Free Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay Page A

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?”
    “Blood on the car.”
    “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
    We drove on for another minute. I felt I was drifting into some kind of dream state, that none of this was happening.
    “Your daughter,” I said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “When you were on the phone. Her name is Cassie?”
    Kip Jennings nodded. “Short for Cassandra.”
    I nodded. “Cassie have any brothers or sisters?”
    “No, it’s just us,” Jennings said.
    I nodded, catching some hidden meaning there. A single mother.
    “What’s happened to her, Detective?” I asked. “What’s happened to my little girl?”
    “We’re back,” she said, turning into the dealership.
    A NDY H ERTZ WAS SITTING AT HIS DESK , a sheet torn from a phone book in front of him. As I sat down, he said, “I got the D’s.”
    “Not now, Andy,” I said. I had to get out of here. I just had to get out.
    “That guy?” Andy said.
    “What?”
    “The one who took out the Ridgeline for a spin? He left it out there at the far end of the lot, dropped off the keys with me when he couldn’t find you. He only came back about five minutes ago. Longest test drive ever, you ask me. Where the hell did you disappear to? You’ve been gone over an hour. Anyway, he left, went across the street, and got into a yellow Pinto. I didn’t even know any of those were still on the road. Wasn’t there something, years ago, about those things blowing up or something?”
    It was before his time.
    I got up, scooped the truck keys off Andy’s desk, and went outside.
    Once I had the dealer plates off and the truck where it belonged in the back lot, I’d take off. Drive around Derby, find more places where teens might hang out, show Syd’s picture around.
    As I approached the vehicle, I noticed something unpleasant wafting my way. The closer I got to the truck, the worse it got.
    I opened the driver’s door and as I lifted myself up to get inside, I happened to glance back into the pickup bed. It was filthy. There was some kind of brown debris—at first glance it looked like topsoil—smeared all over the place and up the side walls.
    I hopped down, came around to the back of the truck, and dropped the tailgate, which, on the inside, was an even greater mess. Some of it got on my hand.
    “Shit,” I said. The word was more than just an expression of anger. It was descriptive.
    The son of a bitch had used the truck to deliver a load of manure.
    I CAME BACK INTO THE SHOWROOM , determined to get the hell out of there—I couldn’t get the image of blood on Syd’s car out of my head and needed to get away from these people—but Patty Swain was