Danny leaned closer into the phone, spoke softly. “You’re afraid of him?”

“I shouldn’t be, I know, but…I don’t like him. He’s never had anything to do with us but I think it was him. I was cleaning the front window and I saw him drive by. He slowed down.”

“Why would you be afraid of him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I just saw him drive by and slow down, and I remembered some of the things he did.”

“What kind of things?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was my imagination. I shouldn’t have called.” But she didn’t hang up.

Danny said, “Can you describe him?”

“I haven’t seen or heard from him in eleven years. Maybe longer than that. Right after we buried Karen, he moved to California. Just upped and left, like he was footloose and fancy-free.”

Danny was sensing there were old wounds here, possibly imaginary, but you could never count on that. “You want me to come by?”

“No, no. I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Look, I’m not far away. My wife is sleeping. She just had a baby.”

“Maybe you should come by.”

No congratulations. Not even a “That’s nice.”

He said, “I’ll be there shortly. There are a couple more questions I want to ask you, anyway.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Neither she nor her husband had ever asked about the status of the case. He’d thought that was strange at the time, but he was busy with his own work and, of course, the coming birth of Elena. But after the initial shock, the crying and the desperation to see her father Pat exhibited, he’d been surprised that there hadn’t been a flurry of calls afterward.

People reacted to tragedy in wildly different ways. Nothing surprised him anymore. Theresa needed her sleep. And he needed to work.

He left word with the nurse, went by to take another look at his beautiful, precious daughter, and drove down to Rio Rico.

When he arrived, Pat was back to her vague, flustered, disjointed self. She was sorry she’d bothered him. She was fine now. Bert would be coming home soon, and anyway, it was just her imagination. Her brother-in-law wouldn’t be here. He’d been living in California, and although she’d heard he might have moved back to Arizona, she’d assumed it would be up north, to Phoenix, where he was from.

“You think he moved back to Arizona?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it was just a visit. Dad mentioned seeing him, but I can’t really remember what he said. Dad knew I didn’t want to hear about him. He made Karen so unhappy. You should have seen the way he treated her. Like she didn’t matter. That’s a terrible thing to do to a woman. Especially one who was five months pregnant when she died.”

“Your father? They were friends?”

“They were partners. For years.”

“You mean your brother-in-law was a cop?”

“Yes, he was a homicide detective, just like my father was.”

He said, “Karen died during a robbery? Is that right?”

“Yes.”

He asked her to describe it.

She told him Karen had been at a convenience store—a Pit Stop—the night someone came in and robbed the store, killing both the clerk and Karen. “They were the only people in the store,” Pat said.

“Where was this?”

“Phoenix.”

“Do you know the name of the detective who investigated the shooting?”

“It was…Detective…” She closed her eyes. “Detective Clarence Sinkwich. I remember that because I’ve always used word associations to remember peoples’ names, and so I pictured a tiny little witch sitting in a sink. He was a very kind man. I don’t know how we would have gotten through it without him. He was like a rock. My dad was like that, too. Although I never saw him in action, that’s what I heard.”

“Do you remember when this was?”

“It was October fourteenth, 2001.” She added, “I’ll never forget that night.”

“What about your brother-in-law?”

“Wade?” She practically spat his name. “He was around. You know, at the funeral. He came by once. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about her and he didn’t give a damn about the baby she was carrying.”

CHAPTER 38

Brayden came over with Aurora. Michael and his little sister sat out by the pool, watching Brayden’s kid swim with Michael’s two children. His wife, thank God, had gone off to “lunch” with her friends. It would be a long lunch, with plenty of alcohol. He knew she drank mostly because she couldn’t stand him. She suspected what he was doing but she didn’t know for sure. She thought they were playing a game, but she didn’t know the extent. She’d suspected he’d had something to do with Steve Barkman’s death—one of the few he’d had nothing to do with.

Now it was time for Michael to find out if Brayden was involved in Barkman’s death.

Brayden hung tough. She was a hard-nosed bitch. He was getting impatient.

“Brae,” he said, using the name he’d had for her when she was a kid, “what do you think is happening here?”

She kept her eyes on her kid. Looking at her, you’d think she was just a sweet little housewife, plain but attractive in a homey way. The kind you’d set up playdates with, the kind who’d go to PTA meetings. “Brae?”

She looked at him. “I think that cop from Nogales thinks she’s on to something.”

“And why is that, do you suppose?”

She squeezed out some sunscreen and lathered her face with it. “I think she’s put it together. The guy who was killed down in that ghost town.” She looked at him, her eyes startling. Big round eyes, like the women from the turn of the last century. She had their mother’s eyes, but not her sweetness.

“George Hanley?”

“Uh-huh. I think she’s on to that.”

“On to it?”

Brayden said, “I thought we were gonna wait on him.”

“We were.”

Of course they were going to wait on him. The show he was on, The Ultimate Survivor, had only aired last year. He was too close. Too close in his notoriety, too close in geography. They’d decided early on that George Hanley was a project down the road. Maybe a year from now. But Jaimie…“You think Jaimie did this?”

Brayden shrugged.

“Seriously. Would she be capable of it? That was pretty rough stuff.”

But he thought she was capable of it. For one thing, she had an AR-15. She loved her assault weapon. It was her passion. She voted NRA exclusively. When she wasn’t giving riding lessons or picking up men at the Buckboard Saloon, she spent most of her time at the firing range.

Of course there had been few details that had come out about the Hanley killing, except that it was overkill. One account hinted at a cartel. Imagine, a cartel coming up into the US and killing some old man. It didn’t make sense. But it could be made to look like a cartel killing.

But who would do that?

Michael said, “You think Jaimie’d be capable of something like that? Just shooting the shit out of someone?”

Brayden shrugged. Brayden was the champion shrugger of the world. She never committed to anything. As a lawyer, she could tie you in knots. She was, in many ways, the closest you could get to their father. Their patriarch. She didn’t have his mean streak, but she had the confounding part right down.

Michael said, “She took the dog.”

“What dog?”

“Hanley’s dog. She took it as a prize.”

“You mean, like the spoils of war?”

“Exactly. She’s trying to pass it off as a dog she just found.”

He let that lie out there. Jaimie had always been the weakest link. She was really not to be trusted. But Michael wondered if Brayden was to be trusted, either.

Suddenly, he wondered if she was seeing someone. He didn’t care about her love life, but he didn’t want any complications. “You know not to tell anyone.”

Brayden stared at her daughter playing in the pool, then turned her round face to him, the sweet little housewife face. “Michael, you can be a real asshole, do you know that?”