By the time Canham had finished interviewing Ellen Storey, the word had spread that he was looking for people who had seen Hayden on Friday. A small queue of eager witnesses sat on chairs in the hallway outside the room he was using.
Detective Price had spent a feverish hour on the station phone. He’d reached Dr. Robert Pyle’s host in Santa Barbara only to learn that his quarry had flown to Seattle, driven home to Gray’s River, and almost immediately left for Fairbanks, Alaska. Price had managed, through the airline, to be in touch with the rental-car agency Pyle had used and the Alaska State Troopers were alerted to the license numbers for the Ford Focus he’d rented. Now Price returned to the operations center, resignedly set to take notes.
First called from among the would-be witnesses
