now. She hoped she had. Because Ashley was feeling alone, and scared, and she knew her father would make her feel better. Like she was the only one he wanted or needed. That she was so special and beautiful. She felt suddenly nauseous. She needed to cut herself. To make it stop. But there were so many people standing around her. So she dug her fingernails into her hand until she felt the skin pop and the warm blood. The thoughts didn’t stop, though. They only got louder. Then, blessedly, the next contraction began, searing its way through her abdomen and allowing her to finally smile in relief.

Joe met Gil in the hallway outside the interrogation room.

“Okay,” Joe started. “Here’s my idea. I say we send this guy back to County because I’m sick of looking at him and then go talk to Ashley and her mom some more.”

“Do you think that’ll get us anywhere?” Gil asked.

“No. I honestly think at this point pretty much the only thing that’s going to get us anywhere is kicking that guy’s ass.”

“Anything more constructive?” Gil asked.

“I think that would be really constructive for me.”

“Well, thankfully,” Gil said, “I have another idea. Give me a second.” Joe wandered off down the hallway toward the vending machines as Gil flipped open his phone and dialed. His sister, Elena, answered, saying, “Hi, Gil. What’s up?”

“Do you know an Anna Maria Roybal? She does adoption law?”

“Hmm . . . maybe. There was an Anna Maria a year ahead of me in law school. Hang on a second, I’ll have to go look for my New Mexico Bar Association directory.” He heard her making noises in the background as she searched for the book. Knowing Elena, it was likely under a pile of legal papers. He heard her thumping around for another couple of minutes before she said, “Okay, here it is.” She gave him the number.

“What time are you coming up?” Gil asked her. Elena would be making the hour drive up from Albuquerque later in the day to go to his aunt’s fiesta party.

“I told mom I’d be there at one.”

“Oh, hey, by the way, Mom made her adovada,” Gil said.

“Fantastic,” she said. “I’ll bring some empty Tupperware.”

They hung up, but Gil didn’t put away his phone. He dialed the answering service for the district attorney’s office again, and left another message for the on-call lawyer to contact him. Nothing had changed with Geisler. Gil still had to interrogate him, but if the DA didn’t return his calls, he’d have to do it without the benefit of legal counsel.

Joe came back, sipping a Mountain Dew. “So what next?”

“A conversation with Anna Maria Roybal.”

Lucy made sure to compliment Andrea on her great investigative work as they drove back to Starbucks, where they had left her car. As Andrea was getting out, she was still buzzing about the story, talking about leads to follow and who to interview next.

Lucy finally said, “I promise you, we will get to it next week, when Tommy can help, okay? Just go have a good day off, and I’ll see you on Monday.”

Andrea said good-bye and closed the door. The car became blissfully silent, and Lucy took a minute to appreciate it. She decided to go on a drive. She took New Mexico 14 away from the city and into the flat plains of the valley, which was ringed by mountains and old volcanoes gone silent. The ground was covered in low, straight grasses that were drying into a haystack yellow in the late summer heat. The flatness gave way to a few roller-coaster hills.

She topped a rise and saw the desert change from a flat plain to rolling hills of piñon and juniper. Below her, at least two miles away, a crease of green cut the ground. She knew there had to be a river there. The entire state of New Mexico was shades of brown and beige that were occasionally struck through by a line of bright shocking green that held the blood of life—water.

In Florida, she had never thought about water, about what it meant. There was just so much of it. Here it was precious. People had been killed over it. The Pueblo Indians and original colonists had built extensive acequia systems that brought the water from the rivers to the farmlands. They had created a complex system of water rights and inheritance laws around it. Each acequia had its own water board and mayordomo. Often, the water