Tucson. It shimmered in the sun, brighter and harder than Phoenix, probably because there was always less air pollution down here. Jack Sandoval’s destination didn’t lie in the tall buildings and revitalized shops and restaurants of downtown, though, but out on the periphery, where the suburban sprawl met the original landscape, the sharp, rocky slopes of the foothills with their sentinel saguaros.
Consuelo de la Paz lived at the end of a dirt road, her nearest neighbor probably a quarter-mile away. Jack was glad he’d driven his personal vehicle, a Jeep Wrangler, rather than one of the department’s unmarked vehicles. A Taurus might have survived the washboard surface, but he really didn’t want to take bets on that.
He got out of the Jeep and approached the house, a squatty, sprawling ado
