'Exactly,' Brass said. 'So, you ready for some international travel?'
'You know me, I'm ready for anything.'
'Then let's pay Miss Ochoa a little visit.'
The Grey Rock Paiute tribal police headquarters was in a steel building, painted white, with the tribe's official logo – a sharply peaked grey mountain jutting up through fluffy white clouds against a bright blue sky, all of it contained within a triangle shape – on the wall facing the gravel parking lot. By the lime they had parked Brass's Dodge sedan, a uniformed tribal cop was shuffling across the hot gravel toward them. He was wide, his bulk accentuated by his duty belt with its holster and pouches, and his gut overhung the buckle a little. But he looked sturdy, maybe mid-forties, and he was beaming a smile at them all the way over.
'I was hoping it'd be you,' Brass said. 'Rico, meet Nick Stokes, with the crime lab. Nicky, Rico Aguirre and I worked a case together a few years ago. How've you been? Looks like your wife's keeping you well fed.'
'Can't complain,' Officer Aguirre said. He eyed Nick from underneath a sweat-ringed straw cowboy hat and offered his hand. 'Well, at least not where she can hear me.' He laughed, then added, 'No, really, I'm good, Jim. A little crazed today, because of what happened to Chairman Domingo, of course, but that's what the job's about, right? Pleased to meet you, Nick.'
Nick shook his hand, the skin callused and hard. 'You, too, Rico.'
'You can call me Richie,' Aguirre said with a grin. His eyes were hooded, not much more than slits, his nose broad and prominent. Deep-cut lines on his face looked like those of someone who laughed a lot. 'Most white people do.'
The police headquarters was a few miles beyond the reservation's boundary with Las Vegas. The morning sun shone down on rolling hills in shades of tan and brown, some of them dotted with cacti and other succulents, a few of the valleys carpeted in spring wildflowers. In other places, the land was almost as barren as a moonscape. In the distance, beyond the rectangle of headquarters, a purple mountain with a three-pointed peak shouldered up into an azure sky, almost a match for the logo painted on the building. There was beauty all around, but it was the kind of beauty one had to look for, the subtle beauty of a desert springtime.
Aguirre noted Nick's gaze. 'What do you think of our land? Did the Great White Father rip us off?'
'I don't know,' Nick said. 'It's pretty empty, but that's not a bad thing. Maybe you guys got the better end of the deal by not getting the Strip.'
Aguirre laughed again. 'See, you're only here a few minutes, and you're already thinking like an Indian.' He turned to Brass, suddenly all business. 'So you want to talk to Karina Ochoa?'
'Do you know her?'
'Jim, I'm Rico Aguirre. I know everybody.'
'Is that a fact?'
'No, but I thought maybe you'd buy it anyway. I do know Karina, though.'
'That's good, because I tried to get a map to her place online, and it seems the mapping services don't do too well on the reservation.'
''Cause we put a magical protective shield over it.'
'Right,' Brass said, sounding less than convinced.
'Man, you just can't be fooled.' Aguirre addressed Nick. 'Most people believe we're all mystical and spiritual and stuff. If I told them I solved a case through diligent police work, they'd think I was full of it, but if I told them I magically made the guilty party appear in a dream, they'd be all over it.'
'We're a little more reality-based at the crime lab,' Nick said.
'Not that I
'Can you keep the day from being hot?' Brass asked. 'Because it's starting to feel like it might be a scorcher, and that kind of magic I could go for.'
'Sorry, Jim. I can only do so much.'
'Okay, then, why don't you start by taking us out to Ochoa's place? If we need you to extract a confession from her magically, we'll let you know.'
'That I can manage.' Aguirre led them to a white Jeep with tribal police markings, parked in the shade of a spreading mesquite tree. His duty belt creaked as he walked, spinning his key ring on his finger. 'Our chariot awaits.'
When they were settled inside, he started the Jeep and drove out of the parking lot, turning right on the road Brass and Nick had taken to get there. 'What do you want to talk to Karina about? She a witness to something?'
'She might have killed Robert Domingo,' Nick said.
Aguirre let the Jeep slip off the side of the road, then corrected his course. 'No. You've got the wrong person, then.'
'How do you know?'
'I just know Karina. She wouldn't do anything like that.'
'People can surprise you, Richie,' Brass said.
'That's true. And I don't know her all that well. But from what I do know… it just doesn't sound like her. She's kind of a political type, hangs around with some people who like to make a fuss. But she's liberal, a peacenik type, not someone I can see getting involved in murder. I don't believe she would ever get violent.'
'We know she was at a club with Domingo last night,' Nick explained. 'We know she left with him and went for a ride in his Escalade. Someone smashed in one of the windows with a brick. We think that was her, too, but we're still waiting for DNA results on the epithelials. A little while later, someone smashed his skull with a heavy cigarette lighter.'
Aguirre was nodding along as Nick spoke. He had pulled off the main road and was driving up a steep hill, taking tight switchbacks with comfortable familiarity. The road was jarring, every bump feeling as if it was compacting Nick's spine a little more. 'I'm sure you guys have your reasons for being here. I just have to believe there's a disconnect somewhere along the way. I read the report on Chairman Domingo, and that was some brutal stuff. Maybe she broke that car window, but I don't see her bludgeoning anybody to death.' He pulled into a packed-dirt driveway that led around a smaller hill, and parked in front of a tiny pink-stucco house. 'You'll find out for yourselves in a minute. This is her place.'
The yard was nonexistent, just raw desert right up to the front door. A couple of window air-conditioner units poked out, dripping into the dirt and breaking the smooth planes of the walls, but otherwise, the house was a flat- roofed box. White lace curtains in the windows added a homey touch. 'She live here alone?' Nick asked as they got out of the Jeep.
Aguirre scanned the desert beyond the house, alert for anything. Nick wasn't sure what he was watching for, but the murder of their chairman must have had everybody on edge. The tribal cop had seemed loose, casual, but Nick had noticed that his gaze caught every motion on the way over, every roadrunner or snake in the road, every hawk wheeling overhead. 'No, her mom and a couple cousins live with her.'
'Crowded.'
'That's what poverty's like,' Aguirre said simply. He strode to the front door and knocked twice.
'Karina Ochoa!' he called. 'Get your clothes on, it's the law!'
A slim young woman opened the door, laughing. 'You crack me upRichie,' she said. She saw Brass and Nick looking at her, and her smile faded. 'Who are they?'
Brass showed his badge and walked toward the door. 'Miss Ochoa, I'm Jim Brass with the Las Vegas Police Department, and this is Nick Stokes with our crime lab. May we come in?'
She glanced at Aguirre, who nodded. She looked like the woman in the driver's license photo and could easily have been the one in the video as well. Her hair was long and straight, as black as spilled ink. Her eyes were dark brown, and there was a light, metallic eye shadow above them, a heavy black line around them. Her plump lips had dark lipstick on them. She wasn't dressed as she had been at the club but simply, in a blue tank top and black shorts. Metallic green polish, like a beetle's back, decorated her toenails. Nick couldn't help noticing her slender
