“Depends. He might have dyed his hair, could be twenty pounds heavier, be wearing dark glasses. It isn’t hard to disguise yourself in a crowd, especially when people are wearing rain gear.”

He looked at the scrap of paper. The writing was plainly visible through the plastic. “Do we have your brother’s fingerprints on file?”

“I’m not sure. By the time we reported him missing, our housekeeper had dusted and vacuumed his room at home. He shared the student apartment with two of his friends, and like most of those places, there were at least a dozen others who were in and out every day. His car was washed and cleaned after the last time he used it.”

Barrott handed it back to me. “We can run this paper through for prints, but I can tell you now we won’t get anything. You and your mother handled it. So did your uncle, the monsignor. So did the usher who brought it to your uncle. My guess is that at least one other usher might have helped to add up the collection.”

Feeling as though I needed to offer more, I said, “I’m Mack’s only sibling. My mother and father and I came in to register with the familial DNA laboratory. But we’ve never heard from them, so I guess they’ve never found anyone who could be even a partial match.”

“Ms. MacKenzie, from what you tell me, your brother had absolutely no reason to willingly disappear. But if he did that, there was and is a reason. You’ve probably watched some of these crime programs on television so you probably have heard that when people disappear, the reason usually ends up being an accumulation of problems caused by either love or money. The jilted suitor, the jealous husband or wife, the inconvenient spouse, the addict frantic for a fix. You have to reexamine all your preconceived notions about your brother. He was twenty-one. You say he was popular with the girls. Was there one special girl?”