I found myself hoping that if I were able to find the missing boys, then something about the way they were buried, something about the location or what was buried with them, would lead to the discovery of their killer. I know better than anyone that death comes to us all. I hate the murderers of the young, because they rob the world of a life that still held potential. This doesn’t really make sense, I know; even a dissolute alcoholic seventy-five-year-old can push a woman out of the path of a speeding car, and change a bit of the world forever. But the death of children always carries its own particular horror.

Three

TWYLA Cotton had a Cadillac, only a year or two old. “I like a big car,” she said.

We nodded. We liked it, too. We were bundled up for the weather, and Twyla looked like a ball of fudge in her dark brown coat.

“Do your son and his wife know we’re here and what we’re doing?” I asked cautiously.

“Parker and Bethalynn do know, but they don’t believe it will lead to anything. They think I’m wasting my money. But they know it’s my money to waste, and if it makes me feel better…”

I hoped they were as philosophical about it as Twyla made it sound. Families can give us an awful lot of trouble—which I guess isn’t too surprising, since they usually believe we’re defrauding their grieving relative. Still, we’ve had a bellyful of trouble in our lives, and we don’t want any that we can avoid. I exchanged a glance with Tolliver, who was in the back seat, and one glance said all this between us.

“Have you ever had a child, Harper?” Twyla asked.

“No, I’ve never been pregnant,” I said. “But I know how you feel. My sister has been missing for eight years.”

I didn’t normally tell people that. Of course, some of them already knew it. It had made a big splash in the papers when it happened. But I was a high school student then, not a…whatever I was now.

“You have other family?”

I said, smiling brightly, “Well, I have Tolliver. I’ve got a half brother, Mark, and two half sisters, little ones, Mariella and Gracie. They live in Texas with our aunt and her husband.” Mark wasn’t my half brother any more than Tolliver was. He was simply Tolliver’s older brother. But I wasn’t in the mood to spell it out.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Your parents already passed?”