“You knew there would be bodies there?”

“I thought there might be.”

“You said you came here with your godson. Seems like it might be a little cold for an overnight campout at this time of year. Where exactly were you?”

Lani pointed back to Ioligam. “Up there,” she said. “I can show you if you’d like.”

“How old is your godson, and where is he?”

“He’s not quite fourteen. As for where he is right now? He’s at home. We had an argument, and he left.”

“Left how?”

“He walked off the mountain and went home.”

“In the middle of the night? In the dark?”

“It wasn’t that dark,” Lani said. “There was moonlight. There was starlight. You should try it sometime.”

Just as Lani had felt the desert go silent after the gunfire, she felt a sudden shift in Agent Howell’s focus. “What kind of an argument?”

“Do you have a godmother?” Lani asked.

“A godmother?” Agent Howell asked. “Why would you ask that?”

“Do you?” Lani persisted.

“Of course not. My parents didn’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“Well, we do here,” Lani said. “For the Tohono O’odham, godmothers play an important role. We’re part of the child’s life; if we suspect that child is straying onto the wrong path, godmothers try to offer guidance away from the bad and back to the good.”

“That’s what was happening with Gabe?”

Having said that much, Lani had no choice but to continue. “His parents were worried that he was slipping into things he shouldn’t, and they asked me for help. That’s why we came here—­to talk about those things—­and that’s what the argument was about. His parents were worried about some of the kids Gabe was hanging around with who were pulling him away from the old ways.”

“As I understand it, Gabe’s mother is Delia Cachora Ortiz, the tribal chairwoman?”

“The tribal chairman,” Lani corrected. “We’re Indians. We don’t have to be politically correct.”

If Agent Howell noticed the verbal slap, she didn’t acknowledge it. “So you and Gabe argued and he left. What time was that?”

“I have no idea.”

“You knew to the minute when the gunshots happened. I should think you’d remember what time a kid walks off into the wilderness on his own.”

“Gabe and I came to Ioligam—­”

“To what?” Agent Howell interrupted.

“Ioligam. That’s what we call Kitt Peak. In our tradition, it’s a sacred place. I brought Gabe here to have a serious discussion about the old ways, about right and wrong. That means the time I spent with Gabe last night was done on Indian time. It’s time ruled by what’s important—­by day and night, light and dark, the sun and the stars. It has nothing at all to do with hours, minutes, and seconds. As for the shooting? That didn’t happen on Indian time. The shooting was all about your tribe, Agent Howell, and I knew that in the Milgahn world—­the Anglo world—­knowing the exact hour and minute would be important.”

“So Gabe left,” Agent Howell said. “What did he take with him?”

“His grandfather’s blanket.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“No food, no water, no cell phone?”

“No, none of that.”

“What about weapons? Did Gabe have any weapons with him?”

“Wait, is that where this is going? You think Gabe had something to do with what happened here? He left hours before the shooting happened.”

“You said he’s home now?”

Lani nodded.

“Did anyone notice what time he arrived there?”

“I doubt it. His parents were at the dance at Vamori last night. They didn’t get home until early this morning, just before Leo came to pick us up. They didn’t check Gabe’s room when they got home because they still thought he was up here with me.”

Someone tapped on the driver’s window, and Agent Howell buzzed it down. “We’ve got a tentative ID,” Agent Armstrong said. “We need to go. You can finish this later.”

Agent Howell turned back to Lani. “Do you have a phone number? How can I reach you?”

“Just call the hospital in Sells,” Lani told her. “Ask for Dr. Walker-­Pardee. They’ll know how to find me.”

When Lani returned to Leo’s pickup and climbed inside, she saw from the expression on his face that something was wrong. “What is it?” she asked.

“Jimmy Lewis, one of the Law and Order guys, is a buddy of mine. They know who the victims are.”

“They’re not illegals?” Lani asked.

“No,” Leo said, turning the key in the ignition. “They found their driver’s licenses. It’s two of the José brothers, Carlos and Paul.”

“I was afraid of that,” Lani said.

Leo nodded. “So was I.”

Lani thought of the single gunshot she had heard later in the morning, after the initial volleys of shots. “What about Tim?” she asked.

“There was no sign of him here, but chances are he’s dead, too,” Leo said. “We have to get back to Sells. I want to tell Gabe before anyone else does.”

BRANDON WAS FINE FOR A while as he headed north on the Catalina Highway. Driving through the bustling business centers of Oro Valley, he couldn’t help but remember when Ina had been on the far edge of the city. That was no longer true. As for Catalina? He remembered that as a sleepy hamlet on a two-­lane road with little more than a bar, a gas station, and a tow-­truck operation. Now it, too, was busy enough to have multiple lanes and multiple traffic lights. Off to the left, between there and I-­10, were numerous housing developments and golf resorts. And off to the right, the ridgelines in the distance teemed with newly constructed cheek-­by-­jowl houses.

He stopped briefly at the red light that marked the entrance to Saddlebrooke, with a thriving “active adult” community that included thousands of retirement homes and more golf courses. No doubt somewhere up there was the property near Golder Dam that John Lassiter had sold to some “crazy” developer who planned to build houses there. It turned out, Brandon realized, that the developer was having the last laugh.

It wasn’t until Brandon turned off Catalina Highway and onto Highway 77 that the familiar pall of grief settled over him. His meeting with Amanda Wasser, in which he had learned about her unyielding loyalty to a father she didn’t know, had put Brandon’s troubled relationship with his own sons in an even worse light.

Tommy had died in his late teens. He and his younger brother, Quentin, had been engaged in the felonious activity of stealing pots from an ancient site in a cavern on the reservation when Tommy had fallen to his death. Wanting to cover up what had really happened, Quentin spent years maintaining that Tommy had simply run away. During that time, before Mitch Johnson’s arrival on the scene had revealed the truth about Tommy’s death, Quentin had drifted ever deeper into the world of boozing and drugging. His coming down with hep C was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and his frequent run-­ins with the law meant that he had finally been given a three-­strikes life sentence.

On the surface it was easy to theorize that Quentin’s burden of guilt about his brother had been the cause of Quentin’s eventually fatal downward spiral, but every time Brandon had driven Highway 77 from Tucson to Florence—­every time he had gone to the prison to visit Quentin prior to his death—­Brandon had blamed only himself. Today was no exception.

Brandon hadn’t been able to prevent his divorce from his sons’ mother, Jane, but once that happened, he should have been more actively involved in raising the boys. He should have done more to set them on the right path. He should have done better. He should have fixed it. Brandon’s sons were both dead while he was still alive. That wasn’t the way life was supposed to work. He grieved for his boys who had died so young and wasted so much of their all-too-short lives.

Drowning in regret, Brandon wasn’t the least bit surprised to pull into the visitors’ parking lot at the prison and find that the knuckles on his fingers were white from his death grip on the steering wheel. On a sunny Saturday in March, the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence was the very last place in the universe where Brandon Walker wanted to be.