Inside the store, Dan gathered a few items including two ham sandwiches-one for him and one for Bozo-a couple of bags of chips, two Cokes, and several bottles of water. Those would give him enough calories and help keep him alert through the long nighttime hours-hopefully long empty hours-before his shift ended at six the next morning.

Even though the line at Rosemary Sixkiller’s register was longer than the other ones, Dan went through hers anyway. Of all the clerks in the store, she was the only one who was consistently nice to him.

“There’s a dance at Vamori tonight,” she told him as she rang up his items. She gave the ham sandwiches a disapproving shake of the head as she put them in the bag. “You know you could go to the feast house there instead of eating these. They’re probably old.”

Dan had checked the sell-by date on the package, and Rosemary was correct. The sandwiches were right at the end of their sell-by date. He also knew she was teasing him about the dance. That was one of the reasons he always stopped at her register. To Dan Pardee’s ear, “Sixkiller” didn’t sound like a Tohono O’odham name. He suspected that Rosemary, like Dan, wasn’t one hundred percent T.O., or maybe even any percent. He appreciated the fact that she didn’t seem scared of him and that she joked around with him a little, even though they both knew why he wouldn’t be showing his Apache face at a Tohono O’odham feast house anytime soon.

“Can’t,” he said. “I’m working.”

Which was more or less the truth. Other Shadow Wolves did stop by feast houses now and then. Chatting with the locals gave the officers a chance to learn about what was going on in any given neighborhood-what people might have seen that was out of the ordinary, including the presence of any unfamiliar vehicles coming or going. Because the Tohono O’odham’s ancestral lands had been cut in two by the U.S./Mexican border, those strange vehicles often belonged to smugglers of various stripes and were, as a consequence, of interest to Homeland Security. Dan knew better than to try using the feast-house chitchat routine. He was the ultimate outsider here. What he found out about activities in his sector he had to find out the hard way-by personal observation.

Leaving the store with his small bag of groceries, Dan found two little girls standing outside the Expedition feeding bits of popcorn to a very appreciative Bozo. When Dan walked up to the vehicle, however, the two girls ducked their heads and sidled away without speaking to him or even acknowledging his presence.

Yup, he told himself. Daniel Pardee, the ultimate outsider.

“Okay,” he said aloud to Bozo. “Let’s go to work.”

Bozo looked at him, thumped his tail happily, and grinned his goofy canine grin.

With that they headed out of town, driving south toward the village of Topawa and then, beyond that, along the west side of the Baboquivari Mountains. Baboquivari itself, Waw Giwulk, or Constricted Rock, was an amazing rock monolith that towered over the surrounding flat desert landscape.

Driving through the pass just east of Sells always left Dan with the sense that he was a foreigner, but when he drove past Waw Giwulk, Baboquivari, his apartness seemed to melt away. That odd sensation puzzled him. He had no idea why that would be. He understood that Baboquivari was the legendary home of I’itoi, the Tohono O’odham’s Elder Brother. As such, it seemed to him that the mountain should have rejected Dan Pardee in the same way the people did.

Strange as it seemed even to him, he always had the weird idea that I’itoi was somehow welcoming him home. The same feeling washed over him that Saturday afternoon. How was it possible that he seemed to belong here in this wild stretch of untamed Sonora Desert in a way he belonged nowhere else?

Finally, however, he came to his senses. “What was I thinking?” he asked his partner, Bozo. “I must be making it up. I’itoi would never throw out the welcome mat for someone like me, not for an ohb.”

Bozo loved the sound of Dan’s voice. He thumped his tail happily. It wasn’t a very satisfying response, but under the circumstances it was the best Dan could hope for.

“Sounds like you’re of the same opinion,” he said, giving Bozo’s head a fond pat. “For some reason we both belong here.”

Five

Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 7:15 p.m.

87º Fahrenheit

When Brandon returned to the house in Gates Pass, he pulled into the garage and parked his CRV next to Diana’s hulking Tampico red Buick Invicta convertible. She had told him just that morning that she intended to sell it-that she wanted him to take it up to Barrett Jackson, the collector car auction place in Scottsdale, to see what he could get for it.

The idea that she was even thinking about unloading her treasured car had come as a real shock to him. The old Buick convertible had been little more than a wreck when Diana had won it at a charity auction, and she had paid good money for Leo Ortiz to bring the vehicle back from the dead. Now it was a real collector’s item, all spit and polish and complete with custom-made red and white imitation leather seats that were unashamed copies of the factory originals.

If she went through with that idea, Brandon doubted Diana would get as much as she expected from selling her pride and joy, but still, why do it? Even with their book-contract difficulties, it wasn’t as if they needed the money. They didn’t.

When Brandon stepped inside the back door, Damsel greeted him ecstatically. Despite years of lobbying on Brandon ’s part, Diana continued to regard pet doors as magnets for other unwanted critters. Damsel had been left inside for so long that she went racing outside without even noticing the doggie bag containing Brandon ’s leftover fajitas. Once she was back inside and downing her treat, Brandon lugged Geet Farrell’s box into his study and set it on his desk.

Once upon a time the room had been a treasure trove of mementos from Brandon ’s law enforcement days. There had been photos of him meeting various dignitaries, including one of him shaking hands with President Nixon. Nixon may have left office in disgrace, but Brandon still had a soft spot in his heart for the man who had campaigned for office as a “law and order” candidate.

And maybe part of Brandon ’s fondness for Nixon came from his own understanding of disgrace, because a similar fate had befallen Sheriff Brandon Walker. Richard Nixon had been brought low by that pesky group of “plumbers.” Brandon ’s downfall had come about due to his two ne’er-do-well sons, Tommy and Quentin, who had never given their father anything but heartbreak.

And the truth was, Quentin had been more at fault than Tommy ever was. Tommy hadn’t lived long enough to grow into anything worse than an overgrown juvenile delinquent. When he disappeared, Brandon and Diana had assumed he had simply run away. Instead, he had died years earlier while on a grave-robbing expedition out on the reservation. His parents might never have learned the truth about their son’s disappearance if it hadn’t been for Mitch Johnson’s attack on Lani, which had led to the discovery of Tommy’s skeletal remains.

Quentin, on the other hand, had lived long enough to become a genuine criminal. His involvement in a prison-based protection racket had been an important component in Brandon ’s losing his bid for reelection to the office of sheriff. And later on, when Quint was paroled from prison for the second time, things had gotten worse instead of better.

While imprisoned in Florence, Quentin had come under the spell of not one but two crazed killers, both of them sworn enemies of Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd. Diana had helped her friend, Rita Antone, see to it that a former English professor named Andrew Philip Carlisle had gone to prison for the murder of Rita’s granddaughter, Gina. Brandon had done the same thing for a remorseless killer named Mitch Johnson, who liked to go out into the desert and use illegal immigrants for target practice.