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died, rather than sell. At times like this, I didn’t know if I could bear to part with it, or if I could bear another night in it.
    It was not a good mind-set in which to receive a full-mouth French kiss from an old girlfriend. I poured another scotch, wished it wasn’t too hot to sit in the garden, ended up on the staircase, absently perusing the books that Grandfather, and then I, had stacked onto the old shelves.
    Julie Riding was not the great love of my life. But she was my first real girlfriend. “Real” in the sense that I lost my virginity to her, at the shameful old age of nineteen. “Real” in that we stayed together, more or less, for two years and sometimes I felt like I loved her.
    We built the kinds of traditions that twenty-year-olds build. I was very proud to have her on my arm. I think she thought I was “smart,” but what did that mean to a young woman like Julie? I remember she never liked books. And I wasn’t at all like the rockstar clones she seemed to moon over.
    Did we love each other? Who knows? Who knows anything at that age. Who knows anything now? The heart is such a mystery.
    I do remember the first time I saw her, walking away from me on the mall at ASU, all blond straight hair and long legs and youth. We would never know less sadness in our lives than that first time we stayed out all night talking, then spent the morning in each other’s arms in the safe chill of the air-conditioned darkness. Every possibility that life held was open to us. And every mistake.
    I dreamed about Julie that night, dreaming in the heavy sleep that comes after a day spent in the desert heat. But whatever we said and did was forgotten in the sudden smashing of bumpers and screeching of tires out on the street. I was immediately awake. The clock read 3:30.
    My bedroom fronts the street. I could hear shouts and cursing in English and Spanish. Then threats. Then a gunshot, sharp and deep. Then another two—higher-pitched, maybe a .22.
    I dropped painfully to the floor, grabbed up the cordless phone, and dialed 911. Talking to the dispatcher, I crawled over to the window and cautiously lifted one blind. They were gone, not a body left behind, not a trace. Just the vivid white circle of the streetlight. Four minutes had passed. I explained three times to the 911 operator that I hadn’t seen the incident, only heard it. I told her it wasn’t necessary for an officer to make contact.
    When I was growing up in this neighborhood, even in the turmoil of the 1960s, it had seemed the safest place in the world. The biggest worry for parents was the traffic on Seventh Avenue. Now there were no safe places. I pulled on some shorts, went into the garage, and pulled a dusty, slender box out of a carton I had brought back from San Diego, along with my books and lecture notes. Inside was a Colt Python .357 with a four-inch barrel and ammunition. When I was a deputy, this had been my pride and joy—“one of the finest handguns in the world,” Peralta had pronounced—and had cost about a month’s worth of paychecks. It had less usefulness for a college professor. I hadn’t seen the revolver for a month, since I qualified at the range to get my deputy credentials and keep Peralta off my back. I took the box back inside, turned out the light, and listened a long time in the darkness until sleep came again.

Chapter Six
    Phaedra Riding’s apartment sat fifty feet back from Hayden Road in south Scottsdale, on the second floor of one of the cookie-cutter stucco complexes that popped up around the city back in the 1970s. The front door faced a courtyard, with its pool, landscaping, and ornamental lights, while a rear balcony looked out on a parking lot and, beyond a stand of olive trees, the street. This part of Scottsdale lacked the moneyed glitz of the resorts and walled-off neighborhoods a few miles farther north, but it was still comfortable and pleasant. I used the key Julie had given me to let myself in.
    The place was