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?”

I knew where she was. “I’ll be right there,” I told her. “Don’t move.” I hung up the phone, grabbed my keys, locked the house on the way out, and got into the CR-V.

It had turned into a muggy night, but instead of flipping the air on I put down the windows. Fresh air blowing through the car would help wake me up. The drive down to East Broadway took only a few minutes. I trolled slowly down the street. Quite a few young people were walking along the sidewalk, a few wandering down the center of the street, a few holding bottles in their hands. Clearly, a big party had taken place somewhere, no doubt in one of the beach houses where the parents were away.

I drove slowly, not just because I was trying to spot Patty. I didn’t want to run anyone over.

I slowed to a crawl as I reached Gardner, then came to a full stop. There were twenty kids or more milling about behind one of the houses on the south side of the street, which was right on the beach. All the lights were on and loud music blared from inside. Up at the far end of the street, a police car was making its way.

I spotted Patty standing on the curb, a tall boy towering over her, bending down, talking into her ear. She had her head turned, like she didn’t want anything to do with him. I wondered why she didn’t just walk away, then noticed the boy had a grip on her arm.

“Patty!” I called.

She didn’t hear me. The boy was yelling at her.

I had the door open and one foot down on the pavement. “Hey!” I shouted. “Let go of her!”

The boy glanced over, still holding on to Patty. His head wavered a bit and he struggled to focus on me.

“Patty!” I shouted.

She ripped her arm away from the boy and started off in my direction. The boy stumbled after her, saying, loud enough for me to hear, “Come on, come with me.”

She turned back to him, made a jerking gesture with her fist, said, “Do it yourself.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

Her hair was scraggly, and as she approached my car I could see she was walking with a decided limp. She was wearing black shorts that fit her like a second skin, her legs brilliant white in contrast, except for the area around her right knee, which was dark and slightly shiny.

“Hey, Mr. B.,” she said, approaching my window. “Whoa, nice nose job.”

“Get in,” I said. The boy stood in the street, watching us through clouded eyes. “Get lost,” I said to him and got back into the car.

Patty loped around the front of the car, fumbled with the door handle on the passenger side, and got in. She smelled of alcohol.

“Home, James,” she said.

I pulled a U-turn in the street and started heading back toward the center of Milford. Even though I didn’t know where Patty lived, I wanted to get away from all these kids hanging around.

“Where do you live, Patty?”

That seemed to sober her up almost immediately. “Shit, no, we can’t go to my house. Take me to your place.”

“Patty, I have to take you home.”

“If I go home like this, my mom will kill me.”

“I thought you said your mother’d probably already be passed out.”

“If I’m lucky. But if she’s awake, she’s going to have six shit fits seeing me like this.”

She reached down and tentatively touched her knee. “God, does that hurt. I bet it hurts almost as much as your face.”

I flicked on the interior light and glanced over as I drove. Her knee was a mess. “Who did that to you?”

“Okay, so this asshole Ryan or whatever his name was, he drops his beer on the sidewalk just as I’m walking by, right, and there’s glass all over the place? And I’m trying to walk around it, and there’s this bunch of girls who aren’t even from around here, they’re like these skanks from Bridgeport or something, and they start saying something about my hair, and I turned to give them the finger and tripped, right? I hit the sidewalk and there’s this little bit of glass right under my knee but I think I picked it out but what a bunch of assholes, right, they-”