After the kind of day I’d had, I was on high alert, like a mouse slipping through the forest at night wondering how many owls are overhead. I was checking my rearview mirror, looking for vans, scanning the faces of pedestrians I passed on the street, hunting for people in the bushes, looking for lights that were on that should be off, lights that were off that should be on.
I’d asked Jennings whether I was entitled to some sort of police protection, and she’d said she’d put a call in to the Secret Service. I took her sarcasm to mean the Milford police did not have a lot of extra officers to go around. So I was my own bodyguard, and I didn’t exactly feel up to the job.
As I pulled into the driveway, the house appeared in order.
I unlocked the door, went inside, flipped on the front hall light switch. The house looked almost as it had before I’d gone to Seattle. Things back in place, carpets vacuumed, floors swept.
My nose was throbbing, my head pounding. I went looking for Tylenol in its usual place in the kitchen cupboard, but after the cleanup many things were not where I expected to find them. I hunted around, finally found the bottle, and washed down a couple of pills with some cold water from the tap.
I stood there, leaning up against the counter, pondering what I would do next. I’d made a decision to devote every waking hour to finding Syd. Now all I had to do was figure out how to use them productively.
I wondered how Arnie Chilton’s parallel investigation was coming along. Perhaps, by this time, he’d tracked down a Boston cream donut.
It wasn’t until I was standing there, alone in my kitchen, that I realized how weary I was. I felt as though I had nothing left to give, at least right now.
I decided the smartest thing to do, for myself and for Syd, was to head straight to bed, get a good night’s rest, start fresh on this in the morning.
I finished drinking the water, set the glass in the sink. And then, perhaps not sure whether I really should go to bed, I sat down at the kitchen table. Put my head down for a moment onto my folded arms. Turned my head so my injured nose wouldn’t rub up against my arm.
Maybe I didn’t need to go to bed yet. Maybe, if I just rested for a few moments, it would be enough to recharge my batteries. Then I could spend the rest of the evening coming up with a plan to find Syd. Even though this Eric character didn’t know where she was, maybe if I knew more about him, that would tell me more about what Syd had been into, and then…
I’m not sure how many times the phone rang before I heard it. I jerked awake, looked up at the clock. It was after midnight. I’d been asleep at the kitchen table for nearly three hours. I pushed the chair back, stumbled over to the phone, and snatched up the receiver.
I put it to my ear and said, groggily, “Hello?”
There was some background noise. Music, people shouting. And then a voice.
A girl’s voice.
She said, “Help me.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“SYD?” I SAID. “Syd, is that you?”
At the other end of the line, crying. “I need you to come and get me.” Her words were slightly slurred. The background music made it difficult to hear her clearly.
“Syd, where are you? Tell me where you are!” I was feeling overwhelmed, as though my entire body wanted to cry. “I’ll come and get you.”
“It’s not Syd.”
“What?” I said.
“It’s me. It’s Patty.” She sniffed. “Can you come and get me? Please?”
“Patty?”
“Can you get me?”
“What’s happened, Patty? Are you okay?”
“I hurt myself.” Her words continued to slur.
“What happened?”
“I fell down.”
“Are you drunk, Patty?”
“I might have had… maybe a few, I don’t know. I’m pretty good.”
“Patty, you should phone your mom. She’ll come get you. If you want, I’ll call her for you.”
“Mr. B., like, this time of night, she’ll be more shitfaced than I am.”
“Have you got money for a cab?” I asked. “Tell me where you are and I’ll send one to take you home. Or I’ll pay him before he heads off.”
“Please just come get me,” she said.
I heard a boy talking to her. “Shit, whaddya do to your leg? Why don’t you stop bleeding all over the place and come with us.”
“Fuck off,” Patty told him.
“And why don’t you suck this,” the boy said. That was followed by raucous male laughter.
“Patty,” I said. She wasn’t going to have to ask me again. I didn’t like the sounds of things. I’d go get her.
“Huh?”
“Tell me where you are. Right now. Where are you?”
“I’m on, like… Hey!” She was shouting at someone. “Where the fuck is this?” Someone yelled something back that sounded like “America!”
“Very funny, asshole!” Patty shouted. She called out to someone else, and then said into the phone, “Okay, you know that road that goes along the beach? Broadway? East Broadway?”
“Sure.” It was five minutes away, tops. “Where are you along there?”
“There’s, like, a bunch of houses.”
It was all houses along there. “Do you see a street sign, Patty?”
“No, wait, yeah, Gardner?”