'How old were you seven years ago?' he demanded roughly.
'Twenty-four.'
'I was a little older than that, but I wasn't much wiser.
When I told you to trust the system, I meant it, because I still did, too. I was young and idealistic and ignorant. I thought being a cop was one way to save the world. So get off your cross, Diana. You weren't the only one who got screwed. So did I.'
Diana Ladd was taken aback by this outburst. In the brief silence that followed, Davy and Bone edged back into the room. 'I'm hot,' the boy said. 'Can I have something to drink?'
His request offered Diana an escape from Brandon Walker's unexpected anger. 'Sure,' she said lightly, getting up.
'The tea should be ready by now. Would you like some, Detective Walker?'
He nodded. 'That'll be fine.'
After she left the room, Walker sat there shaking his head, ashamed of himself for lashing out at her. What she'd said hadn't been any worse than what he'd told himself time and again during the intervening years.
Diana Ladd didn't have a corner on the Let's-beat-up-Brandon-Walker market. He could do a pretty damn good job of that all by himself.
With effort, the detective turned his attention to the boy who sat on the floor absently petting the dog. Davy seemed decidedly less friendly than he had been the day before.
Wondering why, Brandon made a stab at conversation.
'How's the head?' he asked.
'It's okay, I guess,' Davy muttered.
'Does it still hurt?'
'Not much. Will my hair grow back? Where they shaved it, I mean.'
'It'll take a few weeks, but it'll grow. Have the barber give you a crew cut. It won't show so much then.'
'Mom cuts my hair,' Davy said. 'To save money. I don't think she knows how to do crew cuts.'
Brandon glanced toward the swinging kitchen door. It seemed to be taking Diana an inordinately long time to bring the tea.
'Did you know my daddy?' Davy asked.
It was a jarring change of subject. 'No,' Walker replied.
'I never met him.'
'Was my father a killer?'
Brandon found the unvarnished directness of the boy's questions unnerving. 'Why are you asking me?' he hedged.
'Everybody says my daddy was a killer,' Davy answered matter-of-factly.
'They call me Killer's Child. I want to know what happened to him.
I'm six. That's old enough to know what really happened.'
Brandon Walker realized too late that he'd been sucked into an emotional mine field. 'What did your mother tell you?' he asked.
'That my daddy was afraid he was going to get into trouble about Gina Antone, and so he killed himself.'
'That's right.' At least Diana had told her son that much.
'Mom said you were the detective. Did you arrest him?'
'No,' Brandon said. 'By the time I got to the house, your father was already gone.'
'Gone where?'
'Out to the desert.'
'To kill himself? That's where he did it, isn't it? In the desert?'
'Yes.
Davy turned his immense blue eyes full on the detective's face. 'Why didn't you get there sooner?' he demanded.
'Why didn't you hurry and stop him? That way, I could have met him before he died. I could have talked to him just once.'
Your father was a scumbag, Walker wanted to say, looking at the wide-eyed boy. Garrison Ladd didn't deserve a son like you. Instead, he said, 'I did the best I could, Davy.
We all did.'
It is said that long ago in a small village lived a very beautiful young woman who was the daughter of a powerful medicine man. She was so beautiful that all the young men of the village liked to look at her.
This made her father so angry that he made her stay in the house.
If she went out, he scolded her. Whenever he found the young men of the village trying to spy on her, he
