‘Well, the sooner you answer our questions, the sooner you’re out of here,’ Thistle says.

‘I know my rights,’ Black responds, with the confidence of someone who doesn’t. ‘I get a free lawyer. And if you’re not gonna charge me, you have to let me go within twenty-four hours. That’s the fifth amendment.’

‘It’s the sixth amendment, and it doesn’t specify a time-frame,’ Thistle says. ‘Texas state law says seventy-two hours. And the free lawyer only comes if we charge you.’

‘Would you like us to charge you?’ I add. ‘We’re happy to do that if it will speed this up.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Black says.

‘You mean since last time.’ Thistle flicks through a file. She’s pretending that it’s a rap sheet, but from this angle I can see that it’s only an old consent form. ‘I see here that you turned down a plea bargain when you were pulled in for solicitation last year.’

‘They wanted me to testify against Charlie Warner,’ Black says. ‘Would you have done that, in my position?’

Warner runs all the brothels in Houston, so it’s not too much of a coincidence that Black used to work for her. But it still makes me uneasy.

Thistle leans back in her chair. ‘Tell us about Shannon Luxford.’

‘I don’t know who that is.’

‘Uh-huh. You haven’t switched on a TV today? Seen a newspaper?’

Black’s throat bobs. We’ve caught her in a lie. ‘Oh, yeah. The Crawdad Man, right? He killed all those women.’

At the latest press conference, Zinnen was careful not to accuse Shannon Luxford of being a serial killer, something we still can’t prove. All we know for sure is that he abducted Abbey and raped Hope, he knew Biggs, and Biggs’s phone trail dead-ended at the dump, as did the phone trails of all those overweight white men. It’s not iron-clad. But the media has been happy to join the dots.

‘Men,’ Thistle is saying. ‘His female victims survived, at least the two we know about. Are you at all worried about what they might tell us?’

‘Why? I don’t know those bitches.’

‘You said we’re costing you money,’ I say. ‘What do you do?’

‘I run errands,’ Black says.

‘Like what?’

‘Like whatever. Going to the post office. Picking up dry-cleaning, or takeout.’ She glances at her watch. ‘This is peak earning time, right here.’

She seems more anxious about this than about being under arrest, which makes her very smart or very dumb.

‘Who do you work for?’ I ask.

‘Whoever. People hire me over the internet.’ She looks at me like I wouldn’t understand this. I wonder how old she thinks I am.

‘It’s called being an entrepreneur,’ she adds.