It was a meager list, but it was better than nothing. Miss Ella had provided the names of Lamont’s high school physics teacher and a Pastor Hebert from her church. Karen Lennon had somehow persuaded Miss Ella to divulge the names of three of her son’s adolescent friends. Interrogation is all about knowing how to ask your question so the subject will answer. Karen Lennon clearly had a touch with Miss Ella that I lacked.

“What about my talking to Miss Claudia?”

The pastor hesitated. “I think it would be a good idea, if she starts feeling a little stronger. She’s been pretty frail the last few weeks, and strangers would be hard on her. And Miss Ella holds Miss Claudia’s power of attorney, so that may be an obstacle as well.”

When we’d hung up, I did a search on the list of people who’d known Lamont. Four of the five men were still alive, which wasn’t as big a help as the optimistic detective needs. One of the friends from Lamont’s youth had died of pancreatic cancer when he was thirty-seven. A second friend had disappeared as thoroughly as Lamont himself. The physics teacher had retired to Mississippi fifteen years ago, and Pastor Hebert, at ninety-three, apparently wasn’t quite the ball of fire he’d been in his prime. “Oh, Pastor Hebert, such a shame,” the woman who returned the message I left on his church’s answering machine said. “The Holy Spirit inhabited that man’s body.”

I asked if he was dead.

“No, no, he’s still with us, but not quite with us, if you understand. He brought me to Jesus, me and my two boys and my sisters, and we need that saintly man’s saving voice here now. But the Lord does as He will in His own time, and we must pray to Jesus, pray for Pastor Hebert’s healing, and pray for a prophet to lead us out of our wilderness.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said weakly.

I called the physics teacher, who remembered Lamont but hadn’t seen him since his high school graduation. “He was a bright boy, a good student. I wanted him to go on to college, but he’d turned into such an angry young man, you couldn’t talk to him about anything in the white man’s world anymore. I suggested Howard or Grambling, but he still wouldn’t listen. I didn’t even know he’d disappeared.”