Maybe she was punishing both of us, I imagined. For splitting up. For ruining what had been, for a long time, a pretty decent little family. For making her shunt back and forth between houses for five years, for having to move now, at seventeen, into Bob’s house. Sure, it was a bigger place, he had more money, could give her things I couldn’t, but maybe all this change was unsettling, messing her up.

Now, though, there were more logistical questions. I wasn’t just asking myself why she was gone. I was asking myself how. If she didn’t have wheels, how had she gotten to wherever she’d gone? Why leave the car behind?

I couldn’t think of any reasons that made me feel optimistic.

Jennings hung a left at the end of Derby Milford Road, went another couple of miles, straight past the Wal-Mart where I presumed Syd’s silver Civic had been found, then pulled off onto a gravel lot where a couple of tow trucks were parked outside a low cinder-block building that adjoined a fenced-in compound full of cars.

Jennings found a badge in her purse and flashed it at someone in the office window. The metal gate that led into the compound buzzed; then Jennings went through and beckoned me to follow her.

The Civic was tucked in between a GMC Yukon and a Toyota Celica from the 1980s. Syd’s car looked the same as the last time I’d seen it, yet it was somehow different. It wasn’t just Syd’s car now. There was something ominous about it, as though it was sentient, knew things it didn’t want to tell us.

“Don’t touch it,” Jennings said. “Don’t touch anything. In fact, put your hands in your pockets.”

I did as I was told. Jennings set her purse down on the hood of the Celica and took out a pair of surgical-type gloves. She pulled them on, giving them a good snap at the wrist.

I walked slowly around the car, peering into the windows. Sydney was proud of this little car, and kept it tidy. Unlike Jennings’s vehicle, there were no discarded Big Mac boxes or Dunkin’ Donuts cups.

“Do you have the keys?” I asked.

“No,” Jennings said. “But the car was found unlocked.”

She was walking around it in a crouched position, looking at it in a trained, professional way. She seemed to be studying the handle on the driver’s door.

“What?” I asked from the other side of the car.

She held up one gloved hand, index finger pointed up, as if to say, “Give me a sec.”

I came around the back of the car, stood there and watched as she gingerly opened the door with one finger, slipping it under the handle and lifting very carefully.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Again, she said nothing. Once she had the door wide open, she looked down, next to the driver’s seat, and reached down. There were a couple of small levers there, one for the gas cap and one for the trunk. Next thing I knew, the trunk lid, right in front of me, clicked and popped open an inch.

Even though Jennings had said earlier that no one had been found in the car, the unlocked trunk provoked an overwhelming sense of dread.

“Don’t open it,” Jennings said. “Don’t touch anything.”

I didn’t have to be told.

She came around to the back of the car and slipped a gloved index finger under the far right lip of the lid, where someone would be unlikely to have touched it, and slowly lifted. There was nothing inside except for the first-aid roadside emergency kit I’d put in there myself when I got Syd the car. It didn’t appear to have been touched.

“Anything missing?” Detective Jennings asked.

“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.

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?”