No one knew the whereabouts of her father, who had disappeared from Mamou after he was accused of molesting a black child in his neighborhood, but I interviewed her grandparents again, the owner of the bar in St. Martinville where she had last worked, the girls she had been with in the clapboard jukejoint the night she died, and a police captain in Lafayette who had recommended probation for her after she had been busted on the prostitution charge. I learned little about her except that she seemed to have been an uneducated, unskilled, hapless, and fatally beautiful girl who thought she could be a viable player in a crap game where the dice for her kind were always shaved.

I learned that about her and the fact that she had loved zydeco music and had gone to the jukejoint to hear Sam "Hogman" Patin play his harmonica and bottleneck blues twelve-string guitar.

My desk was covered with scribbled notes from my note pad, morgue and crime-scene photos, interview cassettes, and Xeroxes from the LeBlanc family's welfare case history when the sheriff walked into my office. The sky outside was lavender and pink now, and the fronds on the palm trees out by the sidewalk were limp in the heat and silhouetted darkly against the late sun.

"The sheriff over in St. Mary Parish just called," he said.

"Yes?"

"He said thanks a lot. They really appreciate the extra work." He sat on the corner of my desk.

"Tell him to find another line of work."

"He said you're welcome to come over on your days off and run the investigation."

"What's he doing with it?"

"Their coroner's got the bones now. But I'll tell you the truth, Dave, I don't think it's going anywhere."

I leaned back in my swivel chair and drummed my fingers on my desk. My eyes burned and my back hurt.

"It seems to me you've been vindicated," the sheriff said. "Let it go for now."