When Helena Cameron recovered, Catherine would suggest that she give Drake McCann a raise.

26

If they were going to spot him, Brass figured, it would be now, while he was working his way down off the last boulder and approaching the back door. He couldn't be sure how many people were inside or how vigilant they were, but for all he knew, someone might have been lining up a shot at that very moment from one of the dark windows facing his way.

The backyard had been planted with grass once, but that hadn't lasted long. There were a couple of tufts remaining, and the rest was as dry and dusty as the front. A deck extended from a concrete slab behind the house and wrapped around a covered hot tub, but that was the only feature of note. Instead of a fence, there were the boulders that backstopped the property, some of them as tall as the house itself, jumbled up one atop another as if they'd been shaken out of a can. The scramble up and down and around had been tiring, and Brass's clothing, entirely unsuited to the job, was thrashed.

But he had almost reached his goal.

Seven windows faced him, one small and set high into a wall – a bathroom window, he thought. One, near the far left corner, was floor-to-ceiling, and he could catch glimpses of an empty living room or dining room through that one. A few feet to the right of that was a door with a window inset, which Brass guessed led into a kitchen or utility room. The others were upstairs, more standard-sized and regularly placed, and were probably bedrooms.

He hadn't detected any movement through any of them. For all he could tell, Solis and Moran weren't there after all or had left after Brass and Aguirre split up, and this had all been nothing more than a fairly unpleasant afternoon workout.

Brass stopped in the notch between two boulders he had just climbed down and scanned the back of the house again. All was still. He couldn't hear anything from the house. In the distance, a raven cawed, and muffled conversation from around front sounded as if Aguirre had reached the pair of police officers standing guard. The only smell was the dry tang of desert.

Waiting any longer wouldn't do him any good. He drew his duty weapon and stepped out into the yard. Walking briskly, he made for the back door. No one raised an alarm, and in seconds, he had the doorknob gripped in his left hand. It turned easily. The window was smudged, greasy on the inside, preventing him from seeing through.

Brass took a deep breath and let it out again, willing the hammering of his heart to slow. He had more years on the job than he liked to think about, but no matter how many times he had done it, going through a door blind, into a place he didn't know, where anybody might be waiting, was a nerve-wracking thing. To make it worse, he had to trust that Aguirre was really working on distracting the men out front and not warning them. Ray's friend had speculated that most tribal police would be on Domingo's side. Whether that extended to Aguirre he couldn't know.

He twisted the knob and yanked the door open, inserting his gun into the space first, ready to fire if lie needed to.

He was looking into a kitchen, its counters yellow tile, cabinets old, scarred wood. The floor was linoleum, some of the squares peeling up at the corners. A refrigerator and stove, both olive green, had scrapes and rust spots on their doors, and on the side of the refrigerator. Brass could see black mold inching its way up from the floor. More of the same dotted the floor and ceiling. A butcher block stood in the middle of the floor, a few pots and pans hanging from hooks on its sides.

Announce himself? Or not? He didn't have a warrant. But there were people dead and wounded from the assault on Meoqui Torres's home and a potential connection to the murder of Robert Domingo in Las Vegas, and he had probable cause on his side. He had called in for backup and to have search and arrest warrants written up, but, as he had told Aguirre, he didn't want to wait for those to arrive.

He decided not to announce. Surprise would be the best ally he had. He shut the door silently and crossed the kitchen, testing each step to make sure a squeaking floor didn't give him away now that he had come so far. His breathing was shallow, but his heart had started to calm. He was in it now, in the groove. Things would unfold as they unfolded, and the best he could do was to meet events head-on.

From the kitchen, a stub of a hallway led to a carpeted living room. Brass heard someone swallowing liquid, then the clink of a bottle being set down on a hard surface, and finally a soft belch. Two males laughed. "Your mom should have left a TV or something, dude," someone said. "I'll go crazy, we stay here for much longer."

"That won't be a problem, then," Brass said as he swung around the corner.

Two young Native American men faced him, a slender one sitting on an old yellow sofa, so mildewed that it had been left behind, and the other, stocky and as solid as one of the boulders outside, with tattoos all up his arms and wrapped around his neck, cross-legged on the floor. They wore almost identical looks of surprise. An assortment of guns filled most of a low table, including a big.50-caliber automatic rifle and some handguns, with a couple of sweating beer bottles standing amid them. There were more bottles and food wrappers and other trash scattered around the room. Holes at shoulder height looked as if they had been made by someone punching the walls or throwing things into them.

The slender guy snaked an arm toward the table. Brass covered the distance quickly and kicked out, feeling a satisfying crunch under his dusty shoe as the heel smashed into the man's hand. The gun he had been reaching for dropped back onto the table with a heavy thump. "I wouldn't try that," Brass said, growling out the words.

"You freakin' hurt me!" the man complained. He held his arm by the wrist, shaking the hand loosely.

"Like you wouldn't have shot me?" Brass kept the gun aimed between the two men, ready to shift it to either side in a heartbeat, and he drew back his blazer to show the badge hanging from his belt. "LVPD," he said. "Just so you don't think I'm trying to jack you or something. Which one of you is Ruben Solis?"

The two men glanced at each other, and then the slender one shrugged and answered, "You must have the wrong house, man."

"There a lot of houses around here with squatters in them?"

"You might be surprised," the slender one said.

"Who says any of us is whatshisname?" the big guy added. "Guy you're looking for."

Brass let his gaze drill into the smaller man. Shep Moran was the one who had done time, and some of the big guy's tats looked like jailhouse ink. "One of you is Ruben, and I'm thinking it's you." He twitched the gun barrel toward the heavier guy. "Which makes you Shep Moran. This is your mom's house, or it was." The big guy turned his gaze toward the floor. "This place has been trashed enough," Brass said. "Let's just go outside and talk."

"Don't make any difference," Moran said. "It ain't her problem anymore."

Brass didn't bother to explain that further damaging the house would only make it harder for this neighborhood ever to get back on its feet. As long as it was mostly empty, the houses occupied by squatters but not by permanent residents, it would be a haven for crime. That would probably suit Shep Moran just fine, but chances were good that his mother wouldn't have felt the same way.

"Outside works for me," Ruben Solis said. His hair was long and straight, his T-shirt baggy and black. The muscles on his arms were toned and firm. Moran strained the seams on his T-shirt, and his pants would have been dangerously droopy on anyone smaller. As it was, Brass thought you could drop a tractor tire through each leg without straining the fabric.