Giving up, Gabe flung the blanket over his shoulders and resumed his painful journey, wincing with every step, as first one spine then another bit into his flesh.

Damn Lani Pardee anyway, he thought. It was all her fault that he was out here in the middle of the night with cactus spikes stuck in his butt. And damn I’itoi, too! If he was the Spirit of Goodness, why hadn’t he kept Gabe from tumbling into that patch of cholla?

More alone than he’d ever been, to say nothing of hurt and angry, Gabe Ortiz stumbled on through the night, but he knew what he was going to tell his parents as soon as he saw them—­that Lani Walker-­Pardee wasn’t his godmother anymore. After all, he was almost a grown-­up now, and grown-­ups didn’t need god­parents.

CHAPTER 8

AFTER OLD MAN RETURNED WITHOUT heat, the Indians held another council. This time they asked the Thah O’odham, the Flying ­People, for help. Oriole—­S-­oam Shashani—­was listening, and he said he would go. The next morning Oriole started off very early. He did not return until very late, and when he did, he was changed. Some of his feathers had turned the color of the sun and others were black. He said that when he came too close to Tash, some of his feathers started to burn. He had to find some water and dive into it. That is why, even to this day, some of Oriole’s feathers are black and others are yellow.

After that, several more birds were sent, but none of them could bring heat. The Indians decided that since the small birds could not bring heat, they should try the big birds.

Nuwiopa—­Buzzard—­was floating around in the sky and listening to the ­People talking. The Indians called to him and told him that he flew so well that it would be a small thing for Buzzard to go to the home of Tash and bring back some fire. Nuwiopa, too, thought this would be very easy. The next morning he started out. All the ­people were sure that this time Buzzard would succeed, and so they stopped work and waited.

About noon they saw a tiny black speck, high in the sky. When Buzzard came down, the Indians saw that all his feathers, which had been brown, were now burned black and his head had no feathers at all. It was all covered with blood. The ­People did what they could to help poor Nuwiopa, but that is how Buzzard is even to this day. He is covered with black feathers and has a head the color of blood.

BATHED IN THE WARMTH OF the overhead heaters and with Bozo snoring contentedly beside him, Brandon Walker savored the quiet and let his mind wander back to the point where Amos Warren and John Lassiter had first come to his attention.

Brandon couldn’t remember the exact year—­sometime in the late ’70s. He and Diana had married by then, but Lani had not yet come into their lives. Whenever it was, he’d been a detective for some time, but it had been a grudging promotion, done over Sheriff Jack DuShane’s strenuous objections. Yes, he was a detective, but he was still on DuShane’s shit list. That meant Brandon still worked the crap shifts and was given the crap assignments, and that had included his first encounter with what would eventually become the Amos Warren homicide investigation.

The initial call had come in on a hot Sunday afternoon in the middle of August. Brandon had been sprawled on the living room floor teaching the game of checkers to a pair of towheaded nine-­year-­olds who looked like they could have been brothers but weren’t. One was Brandon’s stepson, Davy, and the other was Brian Fellows. His own sons, Quentin and Tommy, had zero interest in checkers.

Brandon had served in Vietnam, far enough from the front lines that he didn’t wake up at night quaking from dreams of the war, but close enough to understand the concept of collateral damage. Brandon thought of Brian as the opposite of collateral damage.

Brandon had been devastated when his wife, Janie, had divorced him, taking his two sons, Tommy and Quentin, with her. In the divorce proceedings, she had claimed that her husband neglected her and that she was tired of coming in second to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. The whole “neglect” issue turned out to be nothing but a ruse. Brandon learned later that, long before the divorce came along, Janie had been playing around behind Brandon’s back. She was also pregnant with another man’s child, a guy who skipped out as soon as he heard a baby was on the way. Brian was born a scant six months after Janie’s divorce from Brandon became final.

Brandon had lost the house in the divorce and almost everything else as well. He never missed a single one of his child support payments, but his meager salary at the sheriff’s department didn’t stretch far enough for him to buy or even rent someplace decent to live. He’d ended up moving back home to live in his old bedroom with his ailing father and his incredibly bossy mother.

Living at home, however, meant that on visitation days, he could splurge and take Tommy and Quentin out to do special stuff. He took them to U of A Wildcat baseball games, which were the ones he could best afford. They also went bowling and saw movies. On those Saturdays when he’d go to pick up his boys, it had broken his heart to see Brian standing sad-­eyed and alone as they drove away. One day, on a whim, he’d asked Brian to join them, and the poor neglected little kid had been overjoyed. Much to Tommy’s and Quentin’s dismay, their annoying half brother became a regular on those visitation excursions with their father.

Three and four years older than their half brother and Brandon’s new stepson, Davy Ladd, Tommy and Quentin had as little to do with the younger boys as humanly possible, but Davy and Brian became fast friends. And Brandon, having missed out on much of Tommy’s and Quentin’s childhoods, enjoyed having a do-­over of sorts with Brian and Davy.

On that Sunday afternoon, Brandon had no way of knowing that this second chance at fatherhood would be far more successful than his first attempt with his own sons, and that Brian—­a boy who was no blood relation—­would one day follow Brandon’s footsteps into the world of law enforcement.

“It’s for you,” Diana said, passing him the phone. “It’s the department.”

Brandon levered himself into a sitting position. “Detective Walker here,” he said.

“Got a dead one for you,” Luke, the Dispatch operator said. “A ­couple of hikers just called in saying they found human remains out near Soza Canyon on the far side of the Rincons. It’s probably some Indian who’s been dead for a hundred years or so, but it’s your problem now.”

“Where’s Soza Canyon?” Brandon asked. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Not surprised,” Luke said. “I hadn’t heard of it earlier, either. As I said before, it’s on the far side of the Rincons. According to my topo map, the spot they’re referring to is just barely inside the county line. Soza Canyon evidently drains into the San Pedro River, somewhere east of where the hikers found the body.”

“And how do I get there?”

“Drive to the end of Tanque Verde and keep on going. That’ll put you on Redington Road, which will take you up over the pass. Just keep following that until you get there.”

“How far?”

“The ­people who called it in said they’d meet you somewhere along the way. They had to drive all the way to Pomerene to find a phone. The first call they made was to the Cochise County sheriff, but someone there pointed out that Soza Canyon is in Pima County, not Cochise. Anyway, they’re driving a blue Toyota Land Cruiser. They’ll park it alongside the road and lead you in from there.”

“Great,” Brandon muttered.