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morning I had my partner do some checking on past crimes in Cochise County and he found something interesting.”
    It has always amazed me how quickly handsome men can turn ugly, but Avery accomplished just that. His mouth hardened into a dangerous line. “We’re done here.”
    I stood my ground. “A couple of months before 9/11, a little girl named Tujin Rafik went missing from Los Perdidos. Her family had recently immigrated here from northern Iraq to work at that insecticide plant. You were new on the job then, and maybe not as sharp as you are now. The night she didn’t come home from school, you released a statement that she probably just ran away, since you’d been told that with her language difficulties and all, she was having trouble in school. I’ll bet you regret that statement now.”
    No answer.
    Taking his silence for agreement, I continued. “After Tujin had been missing for several days without a sighting, you realized you’d screwed up big time and initiated a house-to-house search. You never found her.”
    Jimmy had shown me a picture of the girl printed in the
Cochise County Observer
at the time of her disappearance. The expression on Tujin’s face hinted at a difficult life. I’d never seen such sad eyes.
    The sheriff wasn’t impressed. “That partner of yours ought to try out for a job down here. If he can stand the pace.”
    I ignored the barb. “Tujin Rafik was seven when she disappeared. Precious Doe looked around seven, too.” Seven. The same age I’d been when…Best to keep my mind off that terrible memory.
    “What does the age matter?” Avery was determined to give nothing away.
    “Come on, Sheriff. Everybody in law enforcement knows that most child molesters have individual preferences for certain age groups. Looks like you’ve got one who likes seven-year-olds.”
    “Maybe.”
    I finished summoning up the Tujin Rafik case. “Several months after Tujin disappeared, those planes flew into the World Trade Center. A couple of months after that, her family returned to Iraq.”
    His eyes flickered. “Can you blame them?”
    “Usually with these child disappearances, the parents stay in the same house until it falls down around their ears, hoping the missing kid will eventually find his or her way home.”
    A bitter laugh. “Oh, come on, Ms. Jones. You know as well as I do that the mood toward anyone who appeared Muslim turned pretty ugly after 9/11. A lot of Middle Easterners got roughed up, even killed. Some of ours split for Phoenix, where they wouldn’t stand out quite so much. A few, like the Rafiks, returned to their home countries. They were just part of the general exodus.”
    I didn’t buy it. “Let’s see if I have this straight. Several years ago, an Iraqi child went missing from your area, and this past weekend we found a dead girl of about the same age who just happens to be black. That makes
two
girls,
two
minorities,
both
around seven years old. I’ve been doing some thinking about the white cloth on Precious Doe, and I’m no longer sure it was just some anonymous wrapping or shroud. Maybe it was tribal dress. You not only have a sizeable Mideastern community here in Los Perdidos, you also have a lot of Africans, all lured by the jobs at the insecticide plant.”
    Avery answered quickly. “Nice theory, but after 9/11, the traditionals were the first to leave town. By and large, the Africans who stayed turned more Western than Wyatt Earp. They hang out at the library and volunteer during Los Perdidos Apache Days. As for their dress, most of them wear tee shirts and jeans, just like you.”
    The American stewpot, with various nationalities blending merrily away,
if
the sheriff was to be believed. But one young girl was dead, another missing and presumed dead. I didn’t believe in coincidences, and told him so, finishing with another question. “Have you contacted the FBI?”
    “Of course, and they have the investigation well in hand.” He didn’t sound