Louisa nodded. “We got a nice shot of the plates.” She opened the notebook that she carried and handed them a piece of paper. “Belongs to Pierce Dowl, who lives in Madison. We already passed his address along to our friends there and officers have checked his house. Vehicle is there. No sign of anybody in the house or that anybody has been there for several days. No milk in the fridge. No dirty dishes in the sink.” She stopped. “No odd men with matching clothes.”

“Where does this leave us?” Rena asked.

“I don’t know,” Louisa said. “I’ve looked at video of this same route for Thursday, Friday and today. They never ride that bus again.”

They were gone. Just like Emma. “Thank you, Louisa,” A.L. said. “This has been very helpful. Do you know if somebody is watching this house, seeing if Pierce Dowl returns?”

“They are. Normally, I guess it would be hard to get the resources to do that. But they know what we’re working on here. Everybody is willing to help.”

Rena waited until Louisa was packed up and out of the room before saying, “We don’t need help. We need a miracle.”

“We keep working the case,” A.L. said. “And it’s time to make this official.” He typed on his computer keyboard for several minutes. “Coyote Frogg and his unnamed associate are now identified as Persons of Interest in the disappearance of Emma Whitman. We know that Coyote Frogg was in Baywood on both Monday and Wednesday of this past week. He’s living nearby. We need to get everybody looking and run him to ground.”

“There may not be much more we can do tonight,” Rena said.

“Two more things.” A.L. picked up his smart phone and started pressing keys. “Here it is,” he said. He held his phone out to Rena.

It was a web page for the city of Baywood.

“Look in the middle—there’s a section about the Activities Committee.” She looked and sure enough, it listed the cochairs of the group as Steven Hanzel and Kara Wiese.

“Kara was telling the truth,” she said.

“Looks like it,” A.L. agreed. “No affair, just innocent fun and community service.” He turned to his computer and started typing. Finally looked up. “That was the second thing. I just sent a message that will get distributed to every one of our officers, county and state, about the bib overalls and the red Wisconsin T-shirts. Somebody will know where those are sold.”

“Red Wisconsin T-shirts are sold everywhere,” Rena said.

“Yeah, but not with bib overalls, and we’re specifically looking for a place with limited choices. I put all that in the message.”