The house was so small there was little question of which room he meant. It still held twin beds, with a nightstand jammed between them. The walls were covered with posters and memorabilia. There were dried corsages and party invitations, notes from friends and buttons with cute sayings, a big straw hat and a napkin from Dairy Queen. Little things like that would only evoke a memory for the one who saved them; and now those memories did not exist anymore. I was willing to bet that all Sally’s memorabilia had come down when she married. All these items were Teenie’s. There wasn’t any hair in the brush on the shelf under the small mirror. I wondered if the police had taken it when she’d vanished, to get a DNA sample. I spied a purse was on top of the battered chest of drawers. I dumped it out on the nearest bed and was rewarded with a smaller hairbrush choked with Teenie’s dark hair. I put the brush into a brown envelope I’d brought with me and glanced around the crowded space. I was sure various people had already searched this room thoroughly—the police and Helen, of course. I would search my daughter’s room if she went missing. I would tear up the floorboards. There didn’t seem to be any point in me combing it for clues.

I got a hair sample from Jay Hopkins, who made a wry joke about how little of it he had to spare. Now I had hair samples from both Teenie and Jay, and a fat lot of good it would do me. But I would send them in, nonetheless.

Tolliver had a friend in a big private lab in Dallas. He could get things done that I couldn’t. His friend was a woman, and he had to give her a certain amount of sweet talk, but that never killed anyone. Well, it made my stomach clench, but I wouldn’t die of it.

I was anxious to leave, but Jay wanted to know about our last talk with Helen, and I felt obliged to recount it just as I had to the police. He gave me permission to get hair from Helen’s brush, too, and he suddenly seemed more interested than upset by the idea that now he could find out if he was Teenie’s biological father.

“And you’re paying for this?” Tolliver asked as we drove away. We went to the UPS pickup spot, which was in an auto parts store many blocks from the square. Small businesses in Sarne—in the south in general—had to diversify, but I was used to that and kind of enjoyed it. I got some mailers and followed the advice of Tolliver’s friend at the lab in packing the samples I had.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I’m paying for this.”

“Why, in God’s name, are you doing this?”