Passing the buck to him. Or maybe not. Pauline’s body was in his jurisdiction. Decker said, “Will do.” He hung up, and then he stopped walking. “Regarding Pauline Corbett’s car … any news on that?”

“If there was recent news, you’d know about it,” McAdams said. “A BOLO went out for Corbett’s vehicle when Elsie went missing. If Brock Baer is using the car, there haven’t been any sightings of the vehicle.”

“Do we know that for sure?”

“No official has called us.”

“We’re a small town,” Decker said. “We don’t have access to current databases that the big cities have.”

“What are you talking about?” McAdams asked. “You don’t think the BOLO went out nationwide?”

“No, I’m sure it did, but there are better ways to capture the license plate info,” Decker said. “Most major cities have automated license plate readers on the back of their patrol cars. It’s a camera, like a tollbooth camera or a red-light camera, that uploads thousands of license plates that pass in front of the lens. When police see a vehicle that they think is suspect, if they are equipped with ALPRs, the suspected plate number can be uploaded and run through the database, which will spit back info about the car in seconds. Furthermore, if they are hooked up to the system and the patrol car cameras happen to scan a vehicle in the database, the system will alert the officers. Then they can act on the information.”

McAdams regarded Decker. “You’re just telling me about this now?”

“First of all, it’s a newer technology, ten to fifteen years old. Secondly, the database isn’t a governmental system like CODIS or AFIS. Big-city departments usually contract out to private companies who can accommodate that much information. We’re talking thousands of cars in a day. Certainly, our little department is too small to pay for something like that, mainly because we’re low crime and we don’t need that much information. I suspect it’s the same with Baniff. But Philadelphia is a big city. Let me call Cindy and see if the city has ALPRs on their patrol cars. Maybe I can have her enter Pauline’s plates in the system.”

“That would be helpful.” McAdams paused midstride. Then he said, “Don’t you think that Baer, if he was using Pauline’s car, would change the plates?”

“Maybe. But guys like him are usually lazy. Let’s at least get the plates into the system. The companies that own the databases also store info about tollbooth cameras, and there are a lot of tollbooths in this area. Maybe Baer went through a tollbooth in Pauline’s car before he changed plates.”

McAdams said, “It’s a good idea.”