It had been about a year since he’d last seen Garrison in person, when they’d met in that cemetery in El Paso and he’d talked to the agent about the Earls. Garrison hadn’t looked great then, and getting out of his dust-covered car, Chris hated to see that he looked worse now. He’d picked up more weight and his hair had gotten grayer. He’d grown a beard, and it hugged his face in a salt-and-pepper shadow. He was carrying a folder and wore tan slacks and a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but no coat and tie, and his duty weapon was settled on his hip in a scuffed paddle holster. Everything about him looked heavier—those clothes, that gun—as if he were carrying a great burden. He even came up the porch steps slowly, stopping to take in the view, shaking his head.

“Jesus, you’re way out here.” He got to the top of the steps and extended a hand, and Chris was glad to find that at least his grip was still strong. Determined. “Is this where you found Rudy Ray . . . Rodolfo?”

Chris finished the last of his beer and set the bottle on the porch rail. “No, that was over there, near Indian Bluffs.” He pointed east to a mesa purpled by the late-afternoon sunlight, a shadow of a shadow. “This is where Duane Dupree and I met that plane.”

“The plane . . . you mean where you were shot?” Garrison said. “Damn near killed?”

“Yeah, damn near that.”

Garrison looked back and forth across the scrub, taking it all in. He scanned it as if he were searching for something: something hidden, something he’d forgotten. An explanation, maybe, although Chris knew there wasn’t one out there. “It all looks the same to me, Chris. I don’t know how you keep from getting lost out here.”

Chris nodded. “Sometimes, I don’t either. Let me get you a beer, and you can meet Melissa and Jack.”

—