My first impression was that he’d made himself a modern cave similar to the ones through which I had been crawling; an enclosed space with walls covered with primitive artwork. And maybe that had been his intention, but it had the overwhelming sense of incompleteness, of a work abandoned before it was finished. It was the same sense I got from the smiley faces themselves, or perhaps because of them. There was just something inherently inconsistent about the nature of the designs. I found it hard to believe that anyone with enough talent to paint nearly perfect circles would content himself with such childish and meaningless expressions of his creativity.

I advanced deeper into the house. There were gaps where appliances had once been and the kitchen cupboards hung slightly open with the will of gravity. The counters were covered with dust. There was a black trash bag on the floor that smelled of the Dumpster behind a Taco Bell, crawling with black flies so fat I doubted they were capable of flight anymore.

Another gust of wind shook the entire structure. The sand and gravel sounded like hailstones.

The bathroom to my right smelled like an outhouse. The buzzing racket of flies sounded hollow, as though they were swarming somewhere beneath the sink, or possibly under the lid of the toilet. All of the walls in the hallway were painted in the same fashion as the living room, variations on the theme anyway. Even the master bedroom was white and covered with smiley faces, although it was obvious these hadn’t been painted with a brush like the others had. I recognized the distinct paw pad marks. It was in this room that he taught himself to paint with the severed limb of a coyote. I shuddered at the thought of him unwrapping the stiff leg from a bundle of cellophane, turning it over and over in his hands, and then dipping it into the red paint for the first time, the charge causing the goose bumps to rise all over his body.

There was a military surplus cot with a large footlocker overflowing with clothes in the middle of the room. This was where he’d been living, all right. But there was nothing here that offered any sort of clue as to where he was now. At least not that I had found.

Yet.

I turned around and headed back into the living room. That was where all of this had started, where one day he had boarded over the windows, painted the walls, and begun creating his modern-day cave. Another Hohokam allusion? It certainly fit the established pattern, but why go to such lengths to actualize a small portion of a myth? It was only a story, after all, a story that eventually led to a mischievous creator god.

Don’t be too quick to lay this at the feet of I’itoi. There are many gods of mischief out here in the desert.

A creaking sound behind me.

I spun around, my light tracing the wall as I aligned it with my pistol and sighted down the open front door—

The wind wailed and sand clattered.

An animal stood before me, its front haunches inside the trailer, its back legs on the makeshift stairs. Its eyes reflected my light like twin moons. One ear stood straight up while the other sagged against its cheek. Its gray fur was mangy and matted and the crescents of its ribs showed. It just stood there, looking right at me, its tongue lolling from its mouth.

Another gust rattled the trailer and it disappeared back into the night again.

I stared after it for a long moment before I finally turned around once more. As before, my beam swept across the smiley faces, seemingly animating them like a zoetrope. I was already attempting to mentally catalogue the differences from one face to the next when my brain caught up with my eyes.

I turned again, this time swinging my light across the opposite wall. I did it again. Faster. Watching one face metamorphose into another and another. I did it again. And again and again and again.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.

It had been right in front of me the entire time.

I sprinted out the front door, cleared the stairs, and raced to my car. The moment I was in the driver’s seat I grabbed my laptop, launched my digital photo manipulation program, and imported the pictures from the various crime scenes. My feet tapped restlessly on the floorboards while I worked. I needed to know for sure. I couldn’t afford to go running off on another tangent. I found the clearest example of each smiley face, the winking face, and the armless K. I scaled and resized them and converted them into semi-transparent masks that allowed me to separate the designs themselves from the rocks upon which they’d been painted in the blood of the Coyote’s victims. I arranged them in chronological order.

Then I took all five and placed them one on top of the other.

It was a mess, but I was getting closer.

I highlighted each mask in turn and started to rotate them in various directions.

Almost. I could positively feel the tumblers falling into place. I had it now.

I had him.

More rotation.

Closer still.

And then I saw it take form in front of me. I could see the moves I needed to make like a chess master surveying his board and recognizing there was no way his strategy could fail.

I made the final moves and held the screen up before me.

I knew where he was.

Ban.

The Coyote.

My Elder Brother.

I’itoi, that mischievous trickster god.

The Man in the Maze.

DAY 4

tash gi’ik

wia

 

Sir Francis Galton, first cousin of Charles Darwin, was the first to study the heritance of behavioral traits and is credited with launching the behavioral genetics movement, from which came the first twin studies and the resultant nature vs. nurture debates that will undoubtedly be waged until the end of time. It is an extension of this science that led to the development of Project Genome, which is dedicated to the understanding and advancement of humanity as a species. Conversely, from this science was derived the concept of eugenics and, by extension, Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution. If that in itself isn’t an argument for Team Nurture, then I don’t know what is.

THIRTY-FIVE

Bobquivari District

Tohono O’odham Nation

Arizona

September 12th

I tried to recall Antone’s words as I sped across the desert, my signal jammer making me invisible to the Oscars.

That mountain over there. Kind of looks a little like a top hat? That’s Baboquivari. Waw Kiwulik in our native tongue. It is the most sacred of all places to our people.