Chapters (73)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Part IAnnie
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Part IIHarry
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Part IIIAnnie
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Part IVHarry
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Part VAnnie
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
Back at the station, he logged in to the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles and entered the plate from Nabler’s truck.
And nothing came back.
Harry wondered whether he had copied it down wrong. Did he mistake a lowercase letter l for the numeral 1? No, he hadn’t, because the plate contained neither. He had written it down clearly, legibly. So he entered the plate into the system again.
And again, nothing came back.
He put in a call to someone he knew at the DMV. “I got a plate that when I enter it I’m coming up with nothing,” he told the woman who took his call after identifying himself.
“Let me try it,” she said. He could hear her tapping away on a keyboard. “Chief, there is no such plate.”
“Yes, there is. It’s on the guy’s van.” Harry had encountered stolen plates plenty of times, but never ones that were outright fake.
“Well, there’s no plate that’s been issued by the state of Vermont that matches what you’ve given me. You sure it was a Vermont plate?”
Harry sighed. “I can read. It said Vermont on the plate. I’ve done this before. And to the best of my knowledge, there’s not another state in these United States of America that has green plates like Vermont’s.”
“You don’t have to get snippy, sir.”
“Forget the plate. Run a name for me. I want to see if this guy I’m looking at has a driver’s license more legit than his plate.”
“Go ahead.”
“Edwin Nabler.” He spelled it.
“Middle name or initial?”
“Don’t know.”
More tapping in the background.
“There’s no one in Vermont with a driver’s license by that name,” the woman said.
Harry said nothing.
“Chief?”
“Thanks,” he said, and ended the call.
He tried some non-vehicle-related databases, entering the name Edwin Nabler. When one came up short, he tried another, and then another.
Until he gave up. As best Harry could tell, there wasn’t a single governmental agency in the US that knew one damn thing about Edwin Nabler, because Edwin Nabler did not exist.
If he wanted to nail Nabler for something, all he’d have to do is spot him driving that van around town one day, pull him over, ask for his license and registration, and when he couldn’t come up with anything, bring him in. Ask him who the fuck he really was.
Harry could do that.
But it wouldn’t get him any further ahead in trying to figure out how—and if—Nabler was linked to those bizarre events. Harry couldn’t move precipitously. He needed to watch the guy first, see what he was up to, learn his routine.