“There’s only the mother,” she says. “Don’t you watch the news? Her father died when she was a baby. Peter Mayhew? You don’t remember him?”

“Should I?”

She shrugs. “Anyway, what am I supposed to do? Ask Donna if we can swab her mouth on the off chance her daughter was tied to a bed and gang-raped by a bunch of dead bangers? I’d just as soon not.”

“I can appreciate that.” I lean forward. “But before you say no, consider this. Your girl disappeared midday Thursday, right? Our shooting went down late Thursday, early Friday give or take.”

“On the other side of town.”

“Yes, but does that mean anything here? I can think of a thousand scenarios that would land a nice girl from the suburbs in a situation like this.”

“But not this girl,” she says. “You don’t know her.”

“Do you?”

“Not personally, no. But I’ve gotten to know Donna, the mother. She’s quite a woman, I’ll tell you that. If her daughter was mixed up in the kind of thing you’re talking about, I think she’d know. And anyway, she’s dealing with enough stress without putting something like this on her.”

As she speaks, my eyes fix on the shape of her lips. This kind of sudden infatuation isn’t common for me, but I’m having a hard time shaking off the feeling. Cavallo’s my type, trim and striking and faintly exotic. A younger, taller version of Charlotte, without all the shared baggage. I inhale her perfume discreetly, then sit back, gazing at the sheerness of her blouse.

“I need your help,” I say. “Call it a favor. I’ll owe you. I can’t do justice to my investigation without following up this lead. If it doesn’t pan out, fine. At least we’ve ticked off that box. But if you don’t help, I’ll be honest, I won’t be able to sleep at night. This is… important to me.”

I shouldn’t be pleading like this, exposing myself, but something about her seems to invite it.

“This is important to you,” she repeats, glancing away. “What’s important to me is not burdening this woman with more fear. She’s living with the unthinkable as it is. I don’t want to make her nightmares any worse than they already are.”

“You don’t have to tell her what it’s for.”

She thinks this over for a moment, resting her elbows on her knees, her mouth covered behind her long fingers. The engagement ring sparkles in my face.

“Look, here’s the thing,” she says finally. “The last couple of weeks, Hannah was getting calls from a certain number. And she called back a lot. The day she disappeared, she got a call at half past eleven. The problem is, the number belongs to a prepaid phone.”

I nod in sympathy. Working murder, plenty of our leads dead-end at a prepaid number, enough to inspire legislation requiring IDs and tracking – not that it would help, given the ease with which a fake driver’s license can be obtained. The things ought to be illegal.

“You know who uses those things?” I say. “Dealers, gang members, people who want to keep off the radar. If you ask me, that strengthens my case.”

“Well, we already have a line on someone at her high school we think was making those calls. But you could be right. The point is, we’ve hit a wall. We’re canvassing and re-canvassing neighborhoods, pulling in anybody who might have information, going over the Willowbrook Mall surveillance tapes with a fine-tooth comb. But I’m not sure it’s getting us anywhere. Hence the task force. They’re hoping to get a result by throwing more money and manpower at the problem.”

“The same old story,” I say. “Look, it sounds to me like you can justify pursuing something like this, whether it’s a long shot or not. I used to work for Wanda. I know she won’t stand in the way. She’s played a few hunches in her time, too.”

Again, she plunges into thought, knitting her eyebrows together in concentration. I’m tempted to say more, but I keep my mouth shut, letting her argue both sides in her head. It’s not every day a stranger shows up trying to enlist you on his quixotic quest. The fact she’s even halfway receptive bodes well.

“One condition,” she says.

“Anything.”

“You come with me. I’ll introduce you to Donna, and if you still have the guts, I’ll ask her for the swab. That way, no matter what happens, she’ll know it’s not coming from me.”

Not what I was expecting. Not at all. But the prospect intrigues me. I’m not anxious to spend time with the frantic mother, but driving out to the suburbs in the presence of Theresa Cavallo seems like a worthwhile way to spend the rest of the afternoon. There’s just one little problem.

“I need to make a phone call first,” I say. Using her desk phone, I dial Narcotics and ask for Mitch Geiger. His number rings, then goes through to voicemail. I leave my name and my mobile number, asking him to call when he gets a chance.

When I hang up, Cavallo is already standing, slipping her jacket on. She’s about five foot nine. Lean, but not skinny. She clips a holstered sig Sauer just ahead of her hip. It disturbs the line of her jacket, but there’s something about an attractive woman packing a gun. I’ve made the right call on this one.

“Are you driving?” I ask.

In answer, she dangles a set of keys.

CHAPTER 6

We battle the outbound traffic stacking up on I-45, then cut over on the Sam Houston Tollway to Stuebner Airline, crossing FM-1960 into a wooded, suburban terra incognita. My mental map of Houston grows sketchy this side of the tollway, but Cavallo navigates like a veteran, one hand on the wheel, the other perpetually in motion, punctuating her words. I like the way she talks, putting her whole body into it, like a sentence isn’t really a sentence until it’s acted out.

In forty-five minutes she’s given me an overview of the entire case, and if I’d paid attention I’m sure it would have been edifying. But the way her watch slides down her wrist distracts me, and so does the movement of her leg as she accelerates and brakes. The shape of her ear, visible as she flicks her hair back. The vein in her throat that grows taut as she cuts off yet another inattentive soccer mom.

I let out a sigh.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

She eyeballs me a moment, then digs her phone out. After making a call, she tells me that instead of meeting Donna Mayhew at her home, we have to intercept her at church.

“Donna’s camped out at her office there,” she says. “It’s easier to stay out of the media spotlight that way than going home.”

“Why would she want to keep a low profile?” I ask, thinking the more attention her missing daughter’s case gets, the better.

“She doesn’t want to feed the frenzy. I’m not saying I agree with that decision, but the woman’s had some experience in the public eye, so I have to respect it.”

“What kind of experience?”

She looks at me with wide-eyed incredulity, like I’ve just admitted never having heard of the Rolling Stones or something. “Seriously? With her husband.” Her voice jumps an octave. “The whole thing when he died? You really have no idea?”

“None.”

So she tells me about Peter Mayhew, a local celebrity preacher from the early 1990s. After some kind of charismatic awakening, he abandoned his Baptist upbringing and founded a nondenominational church out in the Houston suburbs. It kept growing, along with his national status. In his early forties he married a woman half his age, fathered Hannah, and booked speaking engagements around the country.

“I heard him once,” Cavallo says, “at a conference for teens my parents sent me to. He was really good. Very inspirational.”

I’m not sure what to say to this, so I just nod.

Mayhew left for a South American tour, boarding a private plane chartered by his supporters. He never arrived. The plane’s wreckage was recovered in the Gulf, but no bodies were found. Suddenly the story starts sounding familiar.