Hood, in his six short months up here in the desert, had seen that the gangs were thriving. There had been another killing just last week, a seventeen-year-old clicked up with Eighteenth, standing on a street corner waving a big foam “New Homes” sign shaped like an arrow. Hood had learned that these people were called “human directionals” by the developers who hired them, but most people just called them sign wavers. He’d also noted that some of them got really good at it-twirls and aerials and behind-the-back NBA stuff. They could entertain you at a stoplight. But when the Blood gun car had passed by, the human directional with the “New Homes” sign had six bullets in him and he died later in a hospital.

“Speaking of dog bites,” said Laws. He unbuttoned his long-sleeved uniform shirt and showed Hood his left forearm, discolored and punctured, but healing. “That’s what I got for helping a guy out.” He turned on the dome light for a moment and looked at the wound as if it were a mystery he hadn’t yet solved.

“Dog have shots?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, I’m not going rabid on you.”

They pulled into the Legacy housing development. Big homes, two stories, peaked roofs with dormers and faux shutters on the windows. The tract was ten years old and some of the houses already looked like they should be condemned. The desert ages buildings and people twice as fast as anywhere else.

Fourteen-eleven Storybook had a dead brown lawn, weeds eating through the driveway concrete and a broken window patched with plywood against the cold. There were signs of effort, too: a couple of shiny kids’ bikes up by the porch and a bird feeder swinging from a lemon tree in the middle of the dead grass, and a bed of wind-lashed rosebushes by the garage.

A Housing Authority van was parked in the driveway, two men standing by the driver’s door. Hood and Laws pulled up to the curb opposite and parked just short of a peppertree thrashing in the wind. Hood heard the crunch and rattle of peppercorns when he stepped out of the car and crossed the street.