"Yeah, maybe," I said.

"You think somebody else would disembowel a nineteen-year-old girl with a scalpel or a barber's razor?"

"Maybe the guy wants us to think he's a meltdown. He was smart enough not to leave anything at the scene except the ice pick, and it was free of prints. There weren't any prints on the tape he used on her wrists or mouth, either. She went out the front door of the jukejoint, by herself, at one in the morning, when the place was still full of people, and somehow he abducted her, or got her to go with him, between the front door and her automobile, which was parked only a hundred feet away."

His eyes were thoughtful.

"Go on," he said.

"I think she knew the guy."

The sheriff put his glasses back on and scratched at the corner of his mouth with one fingernail.

"She left her purse at the table," I said. "I think she went outside to get something from her car and ran into somebody she knew. Psychopaths don't try to strongarm women in front of bars filled with drunk coonasses and oil-field workers."

"What do we know about the girl?" I took my notebook out of the desk drawer and thumbed through it on top of the blotter.

"Her mother died when she was twelve. She quit school in the ninth grade and ran away from her father a couple of times in Mamou. She was arrested for prostitution in Lafayette when she was sixteen. For the last year or so she lived here with her grandparents, out at the end of West Main. Her last job was waitressing in a bar about three weeks ago in St. Martinville. Few close friends, if any, no current or recent romantic involvement, at least according to the grandparents. She didn't have a chance for much of a life, did she?"

I could hear the sheriff rubbing his thumb along his jawbone.

"No, she didn't," he said. His eyes went out the window then refocused on my face. "Do you buy that about no romantic involvement?"