"All right," the captain said. "You all have a picture of the girl. Samantha. We're asking that you help us get it out there, and, uh-if people see her, you know, citizens. You can call that special task force hotline, which-you have that number, too, in the media. And if we can, uh, circulate the number, and the picture, let's get this girl back. Alive." He gave the room his money shot, a determined and virile glare straight into the cameras, and held it for a beat before he said, "Thank you for your help." And he stood there for a moment longer with his manly jaw clenched, to give the photographers one last good shot of his commanding facial features, and then he said, "All right, that's it," and turned away.

Predictably enough, the room erupted into enormously loud chaos, but Matthews just waved an arm and turned away to say comforting things to the Aldovars, and that really was it. I pushed forward to get to Deborah, collecting and distributing several hard elbows to the ribs along the way. I found my sister standing off to the side, opening and closing her fists. A little bit of color had returned to her cheeks and she looked oddly rumpled, as if somebody had just woken her from a bad dream.

"If I ever have to do that again," she said through her teeth, "I'll turn in my goddamn badge."

"If you ever try to do it again," I said, "Captain Matthews will take it from you himself."

"Jesus fuck," she said. "Was it as bad as it felt?"

"Oh, no," I said. "Much worse."

I suppose my sour mood prevented me from seeing it coming, but Debs whacked me with an arm punch. On the one hand, it was nice to see her recovering from her ordeal. But on the other hand, it really hurt.

"Thanks for the support," she said. "Let's get out of here." She turned and began pushing angrily through the crowd, and I followed, rubbing my arm.

Reporters are odd creatures. They have to think very highly of themselves in order to do their job at all, and clearly some of them who had seen Deborah's pitiful performance must have been very good at that kind of self-delusion, because they apparently believed that if they only shoved a microphone at Debs and shouted a question, she would cave in under the pressure of their perfect hair and teeth and blurt out an answer. Unfortunately for their professional self-esteem, however, Deborah just kept moving forward, batting away anything they put in front of her, and pushing hard at anyone foolish enough to stand in her way. And even the reporters standing back toward the exit, who saw quite clearly what happened to their colleagues, thought so highly of themselves that they tried the exact same thing-and seemed surprised when they got the same result.

Because I was following Deborah, several of them eyed me speculatively, but after many years of diligent maintenance, my disguise was too good for them, and they all decided that I was exactly what I wanted to appear-an absolute nonentity with no answers to anything. And so, relatively unmolested, battered only on the upper arm from Deborah's arm punch, I made it out of the press conference and, with my sister, back to the task force command center on the second floor.

Somewhere along the way, Deke joined us, trickling in behind to lean against the wall. Somebody had set up a coffee machine and Deborah poured some into a Styrofoam cup. She sipped it and made a face. "This is worse than the coffee service stuff," she said.

"We could go for breakfast," I said hopefully.

Debs put down the cup and sat down. "We got too much to do," she said. "What time is it?"

"Eight forty-five," Deke said, and Deborah looked at him sourly, as if he had chosen an unpleasant time. "What," he said. "It is."

The door swung open and Detective Hood came in. "I am so fucking good I scare myself," he said as he swaggered over and slumped into a seat in front of Deborah.

"Scare me, too, Richard," Deborah said. "What have you got?"

Hood pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. "In record time," he said. "Tyler Spanos's 2009 blue convertible Porsche." He flicked a finger at the paper, making a popping sound. "Guy runs a chop shop, he owed me a favor; I cut him a break last year." He shrugged. "It woulda been his third fall, so he called me with this." He flicked the paper again. "It's in a repaint place up at Opa-Locka," he said. "I got a squad car there now, holding the guys were painting it, a couple of Haitians." He tossed the paper on the desk in front of Deborah. "Who's your daddy?" he said.

"Get out there," Debs said. "I want to know who sold it to them, and I don't care how you find out."

Hood gave her a huge meat-eating smile. "Cool," he said. "Sometimes I love this job." He slid up and out of the chair with a surprising grace and was out the door and away, whistling "Here Comes the Sun."

Deborah watched him go and as the door swung closed she said, "Our first break, and that dickhead gets it for me."

"Hey, I dunno, break?" Deke said. "By the time they're painting it, won't be any prints or anything."

Debs looked at him with an expression that would have sent me scurrying under the furniture. "Somebody got stupid, Deke," she said, with a little extra emphasis on the word "stupid." "They should have put the car in a sinkhole, but somebody wanted to make a quick couple of grand, so they sold it. And if we find who sold it to them-"

"We find the girl," Deke said.

Deborah looked at him, and her face looked almost fond. "That's right, Deke," she said. "We find the girl."

"Okay, then," Deke said.

The door swung open again, and Detective Alvarez came in. "You're gonna love this," he said, and Deborah looked at him expectantly.

"You found Bobby Acosta?" she said.

Alvarez shook his head. "The Spanos family is here to see you," he said.

If the man who came through the door first was Mr. Spanos, then Tyler's father was a twenty-eight-year-old bodybuilder with a ponytail and a suspicious bulge under his left arm. That would have meant he fathered Tyler at the age of ten, which seemed to be pushing the envelope, even in Miami. But whoever this man was, he was very serious, and he looked the room over carefully, which included glaring at me and Deke, before he stuck his head back into the hall and nodded.

The next man into the room looked a little bit more like you would hope a teenage girl's father might look. He was middle-aged, relatively short, and a little chubby, with thinning hair and gold-rimmed glasses. His face was sweaty and tired and his mouth hung open as if he had to gasp for breath. He staggered into the room, looked helplessly around for a moment, and then stood in front of Deborah, blinking and breathing heavily.

A woman came hustling in behind him. She was younger and several inches taller, with reddish blond hair and way too much very good jewelry. She was followed by another young bodybuilder, this time with a buzz cut instead of a ponytail. He carried a medium-size aluminum suitcase and he closed the door behind him and leaned against the doorframe. The woman marched over to where Deborah sat, pulled a chair out, and guided Mr. Spanos into it. "Sit down," she said to him. "And close your mouth." Mr. Spanos looked at her, blinked some more, and then let her lever him into the chair by his elbow, although he did not close his mouth.

The woman looked around and found another chair at the conference table, and pulled it over beside Mr. Spanos. She sat, looked at him, and then shook her head before turning her attention to Deborah.

"Sergeant-Morgan?" she said, as if unsure of the name.

"That's right," Deborah said.

The woman looked hard at Deborah for a moment, as if she was hoping my sister would morph into Clint Eastwood. She pursed her lips, took a breath, and said, "I'm Daphne Spanos. Tyler's mother."