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national missing persons database,’ Fennimore said without hesitation.
    â€˜I put the victim’s age and physical details on there,’ Hicks said. ‘You can also input reference DNA samples from the family. Soon as a new unnamed person’s DNA goes on there, it’s cross-checked with all the reference DNA on the system – if they reported her missing, we’ll get a name.’
    â€˜
If
it goes on the system,’ Fennimore said. NamUs was less than ten years old, and from what he remembered of the lecture he’d attended, the biggest difficulty they’d had was getting word of its existence out to front-line law-enforcement officers. ‘As I understand it, filling out the forms is not mandatory. Plus, her family would have to know she’s missing,
and
they would need to know about NamUs
and
they would have to give a damn.’
    She looked downhearted and he realized he’d jumped on one of his hobby horses and ridden it too hard. But Fennimore found it hard to apologize; Kate Simms always said that it was his least appealing characteristic. By way of making amends, he said, ‘What d’you need from me?’
    She showed no emotion, but he noticed she did put her foot on the gas. ‘Would you take a look at the files? They’re in the centre console.’ She patted the armrest.
    The possibility that the two cases were linked was slight. But he was here because he had time to spare, and Abigail Hicks was a pleasant distraction from his own concerns. He lifted up the armrest and drew out two folders. One bore the six-point star of Creek County Sheriff’s Department. He didn’t ask how she’d got hold of a file from a county sheriff she no longer worked for, but he admired her resourcefulness.
    They drove past sagging wooden shacks – a hairdresser’s, two bait shops, one derelict – then on into the town proper. Westfield was a solid Midwest town; the architecture mainly early twentieth century, square-built red stone, except for the Court House, which gleamed white, set back from the road amongst lawns and trees and bright municipal flowerbeds. But every third shop on Main Street was closed down and, at 9.15 in the morning, it was empty of people.
    The Creek County victim that Hicks had found and almost lost entirely, three years back, was Shayla Reed, twenty-two.
    â€˜Shayla was taken into foster care after her momma died of an overdose and her daddy walked out, leaving her and her baby sister in a two-room rental with a packet of Cheetos and a can of Tab each,’ Hicks said. ‘Shayla ended up in foster home after foster home, and drifted into addiction and occasional prostitution.’
    Shayla’s body had been found by Deputy Hicks’s fishermen several months after she was dumped.
    â€˜We ID’d her through NamUs,’ Hicks said. ‘It happened that her sister checked out the website for the first time just after I put Shayla’s details on there – you believe that? Shayla had been out of touch. At first, her not being around seemed like a good thing, ’cos all she ever wanted was a handout. But it wasn’t like Shayla to miss birthdays and Thanksgiving. She wasn’t at her last known address, so her sister did an online search, found NamUs, typed in her distinguishing features.
    â€˜There’s a snapshot of Shayla with her sister’s kids – it’s in a buff envelope, near the back of the file.’
    Fennimore rooted through and discovered an 8 x 5 glossy: Shayla, laughing, on her hands and knees with a toddler riding bronco on her back. He flipped the photo; the inscription read, ‘Shayla on Bobbie’s fourth birthday. Happy times.’
    Shayla had been living on a trailer park just off Interstate 44 in Creek County. Fennimore skimmed the rest of the report, and his eye snagged on a detail that Hicks had chosen not to mention.
    â€˜There was a child,’ he