Deciding it was undoubtedly better not to comment, I asked David, "Would you join us?"

"Mom, this is mother-daughter day," Maggie whined, a scowl replacing her grin. "You promised."

"Maggie," I said. "Just for a few minutes..."

"I cant anyway," David protested. "Im hunting for just the right sweater to go with the shirt I bought for my son. Its Jacks birthday next week. I need to get his present in the mail. Nice to meet you, Maggie."

Maggie just stared at him.

"Maggie!" I admonished.

"Nice to meet you, too," she said, lips pursed.

After David left, she turned to me. I had the feeling she was studying my face.

"Do you like him?" she asked.

"What do you mean? We just work together."

"You look like you like him. Are you going to date?"

"Maggie," I scolded, wondering just how transparent Id become.

At home that night, Maggie appeared to forget our meeting with David. Mom created her special leg of lamb with a thick mustard-and-parmesan-cheese crust. Afterward, we cleaned up the dishes, while Maggie went outside to bed down Emma Lou. It was just getting dark, the days getting longer, leading toward summer.

"Any progress on the Priscilla Lucas case?" Mom asked.

"A few more pieces have fallen into place," I said, deciding to emphasize the positive. It wasnt a lie. We did have the composite and the fingerprint fragment.

"Then, itll all be over soon?"

"I cant say that, Mom," I admitted. "I dont know when or how this will end."

As I was bending down to put the washed roasting pan away underneath the stove, I heard Mom say, "Well, look at that. Whats that girl up to now?"

I joined her at the kitchen window and stared out at the corral. Emma Lou stood off to the side warily watching Maggie, whod hauled a cardboard box out from the garage. Under the elm tree in the center of the corral, she was digging through, pulling out what looked like string. She had a ladder propped up on the thick tree trunk.

"Whats she-"

"Christmas lights," Mom said. "More Christmas lights."

Mom threw off her ap.r.o.n, and I followed her outside.

"Maggie, what are you doing?" Mom shouted, as she stalked toward the corral. "Now if that isnt the most ridiculous...youll get hurt up there, you know."

Climbing up on the ladder into the tree, Maggie shouted back. "Its okay. I can do it."

Mom was right. Maggies behavior seemed odd. It wasnt like her. "Why?" I asked. "Why are you stringing lights in the tree?"

"Because it..." She started to answer, then stopped. She looked down at me from near the top of the ladder and said, "Just because I want to look out at them from my bedroom window."

Mom and I walked through the creaky corral gate, the one Id been meaning to oil. All the while, the filly paced back and forth at the fence, uneasy.

"Youre going to give Emma Lou a scare, lighting up her corral like that," Mom said. "Look, youve got her nervous already. And its spring, Maggie, not Christmastime. You shouldnt-"

I put my hand on Moms arm, and she stopped talking.

"Why, Maggie?" I interrupted. "Why the lights?"

I stood at the base of the ladder, holding it still while Maggie climbed higher, toward the top of the tree, the crinkled cord of the white Christmas lights trailing behind her.

"Because I want them, Mom," she said. "I want to be able to see them."

Perched on a limb just leafing out with its Spring foliage, she turned around and stared down at me.

"Because, maybe its like what you and Gram talked about. Maybe Dads up in heaven," Maggie said.

"Well...what does...?" Mom stuttered.

"Explain it to us, Maggie," I said. "Gram and I need to understand."

Maggie inched out a ways on a limb, where the tree was barely thick enough to hold her. She stopped when it swayed.

"You and Gram talked about Dad being in heaven and wondered if he could see us," she explained, her eyes narrow and serious. "I thought about what you said, about believing in what you cant see."

"And the lights?" I asked. "Why the lights, Maggie?"

Again she paused. I sensed that this was something vastly important to her, and she wasnt sure she could trust us to understand. When she did speak, her voice was edged in sadness.

"The lights kind of look like stars," she said. "I figure that if Dads in heaven, then hes up there with the stars. I thought maybe if I brought the stars closer to us, Dad would be closer, too. The lights were the only thing I could think of. They make me feel like maybe hes not so far away."

My daughters eyes were glistening with tears in the last light from a bright gold sunset.

Mom glanced at me, and I nodded at her.

"Come on," I said. "Lets help."

I threw down the dish towel I was holding into the dirt under the tree and grabbed another strand of lights.

"Sure," Mom said. "You two get started. Ill go for the bigger ladder. We can get them up higher. Might as well do this job right."

Two hours later, wed strung all twenty strands of outdoor Christmas lights in the corral tree, and Maggie held the end of the cord with the plug. Emma Lou was in the stable. Shed have to spend the foreseeable future in the rear pasture with the other horses, to keep her from tripping on the extension cord Id run out from the front porch outlet.

"You ready?" I asked.

"Yeah," Maggie said. "But I want to say something first."

"Okay, say away," I said.

Maggie took my hand in hers and then took her grandmother by the other hand.

We were three generations of women holding hands under the still-dark elm tree.

"G.o.d," Maggie said. "If youve got my dad up there, Ive got a favor to ask. I know I cant get him back. But Id like him to be able to visit here sometimes, to be with us. If you can work it out, it would be really good if he got to see me grow up."

Maggie looked up and smiled at me, and I leaned down and kissed her cheek, not bothering to wipe away the tears that were rolling down my own. Mom pulled a tissue out of her back jean pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

"So this is kind of an invitation," Maggie said, looking up at the dark sky and the true stars shining far above us. "Were going to light this tree up and maybe, if you dont mind, you can let my dad visit sometimes. Just to see that Mom and Gram and I are okay. And that we miss him."

"Your grandpa, too," Mom said. "Ask G.o.d to let your grandpa come visit?"

"Oh, yeah, G.o.d, Grandpa, too."

With that, Maggie let go of our hands and turned her full attention to inserting the plug into the extension cord. Moments later, the lights flicked on and lit up the corral bright as daybreak.

"Amen," Maggie said.

"Amen," Mom and I repeated.

Seventeen.

The drive into the office on Monday morning was a dismal one. A heavy rain clogged the 610 loop with cars jammed like logs bottlenecked in a stream. I didnt care. Id called in off and on all day Sunday hoping to have to rush into the office to follow up on a lead. I knew nothing waited for me at the office except another confrontation with the captain. Wed come up dry. Typically after broadcasting a composite of a suspect, wed be flooded with calls, but not this time, not a single lead, although not only newspapers but TV newscasts across the state had displayed the sketch along with our 800 number. It was as if this guy, whoever he was, didnt exist. We didnt even have reports of any strange cars in the neighborhoods at the times of the killings. Why didnt someone at least see the guys car? With the exception of his run-in with Lily Salas, this psycho was invisible.

Making my morning even more perfect, Id have to face the captain alone. David had called the day before from the airport. By now he was in Quantico, at FBI headquarters, consulting on another case.

"Morning, Sheila," I called out as I walked past her desk, grabbing a stack of phone messages and mail from my cubbyhole. "Captain in yet?"

A round, motherly woman with curly gray hair and a penchant for polyester slacks and brightly flowered rayon blouses, she frowned at me as if I were an errant child in need of discipline. From the beginning, shed treated me better than the other rangers, all men, who often caught her pointed barbs. Id always a.s.sumed she was proud that a woman had finally broken through the ranks. Today, she didnt seem sure.

"Hes been asking for you," she answered, her voice echoing my disappointment. "He wanted to know first thing this morning if any leads came in over the weekend. I gave him the bad news."

In my office, I flipped through a one-inch stack of pink message slips, hoping Sheila had missed something. I found a message from Friday, Maggies teacher, Mrs. Hansen. "Last few days, homework on time," it read. I couldnt help but smile.

The next was from Laurie Thomas, a.s.sistant to the director at the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"Ben," I whispered, picking up the telephone and pushing the b.u.t.ton for an outside line.

"We have a hit on the reconstruction photos you e-mailed in," said Laurie. "A kid named Darryl Robbins, age four. Disappeared about six months ago in Centerville, Texas. The mom and her boyfriend reported him missing."

"Dental records?" I asked.

"Kid doesnt have any," she said. "Weve called the medical examiners office, and theyre going to compare the DNA theyve got on file from the little guys skeleton to a sample from the mom. Put a rush on it."

"Thanks for filling me in."

"No problem," she said. "Ill let you know as soon as we have more news."

"If its him, whos our suspect?"

"Centerville P.D. is working on that, too, of course. Well call when they have something."

"Good."

Between Mrs. Hansens good news and Bens-maybe Id soon be able to call him Darryl-I felt vaguely rea.s.sured about my place in the world, as I hung up the phone and shuffled through the handful of mail that had acc.u.mulated in the week Id been too busy to bother with such mundane matters. Captain Williams, I knew, would be waiting. I was procrastinating, no doubt about it. Instead of admitting I had no idea where to go with the investigation, I paged through the departmental newsletter, skimming an article on a Dallas case solved by carpet-fiber a.n.a.lysis. Then, on the bottom of a stack of memos from headquarters, I found a slim, white, business-size envelope, my name printed in a small, precise, even hand.

Minutes later, I stood at Captain Williamss office door.

"I think youd better look at this," I said.

I handed the captain a sheet of unlined, white paper-the kind used in a copy machine or a laser printer-one Id encased in a protective plastic evidence sleeve. In the same careful hand as on the envelope, someone had written: Why do you pursue me?

Dont you know that I do the work of another?

"Our guy?" he asked.

"It came addressed to me, here at the office. This was in the envelope," I said, handing the captain a similarly preserved newspaper clipping-my photo cut from the front page of Friday mornings Houston Chronicle, the one taken as David and I left the scene of the Mary Gonzales homicide. The envelope was postmarked the same day the article ran, from a downtown Houston zip code, and must have arrived in Sat.u.r.days mail. It had been sitting on my desk all weekend.

"Whats he trying to tell us, that Lucas hired him?" asked the captain.

"Or that hes on a mission from G.o.d, which fits the profile Garrity and I have of him."

"Sign them into evidence and take them to the lab," the captain said. "Lets hope hes finally made a mistake and unknowingly sent you something we can use."

"Lets just take a look," said Frank Nguyen, a slight man with high cheekbones and an uneven trim of charcoal-black hair. Nguyen, whose parents had immigrated to Houston from Vietnam, was one of our best techs. Id never run into him outside the DPS lab, a cluttered collection of equipment in a fluorescent-lit room down the hall from our offices. At times, I wondered if he existed outside the lab walls. Id entertained a recurring fantasy that when we turned the office lights off at night, Nguyen unrolled a cot and slept next to his DNA separating apparatus.

Wearing latex gloves, Nguyen examined all three items, looking for fingerprints. He came up empty on the note and newspaper clipping but isolated two on the envelope. A quick comparison confirmed that neither matched the fragment from San Antonio. He then fed the prints into the computer and keyed in a command to compare each with AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a library of prints from past offenders across the nation. The computer clicked through until NO AVAILABLE MATCH printed across the screen.

"My guess is when we run them through the civil service files on post office employees well come up with matches. They most likely belong to whoever handled the letter in transit at the post office," he said. "They could even be someones in our office, like Sheilas, since she sorts the mail. Well do a broader search, but since the letter itself and the newspaper clip are clean, I dont think well get lucky."

"What next?"

"Lets see if any evidence piggybacked on the paper," he suggested.

Under the stereomicroscope, Frank examined the letter, starting at a magnification of six and working his way up to twenty-five. With each increase, the field of view diminished, and the white, smooth paper gradually transformed from a slick sheet to a substance that resembled tufts of layered cotton. It was a painstaking procedure.

"Heres something. It looks like electrostatic dust," he finally said.

"Whats it made up of?"

"Give me a minute," he answered, sounding excited. There was nothing better than this, I suspected, for Nguyen, using his equipment to zero in on hidden evidence.