Sussex County Police Department

The Sussex County Police Department enters the story at two moments of crisis: the search for Haley McWaid and the investigation after Dan Mercer is shot. Through the department’s officers and Sheriff Mickey Walker, the novel presents local policing as a process of responding to incomplete information, with both cases shaped by what cannot yet be established.

Identity and Presence

The department is identified through Sheriff Mickey Walker, who introduces himself to Wendy Tynes as its sheriff. Uniformed officers are also present at the Wykertown trailer where Dan Mercer had fallen. The evidence offers no broader account of the department’s organization or routine operations; its role is rendered through these encounters and the investigations surrounding them.

Response to Haley’s Disappearance

The search begins when Marcia McWaid finds that Haley’s clothes are missing from the hamper and that her toothbrush, sink, and shower are all dry. Marcia and Ted McWaid go to captain’s practice and learn Haley never arrived. They contact her friends, send an email appeal, and call local police, but no one can say where she is. Despite the parents’ protests, the police initially believe Haley is a runaway, a young person who has left to blow off steam.

The response changes as time passes without news. The FBI is brought in forty-eight hours after Haley’s disappearance, yet there is still no sign of her after a week. A month passes, then two; only in the third month does news arrive. The account stresses the duration of the search and the family’s uncertainty, without detailing the department’s search methods or specifying the content of that eventual news.

The Mercer Shooting Investigation

After Dan is shot at the trailer, an officer keeps Wendy in a police vehicle with the engine off, asking questions and periodically radioing what she has said to another officer. Wendy tells him what she knows, including her suspicion that Ed Grayson was responsible. More than half an hour later, Sheriff Walker arrives and asks Wendy to step out. When she asks whether the shooter has been caught, he does not answer; he walks toward the trailer, and she follows.

Inside, two uniformed officers are already at the scene. Dan is gone. Wendy asks whether the body has been removed, while recognizing that no ambulance, crime-scene van, or hearse has passed her. The department’s presence at the scene therefore does not resolve the central fact of the case: the person who was shot cannot be found there.

Evidence and Investigative Limits

A later off-the-record assessment of the shooting identifies the obstacles facing investigators: there is no body, no weapon, and only one witness. Wendy did not see the shooter’s face and cannot positively identify him. The account does not present these gaps as proof that no investigation is possible; an investigator says the plan is to retrace Mercer’s steps and determine where he had been living.

That inquiry points away from the trailer as a settled residence. Mercer had moved frequently, and, according to the account, had rented the trailer that very morning. There was nothing there, not even a change of clothes. The search for his prior living places offers a line of inquiry, but the missing body, absent weapon, and limits of the witness’s identification leave the shooting unresolved in the evidence presented.