Newark has a small but consequential place in the investigation: it is named as the location of a workplace near the airport and becomes the destination Grace Lawson chooses when she tries to reach Scott Duncan through federal authority.

Industrial workplace

An interview identifies Newark as the site of a Budweiser plant near the airport, where the man being discussed had worked. The exchange supplies no further detail about the plant or the worker’s connection to the investigation, but it gives Newark a concrete industrial presence within the book’s scattered geography.

Federal authority and distance

Newark also enters Grace’s thinking as the possible location of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She believes that Scott Duncan, who works there, might have the influence to help and, above all, would believe her. Unsure whether the office was in Newark or Trenton, she rules out Trenton as too far to travel and decides to try Newark first; the city is presented as the nearer, more practical route to assistance, not as a place she has already visited.

A place reached by phone

Grace makes the call while her children are inside their school. After checking her pocket for Duncan’s cell number and finding it empty, she uses directory assistance to find the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark and pays an extra thirty-five cents to have the operator place the call. She asks for the U.S. Attorney for the state of New Jersey, then requests Scott Duncan. Newark thus functions less as a fully depicted setting than as a point of contact: a workplace in one strand of the investigation and, in another, the address Grace tries to turn into help.