Highway 101 appears as a geographic marker in the aftermath of Polly’s disappearance: she is found in a shallow grave behind the road after months of searching. The location gives the search a stark physical endpoint, while the discovery helps separate Jessica’s imagined connection to the crime from what investigators established.

Setting and Identification

The road is named as Highway 101, with the grave located behind it in Sonoma County. The account does not describe the highway itself or specify a precise point along its route; its importance here is as a landmark locating the discovery.

Polly’s Discovery

By the time Polly was found, more than four thousand people had searched Sonoma County for her, and a black-and-white copy of her school photograph had been posted across California. The grave behind Highway 101 ended that prolonged search with confirmation of her death.

Narrative Significance

The discovery also undercuts Jessica’s fear that the man she encountered had been seeking her and took Polly instead. The killer proves to be an old man whose resemblance to the image of Charlie on a flyer was only an effect of imagination or light. Highway 101 thus anchors the moment when the story’s public search reaches a concrete, devastating answer, even as Jessica continues to feel that Polly’s fate and her own encounter are connected by something less tangible than fact.