Fear The Worst

FORTY-FOUR

“WHAT?” BOB SAID. “What does it say?”

I handed the note to him. It had filled me with a mixed sense of hope and puzzlement. He read it a couple of times and said, “Didn’t you say Patty was dead?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But maybe I was wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But this note could be some kind of trick. It might be from someone else, meant to lure Sydney out into the open.”

I asked Alicia, “You didn’t see who left this? You haven’t seen anyone around? A girl with streaks in her hair?”

Alicia shook her head.

So I thanked her again, and walked back to the office with Madeline and Wyatt. I had Madeline take down my cell number in case Syd reappeared, or anything else happened. Then Bob and I returned to the Mustang, fishing the guns out of the back of our britches before we settled into the seats. I wanted to study the note, so I gave him the keys.

“We’ll check out the covered bridge,” I said, once we were in the car.

“Yeah,” said Bob.

The note was handwritten. I was trying to recall whether I’d ever seen a sample of Patty’s handwriting. If I had, I couldn’t remember. It was hard to tell from the note whether it bore any of the trademarks of a teenage girl’s style. It appeared to have been hurriedly written, and on a rough surface, as if the paper had been held against the side of the cabin when the pen was applied.

“If it isn’t Patty who wrote this,” I said, “whoever did write it will be looking for Sydney, not us. And if it is Patty, she’ll certainly know us when she sees us.”

And, I was thinking, if it really was Patty, what the hell was she doing? How did she know Sydney might be up here, and why was she trying to mount a solo rescue?

“The thing is, Sydney may not be around anymore,” Bob said, interrupting my thoughts. “Something spooked her, made her run.”

“Maybe,” I said. “And if she’s worried about being seen, she may not want to be standing at the edge of the highway with her thumb out.”

“You think she has a car?” Bob asked.

It was possible. I was guessing she ditched the Civic because she was afraid the bad guys would be looking for it. Did she grab another car? Did she hitchhike to Stowe?

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s assume she’s still around, otherwise there’s no point in our being here. And if she’s going to call anyone, maybe she’ll use that pay phone by the pizza place.”

“That’s an idea.”

We turned the car around, powered down both of the windows, and pulled onto Mountain Road, heading in the direction of the town’s center. Bob was taking it slow, scanning the sides of the road, attempting to peer onto porches, down side streets, occasionally glancing into the rearview mirror in case a car started bearing down on us in a hurry.

We were looking for not one girl now, but two.

“Sydney might have gotten a room somewhere else,” I said.

“Maybe,” Bob said, watching out his side.

I continued my scan. Bob said, “Take a look behind us. Is that a car back there, with no lights on?”

I twisted around in my seat, looked out the back window. “Hang on, I’m just waiting for it to go under a streetlight… Yeah. You’re right. Looks like one of those new Chargers. That, or a Magnum. It’s got that big grille, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bob said, his palms sweaty on the steering wheel. “I think it might have picked us up just after we got back onto the main road.”

“It’s definitely holding way back.”

“Covered bridge, dead ahead,” Bob said.

I turned eyes front. It was odd, as covered bridges went. Only the pedestrian walkway, on the left side, was protected with a roof. The roadway itself was uncovered. In darkness, it was impossible to tell whether anyone was hiding under the covered part.

“You want I should pull over?” Bob asked.

“No,” I said. “Not if that other car’s following us. Try to get past it, turn a corner or something, I’ll jump out and run back to the bridge.”

“Okay,” he said. “Do you know my cell number so you can call me?”

I took out a pen and wrote it on the back of the note that had been left for Sydney, wrote my own number on a corner of the page, tore it off and handed it to Bob.

The Mustang rolled over the bridge. The other car, a dark, menacing shadow, was about twenty car lengths back.

“Okay,” Bob said, “get ready.”

He made a stop at the sign, turned left and floored it. Then he hit the brakes, and I prepared to jump out and run down between two buildings.

“Gun!” Bob whispered.

I nearly fell over reaching back into the car as Bob handed me one of the Rugers. Whether it was the one with one bullet, or the one with three, I had no idea. I tucked it into the back of my pants.

I scurried off into the shadows as the Mustang pulled away.

The car with its headlights off slowed at the intersection without signaling or stopping and continued on after Bob. It was a Charger, with tinted windows. I couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel, or whether the driver had company.

Once that car was a safe distance up the street, I ran across the road and down the other street in the direction of the bridge. All there was to hear was the sound of my shoes hitting the pavement, and my hurried breathing.

I got to the end of the bridge, entered the covered portion, and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust.

“Patty?” I called. Not too loud, but loud enough.

I waited two seconds for anyone to respond.

“Patty?” I called again.

“Mr. B.?”

I could detect movement on the bridge, at the midpoint. I started walking, quickly. “Patty!” I said.

I thought she might run toward me, but as I approached I could see that she looked frightened, as though she doubted it was really me. But when I got to her, and threw my arms around her, held her next to me, she said, “The fuck are you doing here?”

“You’re okay,” I said, holding on to her, not wanting to let go. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, and now she was hugging me, too. Her hands touched the gun in the small of my back and pulled away suddenly. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

I let go of her enough to look into her eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

“Fuck, no, here I am,” she said.

I gave this girl-this girl I now knew to be my daughter-another hug.

“What’s the deal, Mr. B.?” she said. “You’re crying.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just glad to find out you’re okay.” I tried to focus. “Everyone’s been worried sick about you. We were thinking the worst.” I thought about Carol Swain, whose level of concern wasn’t exactly off the scale, but she needed to know that her daughter was okay. “You have to call your mother,” I said. “You have to let her know you’re safe.”

“Yeah, sure,” Patty said, rolling her eyes.

“You do. But Patty, have you seen Syd?”

Patty shook her head. “What are you even doing here?” she asked me. “How did you…”

“What about you?” I asked. I needed to get past my emotional response and ask some questions. “What are you doing here?”

Patty seemed to be struggling for an answer. “I’m here looking for Sydney.”

“I figured that,” I said. “But how did you know?”

“She called me,” Patty said quickly. “She called and told me she was here.”

“When?”

“Just, like, yesterday?” Patty said.

“How is she? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s cool, she’s good.”

I felt relief starting to wash over me, but I still had many questions. “How did you get up here?”

“I, you know, I hitched. Took a while.”

“Patty, why didn’t you just tell me? If Syd told you where she was, why didn’t you let me know? I could have brought you up here.”

Her mouth twitched. “I… I was pissed at you. About the other night. I wanted to make you proud of me. I wanted to bring Syd back myself.”

“Oh, Patty,” I said. “Is that why you weren’t answering my calls?”

She nodded. “I wanted to do it myself. Syd got a job up here, and I went there to find her, but she was gone. I was kind of screening my calls. I didn’t feel like talking to anybody.”

“You left Syd a note,” I said.

“Yeah, but I guess she didn’t get it.”

“You left it at the wrong cabin.”

“Shit.”

“How long have you been on this bridge?”

“Off and on, for hours,” she said.

“Sydney got scared off,” I told her. “She ran away from the inn. I think she saw one of them, looking for her.”

Patty looked scared.

I took hold of her by the shoulders. “This is something you can’t do alone, Patty. These people, the ones who’ve been looking for Syd, they’re very dangerous. They’re killers, Patty. And I think they’re up here right now. There’s been a car following us around.”

“Us?”

“I’m here with Bob. We started driving up when we learned Sydney was here in Stowe.”

“How did you know that?”

“I found out from one of them. Patty, I shot a man tonight. I shot him to find out what he knew. And he told me Sydney was up here.”

Something Jennings had told me shortly after Bob and I started heading up from Milford came into my head.

“Patty,” I said. “This call you got from Sydney. Telling you she was up here. You got that when?”

“Yesterday,” she said.

“Was that the first call?”

“Huh?”

“Was that the first time she called you? Yesterday?”

“Yeah, of course,” she said.

“Because the police, they’ve been looking for you for the last couple of days, and they were checking your cell records.”

“Yeah…”

“And they said there were other calls from Stowe. Much earlier ones.”

“That’s crazy,” she said. “They must have that wrong.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted.

“Did Sydney call you before? Has she been keeping in touch with you? You haven’t known all along where she’s been, have you?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Not for a second, anyway. “What?” she said. “Are you crazy?”

“I’m just trying to figure it all out,” I said. “And I can’t figure out why Sydney would call you to come and get her. Why wouldn’t she have called me, or her mother?”

“I don’t know!” she shouted. “I don’t know! Shit!”

“Patty, what’s going on? I need you to be honest with me. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

“Honest?” she said. “You want honest? I’ll give you honest. My whole life has been one long fucking joke. It’s been shit, that’s what it’s been.”

“Patty.”

“And you know why? You know whose fault it is?”

“Patty, this isn’t the time. We have to find out where-”

“It’s my fucking parents’ fault, for sure, but you know who else? Huh? You know who else? You. That’s who. That’s who’s fucked up my entire life. You.”

“Patty,” I said again.

“Because you’re the reason I’m here,” she said. “You’re the reason I exist.”

I let that one hang out there a minute before I said, “I know.”

“What?”

“I know. I saw your mother. I know about the file. You found the file, didn’t you? The detective’s report.”

She stared at me, stone-faced. “Yeah. I saw it.”

“You’re my daughter,” I said.

“Yeah,” she repeated. “Big whoop.”

“You should have told me. When you met Sydney, when you came to our house, you must have figured it out.”

“I knew before,” she whispered. “That’s why I got to know her, kind of snuck into that math class. Because I wanted to get to know you. I wanted to know who my real father was. And now I know. I found out the other night. I saw the real you. When you told me you had one daughter and that was enough.”

“Patty, I didn’t know. If I’d known-”

“If you’d known, what? What would you have done? You’d have freaked out, that’s what you would have done. And listen, don’t even worry yourself about it. Because I really don’t have any father, okay? All you are is just some guy who had it off with a cup.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You make decisions when you’re young, you never think about the ramifications of-”

“Oh, fuck off,” she said. But while she sounded angry, I could see, in the limited light, that she was crying.

“Patty,” I said, “when did Sydney first call you?”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“How long have you known she was up here? What did you tell her? Why have you been keeping-”

My cell phone rang.

“Yeah?”

“Tim? It’s Bob. I’ve got her. I’ve got Syd.”