"I know Erik's heart," Meagan Good begins. "I know he would never do this if he knew drugs were involved He's just a big kid, a big goofy kid."

The young actress who earned critical acclaim in the film Eve's Bayou, and earned a weekly paycheck on the series My Cousin Skeeter, is sitting at Sherry Audé's dining room table. She's part of a small contingent of young Hollywood actors who've made the 60-mile trek from L.A . on a Wednesday in April to the high desert for a weekly prayer vigil in the town where Audé grew up.

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Every week at 8:30 p.m., friends and family and business acquaintances gather in Sherry's living room, underneath that massive picture of Audé, to say the Lord's Prayer.

"He promised me that at the exact same time, he'd say it in his cell," Sherry Audé says.

Sure, they've also come to try to get a little more publicity for Audé's case. Sherry hopes that she can force the DEA or the FBI or anyone else who might listen to launch a major investigation in to Rai's L.A. operation. She is convinced it would be a small step from there to prove that her son was an innocent dupe. And maybe, just maybe, somebody in the U.S. government might take pity on Audé and try to persuade the Pakistanis to let him go. Stranger things have happened. After all, this is L.A., a place where things that are too good to be true happen all the time.

But it probably won't happen this time. To the DEA in Islamabad and L.A., Audé's case is very low on the list of priorities. The DEA agents in Islamabad certainly didn't have the resources to pursue an aggressive investigation, sources have said. And by the time DEA agents in Los Angeles finally got the case file and started interviewing Audé's friends back in California two months after his arrest Rai had vanished without a trace.

Besides, as one source in the U.S. acknowledged, the DEA was already convinced that Audé was guilty, and further investigation "would only implicate him more."