I stood up, so he could see me right away, and he gave me a serious look. I sat down in the folding wooden seat. “He looks all right,” I said to the lawyer, trying to reassure myself. “Don’t you think he looks all right?”

“He does,” she agreed. “I don’t think orange is his color, though.”

“No,” I said. “No, it isn’t.”

As all the people in the courtroom seemed to be sorting themselves out, Phyllis said, “While we have a minute, I’m just curious. Are you any relation to the Cameron Connelly who was abducted in Texas a few years ago? I’m only asking because when Art Barfield called me, he said you had grown up in Texas and you and the girl who vanished both have what could be last names for your first name. If that makes sense.”

“Yes, it makes sense,” I said, though I can’t say I was totally focused on the conversation. “I was named for my father’s mother’s family, Cameron for my mother’s mother’s family. She was my sister.”

“I notice you use the past tense. Was she ever found? Once the media stopped covering it . . .”

“No. But someday I’ll find her body.”

“Ah . . . okay.”

After a beat, I noticed the peculiar tone to the lawyer’s voice. “You know,” I said more directly, “that when people are gone that long, they’re dead.”

“There was that girl in Utah, Elizabeth Smart.”

“Yes. There was that girl in Utah. She turned up alive. But mostly, when people have been gone for more than a couple of days, and no ransom’s been asked, they’re dead. Or they wanted to go. I know Cameron didn’t want to leave. So she’s dead.”

“You hold no hope?” She sounded incredulous.

“I hold no false hope.” I knew my business.

The bailiff told us the judge was coming in, and we rose. A spare gray-haired man (in a suit, instead of a robe) took his seat before us. I wasn’t surprised to recognize the man with whom Phyllis had been chatting earlier. The city attorney (at least I guessed that was what he was) was already in his seat facing the judge, a huge pile of files in front of him, and the proceedings began.

I’d been in court before, for this or that, so it no longer surprised me that it wasn’t like Perry Mason reruns or the more recent Judge Judy. People wandered in and out. Prisoners were removed and brought in. Between cases, there was a low buzz of conversation. There was no reverential air, and there were very few dramatics. Justice was conducted as business-as-usual.