He touched the digital recorder with the tips of his fingers. “So if they confess, I’ve got it here.”

Joe said, “Even if they keep lying and don’t admit a thing or invite me in, they’ll know they’re under suspicion. That alone sometimes leads to them turning themselves in later or ratting on their buddy. Just showing up gets things moving in the right direction.”

She shook her head and looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Tell me this isn’t what you do all day.”

“It isn’t.” He reached for the door handle.

“You can stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes, I suspect.”

“No,” she said. “I want to see this. I want to see what my game wardens do. I can’t be a proper director if I don’t know how things work in the field.”

“Deal,” Joe said, swinging out and clamping his hat on his head. “You can be my backup.”

She grinned nervously at that.

—

THE MORNING WAS HEATING UP into another warm August day. Tufts of translucent cotton from the ancient cottonwood trees were poised on the tips of the grass, awaiting a breath of wind to transport them somewhere. As he approached the broken gate, he instinctively reached down and brushed his fingertips across the top of his Glock, his cuffs, and the canister of bear spray on his belt, just to assure himself his equipment was there. The hinges on the gate moaned as he pushed it open. Lisa Greene-Dempsey maintained a ten-foot distance behind him, and followed him cautiously into the yard.

He was wondering about the burned splotches in the grass on the left side of the shared yard when a woman pushed the screen door open on the right side and stood behind it.

“Are you here about the cat urine?” she asked. “It’s about time.”

She looked to be in her seventies, and wore a thick robe and pink slippers. She had a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“Pardon?” Joe said.

“It reeks like cat urine,” she said, gesturing next door with a tilt of her head. “When it’s calm like this, the smell just about makes me sick. I’ve told them to clean it up, but they just laugh at me and tell me they don’t own no cats.”

Then Joe smelled it, the whiff of ammonia.

“I’m surprised they sent the game warden,” she said, “but I’m not complaining. I expected the sheriff, but I guess you’re in charge of animals around here.”

“Sort of,” Joe said. “But I’m here on another matter.”

“Figures,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody seems to care that much about my problems. Even the guy who owns the place just shrugs and tells me he won’t do anything because they pay the rent on time. I showed him where in the lease it said you can’t have pets, but he just doesn’t care.”

“I’m sorry,” Joe said. “I’m not here for that.”

“Just make sure to ask them about the cats.”

“Okay,” Joe said.

She stepped back and closed the door in front of her. A moment later, Joe saw the floral curtains part an inch so she could watch what happened next.

He turned to Greene-Dempsey and shrugged. She looked nervously at the front door of the left side of the duplex.

“You can still wait in the truck,” he said.

She shook her head no.

“Then make sure you stay back and to the side, please,” he said.

—

THE ODOR GOT STRONGER on the porch when he knocked on the door. Because of the Ford pickup in front, he assumed somebody was home. When he leaned his head close to the door, he could hear and feel the thumping of bass notes from a radio or music player of some kind.

He knocked again, and heard the scuffling of feet. To his right, there was a glimpse of a face in the dirty window, and he waved at it as if to say gotcha.

Then, after some low murmuring on the other side of the door that indicated there was more than one person inside, a series of bolts were thrown. Joe thought, Bolts?

And Bryce Pendergast was standing in front of him with the door halfway open, his face contorted into a pulled-back grimace. Pendergast was naked from the waist up, severely thin, with a sleeve tattoo on the arm. He had long, stringy hair that glistened with hair product—or grease. The tendons in his neck looked to be as taut as guitar strings, and his breathing was quick and shallow. The right side of Pendergast’s body was hidden behind the door. A strong whoosh of the odor enveloped Joe on the porch.

“What do you want?” Pendergast asked, his voice high and strained.

Joe smiled and said in a friendly tone, “I guess you know why I’m here, Bryce.”

“I guess I do,” Pendergast said.

And in the instant it took for Joe to realize that the cat-urine smell was in fact raw ammonia from inside and the burns in the grass were from meth-making chemicals, Pendergast threw open the door and Joe saw the big pistol in Bryce’s right hand that had been out of sight behind the door. The pistol suddenly swung up toward his face.

Behind him, Joe heard Greene-Dempsey gasp—and Joe ducked and flailed his hands up, managing to knock Pendergast’s aim off as the gun exploded next to his ear.

Operating more out of instinct and terror than thought, Joe pinned Pendergast’s wrist to the doorframe with the back of his right forearm and stepped forward and backed into him, now grasping Pendergast’s wrists with both of his hands. Pendergast’s arm was pinned under Joe’s left armpit, the gun pointed toward the dried-out lawn, and it fired again, but Joe could barely hear the roar this time because his right ear was stunned silent. Joe recognized the weapon as an old Army Colt 1911 .45 semiautomatic, and he knew what kind of damage it could do.

Joe slammed Pendergast’s wrist against the doorframe again and again, trying to make him drop the weapon. But Pendergast was younger and stronger. He could feel the hardness of Pendergast’s body pressed against his back. Pendergast was now beating his free fist down on Joe’s head, neck, and back, and Joe wasn’t sure he had the strength or leverage to knock the gun loose.

Although he was temporarily deaf in his right ear from the gunshot and the side of his face felt stunned, he could hear yelling from behind him inside the house and Greene-Dempsey’s high-pitched voice screaming, “Call 911! Call 911!” to the woman in the right duplex.

Pendergast’s fist came down hard on the top of Joe’s head, mashing his hat down nearly over his eyes and unleashing a wave of starbursts in front of his vision. He realized that if he didn’t take Pendergast down soon—somehow—he’d be a dead man. He hoped whoever else was inside the house wouldn’t come out front and join in on the parade of blows, or bring his own gun along.

Joe let go of Pendergast’s wrist with his right hand and reached out and grasped the suspect’s thumb, which was curled around the grip of the .45, and jerked back on it as hard as he could. The bone broke with a dull snap, and the thumb flopped back, held by skin alone. Because Pendergast’s body was pressed tight to his back, Joe could feel him stiffen as the pain shot through him.

Pendergast howled in Joe’s other ear, but the .45 dropped to the concrete of the porch and bounced into the grass. As it did, Joe let go and wheeled, ripping the first thing he could find—a big canister of bear spray—from his belt with the intention of blasting Pendergast in the eyes. But Pendergast’s eyes were closed tight as he howled and hopped up and down on one foot, cupping his wounded right hand with his left, the thumb flopping from one side of his hand to the other, and Joe didn’t see an opening. So he reared back and struck Pendergast solidly on the bridge of his nose with the bear spray canister, staggering him.

While Pendergast was off-balance, Joe reached in through the open door and grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked down, and the man stumbled past him and crashed facedown on the lawn, his arms windmilling. Before Pendergast could come to his senses enough to scramble for the .45, which was within his reach, Joe fell on him and forced him back to the ground and hit him three more times on the head with the bear spray canister until Bryce yelled, “No more, man!”