MY EYES STARTED BRIMMING OVER WITH TEARS to the point that I couldn’t see where I was driving. I managed to veer the Beetle over to the shoulder, put it in neutral, and yanked up on the emergency brake. Then I put both hands back on the steering wheel, squeezed as hard as I could, and made my arms go rigid, as though I could channel all the tension from my body into the car. My breathing, fast and shallow, seemed to be accelerating, like it was trying to keep pace with my heart.
“Oh God,” I was saying under my breath. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” It was turning into a mantra.
Was this what a heart attack felt like? Or was that what this actually was?
All the pressure of the last few weeks had come to a boil. A missing daughter, attempts on my life, and now, a woman murdered in my own home. There was only so much one person could endure.
I was a goddamn car salesman, for fuck’s sake. Nothing in my life had even remotely prepared me for dealing with the things that were going on around me now.
Pull it together.
I pried my fingers from the steering wheel, wiped the tears out of my eyes. The trouble was, the tears were still coming.
It’s about Syd. You have to get it together for Syd. Have your little meltdown, then suck it up and move on. Because if you’re not out there trying to find her, who the hell else do you think’s going to do it?
I wiped my eyes some more, dried my hands on my shirt. My breathing was still rapid, so I concentrated on slowing it down. I took deeper breaths, tried to hold them a second, let them out slowly.
“You can do this,” I said under my breath. “You can do this.”
Gradually, my breathing started to return to, if not normal, something approaching that. The pounding in my chest eased off.
“Syd,” I said. “Syd.”
I put the car in gear, took my foot off the brake, and got back on the road.
MINUTES LATER, I PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY of what I believed to be Patty Swain’s mother’s house. It was in one of Milford’s older neighborhoods, west and inland from the harbor, where the homes have a beach house feel about them even if they aren’t right on the Sound.
There was no car in the driveway, so I wasn’t surprised when no one answered my knock. I thought about leaving a note inside the screen door, with my name and number, but just as I was slipping one of my business cards out of my wallet, a rusted mid-nineties Ford Taurus pulled in next to my Beetle.
I stood on the doorstep and watched a fortyish woman get out. She grabbed a couple of bags of groceries and a purse from the passenger seat, dragging everything with one hand, her keys in the other, teetering on high-heeled sandals. “Can I help you?” she called out. She had on oversized sunglasses and pulled them off as she approached.
“Are you Patty’s mom?” I asked.
“Yes, why—” She stopped in mid-sentence when it seemed that she had a good look at me. I’d never met this woman before, but I felt she recognized me. Or maybe she was looking at my bandaged nose and bruised cheek.
“I’m Tim Blake,” I said.
“I’ll bet that hurts,” she said.
“You should see the other guy,” I said. “Actually, he looks fine.”
I came off the step and offered to take her bags. She let me. She was probably a knockout, once. She still had an impressive figure, but her legs, exposed in her white shorts, were bony, the skin weathered from too much time in the sun. Her cheeks were pale, her blonde hair dry and stringy. I could see Patty in her face: the strong cheekbones, the dark eyes.
I could hear bottles jangling against each other in one of the bags I’d taken from her.
She still hadn’t said anything, so I continued. “Patty’s good friends with my daughter Sydney. You probably know all about her being missing. And now, I understand Patty hasn’t been seen in a couple of days.” I sensed that my voice was shaking slightly, maybe not enough for this woman to notice, but it was there. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall your first name.”
“It’s Carol,” she said. “Um, I thought, at first, maybe you were from the police, until I got a good look at you.”
I took that to mean that, even in plain clothes, I didn’t look like a cop, but asked, “We’ve never met, have we?”
“No, we haven’t,” she said. “Listen, why don’t you come in.”
She got her key into the door and scurried ahead of me into the house, picking up several empty bottles in the front room and taking her bags into the kitchen. “I haven’t had a chance to clean up in the last couple of days,” she said. It looked more like the last couple of years. “What with all that’s been going on.”
“Have you heard from Patty?” I asked. “Has there been any sign of her?”