When I got the news about my sister- in- law I was heading back from the abused women’s shelter situated outside the town of Marana, a thirty- minute drive west from where I live north of Tucson, Arizona. The shelter was called Desert Doves, or some bullshit name like that. When I wasn’t working on an investigation, I volunteered to teach the women at the shelter they didn’t have to be doves.

There were four of them that day, one with the bruises still purplish fading to green at the edges. All of them with the look of the victim stamped on their faces. In that respect, at this stage they were interchangeable, and I couldn’t keep their names straight in my head. Maybe soon I would. A young man, midtwenties with two percent body fat, stood in the corner to watch. I hadn’t seen him before and guessed he was security.

I stepped onto the rubber mat in the middle of the small room that contained a manual treadmill, an elliptical, and some light free weights, all of which looked donated. I had put the women through a little stretching and some cardio warm- up, but that was just to reacquaint them with their bodies. Now we were going for the basic defense move.

I pulled my white ponytail into a bun with a scrunchy and gave my most motherly smile. “Would one of you like to volunteer?”

Their eyes shifted away from me. I had the sense those eyes were used to doing that more often than not.

I said, “Look at me. Look at me. I’m going on sixty years old. Do I look like someone who can hurt you?”

The youngest of them, taller than me but with the muscle mass of a bird, stepped onto the mat.

“What’s your name, honey?” I asked.

“Anna.” It sounded like an apology.

“Anna, you come at me like you’re going to attack me. Can you do it sort of in slow motion? That’s good, just like that. It’s okay, you can giggle if you want to. I’ll move slowly, too, and when we’ve done it once that way I’ll show you what it’s like in real life. Now see how Anna is coming toward me with her right hand pulled back like she’s going to slap me to kingdom come? That’s fi ne, but it doesn’t even matter whether her hand is out or her fi st is coming up to clip me under the jaw or even whether she has a knife. Because all she’s concerned with is her attack, and she doesn’t realize that I’m not going to stand here and take it.

“See, I’m not backing away but going toward her . . . making my strike area smaller by holding my head low, ducking my shoulder under that arm and . . . this may startle you a little, but I promise you won’t get hurt, Anna . . . grabbing you by the waist and rolling you over my hip. Women’s hips are where it’s at. We’ve got more power there and in our thighs than any man no matter what his size. See,

I used Anna’s forward momentum against her.”

It made things a little more difficult to do this in slow motion while talking, so I stopped to take a quick deep breath and went on. “Now Anna is upside down before she knows what happened, and you can imagine what it’s like if we were doing it fast. No, I’m not going to drop you on your head. See, if I put my foot out this way, Anna comes down onto her shoulder, while I simultaneously thrust my leg out under her. It may seem like the purpose is to keep from injuring her, and it actually does prevent her hitting the floor hard, but the main reason I do that is so I can drop to the floor and put my other leg over her in a choke hold. See how my body is perpendicular to hers?

“Your opponent can’t move when you’ve got him like this. Your options are either to get up and run like hell while the guy is still wondering how he got on the floor, or to keep choking until he passes out. No permanent damage. I recommend the second option just to let him know you mean business. Thanks, Anna. See, in order to do this you don’t have to be big, and you especially don’t have to be male.”

As Anna stood, smiling despite herself, the girl with the freshest bruises asked, “If I do that to my husband, what do you think will happen after that? What will he do?”

The others looked keenly interested in my answer. I could sugarcoat it, say that hubby would be respectful and bring them flowers even when he hadn’t abused them first, and they’d live happily ever after. But the movies had already handed these women a lie about love, and it was time for the statistics.

The harsher the words, the gentler the tone. “Sweetheart, he won’t say thank you.”

She said, “He’ll kill me.”

I ignored the sensation that she said those words with a little thrill, something akin to plea sure, as if she was saying He’ll love me. I said,

“That’s the funny thing about bullies. You think he’ll come at you again, but he won’t. Ninety- nine times out of a hundred he’ll just go away. Leave you for someone else. He’ll go look for someone he can control, someone he can beat up who won’t fi ght back.”

The girl crossed her arms in front of her. I could tell she didn’t like that answer. She preferred the lie, and one day she would fall victim to it. I could tell she was already lost, and maybe already dead. I grieved all in an instant, and then turned away because you can’t save everybody. Sometimes you have to be cruel to fight another battle.

I turned to the guy in the corner, a good head and a half taller than me, with eyes that spoke not at all. He was pretending to slouch, but the taut muscles stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt gave him away. The thousand- yard stare made me sense he had gotten his body someplace other than a gym.

“Iraq or Afghanistan?” I asked.

He nodded. “Afghanistan.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dennis.” Even two generations removed from me, his eyes flickered a warning not to say “the Menace.”

“Want to show them how it’s really done?”

He stepped onto the mat.

“Come.”

He came for me with both fists up. No problem. I put him down the way I did Anna, only with a faster one- two, and the women applauded. They had started enjoying themselves. But when I helped Dennis off the floor he gripped my wrist and swung me into the wall over the treadmill. I was unprepared, and it rattled me so I slid down the treadmill onto the floor. The women gasped, but softly, and did nothing. After all, they had seen this before.

I recovered and got up better prepared for his next assault. He came at me again with his fists balled. It must have been that slam on the mat with my legs clamped around his throat that awakened his kill-or-be-killed reaction. I could see that he had gone back to some village in Afghanistan where he had seen and done things he couldn’t live with, and my whispering, “Dennis . . . Dennis,” didn’t slow him down.

I hated to shame him in front of the women, but this guy could hurt me bad. I threw two punches up high, not for the purpose of connecting but just to get his arms up so I could go for something more vulnerable. He didn’t fall for it. Instead of covering his face, he whipped his right arm back and delivered a haymaker.

Nearly delivered. I slipped the punch, and before he could connect I threw him a liver shot. He dropped to the floor in a faint.

The women looked first stunned and then surprisingly enthused to see a large man down, but I made a note to self: Next time do not use a new veteran for demonstrations. I told the women Dennis would be fine and that we were just displaying more advanced maneuvers. I brought him to when the others left the room. We spoke our understanding briefly, really seeing each other for the first time. I told him I could use a sparring partner for the exercise because I was rusty.

He doubted that, but agreed.

On the way out, when no one was looking, I stretched my neck and rubbed the spot where my shoulder hit the wall, but overall I felt good— hell, I felt great! But I also felt relieved that I was still fit after all those years undercover with the FBI, followed by a desk job, followed by my first marriage at the ripe age of fifty- eight to a Catholic priest turned philosophy professor. Life with Carlo DiForenza had all the serenity I craved, but recent experience had shown you never know when you’ll need a body tuned for defense. I needed to make sure it stayed that way, and if I could combine mixed martial arts practice with helping Dennis over his PTSD, that would be double cool.

To reward a job moderately well done and nobody getting seriously hurt, I stopped for coffee from a caravan shop on Thornydale, headed north to Tangerine, and turned east to come back across the valley, on a straight road that undulated as softly as an infant roller coaster. When you first come out to this part of Arizona you think Good grief, it’s all fifty shades of beige, but you’re wrong. On this late afternoon in spring the rosy glow the setting sun cast on the Catalinas in the distance made me think of my friend Mallory’s wisdom, “When the mountains turn pink, it’s time for a drink.”

I looked forward to a glass of red wine and a hot bath with some Tired Old Ass Soak after the tussle with Dennis. One of my peeves is people who kill time driving by calling other people on their cell, but I admit that while sipping at my coffee and holding the wheel steady with my knee, I phoned my husband to let him know I’d be home in about twenty minutes.

Carlo told me he’d gotten the news that my sister- in- law, Marylin Quinn, had died.

My heart dipped along with the road, like when a plane gets caught in an air pocket.

In the movies, that’s when the pi lot comes on the loudspeaker and says there’s a bit of turbulence up ahead and everyone should stay buckled in their seats, but not to worry. The wit behind you makes a joke about Bette Davis.

Then the plane explodes, the fireball snatching the air out of the passengers’ lungs before they know what hit them. Everybody dies.

I was headed toward a time like that. A time of betrayal, wasting disease, and the nature of evil. Because now was the time to keep the promise I’d made to Marylin.

Enjoy the coffee, toots.