They had done portions of this stretch before, primarily to compare the journey with various sightings of Kalfus on closed-circuit cameras or burglaries he was believed to have committed.

This time around, they weren’t only looking for gas stations where he’d stopped, or pawnshops, or food stores, or people’s houses. Now, in a concession to frustration and thoroughness, they were checking every stop, regardless of the apparent reason why.

Which brought them at last to a pull-off used by New Hampshire’s department of highway maintenance, complete with a padlocked shed, a pile of broken asphalt, and two dumpsters.

“You sure?” Lester asked his partner, who had a computer tablet balanced on her knees, featuring the Mercedes’s downloaded map.

“According to this. Time stamp has him parked here ten minutes.”

Lester killed the engine. “Okay,” he said, sounding bored. “Long enough to take a leak behind the shed.”

They got out and looked around, finding little more than what they’d seen at first glance.

“Could he’ve broken in there?” Sam asked, seeing Lester studying the shed’s lock.

“Not if this was closed. You never got a hit to your inquiry about break-ins concerning this place, did you? Or anything featuring the DOT?”

“Not that fit our time frame.”

“Then I’d say no,” he announced, releasing the padlock, which rattled against the hasp. “There’re no signs of anyone monkeying with it. Anything in the dumpsters?”

She’d checked one and was peering into the other. “Both empty. What did you find?” she asked. He was on his knees, reaching under the shed’s slightly raised northern corner, elevated to keep it level on the uneven grade.

He pulled out a two-by-four, about three feet long. “You have your blood testing kit with you?” he asked.

She crossed over and looked at the end of the stick he was studying. It was discolored by some rusty-looking dried liquid, familiar in appearance to both of them.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I do.”

The test was fast, reliable, and designed to react only to human blood. This it did.

“Okay,” Lester said, admiring the color change at the end of the testing swab. “We have a winner.”

“How did you notice it?” she asked.

“A couple of inches were poking out as if somebody shoved it under there, but not far enough. Funny thing to do, I thought.”

He looked around them, adding, “Where’s a security camera when you need one?”

Suitably, given the purpose of this pull-off, there was a truck yard across the street, with garages, repair bays, a refueling station, and more, all belonging to a commercial haulage service.

“Ya think?” he asked.

“Worth a try,” she agreed.

They carefully placed their find in a cardboard evidence box intended for long guns, took one last look around, and crossed the highway to the business’s front office.

Expecting little, they showed their badges to the manager behind the counter and were led to a break room in the back—cluttered and dirty—where their escort showed them a small stacked bank of dusty recorders, along with one flat-screen monitor divided into eight video squares.