"You think she's been down there since she was missing?" Tolliver asked, finally.

It had been the spring of the preceding year when we'd been summoned to Nashville by the Morgenstern family. By then, Tabitha had been gone a month. The police had just cut back on their search, since they'd looked everywhere they could. The FBI had scaled back its presence, also. The extra equipment that had been installed to trace phone calls had been removed, because there hadn't been any ransom demands. By then, no one was expecting such a demand.

"No," I said. "The ground was too freshly disturbed. But I think she's been dead the whole time. I really hope so." The only thing more awful than a murdered child was a murdered child who'd been subjected to prolonged torture or sexual abuse.

"There was no way you could have found her," Tolliver said. "Back then."

"No," I agreed. "There wasn't."

But it hadn't been for lack of trying. The Morgensterns had called me when they'd exhausted all the traditional methods of finding their lost child.

Yes, I had failed; but I had given it my all. I'd been over the house, the yard, the neighborhood, into the yards of anyone with a police record who lived in the surrounding area. Some I'd done at night because the homeowner wouldn't consent. Not only was I risking arrest, but injury. A dog had almost gotten me the second night.

I'd toured nearby junkyards, ponds, parks, landfills, and cemeteries, in the process finding one other murder victim in the trunk of a junked car (a freebie for the Nashville police—they'd been so pleased to have another murder victim on the books), and one natural death, a homeless man in a park. But I hadn't found any eleven-year-old girls. For nine days I'd searched, until the time came when I'd had to tell Diane and Joel Morgenstern that I could not find their child.