“If you two,” she said to the twins, “remember anything that you think might help us find out what happened to Ricky, please call me. Anytime. Or talk to your parents if you’re not sure you want to call.”

They shook hands with everyone and JJ walked them out. He glanced behind him to make sure his family couldn’t hear, then asked, “Do you really think there’s a chance Ricky is still alive?”

Lucy didn’t want to give him false hope, but she didn’t want to make a definitive statement. “The odds are against it, but there is a chance. When we know for certain, we’ll contact you.”

“I would appreciate that. I want my kids to hear it from me, not from kids at school.”

While Nate drove, Lucy called Ash and put him on speaker. “It’s Lucy and Nate,” she said when he answered.

“I had a call from Denise Albright’s parents,” Ash said. “Julie at the ME’s office did the official notification, but because I’d talked to them earlier, they called me for more information. I gave them your contact information, Lucy, but they were talking and I guess I just wanted them to talk because they were trying to make sense of everything. They’d just found out their only daughter was dead.”

“That’s kind of you, Ash.”

“That’s not why I wanted to talk to you. Mrs. Graham—that’s Denise’s mother—is sharp as a tack. She said that she’d called the sheriff’s office repeatedly after they disappeared but couldn’t get any answers, so they hired a private investigator. A firm based out of San Antonio. They found the Escalade at a chop shop outside Matamoros, which is across the border from Brownsville. The car was already dismantled, but they bribed an employee and confirmed that it was the Albrights’, and that there had been luggage inside.”

“Could they’ve been carjacked on the Mexican side of the border?” Nate asked.

“And someone else brought their bodies back and buried them ten miles from their house?” Ash snapped.

Lucy said, “Nate’s playing devil’s advocate. They could have rented a car, borrowed a car, found a friend to pick them up if they were robbed.”

“Sorry. I’m just frustrated. But I have the PI’s contact information and Mrs. Graham is calling to give them permission to share information with you. The frustration on her part was that she gave the information to the detectives in Kerr County and she doesn’t think they did anything with it. She’s angry and upset.”

“We’ll talk to the PI first thing in the morning,” Lucy said.

“We’re taking another stab with the cadaver dogs tomorrow, going wider, but … dammit, Lucy, where is he? Where did they bury him? Why wasn’t he with his family?”

Ash sounded forlorn and depressed.