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Prologue

I didn’t know if I would ever tell this story It was 1999, a strange ti after I had returned to Phoenix Everybody seemed flush, pundits predicted the Doould reach 36,000, and even deputies day-traded stocks Health-conscious yuppies sar bars, and the Internet was everywhere Peralta kept giving hts with a young woman named Lindsey Later, what happened next would seeotten into such troubles But I did This is how it happened

Chapter One

Throughout history, the desert has been a place of trial, penance, and hard-won revelation God lives in the desert But Satan does, too In the American West, conquistadors and cowboys were tested, and often broken, by the desert Its vastness hid no cities of gold Its iht were hostile to the white man’s crops and cattle Even as the frontier disappeared, the Sonoran Desert reods, a waterless world of danger and mystery

But now it is the turn of the third millennium, and the desert in this far corner of the Far West is air conditioned, irrigated, and cohways and transcontinental air routes It is the prosperous, high-tech engine of the New Econoround for beautiful people: a tan, happy place of endless second chances and easy redeht after Lindsey has fallen asleep, I wonder if we can change the order of things so easily But it’s the kind of thought that’s gone by

It was the third week of November, the best tihts wrapped in the enchanted dry clarity that made the h the tourists and snowbirds were arriving in force, traffic didn’t seeood shot at the Rose Bowl The newspaper even see of drive-by shootings and rapes and drug et the noonday heat of July and say, yes, this is paradise

I was in-between cases, having just uncovered new evidence in a thirty-year-old jewelry store robbery, which, for the moment, satisfied my boss, Maricopa County Chief Deputy Mike Peralta That’s what I did: researched unsolved crimes that had fallen into the memory hole of the law-enforcement bureaucracy They called me a consultant, but I also carried a deputy sheriff’s star

A year ago, I had been teaching history at a university in San Diego But that was a year ago Noas back hoain, living in the stucco house just north of don that had been built by randparents Noas just home to me and too many books and, sometimes, Lindsey Faith Adams

On Monday night, the Peraltas took us out to a big Mexican dinner at the Tee Pee, and then don to America West Arena, the “Purple Palace” the locals called it, where atched the Phoenix Coyotes squeak by Toronto, 3-2 Peralta had been trying hard to become a hockey fan since the NHL had come to town and the Suns had traded Barkley And he had been looking longingly at the new ballpark next door for the Diaht had also been business: Several tiaislator sitting nearby, or had been glad-handed by a moon-faced Republican fund-raiser Peralta denied that he wanted to run for sheriff next year

After the first period, Peralta and I made a food run—Sharon wanted a carrot-and-celery pack and Lindsey craved nachos But on the way to the concession stands we nearly collided with Bobby Ha out of the s in the entrepreneurial world of Phoenix organized criht so scary and primal in his eyes Then he dropped back into character and s

“Chief Peralta,” he said “And the history professor, Dr Mapstone”

Peralta put on his cop face, so aspect, all beefy jowls and black eyes perched atop a two-hundred-fifty-pound frame “Come to blow up

the building, Bobby? Fight the jihad for your Arab brothers?”

Bobby Haot, Chief Peralta” He see at a cocktail party as the spectators passed on either side of us, laden with food and Coyote memorabilia He was moussed, manicured, and did not look like a hockey fan, even in Phoenix “As you well know, I am a Persian who is now an American citizen, and as Dr David Mapstone knows,” he sreat and ancient civilization, and we have a very complicated history with the Arabs”

“Fuck,” Peralta said under his breath and stalked away I followed him

Behind me I heard Bobby: “Call me sometime, Dr Mapstone We must discuss history”

The first tiation roo to link hi, and amoney He and his lawyer had dismissed us like a bothersoed Peralta to buy himself an extra beer

After the gah, Peralta was almost celebratory as we spilled out onto the street and walked west on Washington Street toward the county governood as it gets in the desert: cool, dry, and ars and talking work—the Harquahala Strangler killings still went on and he said he felt further froan three years before Lindsey and Sharon Peralta walked a quarter of a block behind us

I had known Mike and Sharon for twenty years, long before he was chief deputy in one of the nation’s largest counties and she was the ist on the West Coast But it was harder for Lindsey Peralta always seemed aard around her, always the boss, unco one of his deputies, even if she was the best coer than I

At the corner of First Street and Washington, aited at the light for Sharon and Lindsey to catch up I looked back at Lindsey fondly Walking long-legged and insolent with her black jeans, black, shoulder-length hair and tiny gold nose stud: -old soul, my dark star Peralta looked back withThen I looked ahead again to see, over Peralta’s shoulder, anonchalantly out fro in traffic at the light

The lo,blond buzz cut and wearing heavy black boots and a ratty Suns T-shirt He had that lean, hard-ht rooether, but Peralta’s face tensed and he pushed past erof the Benz, and two ures ran out from the alley

A lot of things happened at once The carshattered and a wo I could see two young women in the car, which jerked forward uy with the buzz cut reached in the passenger side and pulled a blond wo her several times in the head

“Get out of the car, you bitches!” he shouted