But they didn't. They were humble and undemanding and probably, at the moment, incapable of hearing everything that was being said to them.

I put my business card on the coffee table and stood up to go. "We're sorry for what's happened to your family," I said.

The woman's hands were folded in her lap now. She looked at them, then lifted her eyes to mine.

"Amanda was raped?" she said.

"That's a conclusion that has to come from the coroner. But, yes, I think she was," I said.

"Did they use condoms?" she asked.

"We didn't find any," I replied.

"Then you'll have their DNA," she said. Her eyes were black and hard now and fixed on mine.

Helen and I let ourselves out and crossed the yard to the cruiser. The wind, even full of dust, seemed cool after the long hot day and smelled of salt off the Gulf. Then I heard Mr. Boudreau behind me. He was a heavy man and he walked as though he had gout in one foot. A wing on his shirt collar was bent at an upward angle, like a spear point touching his throat.

"What kind of weapon did they use?" he asked.

"A shotgun," I said.

His eyes bunked behind his glasses. "Did they shoot my little girl in the face?" he asked.

"No, sir," I replied.

" 'Cause those sons of bitches just better not have hurt her face," he said, and began to weep in his front yard.

By the next morning the fingerprints lifted from the beer can thrown out of the automobile window at the crime scene gave us the name of Tee Bobby Hulin, a twenty-five-year-old black hustler and full-time smartass whose diminutive size saved him on many occasions from being bodily torn apart. His case file was four inches thick and included arrests for shoplifting at age nine, auto theft at thirteen, dealing reefer in the halls of his high school, and driving off from the back of the local Wal-Mart with a truckload of toilet paper.