Hood drove toward Calipatria through the ferocious middle day, heat wavering up from the horizon like fumes, the asphalt before him pooling with liquid nonexistent but appearing as smooth as mercury. He thought of the lives he had taken near Mulege. In the dazed aftermath of the shoot-out, Hood had retraced his steps and found the last of the four men he had killed. He had knelt beside him but he didn’t know what to do. The older man’s body lay heavily in the desert sand and it seemed to Hood to be as individual and as important as himself, more advanced on its earthly journey and therefore worthy of respect. But Hood still didn’t know what to do. He wanted to believe in an accessible and generous heaven awaiting most men, but this was not the Christian arrangement that he had been taught, so he did nothing. He found the three others and did nothing also and he told himself fuck it, they chose this life and I chose the flip side of it and we all signed on with our eyes open. There was no way Hood could feel superior of soul in this wind-blown, bullet-ruled patch of torture and death.

The manager at Rudy’s Gun Room had not sold guns or ammunition to any suspicious buyers. He was a pleasant but vague man with a large mushroom cap of a mole growing from his right cheek. Hood had the feeling that as a seller of firearms, he was neither observant nor discriminating. He walked Hood to the door and waved him off like a relative discharging an obligation.

Then down to Brawley, where the owner of Tracker Joe’s was eager to point out that he had filed two reports of suspicious buyers with ATFE one month ago, but there had been no questionable activity since.

Driving east from town to scorching town, Hood hit the Firing Line and the Shoot Shack and the Gun Locker and Freedom Arms and Floyd’s Surplus and the Bullseye, but nobody had sold a gun to a suspicious buyer. There’s no such thing as a suspicious buyer, Hood was told, because if they’re suspicious, we don’t sell to them. Laughter. He wondered again at the idea of an industry left to regulate itself. With guys like Crockett in the deal, it was a wonder ATFE could enforce anything at all. Crockett had opened something in him and he felt sick in his soul and he couldn’t erase Mulege. Jimmy’s fingers. Jimmy’s face. He drove fast, but not even the motion that he had craved as a boy could put distance between him and what he had done and seen.

Then it was dark and he was hours from Buenavista, so he got take-out food and water and bourbon in Yuma and took the prison turnoff. Near the river, he found a dirt road and he wound his way down it in his Blowdown SUV. The headlights cut through the dust as gravel cracked off the undercarriage. He came to a broad turnaround and he shut off the engine and got out. There was a bank lined with cattails and beyond it he heard the Colorado running fast and deep. The smell was as sweet as any he could remember, and the cattails were black slashes against the lighter black of the sky. To the east the walls of the old Territorial Prison rose in the blackest shade of all, and Hood could make out the watchtowers and the old adobe ramparts. He had visited the prison as a kid. It was by then a museum, and Hood had been surprised by how small the cells were, and his father had taken a picture of him sitting on one of the tiny steel bed frames built into the floors, Hood making a face to get his brothers and sisters to laugh.

He sat on the tailgate of the SUV and ate the tacos and drank the water and bourbon separately. He found some music. Later he stripped down to nothing and waded out through the cattails and lowered himself into the fast cold water and, holding on to the cattails, realized how swiftly he would be carried away if he or they were to let go. He stood by the car in the darkness and let the hot desert breeze dry him and then he put on only his underwear and hung his pants and shirt by the garment hooks and spread the coat over the back of the driver’s seat. He lowered both rows of back-seats and opened all the windows and set his holster close, then stretched out there but was not comfortable. He listened to the river and to the bugs tapping around him. As a shield against Mulege, he got out his cell phone and called Owens Finnegan.

“You were right,” he said. “I have a reason to call you.”

“What reason is it?”

“I want to know why you held my face like that. What were you looking for?”

“A face is a map of the heart.”

“What did you see on the map?”

“Innocence.”

“You must have seen violence and death, too.”

“Innocence is their measure. I love that you can still be measured.”

Hood said nothing for a long moment. “When I saw your scars, they made me want to save you.”

“All men want that. I don’t need saving anymore. Where are you now?”

“By a river near a prison. Where are you?”

“In my bed. It’s late, Charlie.”

“Your father was relieved that you’re okay. He wanted me to describe your home. He was concerned about your diet because you’re prone to living on energy drinks. He insists that you are going to college.”

She laughed softly.

“Then he hallucinated about the hanging of an outlaw, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy and drinking with Wyatt Earp in San Diego.”

“Dad. What an imagination.”

“It’s like he was really there. Details, sensory stuff.”

“He never told me about drinking with Wyatt Earp, for whatever that’s worth. Don’t buy in to what he says, Charlie. But be forgiving of him. He must have suffered head trauma when that car hit him.”

“There was sudden swelling. The doctor says it’s not unusual.”

“I’ll visit him soon.”

“That would make him happy.”

“When will you visit me?”

“Soon.”

“I know I’m frightening. I can’t hide the scars. So, Charlie, you come see me again when you’re ready.”

He slept lightly and went back to the river once but didn’t go in.

At eleven o’clock the next day, Hood stepped into Dragon Arms in Quartz, California, population 1,200, elevation ten feet. It was 104 degrees according to the hardware store thermometer across the street. Even after the just-bought deodorant, he smelled strongly of the river, a dank mix of water and vegetation and mud.

Dragon Arms was a small, cool basement store that appeared well cared for. A man and a woman stood behind the counter when Hood walked in, both watching him enter, and Hood knew they had been waiting for him. The man was stocky and silver-haired, and the woman was a big-haired brunette in a green silk dress. They looked early sixties. The man came around the counter and swung his hand into Hood’s.

“Ivan Dragovitch,” he said. “You are the new Blowdown agent.”

“Yes, Charlie Hood.”

“This is my wife, Sheila.”

She offered her hand from behind the counter, and Hood shook it over the pistols.

“I respect ATFE,” said Dragovitch. “I admire agents Ozburn and Bly and Holdstock. Come, sit. I have some new faces for you.”

The Blowdown crew had told him of Dragovitch’s selective contempt and adoration for his customers. He’d shot a biker-robber dead the week his store had opened, then chased the man’s accomplice outside and shot him dead, too. He was openly disdainful of anyone who looked off-center to him. If you were clean-cut and had decent manners, Dragovitch could be courtly and deferential. If he offered coffee, he liked you. He adored law enforcement and made no secret of it. He had had Ozburn, Bly, and Holdstock for drinks once at his home in the hills outside Quartz, and Ozburn said he was gracious. Ozburn also said he was borderline paranoid, but so what.

Dragovitch led Hood to the counter and found him a stool. He was thick-necked and blue-eyed and he styled his silver hair in the jutting prow of a TV evangelist or NFL head coach. Hood sat and smiled at Sheila, who remained standing near the register. She was heavily made up and pretty.