Chapter 10: The Partial Plate
The historical registration search on the partial plate returned three possible matches from the relevant year and region.
Two were eliminated quickly—one vehicle had been junked before the date of Abigail’s disappearance, the other belonged to an owner who was documented out of state that entire month. The third matched a dark sedan registered to a man who had lived, at the time, within a forty-minute drive of the lake road. The detective ran the name through the original case database and found no prior appearance. There had been no interview, no tip, no reason for the man to have entered the file when the working theory remained a solitary lapse in supervision. Now there was a reason.
I was informed in the same measured tone the detective had used since the first meeting after the funeral. The man would be located and, if possible, interviewed. The description from my father’s statement would be compared against any available photographs or recollections. None of this, the detective reminded me, constituted evidence that the man had been at the fence line. It constituted only the first viable name that had ever attached to the physical details my father had withheld. I received the information, thanked him, and drove home along the lake road without stopping at the easement. The path did not need another visit. The distances were already permanent in my body.
