I needed to find Antone.

There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to his approach. Maybe he was following hunches or tracking the known movement of drugs. Maybe he was evaluating the features based solely on size. I didn’t have the slightest clue. But I did have a very bad feeling about this.

Antone obviously hadn’t come home last night, nor had he gone to work this morning. Based on what I had witnessed at the station, I was also reasonably confident that he hadn’t called in either. I already knew that the Coyote had been in the Baboquivari Mountains last night and I was willing to gamble that he was still somewhere up there. I don’t believe he would have attempted to cross the open desert with the corpse of a Border Patrol agent while his fellow officers were converging from all points on the compass. There simply hadn’t been time. No, he was still up there somewhere, and if Antone had come into contact with him, he had done so up there in the Baboquivaris.

I narrowed my search to the north-south stripe of circles to the east of Sells and the south of I-86, which cut across the reservation from Why to Tucson. There had to be a dozen circles already, seven of them crossed out in black, four of them in red.

And one that had yet to be crossed out one way or the other.

I grabbed the corner of the map, tore the whole thing off the table, and blew through the house. The screen door banged from the back of the house as I burst from the kitchen, hurdled the porch railing, and dashed around the side toward the driveway. I was in the Crown Vic and screaming backward in a cloud of dust toward the main road in a matter of seconds. I nearly shot right across it before cranking the wheel, pinning the gas, and rocketing to the east.

My best guess was that I was about twenty-five minutes out if I really pushed it. From there, it was still going to take time to pick my way up into the hills and find the entrance to the underground cave. I could only hope that the larger features Antone was investigating would be easier to find than the ones the Coyote had been using, which thus far had apparently been too small to warrant Antone’s scrutiny. Regardless, if there was a chance that Antone was still alive somewhere up there, I was going to need any and all of the help I could get, damn the consequences.

I grabbed my cell phone and called the police station. Officer Olivia Benally answered before the second ring in a panicked voice that confirmed my suspicions. I had just identified myself and started to express  my concerns when she interrupted me.

“They found the chief’s cruiser.”

“What? Who did?”

“Ajo Station called maybe twenty minutes ago. One of their agents came across the chief’s car abandoned out off the Malvado Drag near Diaz Peak. There was…there was—” She nearly lost it before blowing out a long exhalation to compose himself. “There was blood inside the car.”

“Diaz Peak? Isn’t that in the Ajo Range? That can’t be right. There’s no way—”

“Look. I told you everything I know. Louis is on his way out there now and I have to coordinate things from my end while running the entire department by myself. If you want anything more, you’re going to have to call Ajo.”

She hung up on me, but there was nothing more to say anyway. Everything about this situation was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. I clicked on my scanner and it exploded with voices, so many I couldn’t immediately pick out a single identifiable thread, but there was no mistaking the rage that crackled from the voices of the agents and the grim determination with which the dispatchers directed them. I imagined the majority of these agents were the same ones who had been up all night scouring the desert and were now running on anger and adrenaline fumes. They wanted the man who killed their brother-in-arms, and they wanted him all to themselves before any outside agency could intervene.

I slowed the car and pulled to the side of the gravel road. The Baboquivari Mountains rose ahead of me through the front windshield. I glanced up at the rearview mirror. Nothing but seamless desert all the way to the horizon, beyond which I could imagine Blackhawks thupping over rugged hills crawling with agents on ATVs and on foot. Two different mountain ranges on totally opposite sides of the reservation.

The engine ticked as the dust washed over the car from behind and settled onto the hood.

The radio chatter was frenetic. Every agent within a hundred miles must have converged upon the area when Antone’s car was discovered with blood in the interior. You could probably drive a convoy of semis bursting with drugs straight through the heart of the reservation and no one would notice or care.

I peered again through the sheen of dust on the windshield, then up at the rearview mirror. There was no sign of movement as far as I could see in either direction.

I had been certain that the Coyote was still in the Baboquivaris and the map on the passenger seat beside me all but confirmed that Antone had gone up there, as well. Curse Antone and his infernal signal jammer or every move he had made during the night would have been documented by the Oscars.

Windshield.

Rearview mirror.

Windshield again.

My left foot tapped restlessly on the floorboard.

Show’em the left and bring the right.

Windshield.

Rearview mirror.

Windshield again.

I looked down at the laminated map beside me, then toward the point where the Baboquivaris merged into the southeastern horizon, not far past the top hat-rock of Baboquivari Peak itself.

The voices from the scanner provided a ruckus that made it nearly impossible to think.

Windshield.

Rearview mirror.

Windshield again.

Coyote is the master of deception.

Before I even realized I had reached a decision, I was speeding straight ahead with the Baboquivari Mountains growing larger in front of me by the second.

THIRTY

It felt like it took me forever to find the right spot. Not because I couldn’t read the topographical map, but rather due to the challenge of selecting the right east-west drag to get me there. I had turned down several that necessitated U-turns while I navigated the desert with my eyes glued to the proper arrangement of peaks and valleys. When I did finally follow the correct route, it led me straight up into the foothills to a rutted road that guided me on a circuitous course even higher, until the terrain became more than the Crown Vic could overcome and I was forced to coast backward to a point where I could park in a copse of ironwood trees. The canopy might have offered shade, but it did little to spare me from the heat. The moment I killed the engine and the AC stopped blowing, the heat closed around me like a fist.

I tucked a bottle of water into either pocket of my windbreaker, rolled up the map, and donned my cap to keep the sun out of my eyes. I was already sweating through my shirt when I climbed out of the car and looked uphill toward the rugged peaks lined with cacti and palo verdes, which grew straight from the scree and steep escarpments that would dictate my path.

I took a long pull from the first bottle and pocketed it again. It had to be well over a hundred, but at least there was a breeze blowing at my back. I debated taking off my jacket. My skin was dark enough that it didn’t immediately burn; however, the lightweight fabric allowed for a small amount of convective cooling from my sweat that I wasn’t ready to sacrifice.

There was still the distinct possibility that my hunch was wrong and I had consigned myself to a wild goose chase. I guess there was only one way to find out for sure. I was only a few feet from my car when I saw fresh tire treads in the dirt. Someone had recently parked here. Someone whose car was limited by a clearance and suspension similar to my own. The vehicle had tires of similar width, too.