“No,” I said.
Jennings didn’t look convinced. She was about to ask me something else when her cell rang. She dug her phone from her purse, looked at who was calling, and said, “I have to take this.” She turned and stepped away.
I took the opportunity to go into Laura Cantrell’s office with my warm, damp ice pack.
“Thanks,” I said.
She took it from me gingerly, looking for a place to put it down where it wouldn’t leave a wet spot, and finally set it atop a crinkled copy of Motor Trend.
“I’m taking a leave,” I said.
“Tim,” she said.
“I’m going to look for Sydney and I’m not coming back until I’ve found her. If I have to, I’ll put my house up for sale to keep myself afloat.”
“I guess you do what you have to do,” she said. “But you know, at the end of the day, I can’t hold on to your job forever.”
“I’d expect nothing more.”
“Jesus, Tim, I know you’re going through a lot, but you don’t have to be an asshole.”
“I’ll turn my contacts over to Andy. He can have my customers. He’s already got a head start.”
“I was going to tell you about that,” she said.
“I don’t care, Laura,” I said.
I was about to turn and leave when Laura said, “This is kind of difficult, Tim, but…”
“What?” I asked.
“You are driving a company car.”
I wanted to see whether she could look me in the eye and ask for my keys, and damned if she didn’t. “I can help you out as best I can, but I can’t justify giving a car to someone on a leave,” she said.
Riverside Honda had plenty of used cars to choose from, but suddenly I didn’t want to give my own employer the business. “Give me a day or two?”
“Of course,” Laura said.
“I’ll give Bob a call,” I said, half grinning to myself. “I’ll bet he can put me into something.”
Detective Jennings was waiting by my desk. Her cell phone was tucked away.
“Tell me again why you think this guy was going to kill you,” she said.
“To get Syd to come back. I guess he figured she’d hear, somehow, if I was dead, and she’d feel she had to come back for the funeral.”
Jennings didn’t say anything for a moment.
“What?” I asked.
“That tends to support the idea that Syd is alive.”
I blinked. “You got some reason to believe that she isn’t?”
“That was the lab calling,” she said. “We got the DNA results, on the blood from your daughter’s car.”
I was feeling faint.
“We got two hits. One was your daughter.”
I WAS ALREADY FEELING WOOZY. Jennings put me in my own desk chair, then sat down across from me.
“Some of the blood on the steering wheel and door handle of Sydney’s car turned out to be hers,” Jennings said.
“That doesn’t mean she’s dead,” I said. “It just means that she lost a bit of blood. She could have had a cut finger or something.”
“That’s true,” Jennings said.
I was trying hard to focus, and thought back a couple of sentences. “Some?” I said.
“Some what?”
“You said some of the blood on the steering wheel was Syd’s.”
“We’ve acquired quite a database over the last few years of suspects and convicted criminals.” She paused. “And from the deceased. When we get a DNA sample, we run it against what we already have, see if we get lucky.”
Lucky.
She nodded. “The other blood belonged to Randall Tripe.”
I looked at her oddly. “Should I know that name?”
“I mentioned him the other day. He’d been involved in everything from identity theft to human trafficking. He was found dead in a Dumpster in Bridgeport a day after you reported Sydney missing. Shot in the chest.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Sydney’s car was found up in Derby. That’s quite a hike from Bridgeport.”
“Whoever dumped his body in that Dumpster might have taken him from the car in Derby,” Jennings said. “But the way I see it, there’s a couple of ways to explain two different kinds of blood on the car. One, an injured Mr. Tripe had your daughter’s blood on his hands and took off with her car, or an injured Sydney Blake had Mr. Tripe’s blood on her hands and took off in her own car.”
“But we know Tripe is dead,” I said.
“Bingo. That’s why I tend to go with number two.”
“But if Syd had Tripe’s blood on her hands…”
“Yeah,” Jennings said. “That’s something to think about, isn’t it?”
I thought about what “Eric” had said. That Sydney hadn’t gotten in touch because she was ashamed of something she’d done.
IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME I GOT HOME.