were all in the backyard together.”

“How many times have they been interviewed?”

“Before the lawsuit, probably around a dozen times each.”

“And the story never changed?”

“Never.” Meaning the family probably wasn’t involved. Cracks in the timeline would have shown up by now. Or they all had too much to lose.

“Fisher did all the interrogations?”

“Yeah, and he went after them every which way—soft, hard, alone, together. At the station. At home. Everything.”

Gil didn’t say it, but this was what he had feared—contamination so deep that the truth might never come out. Gil had known Fisher, of course. He had been a good guy who tried hard, but his interview skills were heavy-handed—and sloppy.

“Did anyone in the family take a polygraph?”

“By the time we got to that, there was the lawsuit.”

“Okay, so the family is out as an information source. What about suspects? Were there any?”

“No. We checked all known sex offenders, everything. There was never a viable suspect. That’s why we thought she drowned in the arroyo and her body just hadn’t been found yet.”

“Tell me about the evidence.”

“There wasn’t any. I mean, nothing. She was just gone.”

“What about fingerprints or footprints?”

“The only fingerprints were the family’s. As for footprints, it was monsoon season. It rained five inches in one hour. When I got there the arroyo was flooded and the backyard was soup.”

“All right. So tell me about what you did when you first arrived.”

“All right,” Joe said, shifting in his seat. “Umm . . . I got there a little after 2:00 P.M. Ashley, the mom, answered the door.”

“How did she seem?”

“Freaked out. She said they were all in the backyard grilling when it started to rain. One second Brianna was there, the next she was gone. She said she looked for Brianna for about fifteen minutes before she called 911.”

“Then what?”

“I searched the house.”

“You didn’t call it in?”

“No, I was thinking about the JonBenét case where she was inside the house the whole time but they spent hours looking for her.”

“How long did it take you?”

Joe was agitated, shifting in his seat. “Too long. I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes.”

“What was Ashley doing?”

“Helping me.”

“Where was everyone else?”

“Umm . . . the two kids—the cousin, Justin, and his girlfriend, Laura—were out walking around looking for her. I heard them yelling for Brianna across the arroyo. Rose, Ashley’s mom, was talking to neighbors, I guess, knocking on doors.”

“Is that everyone?”

“Alex, Ashley’s boyfriend, was driving around looking for her.”

“What did you see when you searched the house?”

“Nothing weird. In the kitchen they had food out for the barbecue. A few empty beer bottles. That’s it.”

“What about out back?”

“The grill was open and there was some food still out, soaked. I walked to the arroyo and it was overflowing, going a mile a minute.”

“When did you call for backup?”

“I called Garcia—he was the officer on duty that day—and everybody was there in just a few minutes. Fisher was the detective on call. So between all of us we started a ground search within about a half hour of her going missing. Turn here,” Joe said, pointing to the right. “It’s the third house on the left . . . That’s pretty much it,” he said as Gil pulled up.

Lucy sat at a booth in Denny’s and tried to listen to Gerald and the fire fighters across from her talk about hoses, as they had been doing for ten minutes, but her mind drifted as she gazed unfocused out the restaurant windows.

She looked down at her T-shirt, which read PIÑON VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT with an emblem over her left chest. Their department was a ragtag of volunteers, some who were firefighters only, some who were medics only, and some, like Gerald, who were both. Lucy felt bad that people might assume from her shirt that she was a firefighter when she was only a first responder. The lowest of the low on the totem pole of medics, with paramedics—referred to mockingly as para-gods behind their backs—at the top.

Since Gerald, sitting across from her and discussing hoses with zeal, was the paramedic in charge at her department, she guessed that made him her para-god. Lucy smiled to herself. Praise and glory to Gerald in the highest.

Lucy hoped her pager would go off again. She was exhausted but wired, and wanted something more interesting before she went into work.

She yawned and glanced around. Denny’s at 9:00 A.M. was its regular combination of elderly couples that didn’t look at each other and men in trucker hats who didn’t