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and the land officially in your name, Jimmy? How bad is it this time, the trouble you’ve gotten yourself into?”
    How bad,
Jimmy thinks, and wonders how Richard and his rational universe would deal with the imminent arrival of Aaron Limbe and Newt Deems, the agent and arm of Ray Harp’s worst impulses and general business practices.
    “Bad,” Jimmy says finally and leaves it at that, not wanting to give Richard the satisfaction of further details.
    “I can’t carry you on this one,” his brother says.
    “Can’t or won’t?”
    “Take your pick,” Richard says.
    “You’re something,” Jimmy says. “The whole time, you standing there with your back to me. You have all the answers, but you can’t talk and look me in the eye at the same time.”
    Another short, dry laugh. “That’s it, huh? That’s what you think?”
    Before Jimmy can fully register the movement, Richard has moved from the window and crossed the room, Jimmy not ready for what he sees next, Richard’s face contorted, its features distended in rage, Richard giving in to, bowing before it, a rage that’s been cooked deep in the marrow.
    Without thinking, Jimmy takes a step back.
    “You weren’t there,” Richard says. “Not then. Not ever. Not when it counted.”
    Richard lifts his arm and points at Jimmy. “He was slipping, not taking care of himself. I had to call him a couple times a day just to remind him to take his medication. The same thing with the agency. He wasn’t on top of his game anymore.”
    “He tell you that?”
    Richard leans in and pokes Jimmy in the chest. “I was worried about him. I called around. It didn’t take much checking to find out.”
    Richard steps back and begins circling Jimmy.
    “Not you,” he says. “Me. You were never there. I was the one. And you think I can’t look you in the eye?”
    “Okay,” Jimmy says. “Okay.” He’s watching his brother’s hands.
    “He needed something, I was the one who took care of it, Jimmy. Never you. He made excuses for you. I did what had to be done whether I wanted to or not. I looked out for him. And you, what did you do?”
    Richard pauses, but keeps circling. “You. You can’t even find the time to visit his goddamn grave. I had to identify the body, make all the arrangements. A closed casket, that’s what they had to go with. No choice but that. You weren’t there.”
    Richard abruptly stops. Jimmy braces, anticipating a swing, but Richard turns and walks back behind his desk. He glances up at the clock.
    “Get out of here, Jimmy,” he says. “Now.

FIVE
     
    E velyn Coates parks in the employee lot behind the Mesa branch of Frontier Cleaners. She’s already forty-five minutes late for her stint on the afternoon shift. She drops her hand to the ignition key, but her fingers hesitate then move to her cell phone, where they punch in the number for the store, and she tells the manager, who’s probably standing only a couple hundred feet away, that she’s having car trouble and won’t be in this afternoon.
    She sits for a moment, revving the engine, then pulls back out of the lot, heading west on Baseline toward Phoenix until she hooks up with Route 87 and then cuts south, skimming the western boundary of Gilbert and straight-shooting it through Chandler.
    Evelyn’s tempted for a moment to get off on Warner or Ray Road and take either to where they intersect with McClintock and drive by the house where she was raised, but any impulse toward nostalgia feels false-bottomed, the Chandler she grew up in transformed beyond recognition now after Motorola, Intel, and Avent set up shop there and development went into overdrive, subdivision after subdivision filling the immense fields of cotton and soybeans that during her childhood had lain only a few blocks from her home. The chamber of commerce still touts the city’s small-town charm, but for Evelyn it carries the metallic aftertaste of artificial sweetner.
    Near Riggs Road, on the outskirts of town,