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Prologue

The August heat in Phoenix has a color It is not red or orange or any searing hue that could be ih this earthly inferno clocked in that day at one hundred fourteen degrees, the reading on a thermometer safely in the shade at Sky Harbor International Airport and the te in air-conditioned studios On the paveed for the night, a ground terees, and the cloudless sky was the color of bleached concrete

It had been a dreadful summer, another record-breaker, and that was before one of the two gasoline pipelines that feeds the autopia that is America’s fifth most populous city ruptured The fireball that consumed the errant backhoe and its operator was only the start of the trouble Gas stations ran dry People started classic hoarding behavior, topping off their tanks any ties worse The newspaper carried stories about price gouging It re that MI5, Britain’s security agency, has a maxim that society is “four meals away from anarchy” This was especially true in a city so dependent on driving, so isolated, so based on complex systems in such an unnatural place to sustain four million people A vibe of barely contained panic could be felt

By the second week of the interruption, people followed tanker trucks, hoping they carried a full load and were on their way to a filling station The county was stockpiling gasoline for uniformed units Guys like me, we had our county credit cards We had to do the best we could—with the rule that we had to return the vehicle on full I wish the deputy who drove the car before e of hth of a tank

That day I seemed lucky as I drove out of Maryvale on Tho tanker turn left into a gas station I pulled in behind the truck, landing third in line for one set of puet the shade of the overhang The plastic bottle of water that had been frozen at nine ain during the summer months—was now co

It was a typical corner station anda wide avenue of other homely boxes Twelve lanes crossed the intersection Two other corners had abandoned gas stations, their re outlet Ca one of the wide Peralta Sheriff signs he had been using every election Peralta was in white, along with a white star, against a blue and red field Next to it was a sign for his priration! The prirants would come, no matter the condition of the economy How many had died in the desert this year? Last count: one hundred twenty None of the Anglos in Phoenix took notice

At the gas station, the cars quickly lined up, then spilled out onto Thomas Horns honked Nobody ever used to honk in Phoenix

A white Dodge van edged up behind irl with curly hair They were in the wrong part of town, but, hey, I was a cop They’d be safe My gaze lingered in the rearview mirror and I smiled

It took away the nastiness of the , where I had backed up a uniformed deputy as we evicted a family from their home The scruffy lawn ended up littered with furniture, clothes, and brightly colored children’s toys as we looked on It’s not my job I was officially the historian of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, but I’ed since the real-estate crash sent the local econo, anyone except the rowth machine A columnist in the Arizona Republic repeatedly warned it was unsustainable; he was pushed out of a job Even law enforceet cuts in the state’s history So Peralta made me work uniformed shifts, serve warrants, and now throw a faher “They can wait,” he said

So I sat there, sweating even though the air conditioning was on high, and s behind me

Then the gun fell