“Speaking of phones,” Alex Mumford said, “have you made any progress on tracking the victims’ phones?”

“Not on this end,” Brian admitted.

“It sounds like my chief is a whole lot more motivated than your sheriff. I should be able to add them to my request for a warrant.”

“I’m glad somebody is motivated,” Brian said with a hollow chuckle. “Do what you can, and if you can make it work, call me on this number. Any time night or day.”

“Will do,” Alex said. “Night or day. But if the high-tech solution doesn’t work, maybe the low-tech one will.”

“What’s that?” Brian asked.

“You know,” she said. “That old standby. He gets pulled over for a broken taillight.”

“One can always hope,” Brian said.

Brian knew that buying a car from a dealer was a process that could take several hours, and purchasing one from a private individual wasn’t a slam dunk, either. If Jonathan Southard was trying to replace his vehicle, there was still a window of opportunity to catch him. If anybody was paying attention, that is.

Brian had been dismissed from the case and he had passed on everything he knew to the new team of detectives. It would have been easy to forget about it-to go home for a much-needed nap and let Jonathan Southard be Jake Abernathy’s problem-but there was a big difference between being removed from a case and being able to let it go.

Brian Fellows was a plugger. Yes, he believed there was such a thing as blind luck, but he knew luck came most often to the people who applied themselves and did the grunt work. Rather than heading home, Brian returned to the sheriff’s department, where he settled in behind his desk and started working the phone, calling car-rental agencies and used-car lots.

The Aces wouldn’t mind. Detectives Abernathy and Adams were long on flash and bang, but they weren’t big on gutting it out.

Gutting it out was Brian Fellows’s middle name. He picked up his phone and went to work.

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:30 p.m.

91º Fahrenheit

Delia had made it sound as if the court order for Angie’s temporary guardianship was already a done deal, but it took a lot longer for Judge Lawrence to issue the actual paperwork than Lani would have thought possible. As the two women sat side by side in the waiting room outside the tribal judge’s chambers, Lani wondered if this was the same place where her parents had come years earlier when they petitioned for her adoption.

But I was already their foster child by then, Lani thought. They had clothes for me and furniture and all those other things little kids need. I’ve got nothing, and the bedroom that would be Angie’s is full of unpacked boxes of books.

When she voiced some of those concerns to Delia, the tribal chairman nodded. “When we go before the judge, we’ll ask if he’s able to permit you to go into Delphina’s house to retrieve some of Angie’s clothing and belongings.”

Ultimately, that’s just what the paperwork said. In addition to granting Lani temporary custody, Judge Lawrence issued an order stating that she, accompanied by an officer from Law and Order, was authorized to enter Delphina Enos’s residence for the sole purpose of retrieving Angie’s personal items.

That may have been what the judge ordered, but it wasn’t what happened.

After leaving the judge’s office, Lani and Delia went straight to Law and Order. Accompanied by a uniformed patrol officer, the two women caravanned to Delphina Enos’s mobile home. They arrived there just as Carmen and Louis Escalante were preparing to drive away in a pickup truck that had been loaded down with their dead daughter’s furniture and possessions.

Furious, Delia Ortiz signaled for them to stop. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“We came to get Delphina’s things,” Louis said with a shrug. “Everything she owned is stuff her mother and I gave her. It’s only fair that we should get it all back.”

Inside the mobile home, Lani and Delia were dismayed to discover that the place had been stripped of everything of value-clothing, furniture, dishes, pots and pans. If Angie had any special toys or remembrances, they were gone now, too, except for one-a single cheap stuffed toy, a bedraggled lion that had probably come from the stuffed-toy vending machine just inside the front door at Basha’s. Clearly the lion had been there in the dirt and debris under a couch for some time. Lani picked it up and gave it several hard whacks. The blows raised a cloud of dust.

“How could they do this to their own grandchild?” Lani wondered.

“Did you ever see the movie Zorba the Greek?” Delia asked in return.

Lani shook her head. “Never heard of it,” she said.

“My mother and Ruth loved that movie, mostly because of Anthony Quinn,” Delia said. “In it, some poor old woman dies. The townsfolk descend on her house like a pack of jackals and strip it of everything.”

“Just like this?” Lani asked.

Delia nodded. “Just like,” she said.

As Delia spoke, she opened her purse. Reaching inside, she pulled out two hundred-dollar bills. “This isn’t much, but it’s a start,” she said, passing the money to Lani. “Take Angie into town and use this to get replacements.”

“How can I take her anywhere?” Lani asked. “Legally I can’t even drive her home from the hospital. I don’t have a booster seat.”

“Is that Border Patrol guy still anywhere around?”

“Dan Pardee?” Lani asked. “Yes. I believe he’s still over at the hospital. Why?”

“He’s the one who brought Angie into town from the crime scene last night,” Delia said. “The officers there let him remove the booster seat from Donald Rios’s Blazer in order to do that. I’m sure he still has it.”

“I’m sure he does,” Lani said.

Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:45 p.m.

91º Fahrenheit

By early afternoon, Dan Pardee was mad enough to chew nails. He had waited around all morning and well into the afternoon, but there was still no sign of Angie’s missing relatives, and no sign of Dr. Walker, either. Angie was asleep again, and Dan was pacing up and down the hallway when he saw Dr. Walker’s midnight-blue VW Passat pull into a parking space reserved for doctors. When Lani stepped out of the driver’s seat, Dan strode out to meet her.

“Dr. Walker, where the hell have you been all this time?” he demanded. “Angie and I are still waiting. No one has come for her, not one person. Where are those people? What the hell’s wrong with them?”

She handed him a piece of paper, an official-looking document. “What’s this?” he asked, looking at Lani rather than the court order.

“It’s what’s taken me so long,” she answered. “Nobody has come for Angie because no one is going to come for her. Her family doesn’t want her.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You and I both know that Angie’s alive because the killer didn’t know she was there. Her superstitious relatives have decided that since Angie wasn’t slaughtered along with her mother, she is now regarded as a dangerous object-a Ghost Child. They won’t come anywhere near her.”

“And this?” he asked, nodding toward the document.

“It’s a court order from the tribal judge declaring me to be Angie Enos’s legal guardian.”

“Why you?” he asked. “Did the judge just pull your name out of his hat?”

“Not exactly,” Lani said. “It turns out Angie Enos is my second cousin.” She collected the document, turned away, and started toward the hospital’s main entrance.

“You and Angie are related?” Dan asked, falling in behind her. “Couldn’t you at least have mentioned that to me earlier?”

Lani spun around and faced him. She seemed angry, and he didn’t understand why. “I would have mentioned it earlier if I had known it earlier. It turns out I didn’t find out about it until after I left the hospital.”