Not since the last time I looked in here, I said.

She left the trunk open and returned to the open front door. She leaned in over the driver's seat, still careful not to touch anything. Her short frame was twisted awkwardly, unable to touch any part of the car for balance as she looked around.

Then, suddenly, she jumped back. It was as though something in the car had sprung up and shoved her.

My heart thumped. What? I asked.

She spun her body around and let out an enormous sneeze over the Celica. Sorry, she said. I felt this tickle coming, and I didn't want to contaminate the car with my own DNA.

Once I'd had a moment to recover, I said, DNA?

Jennings said, I'm going to want the crime scene investigators to go over this car.

Why? I asked. Is that just routine? Is that something you always do?

Jennings studied me for a moment, weighing something. Then, Come here.

Delicately, she moved the door back three-quarters closed, drew me closer, and pointed to the outside handle. You see those smudges?

I did. Smears of something dark. Reddish brown.

She pulled the door wide again and pointed to the steering wheel. Don't touch it, she said again. But she pointed to the wheel. You see that?

More smears of what appeared to be on the door handle.

I see it, I said. It's blood, isn't it?

That'd be my guess, yes, Kip Jennings said.

Chapter SIX.

WE'RE GOING TO NEED TO GET A SAMPLE of your daughter's DNA, Jennings said during the drive back. A hair from her brush would do the trick. And then we can compare that to the blood sample.

Yeah, I said, but I was barely listening.

Can you think of any reason why your daughter would be in Derby? Did she have friends there? A boyfriend, maybe?

I shook my head.

I'm having the car brought in, we'll go over it thoroughly, and as soon as I know anything, I'll pass that information on to you and your wife. Sorry, your ex-wife. And I'll have someone come by your house later today, for something we can use to get a DNA sample.

I nodded slowly. You're suddenly taking this seriously.

I've never not taken this seriously, Mr. Blake, Kip Jennings said.

I'm sorry, I said.

You okay? she asked.

I have to make a call, I said.

I have another question for you, she said. A favor for my counterparts over in Bridgeport. If you don't mind. I shook my head absently, neither refusing to answer nor agreeing. I'm sure there's no connection here, but there was an incident around the time that your daughter disappeared.

Someone else is missing?

Not exactly. You ever heard of someone by the name of Randall Tripe?

What was that again?

Tripe. Really. And he usually went by Randy instead of Randall.

Went by? Not anymore?

No. Do you recognize the name?

No. Should I?

Probably not, she said.

What happened to him?

Something that could have been expected sooner or later, she said. He was a low-life entrepreneur. A bit of prostitution, theft, moved stolen property, sold guns, even ran something of an employment agency. And he still found time to work in the odd stretch in prison. He was found in a Dumpster down by the docks in Bridgeport the day after you reported Sydney missing. He'd been shot in the chest. Judging from the wound, he might have survived if someone had got him some help, but instead he got dumped in the trash and was left for dead. She rooted through her purse on the console between us, trying to look inside it and watch the road at the same time. I've got a mug shot here someplace.

I don't understand what that has to do with Sydney.

Nothing, I suspect. She was starting to drift across the center-line, looked up, corrected, went back to the purse. Here it is. She handed me a folded sheet of white paper. I opened it up. A police arrest sheet, dated more than a year ago. Randall Tripe was white, unshaven, fat, forty-two at the time, balding, and looked like no one I knew or would ever want to know.

I gave it back. I don't recognize him.

Okay, she said, tucking the sheet back into her purse.

This can't be good news, I said.

Hmm?

Blood on the car.

We'll see, she said. We'll have to wait and see.

We drove on for another minute. I felt I was drifting into some kind of dream state, that none of this was happening.

Your daughter, I said.

Excuse me?

When you were on the phone. Her name is Cassie?

Kip Jennings nodded. Short for Cassandra.

I nodded. Cassie have any brothers or sisters?

No, it's just us, Jennings said.

I nodded, catching some hidden meaning there. A single mother.

What's happened to her, Detective? I asked. What's happened to my little girl?

We're back, she said, turning into the dealership.

ANDY HERTZ WAS SITTING AT HIS DESK, a sheet torn from a phone book in front of him. As I sat down, he said, I got the D's.

Not now, Andy, I said. I had to get out of here. I just had to get out.

That guy? Andy said.

What?

The one who took out the Ridgeline for a spin? He left it out there at the far end of the lot, dropped off the keys with me when he couldn't find you. He only came back about five minutes ago. Longest test drive ever, you ask me. Where the hell did you disappear to? You've been gone over an hour. Anyway, he left, went across the street, and got into a yellow Pinto. I didn't even know any of those were still on the road. Wasn't there something, years ago, about those things blowing up or something?

It was before his time.

I got up, scooped the truck keys off Andy's desk, and went outside.

Once I had the dealer plates off and the truck where it belonged in the back lot, I'd take off. Drive around Derby, find more places where teens might hang out, show Syd's picture around.

As I approached the vehicle, I noticed something unpleasant wafting my way. The closer I got to the truck, the worse it got.

I opened the driver's door and as I lifted myself up to get inside, I happened to glance back into the pickup bed. It was filthy. There was some kind of brown debris at first glance it looked like topsoil smeared all over the place and up the side walls.

I hopped down, came around to the back of the truck, and dropped the tailgate, which, on the inside, was an even greater mess. Some of it got on my hand.

Shit, I said. The word was more than just an expression of anger. It was descriptive.

The son of a bitch had used the truck to deliver a load of manure.

I CAME BACK INTO THE SHOWROOM, determined to get the hell out of there I couldn't get the image of blood on Syd's car out of my head and needed to get away from these people but Patty Swain was sitting in one of the chairs across from my desk. She had one leg up over the arm, her other leg sticking out the other way, in a pose that was pretty provocative even though she was in a pair of jeans.

She'd dropped by nearly every day if not here, at my house since Sydney had gone missing.

Patty was the girl who comes home at dawn. The one who has no fear of walking through a bad part of town after having too much to drink. The one who wears skirts that are a bit too high and tops that are a bit too low. The one who has a couple of condoms in her purse. The one who curses like a sailor.

She worried me, but her independent streak was hard not to admire.

Syd met Patty last year at summer school. Sydney had failed math and had to spend four weeks making up the credits, squeezing in her dealership job around the classes. The thing was, Sydney had no trouble doing calculations in her head when it mattered. If you'd promised her five dollars an hour to clean up the garage and she'd spent six hours and forty-five minutes at it, she'd be able to tell you to the penny how much you owed her without the aid of a calculator. But no matter how good you may be with figures, if you don't do the homework and don't study for the tests, well, you end up at summer school.

A couple of days into her summer classes, Patty appeared. They ended up sitting together, and found they had more in common than their contempt for a system that would have them sitting in a classroom when everyone else was outside catching some rays.

Music, movies they both had a closet love for Disney flicks from their childhood boys, junk food. Everything seemed to click, with the possible exception of their backgrounds.

Sure, Syd was now from what she liked to call a broken home, but if ours was broken, Patty's had been hit with a cruise missile. She didn't have what you'd call a strong support system, from what I'd heard. Her mother, according to Syd, was pretty much an alcoholic. She had a hard enough time getting through the day herself, let alone monitoring Patty's behavior. Her father, if I remembered right, worked in a liquor store, for now, but didn't tend to keep jobs for long. Despite his sketchy financial situation, he still found different women happy to take him into their homes for varying periods of time. Sydney said Patty had told her he'd walked out on them when Patty was little. But he'd occasionally drift back into their lives for a few days or weeks, until her mother got tired of having him in her bed and kicked him out.

I'm sort of glad, Syd had said to me, that when you and Mom split up, that was it. This getting back together and then breaking up, over and over, that would drive me crazy. You'd get your hopes up, and then everything would go to shit again.

Evidently, it hadn't always been that way with Patty's parents. They'd started out living the American dream. Good jobs, a house with a rec room, a station wagon in the driveway, a week in Florida every year, a day at Disney World. But then Patty's dad lost his job at Sikorsky after it was found he'd been stealing tools, and life was a never-ending downward spiral after that. He left Patty and her mother to fend for themselves when Patty was just a toddler. The mother started drinking. Patty learned early to look after herself.

Susanne and I separately and together offered Syd plenty of words of caution. This girl's had a lot of tough breaks, we get that, but don't let her lead you down the wrong path. Don't let her get you into trouble.

Syd assured us we had nothing to worry about. And she insisted that despite Patty's somewhat wayward behavior, she was a good kid, and a good friend. She's like this soul mate I've always been waiting for, Syd told me once. We say things at the same time. We finish off each other's sentences. All I have to do is look at her and she cracks up. I'll be thinking about her, and right then, swear to God, my cell will ring and it's her.

When Syd was staying at my house, Patty seemed to be there more than half the time. And when Syd was at her mother's, Patty was often hanging out there. (I didn't know whether this was true now that Susanne and Syd had moved in with Bob.) Patty, for all her hard knocks and cynicisms, devolved into a little girl when it came to making a batch of chocolate chip cookies. It seemed Syd had a moderating effect on Patty, rather than Patty having a negative influence on Syd.

I like it here, I heard her tell Syd when they were at my house. No one's screaming at each other or falling over pissed.

My heart went out to her.

Despite her apparent recklessness, Patty had an instinct for survival. No rose-colored glasses for her. She saw the world for what it was. A cruel place where you couldn't count on anyone but yourself. That was one reason I liked her and, at some level, admired her. She'd been dealt a bad hand, and was trying to play it as best she could.

I hadn't seen her stroll in this time, but she usually turned heads when she came to visit, breasts bobbing and hips swaying as she wound her way through the roomful of Hondas. Patty knew what she had and didn't mind using it to effect. Today, in addition to the low-cut jeans with rips at the knees and thighs, she was wearing a dark blue tee that didn't come down far enough to hide her pierced navel, but did come down low enough to offer a tease of a lacy black bra. Her hair was dirty blonde with a few narrow pink streaks going through it, and she seemed to be without makeup except for some very bright red lipstick.

As I sat down in my chair she said, Hey, Mr. B. You look like shit. You okay?

I nodded. Hi, Patty.

What's going on? You look kind of pasty.

Just' nothing.

That sucks.

Yeah, it does.

She wrinkled her nose. What's that smell?

Manure, I said.

Then, another greeting: Hey, Mr. Blake. I looked around, didn't immediately see anyone.

Jeff tagged along, Patty said. He's over there.

She pointed to an Accord. Patty's friend Jeff Bluestein was sitting behind the wheel, touching the buttons on the dash, fiddling with knobs. Whenever he came by, he found a car to sit in and stayed there.

Hey, Jeff, I said, offering half a wave.