Arizona links the novel’s intimate lives to a fractured landscape of local, tribal, county, and federal authority. From Benny Gutierrez’s work along Highway 86 to Brandon Walker’s home near Tucson and the long-neglected investigation into Roseanne Orozco’s murder, the state is both a lived setting and a structure that determines who is responsible for pursuing justice.

Geographic and Everyday Setting

In November 1970, Benny Gutierrez drags a trash bag along Highway 86 west of Sells as part of the Tribal Work Experience Program. He has been staying with his brother and sister-in-law after losing his truck and being sent away by his wife; with the weather turning cold, the bed they offer matters more than the ground outside. His slow workday, shared at an equally unhurried pace with Alvin Narcho, places economic hardship and reservation life within Arizona’s ordinary routines. The Three Points Trading Post, east of the Tohono O’odham Reservation boundary, is part of the same local geography: Benny and his companions have spent the weekend there before he returns to work.

By April 2002, the narrative also locates Brandon Walker in a different Arizona setting: his home at Gates Pass near Tucson. At sixty-one, he swims in a heated lap pool to maintain his endurance, accommodating pain in his hip and knee while resisting the prospect of joint-replacement surgery. He is retired after an unsuccessful reelection bid for Pima County sheriff, while Diana Ladd remains occupied with her writing career. The state thus holds both the landscape of Brandon’s former public work and the quieter domestic life that followed it.

Arizona and the Orozco Investigation

The jurisdictional divisions within Arizona help explain why the investigation into Roseanne Orozco’s murder stalled. Brandon recalls that Gina Antone was killed just off the reservation, and that the case fell to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department because she had died outside reservation land and her killers were understood to be Anglos. Roseanne’s case was treated differently: although the actual murder site was never found, investigators assumed she had died on the reservation and had been killed by another Native person. Responsibility therefore lay with either the Federal Bureau of Investigation or local tribal police, rather than with the county department.

Brandon remembers that the FBI’s investigations into reservation murders were often cursory, particularly when both victim and suspected perpetrator were Native. The Papago Tribal Police Force, known as “Law and Order,” was called to Roseanne’s case, but lacked training, equipment, and money. Its investigation came to nothing. Brandon had not known how completely the case had failed until Emma Orozco told him; in the years around the murder, he was newly divorced, struggling financially, and preoccupied with alimony, child support, and his father’s declining health. The state’s institutional boundaries had practical consequences: they dispersed responsibility while leaving a family without answers.

Investigative Work Across Boundaries

The later effort to investigate Roseanne’s death also encounters legal and cultural limits within Arizona. Her grave is at Big Fields, on the reservation. Ralph Ames warns that even with the grandmother’s permission, a court order will probably be needed to exhume the remains. Brandon contrasts this with the recent burial of Fat Crack Ortiz at Ban Thak: bringing picks and shovels to bury someone had been straightforward, but disturbing a grave raised different concerns, including Tohono O’odham taboos and the need for a medicine man.

Emma ultimately tells Brandon that she, Sam, and her grandson dug up the remains after dark rather than wait for the tribal council’s process. The decision achieves speed but compromises the chain of evidence. Brandon, working with The Last Chance rather than as a sworn officer, is caught between helping survivors obtain answers and preserving evidence that could support accountability in court. Arizona’s layered authority is therefore not merely a backdrop to the investigation; it shapes the difficult choices through which the case can—or cannot—be pursued.

The State as a Route and a Limit

Arizona’s connection to Mexico gives the investigation another consequential boundary. When Brian Fellows suggests that Larry Stryker might flee toward the border, Brandon agrees that Stryker’s connections in Mexico could make him unreachable once he crossed. Brian adds that Mexico would not extradite someone likely to face a capital trial. The possibility of escape changes the urgency of the pursuit: the state is not only where the crimes and investigations unfold, but also the territory from which a suspect might disappear beyond the reach of the case.