mention my name, much less let on that you know me.'
After Brandon poured cups of coffee, the two men were quiet for a few moments. Brandon didn't mean to pry, but in the end he couldn't resist probing.
'How are things going out there?' he asked. 'I mean, how are things at the department really going?'
Brian shrugged. 'All right, I guess. But there are lots of people who miss you. Sheriff Forsythe's'-Brian paused, as if searching for just the right word-'he's just different, I guess. Different from you, that is,' he finished somewhat lamely.
'You bet he is,' Brandon replied, not even trying to keep the hollow sound of bitterness out of his voice. 'The voters in this county wanted different. As far as I can see, they got it.'
Once again the two men fell silent. For a moment Brandon Walker felt vindicated.
A parade of boyfriends and briefly maintained husbands had wandered through Janie's life and, as a consequence, through the lives of her three sons as well. One of them-Brian no longer remembered which one-had told him that children should be seen but not heard. Brian had taken those words to heart and had turned them into a personal creed. What had once been a necessary tool for surviving Quentin's casual and constant brutality had become a way of life. Brian Fellows answered questions. He hardly ever volunteered information, although Brandon Walker could tell by looking at him that the young man was clearly troubled about something.
'So what brings you here today?' the older man asked at last.
Brian ducked his head. 'Quentin,' he answered.
'What about Quentin?'
'He's out,' Brian answered. 'On parole.'
'Where's he living?'
'Somewhere in Tucson, I suppose. I don't know for sure where. He hasn't come by here, has he?'
Brandon shook his head. 'He wouldn't dare.'
Brian sighed. 'He has been by the house a couple of times, wanting money and looking for a place to stay. I had to make him leave, Mr. Walker, and I thought you should know what's going on.'
'What is going on?' Brandon asked.
Brian swallowed hard. 'He came by to hit Mom up for money, for a loan, he called it. She had already written him two checks for a hundred bucks each, before I caught on to what was happening. She can't afford to be giving him that kind of money. She still has some, but with the nurse and all the medical expenses, it's not going to last forever. I don't know what to do.'
'Go to court and get a protection order,' Brandon Walker said at once. 'Janie has given you power of attorney so you can handle her affairs, hasn't she?'
Brian nodded. 'Yes.'
'As her conservator, you have a moral and legal obligation to protect her assets.'
With a pained expression on his face, Brian nodded again. 'But Quentin's my brother,' he said.
'And he's my son,' Brandon replied. 'But that doesn't give him a right to steal from his own mother.'
'So you don't think I did the wrong thing, by not letting him stay at the house?'
With his heart aching in sympathy, Brandon looked at the troubled young man sitting across from him. 'No,' he had said kindly. 'I don't blame you at all, and neither will anyone else. With people like Quentin loose in the world, you have a responsibility to protect yourself. If you can, that is. And believe me, Brian, since I happen to be Quentin's father, I know that isn't easy advice to follow.'
Months after that last courtesy visit to Gates Pass, Brian was sitting in his air-conditioned Blazer next to the trading post at Three Points, sipping his Coke and wondering how soon his friend Davy would be home when the call came in over the radio. An INS officer was requesting assistance. The dispatcher read off the officer's location.
'Highway 86 to Coleman Road. First left after you cross off the reservation. It gets confusing after that. The INS officer says just follow her tracks. You're looking for a charco.
'By the way,' the dispatcher continued. 'Are you four-wheeling it today?'
'That's affirmative,' Brian said, putting the Blazer in gear.
'Good,' the dispatcher told him. 'From the sounds of it, if you weren't, I'd have to send in another unit.'
With lights flashing and siren blaring, Brian Fellows sped west on Highway 86. At first he didn't think anything about where he was going. He was simply following directions. It wasn't until he turned off the highway that he recognized the place as somewhere he had been before. He had gone to that same charco years earlier, the summer Tommy disappeared. The four of them had gone there together-Quentin and Tommy, Davy Ladd and Brian.
By then, though, he was too busy following the tracks to think about it. Kicking up a huge cloud of dust, he wheeled through the thick undergrowth of green mesquite and blooming palo verde. He jolted his way through first one sandy wash-the one where Quentin had gotten stuck-and then through another, all the while following a set of tracks that could only have been left by one of the green Internationals or GMC Suburbans the Immigration and Naturalization Service sends out on patrol around the desert Southwest, collecting illegal aliens and returning them to the border.
Brian spotted the vehicle eventually, an International parked next to the shrine he remembered, Gina Antone's shrine. The small wooden cross, faded gray now rather than white, sat crookedly in the midst of a scattered circle of river rocks.
Maybe while Davy's home,Brian thought, parking his Blazer, we can come out here with flowers and candles. We can paint the cross and fix the shrine up the same way we did before.
It was nothing more than a passing thought, though, because right then, Deputy Brian Fellows was working. When he stepped out of the Blazer, there was no sign of life. 'Anybody here?' he called.
'Over here,' a woman's answering voice returned from somewhere in the thick undergrowth. 'And if you've got any drinking water there with you, bring it along.'
Brian grabbed a gallon jug of bottled water out of the back of the Blazer and then started in the direction of the woman's voice. 'Watch out for the footprints,' she called to him. 'You're probably going to need them.'
Glancing down, Brian saw what she meant. Something heavy had been dragged by hand through the sandy dirt, leaving a deep track. A single set of footprints, heading back toward the charco, overlaid the track. As instructed, Brian Fellows detoured around both as he made his way into a grove of mesquite. Ten yards into the undergrowth he came to a small clearing where a woman in a gray-green uniform was bending over the figure of a man. He lay flat on his back, with his unprotected face fully exposed to the glaring sun. A cloud of flies buzzed overhead.
'What happened?' Brian asked.
The woman looked up at him, her face grim. 'Somebody beat the crap out of this guy,' she said.
Brian handed over his jug of water. By then he was close enough to smell the unmistakable stench of evacuated bowels, of urine that reeked of secondhand wine.
'He's still alive then?' Brian asked.
'So far, but only just barely. I've called for a med-evac helicopter, but I don't think he's going to make it. He can't move. Either his back's broken or he's suffering from a concussion, I can't tell which.'
The man lying on the ground, dark-haired and heavy-set, appeared to be around sixty years old. The large brass belt buckle imprinted with the traditional Tohono O'othham maze identified him as an Indian rather than Hispanic. One whole side of his face, clotted with blood, seemed to have been bashed in. His eyes were open, but the irises had rolled back out of sight. He was breathing, shallowly, but that was about all.
'Thanks for the water,' the woman said, opening the jug and pouring some of it onto a handkerchief. First she wrung out some of the water over the man's parched lips and swollen tongue, then she laid the still-soaking cloth on the injured man's forehead. That done, she sprinkled the rest of his body as well, dousing his bloodied clothing.
'I'm trying to lower his body temperature,' she explained. 'I don't know if it's helping or not, but we've got to try.'
It was all Brian could do to kneel beside the injured man and look at him. His mother's condition had taught him the real meaning behind the awful words 'broken back.' He wasn't at all sure that keeping the man alive would be doing him any favor. What Brian Fellows did feel, however, was both pity and an incredible sense of gratitude. If the man's back was actually broken or if he had suffered permanent injury as a result of heatstroke, someone else-
