the police.”

She reached into her purse.

Two Moons stepped aside.

Olafson passed him and muttered, “Barbarian.”

Darrel had felt like an idiot for weeks. Thinking about it now made him feel stupid.

Why had he even told Kristin?

Because he’d come home in a foul mood, ignored the girls. Ignored her.

Talk, she was always telling him. You need to learn how to talk.

So he’d talked. And she said, “Oh, Darrel.”

“I screwed up.”

She sighed. “Honey… forget it. It’s no big deal.” Then she frowned.

“What?”

“The pictures,” she said. “They really are insipid.”

He found that he’d been grinding his teeth at the memory and willed himself to relax. So he didn’t like the victim. He’d worked other cases where that happened, plenty of them. Sometimes people got hurt, or worse, because they were bad or stupid.

He hadn’t told Steve the story. No reason to then. No reason to now.

He’d work this one hard. For some reason, reaching that decision made him feel better.

Gunnery Sergeant Edward Montez had been all army, and Darrel, his only child, raised on bases from North Carolina to California, had been groomed to follow.

At seventeen, living in San Diego, when he found out his father was going to be sent to Germany, Darrel rebelled and went over to the nearest Marine Corps recruitment office and enlisted. Within days, he’d been assigned to basic training in Del Mar.

As his mother packed suitcases, she cried.

His father said, “It’s okay, Mabel.” Then he trained his black eyes on Darrel: “They’re kind of extreme, but at least it’s the military.”

“I’ll like it,” said Darrel. Thinking: What the hell have I done?

“We’ll see. Make sure you learn something from them besides killing.”

“Like what?” Darrel rubbed his newly shaved head. The loss of his shoulder-length hair in ten seconds and the way it lay on the floor of a barbershop in Old Town still freaked him out.

“Like something useful,” said his dad. “A trade. Unless you’re planning to spend the rest of your life jumping to attention.”

Midway through his hitch, his mother died. Mabel and Ed Montez were both chain-smokers, and Darrel had always worried about lung cancer. It was a heart attack that got Mom. Only forty-four, she’d been sitting in the front room of a noncom housing unit outside of Hamburg, watching Wheel of Fortune on U.S. Army cable, when her head pitched forward and she never moved again. Her last words: “Buy a vowel, stupid.”

The Marines gave Darrel compassionate leave for a week, then he returned to the base in Oceanside. He was a lance corporal by now, training grunts, earning a rep as a tough DI. The little crying he did, he did in private.

His father quit the army and settled in Tampa, Florida, where he lived off his pension and got depressed. Half a year later, he called Darrel and announced he was moving to Santa Fe.

“Why there?”

“We’re Santa Clara Indian.”

“So?” Darrel had been made casually aware of his heritage. As an abstraction, something historical. The few times he’d asked his parents about it, they’d inhaled their unfiltered Camels and said, “Be proud of it, but don’t let it get in the way.”

Now his dad was moving because of it? To New Mexico? Dad had always hated the desert; when they lived in California, you couldn’t get him to Palm Springs.

“Anyway,” said Ed Montez, “it’s time.”

“For what?”

“To learn, Darrel. If I don’t start learning something, I’m gonna shrivel up and die like a moth.”

The next time Darrel saw his father was when he finished his Marine hitch, decided he wanted more hair on his head, and didn’t re-up.

“Come out here, Darrel.”

“I was thinking L.A. ”

“Why there?”

“Maybe go to school.”

“College?” said his dad, surprised.

“Yeah.”

“What you want to study?”

“Maybe computers,” Darrel had lied. He hadn’t a clue, knowing only that he wanted the freedom of sleeping late, meeting girls who weren’t hookers or Marine groupies. He wanted to have some fun.

“Computers are good,” said his dad. “The talismans of our age.”

“What?”

“Talismans,” said Ed Montez. “Symbols-totems.”

Darrel didn’t answer.

“It’s complicated, Darrel. Come on out, you can go to school here. UNM’s a good place, got a nice campus, and there’s all sorts of scholarships for Indians.”

“I like California.”

“I got no one,” said his dad.

When Darrel got off the plane in Albuquerque and saw the old man, he nearly fell over. Ed Montez had gone from Crew-Cut Noncom to Big Chief Whatever. His gray-streaked hair was center-parted and hung down past his shoulder blades, held in place by a beaded band.

His mop was a lot longer than Darrel’s own tresses had been when his dad had ridden him about looking like “a hippie bum.”

Dad’s civvy clothes had changed just as radically. No more golf shirt, pressed slacks, and spit-polished oxfords. Ed Montez wore a loose-fitting linen shirt over blue jeans and moccasins.

Wore a wispy chin beard.

He hugged Darrel-another change-took Darrel’s carry-on, and said, “I changed my name. I’m Edward Two Moons. Maybe you should think about a change.”

“Genealogy,” the old man explained as they made the one-hour drive to Santa Fe. So far the terrain was flat and dry, lots of empty stretches paralleling the highway, the occasional Indian casino.

Just like Palm Springs.

Seventy-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Darrel had no problem with that. His father was doing ninety and so was everyone else.

Dad lit up and blew smoke around the cabin of the Toyota pickup. “Aren’t you curious?”

“About what?”

“Genealogy.”

“I know what it means. You’ve been looking into your roots.”

“Our roots, son. On the drive over from Florida, I stopped in Salt Lake City, went over to the Mormon place, and did some serious studying. Found out some interesting things. Then when I got here, I did some more and it got even more interesting.”

“Like what?” said Darrel, even though he wasn’t sure he cared. Mostly, he was sneaking sidelong glances at the old man. Edward Two Moons? When he talked, the chin beard vibrated.

“Like our lineage goes straight back to the Santa Clara Pueblo. That’s on my side. Your mom was Apache and Mohawk, but that’s another story. I still got to look into that.”

“Okay,” said Darrel.

“Okay?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I thought,” said Ed, “that you’d be curious.”

“You always said it was in the past.”

“I’ve come to appreciate the past.” His father jammed his cigarette into his mouth, reached over with his right hand, and grasped Darrel’s wrist. Held on. Weird. The old man had never been one for touch.

“We’re related to Maria Montez, son. Straight line all the way back to her, not a doubt.”

“Who’s that?”

“Maybe the greatest Indian potter ever.” Ed let go, flipped his hand over. The palm was gray, coated with some kind of dust.