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“I think we pissed him off,” Englishman said.

***

The professional wasn't supposed to kill this one. Just make an impression, scare her. That didn't rule out a bit of maiming, he decided. Lopping off a few fingers with the hatchet, for instance, should accomplish his assigned task while sending the client a little message.

The back door opened on a dark utility room. Just beyond, he found a kitchen—clean, nearly scent free. It hadn't been cooked in lately. Next was a small dining room, and on its right, a living room that was more functional than ornamental. Not your run-of-the-mill woman living alone, he decided.

The living room was lit. A folded blue blazer lay on the arm of a wingback chair near the front door. A purse sat on the cushion and a cell phone was plugged in for recharging on an adjacent end table.

At the far end of the long narrow living room was an arch, like the one he'd passed through as he left the dining area. Opening on a hallway to bedrooms and baths, he decided. And someone was moving around back there. He could hear her coming his way. Her shadow appeared a moment before the light went out behind her. He launched himself toward where she was about to be—where she suddenly was.

She was handsome in a kind of formal manner, but not pretty. Her slacks had rigid starched pleats down the front of each leg. Her blouse was equally perfect and without wrinkles. But what caught his attention and stopped him in his tracks was the badge that was clipped to her belt, and the holstered pistol just behind it. His employer really should have told him she was a cop.

It was too far to cross the living room and get to her before she could draw her weapon. Maybe he could get back out through the dining room before she pulled it and fired. It would be close. Too close. That left one possibility.

“Mad Dog?” she whispered. At least the makeup had been effective and she wasn't going for the gun yet.

He smiled, half turned from her, and then came around with the hatchet. He threw it at the center of her chest. Getting away trumped fulfilling the terms of his contract. He wouldn't mind if his aim proved true, but he didn't stay to see the results. He had thrown axes before, but it wasn't one of his primary skills. Instead, he used the throwing motion to pivot and dive back across the dining room toward the exit. When a bullet whined by his ear and took a chip out of the trim around a kitchen cabinet, he knew the ax had missed.

***

The ax missed Parker's left hand by inches. By then, her right was full of SIG-Sauer. A nine mm slug tore into the elaborate woodwork just inside her kitchen but, like the ax, failed to hit its target. She followed him, moving fast, but not so fast as to go through that kitchen door without being sure he wasn't waiting just inside it, counting on her lack of caution.

The back door slammed. She went through the kitchen and the utility room and kicked the back door open. He was across the yard, swinging over her jagged fence top on the branch of an overhanging tree. She had a shot—one she would normally have taken—but behind him was a neighbor's house. The bedroom of a pair of pre-teen girls was just the other side of the spot where he landed. And then, as if he realized what was preventing her from firing, he was sprinting straight toward that home until a pair of garbage bins and an adobe wall gave him a chance to change directions and disappear from view.

“I thought you wanted to surrender to me,” she called. A mockingbird was the only one to answer. She couldn't even hear his retreating footsteps.

Parker went back inside and grabbed a phone and paused at nine-one, not adding the final digit. Something bothered her. Something was wrong and she wasn't quite sure what.

She put the phone back in its cradle and returned to the living room. The ax had hit the wall head first and left a hole in her plaster, but it hadn't stuck. It lay on the floor and she went to it, knelt, and examined it without touching it.

Here was the problem, she realized. In the few times she'd seen Mad Dog decked out in his Cheyenne paraphernalia, he'd never been armed. No knife, no bow and arrow, certainly no ax. Nor had she ever heard of him carrying such things.

She bent, looked closer. Sighed.

She didn't know who had just tried to kill her, but it wasn't Harvey Edward Mad Dog. Of that, she was sure. This hatchet had a Wal-Mart price tag on the butt of the handle. Wal-Marts had doomed many small towns in rural America. She'd heard Mad Dog's rant on that subject often enough to know there was no way he'd use one of their products.

***

The fuck you doin'?”

Mad Dog thought the pretty black woman in the long t-shirt might calm down if she could have some malt liquor like the rest of them. He offered her his can but she didn't want it.

“And what's this crazy motherfucker with the black paint on his face doin' in my living room in the middle of the night?”

“He's not crazy,” one of Mad Dog's new friends told her, neglecting the other epithet. “He's leading us in a kind of ceremony to help us get right with the spirits and shit.”

“You already right with all the spirits you need,” she said, “way you slurring your words.”

“I'm sorry we woke you.” Mad Dog thought he really should have argued against group drumming, but their host had that African drum right there in the living room.

“Aw, honey,” the man said. “Calm down now. What we're doing here's important. This man, he's a shaman and he's got himself some trouble. If we help him, maybe we can help ourselves, too.”

“I'll shaman your ass, you don't get these no-goods out of my house this very minute.”

“We don't really need the drum,” Mad Dog said. “We could just sit in a circle and be quiet and focus on the spirit world.”

The woman stalked across the room and bent over and put her face inches from Mad Dog's.

“What part of ‘out' don't you understand, Mr. Shaman?”

“I guess we
should
go,” Cherokee said.

The circle of friends stood, none too steady, and reached out to help Mad Dog to his feet.

“Is gettin' kinda late,” one said.

“My wife will be on me like black on rice, I don't get my ownself home,” another agreed.

The group found themselves on the front porch, the door slammed behind them almost before they knew it.

“You need a ride?” Cherokee asked Mad Dog.

“Yeah,” he said, “only I don't know where.”

“That's okay,” Cherokee said. “I'm probably too drunk to find it, anyway. And I sure don't need to be getting no DUI.” He handed Mad Dog his keys. “That red Chevy over there. You drive and we'll take a couple of these drunk brothers home.”

“I don't know,” Mad Dog said. He was a little woozy himself, though he'd just begun his second can of malt.

“You'll be fine,” Cherokee said. “Besides, after what you told us, if the man stops us, he ain't gonna breathalize you. Hell, cop killer like you—they'll shoot you dead before you can get outta the car.”

***

Both lines to the Benteen County Sheriff's office rang simultaneously. The sheriff nodded to Mrs. Kraus. “Looks like we're on duty early today,” he said. He maneuvered his walker over to his desk while Mrs. Kraus got the first line. He picked up the second and said, “Sheriff English.”

“Hi, Daddy.” It was Heather. “Guess what I did?”

He didn't feel like guessing and didn't get the chance when Mrs. Kraus held up her phone and told him, “Tucson Police Department for you.”

“Can you hang on, honey?” he asked. “I've got an official call on the other line.”

“I may know what that's about,” she said, “but go ahead and take it. It might save me some explaining.”

He didn't like the sound of that, but he put her on hold and punched the button for the other line.

“I thought we had an agreement to cooperate on this investigation,” a voice said. He didn't recognize it. It wasn't one of the detectives he'd talked to before. Nor was it that Sewa Police captain.

He'd opened his end of the conversation the same way he'd answered his daughter's call. “I identified myself. Perhaps you could extend me the same courtesy.”

“This is Deputy Chief Dempsey, Tucson Police Department. Acting chief at the moment, until the regular chief gets back from a conference. I'm told we had an agreement. You'd do what you could to talk your brother into surrendering and we wouldn't hold your daughter if she'd stay with the Jardine woman.”

“That's correct.” The sheriff thought he knew why Heather was calling now.

“That doesn't seem to be working on this end. Your daughter made a run for it and got away.”

“Do you plan to charge her?”

“Not yet. But we can change that, put out a warrant if she doesn't turn herself back in, and damn soon.”

The sheriff nodded. “I see.”

“Then there's another matter,” Dempsey said. “You suggested your brother might be willing to surrender to our Sergeant Parker.”

“I intend to suggest it to him when he calls back. He hasn't done that yet.”

Dempsey's tone made it clear he didn't believe the sheriff. “Sergeant Parker had a visitor a few minutes ago. A man covered in black body paint with white lightning bolts on his arms, legs and face. He broke into her house and tried to kill her with a hatchet.”

“Mad Dog would never do that.” Even as he denied the possibility, the sheriff wondered if his brother could have gotten into some bad peyote or screwed up a joke on Parker, not that Mad Dog knew where she lived.

“Funny,” Dempsey said. “Sergeant Parker also says it couldn't have been him. But I'll tell you what I told her. Even a city the size of Tucson is going to have a limited number of whacked-out, body-painted shamans running around assaulting people with edged weapons on any given night. That's why I issued an armed and dangerous warning to my people a few minutes ago, along with an order to use all necessary force. You understand me?

“Shoot first, ask later. Yeah,” the sheriff said, “that's clear enough.”

“You deliberately overstate my orders, Sheriff English, but if you want to see your brother taken alive, you better inform him to just stop, wherever he is, lie face down with his arms and legs spread so it's clear he's no threat, and not move while you notify us where to find him before we do it ourselves.”

“I will, Chief Dempsey, if he calls back. You've got his cell phone so I can't contact him. He hasn't called me since I talked to your detectives.” The sheriff purposefully left off mentioning that his daughter was holding on the other line.

“Then you better hope to hear from him
real
soon,” Dempsey said. “Because we
will
find him, and we
will not
let him get away from us again.”

There was suddenly a dial tone humming in the sheriff's ear. He glanced at Mrs. Kraus and gave her a “not good” shake of the head as he punched onto the other line.

“Heather,” he said. “I hope to hell you ran because you're with your uncle or know where he is. If not, they may be issuing a shoot-on-site order for you pretty soon, like the one they just put out on him.”

The second line was quiet for a moment. Then Heather said, “No, Daddy. I haven't a clue. I hoped you'd tell me where to look for him.”

***

After they dropped off the last rider, Cherokee directed Mad Dog through a few blocks of neighborhood, then told him to turn north on Grande.

“That over there,” Cherokee explained, “used to be Dunbar School. It's where all the Black kids went back when Tucson was segregated.”

“Arizona had segregated schools?” Mad Dog hadn't thought of this as part of the Old South.

“Yep. And on your left is Estevan Park. It had the only pool colored kids could use. You know who Estevan was?”

Mad Dog was considering the question when Cherokee told him to turn east on Speedway.

“Estevan the Moor was a slave. Part of Cabeza de Vaca's party, the first Europeans to enter this country.”

Mad Dog remembered. The Indians had considered Estevan a great sorcerer, too great to live when he led the way into Cibola ahead of Fray Marcos de Niza.

“And Tucson was part of the Confederacy in the Civil War,” Cherokee continued. “Lots of Southern sympathizers here back then, until the California Column marched across the desert and drove the Rebs out. Say, I bet you didn't know the farthest west battle of the Civil War took place just north of here near I-10—place called Picacho Peak.”

Cherokee continued the history lesson as he directed Mad Dog east and north.

“I live in Sugar Hill,” the man said, “where rich Negroes moved while white folks got out of their way and beat it for the foothills. Wife and I, we got an apartment in this complex, just over here.”

It looked like a nice place with tall palms and neatly manicured vegetation. Mad Dog pulled in and Cherokee opened his door and climbed out, even though Mad Dog couldn't see any vacant parking places.

“You can leave the car in the street, just down from the park there,” he said. “Let me go smooth the way for you with my old lady. We're in two-oh-four, second floor on the left.”

Mad Dog watched to see which set of stairs his new friend took, then backed out onto the street and headed for where he'd been told to park. He chose a spot behind a white van. As he pulled in, the van suddenly accelerated out of its spot. Metal slammed metal as it encountered the vehicle in front and broken glass rained into the street. Mad Dog wasn't thrilled with the idea of talking to the van's driver while his face and hands were still covered in black body paint. Or with the inevitable call to police to investigate the accident. But the van had hit hard enough that someone could be hurt in there.

He opened his door and got ready to begin trying to explain himself. No one wanted to hear. All the doors on the van flew open and people began running every direction.