Really, she said. She decided to go in a different direction. You said you saw the car?

Speeding off, yeah. A van. I just caught a glimpse of it. It might have been the same van that was parked across from the dealership, the one that belonged to the guy who tried to kill me.

Maybe he's going to keep doing this until he gets it right, Jennings said.

A uniformed cop came out of the house and said to Jennings, There's something upstairs you should see.

Jennings looked at me like I should know what the officer was talking about. I shrugged. I followed her, and the uniform, into the house and up the stairs. The cop stopped outside the bathroom door in the upstairs hallway and pointed inside.

We found those, he said.

He was pointing to some bloodied towels, wadded up and tossed onto the floor beyond the toilet.

Jennings looked at me. That your blood?

No, I said. But We're going to have to get that bagged, Jennings said to the cop. Forensics here yet?

Just arriving, the cop said.

Jennings said to me, I thought you said no one got hit.

I can explain those, I said. You don't have to do anything. I mean, forensics-wise.

Come with me, Jennings said, heading back downstairs and into the kitchen, where there was less traffic. Explain.

You know Sydney's friend, Patty Swain?

Jennings, who had what I would call a poker face most of the time, did something with her eyes. They seemed to pop for a hundredth of a second.

Yes, she said.

She called me late last night. She was at a party down on the beach strip. She'd had a lot to drink and she'd hurt herself.

Go on.

She asked me to come and get her. When the phone rang, and I picked up, I thought it was Syd calling for a second. They almost sound the same on the phone.

And why did she call you?

I guess she felt she didn't have anyone else.

Why's that?

Her father left years ago, and she says her mother's a bit of a this isn't me saying this, this is Patty, and Syd's made comments in the past she says her mother's a bit of a drunk. Said even if she called home, her mother wouldn't have been able to come and get her.

So you went, Jennings said.

I sighed. Yeah. I was pretty exhausted, but it's not like she was calling from far away. So I drove down, found her, and brought her back here. It was pretty ugly down there, guys getting a bit aggressive, you know? I offered to drive her back to her own place, but there was no way she'd let me take her there. Her knee was cut up pretty bad.

What happened?

She fell on some broken glass.

And you patched her up?

I brought her into the house, got her cleaned up in the bathroom up there. I blotted up some of the blood with the towels, tossed them in the corner, forgot all about them when I headed out this morning.

Jennings was wearing a very serious expression.

What? I asked. It's not a big deal. I mean, set your forensics people loose on the towels if you want, but that's all it was.

What happened after you took care of her knee?

Okay, well, I bandaged it up, and then I offered again to take her home, but she didn't want to leave, so I said she could sleep in Sydney's room for the night.

Really, Jennings said.

Maybe that was stupid, I said. But she said that if I drove her home, she'd just run off someplace, and the idea of a teenage girl, who'd been drinking, wandering around town on her own in the middle of the night, didn't seem like a good idea to me.

Of course not.

The fact is, I don't know whether she stayed here for the night or not, I said. I went straight to bed and when I got up in the morning she was already gone and the bed didn't even look as though it had been slept in. She'd let herself out, the front door was unlocked.

What time did you get up?

About seven-thirty, I said.

Did she talk to you about anything?

What do you mean?

Just, anything.

I shrugged. A bit about her father. She doesn't much care for him, but it sounds like she hasn't seen much of him for years. Her mother, the drinking. She offered to stay here, look after the house, until Syd comes back.

Did that seem odd to you? Jennings said.

I don't know. Maybe. It's like she wants to live here instead of her own house. She's spent a lot of time here since she and Sydney became friends. I told Patty that wouldn't work. And I told her she had to be gone first thing in the morning, so maybe I pissed her off and she left right after I went to bed.

Is there anyone who can back this story up for you? Detective Jennings asked.

Why's that necessary?

I'm just asking.

Kate Wood. She could back up the first part of my story. She saw me going into the house with Patty. But was Kate someone I wanted to put the police onto? Would talking to her make things any better?

Look, there is someone, I said hesitantly. But I have to tell you, she's a bit, you know, she's a bit of a flake.

Is that so? Jennings said.

A woman I was seeing, her name's Kate Wood. She drove by here when I was bringing Patty into the house. And I talked to her later, explained what was going on.

Why did you feel the need to do that? Jennings asked.

Because it looked bad.

Just, I don't know, I thought she might have gotten the wrong idea, I said. Kate probably wanted to drop by, have a talk Why would she do that? Didn't you say you used to be seeing her?

Yes, I said. That's true. But I guess, I don't know, I guess she thought there were still issues to resolve.

Jennings said, Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything you want to get off your chest?

What? No. I mean, yes, there are things I want to talk about. I want to know what you're doing to find Sydney. You're always asking me questions, but you never have any news for me. Other than Sydney's blood being on the car, of course. I've been driving all over the place today, showing Syd's picture to hundreds of people. How many people have you shown her picture to today?

Jennings held my gaze momentarily, then said, We'll talk more in a minute.

She was taking out her cell phone as she left the kitchen. By the time she was talking to whoever she wanted to talk to, she was outside, where I couldn't hear her.

I leaned up against the fridge, tried to get my head around what had happened here in the last hour.

Sydney was still out there.

People who wanted to know where she was were trying to kill me.

Just call me, Syd. Tell me where you are. Tell me what's going on.

Jennings returned a moment later, pocketing her phone. I'd like to go over this again. When you picked Patty up, when you brought her home.

Why's this a big deal?

She's missing, Kip Jennings said.

Chapter NINE.

THIS MUCH KIP JENNINGS TOLD ME:.

Patty had a part-time job in that accessories store in the Connecticut Post Mall, two or three shifts a week. She was due in at ten that morning, and no one thought much about it when she hadn't shown up by ten-thirty Patty had a somewhat cavalier attitude about things like punching in on time.

But when it got to be eleven, they started to wonder whether she didn't realize she was scheduled to work, so they tried her cell. When they didn't get any answer there, they tried her home. No luck there, either.

One of the staff knew where Patty's mother, Carol Swain, worked, so a call was put in to her at a glass and mirror sales office on Bridgeport Avenue. She hadn't seen her daughter since the afternoon of the day before, and while it was not unusual for Patty to get home late, her mother was surprised not to find her home in the morning. And then for her not to show up for work while she was often late, she'd eventually show up that was definitely out of the ordinary.

When Carol Swain got home and Patty wasn't there, she tried her daughter's cell herself. When that failed to raise her, she considered calling friends of her daughter's, then had to admit she didn't know very much about Patty's friends. Patty didn't tell her a damn thing about the kids she hung out with. Carol was telling all this to one of her friends, a woman she sometimes went drinking with after work, and the friend said, Carol? Has it occurred to you your daughter might actually be in some trouble?

So around six o'clock, Patty's mother called the police. Almost apologetic about it. Probably nothing, she said. You know what girls are like today. But had there been, you know, any teenage girls who looked like her daughter run down at an intersection or anything?

The police said no. They asked Carol Swain if she wanted to file a missing-persons report on her daughter.

She thought about that a moment, and said, Hell, I don't want to make a federal case out of this or anything.

The police said, We can't do anything to help you find her if you're not going to report her missing.

So Carol Swain said, Oh, why the hell not?

Jennings told me all this, finishing up with I just made a couple of calls in the last few minutes, and she hasn't turned up.

I tried to call her a couple of times today, I said. She never answered.

At the moment, Jennings said, it seems that you're the last person who's seen her.

That seemed to be more than just an observation. What are you saying?

Mr. Blake, you seem like a decent enough guy, so I'm just trying to be straight with you. We've found bloody towels in your house that you say were used to help a girl who hasn't been seen in nearly four hours.

I've been totally straight with you, I said.

I hope so, she said. Now we've got two missing-girl cases, and you're at the center of both of them.

IN THE MORNING, I PHONED SUSANNE AT WORK.

Has Bob got that Beetle ready? I asked.

Yeah, she said. New tires, new headlight.

Oil leak?

I'm not a miracle worker, Tim.

I need a lift.

You had to give the car back already? she asked.

It's gone, I said. But it was the police who had it, not Laura Cantrell.

I'm on it, Susanne said.

I hoped she would come pick me up herself. I thought it was unlikely she'd send Bob.

I was surprised to see Evan drive down my street in the Beetle. There was an ominous rattling sound coming from under the hood. The short wheelbase allowed him to do a tight U-turn in the street, bringing the passenger door right to me.

I got in and he said, What's with the police tape around your house?