“Not to pour cold water on things, but we need to accept that the vehicle in the video on the road near Lucifer’s Notch may not have any role in the disappearance at the Green Rolling Hills Inn,” said Greg Rayner, the FBI’s resident agent, who was on the conference call from Rutland.

“Think about it,” Rayner continued. “If our suspect wanted to abduct her, he’d do it in the remote area, where he has her isolated. Why would he pursue her to the motel on the long-shot chance she’d leave her room?”

“We don’t know,” Noble said. “Maybe he wanted to play cat and mouse, build up the hunt, for the thrill of it all? And maybe you’re right, that the stalker pickup on the road is not involved. But until we find it, question the driver, and process it, we can’t rule it out.”

“It might be out of state, or from Canada,” Billersby said.

“Yes, but before this, we had next to nothing. Now we’ve narrowed it to a pickup truck, no older than five years.”

Keys clicked at the table as Detective Kay Kellerman, resident math champion and cyberexpert, worked on her laptop. Her quick research showed that according to state motor vehicle registrations, Vermont had approximately 620,000 vehicles of all types. Of that number, about 360,000 were trucks of all types. Of that number, about 180,000 were classified as light trucks; and that included commercial fleets, publicly owned vehicles, like city and state trucks, and private vehicles.

“So that’s our suspect pool just in Vermont, Rod. One hundred and eighty thousand, give or take,” Kellerman said.

Someone at the table whistled. “That’s a huge pool.”

Noble steepled his fingers before his chin and thought.

“We can run a program to eliminate all vehicles older than five years,” he said. “Then we can go to our tire impressions from the motel, and reduce the number there to only tread patterns for tires used on light trucks.”

“What do you suggest we do after that?” Billersby asked.

“We start a canvass of pickup truck owners—check timelines, alibis, criminal histories, the sex offender registry—and we grab tire impressions for comparison. We start with those owners nearest the motel, and fan out.”

Billersby absorbed Noble’s strategy.

“That’s a helluva lot of work requiring a lot of resources.” Billersby tapped his pen on his notepad, weighing matters.

“Captain,” Noble said, “before this, we had nothing. Now, the university has given us a haystack. It’s up to us to find the needle.”

“All right,” Billersby said. “I’ll make some calls, get some extra bodies, and we’ll get to work.”

Noble nodded, then joined the others at the table in looking at the large monitor. As a screen saver, someone had installed the Missing Person poster for Samantha Moore.

She stared down at the group, her eyes shining like falling stars.

CHAPTER 18

Northern Vermont