“Where is she?” I asked.

“What?”

“Where is she?” I was shouting at the top of my lungs.

“Get out!” Ian shouted.

There were two doors on the far side of the room. I shoved Ian out of the way and went to the first one, flung it open, expecting a bedroom or closet or bathroom. But it was an entrance into the back of the florist shop.

I turned to the other door, and as I was putting my hand on the knob Ian pounced on me from behind like a cat. He wrapped his hands around my head, digging his fingers into my eyes and cheeks.

He was slight, which gave him the edge when it came to speed and nimbleness. I tried to get my fingers under his and pry him off, but he was hanging on. So I propelled myself backwards and into the wall, crushing the wind out of Ian. He let go and fell to the floor. He was up again in an instant, but this time I was ready for him. I put my fist into his face, catching him below his left eye.

That knocked him back a second time, giving me enough time to throw open the door and enter what turned out to be the bedroom.

It wasn’t much larger than a walk-in closet. A small dresser along one wall, a narrow door that must have been a closet, and a second door at the other end that was open and showed a sink and toilet.

There was just enough room for a single bed.

There was a person under the covers, and judging by the shape it definitely looked to be a young woman. Not moving. Drugged, I thought.

Or worse.

The covers were pulled high enough to hide everything but a few locks of blonde hair. Despite all the ruckus, she still hadn’t moved.

Oh dear God…

“Syd,” I said. “Syd?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and was about to pull down the covers when I sensed Ian coming through the door. I turned and pointed and fixed my eyes on him with such fury that he stopped.

“You make one move and I swear I’ll fucking kill you,” I said, barely able to get the words out I was panting so hard. Sweat was dripping off my brow, my shirt was plastered to me.

I pulled the covers back down to the girl’s shoulders. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Her skin looked rubbery, had an odd sheen to it.

“What the fuck?”

This girl was not Syd.

This girl was not a girl.

She was a doll.

EIGHTEEN

I TURNED AROUND AND LOOKED AT IAN, who stood in the doorway staring at me, his face flushed from our grappling and, I suspected, embarrassment.

“Just get out of here,” he said quietly. There was a bruise coming up on his cheek.

“I thought… I thought she… I thought it was my daughter.”

Ian just stared at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “When I saw you…”

“You were spying on me?”

“I saw you carry something in from your van.”

I put my hand around the doll’s arm, raised it up to get a sense of its weight. No wonder it was so easy for Ian to carry it in here. It couldn’t have weighed much more than ten or twenty pounds. The inside of the arm felt like pillow stuffing.

I got off the bed and moved past Ian into the main room.

“You bought that next door?” I said.

Ian nodded. His nearly naked body seemed to have caved in on itself. Instead of seeming menacing, he now bordered on pitiful. “Please don’t tell my aunt,” he said.

I lowered my head, shook it regretfully. “Yeah, sure. I’m sorry.” Then I remembered the command I’d shouted out to Carter as I’d run out of the Just Inn Time. We could probably expect to see the police here any moment.

I said to Ian, “You keep… it… here?”

Ian shook his head. “My aunt’s in here all the time, cleaning up, making me things to eat. I got a storage unit in Bridgeport where my family’s stuff is. I keep her there and bring her over sometimes, then take her back before my aunt gets here in the morning. Sometimes, we just go for a drive, maybe park down by the harbor for a while and listen to the radio and stuff.”

I didn’t want to think about the stuff.

I ran my hand through my hair. Now I understood why Ian had been so odd when I’d spoken to him before. It was because he was, well, odd.

“Listen, Ian,” I said. “The police are probably going to be here any minute.”

“Oh shit no. That can’t happen.”

I felt a bit the same way. Ian, once he recovered from the inevitable mortification, would have every right to charge me with breaking into his apartment. He could have me charged with assault. I was a regular home invader.

“I don’t want the police here,” he said. “It’s not just… her.”

“What?”

“I’ve got weed here, too.”

“Okay, look, I’m just going to go,” I said. “When the cops show up, I’ll tell them I thought I saw my daughter hitchhiking or something.”

Ian, despite all I’d done, managed to mutter, “Thanks.”

I left without saying anything else. I was expecting to see police cars screaming into the lot out front of the florist shop and XXX Delights, but there was nothing going on. I jogged back to the Just Inn Time, spotting along the way one police car driving up Route 1 at a regular rate of speed. It drove past the Howard Johnson’s and kept on going.

When I walked back into the lobby of my hotel, Carter came out from behind the desk and said, “What’s happened, Mr. Blake?”

“Did you call the police?”

“Not yet,” he said. “You ran out of here and didn’t say where you were going or what you’d seen. What was I supposed to tell the cops?”

Ordinarily, I’d have been pissed, but not this time. “No harm done. It was my mistake,” I said and went back up to my room.

ON MY WAY OUT IN THE MORNING, I grabbed a complimentary stale blueberry muffin and coffee from the lobby. There was no sign of Carter or Veronica, but Cantana, the young Thai-looking woman I’d met here the other morning, was working the breakfast nook. She handed me a takeout coffee cup.

“You can tell just by looking at me that I need coffee,” I said, trying for Mr. Amiable. Instead of returning the smile, she nodded politely, looked away, and went back to work.

I threw my bag into the back seat of the CR-V, put my coffee in the cup holder, and took a bite of muffin, crumbs raining down into my lap. Before turning the ignition, I let my head fall back onto the headrest and let out a long sigh. I’d had little sleep since my raid on Ian’s apartment. I felt like a damn fool. And worse, I was no closer to finding Syd.

I turned the key and hit the button on Syd’s music shuffler. There was an old Spice Girls tune-Syd was too young to have paid much attention to them their first time around, but got interested when they reunited for a tour a year or two ago-and another Beatles tune, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” from the White Album. What father didn’t want one of his daughter’s favorite songs to be about people having a fuck in the passing lane?

That was followed by-and I was guessing here on some of these-songs by Lily Allen, Metric, Lauryn Hill. Then some familiar chords kicked in and I thought, yes, a band I know and love: Chicago. Too bad the song had to be “If You Leave Me Now.”

I hadn’t cracked the lid on the coffee by the time I’d pulled up to the curb in front of my house a few minutes before eight, but there were muffin crumbs all over my lap and down on the floor mats of the CR-V.

There was a police car in the driveway, and parked out front of the house next door, what looked to be Kip Jennings’s car. There was no one in the driver’s seat, but there was someone sitting on the passenger side.

I took my coffee and as I came up even to the car I saw that there was a young girl sitting there. Twelve, thirteen years old. There was a backpack on the floor by her feet. On her lap was an open textbook. She glanced through the open driver’s-side window at me.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re Cassie.”