And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(27)

They’re both out of the car. It’s dark. It’s pouring rain.

Something happens.

Another option was there was some kind of accident that hadn’t been found yet. If it was raining hard and they were speeding, there were plenty of places where they could miss a curve in the road or a narrow bridge and wind up in the trees or a stormwater pond.

He kept coming back to the phones and how many times drugs came up in connection with Jesse’s name. They still could have been in an accident, but this felt like something else.

After dropping Jesse’s sister off at school yesterday, Packard had gone back to the station. He and Kelly had spent the afternoon pulling together the paperwork for a court order for the records from both of Jesse’s cell phones. His second phone—the one Alissa gave him the number of—intrigued Packard the most. Finding out who called or texted him on that phone might be the break they needed.

At the end of the day, he’d caught up with Ron Callahan, the sheriff department’s school liaison, as the shifts were changing. Callahan was the best deputy in the department. He had the most seniority after the sheriff. Packard knew the only reason Stan Shaw had made him acting sheriff was that Callahan had turned it down first. Before joining the department, he’d spent twenty years in the army as a drill sergeant, turning teenagers into soldiers. He had a gray, bristled flattop and ruddy jowls. He carried seventy-five pounds more on his frame than the army would have allowed. Packard had liked him from the minute they first met.

Callahan told Packard that Jesse had only recently shown up on his radar. “A few weeks ago someone left an anonymous tip that Jesse was dealing. I decided to have a talk with the boy, so I went to the school and asked Principal Overby and the counselor to pull him from class. The point was to give him a shot across the bow. Let him know that I’d heard about him and that this was to be the one and only warning.

“The two of them went to get the boy. A few minutes later, they all three came around the corner, and Jesse got his first look at me standing outside the administration office. I felt like we almost had a moment of telepathy when our eyes met, like we both knew he was going to make a dash for it almost a second before he did it. That’s probably all hindsight, but I swear I saw it coming.

“Anyway, he suddenly paused, hopped back two steps, and slammed through the door of the girls’ restroom. By the time I ran down there and got my hands on him, he was standing in one of the stalls and both pockets were hanging inside out. He’d kicked the flush lever two or three times. Whatever he had on him was gone.”

“So we know he was carrying at a minimum, probably dealing.”

“He didn’t run into the girls’ bathroom to fix his hair.”

Packard picked up a jump rope from the workout equipment in his basement—spread his arms wide enough to keep it from hitting the low ceiling—and added what he’d learned from Callahan into his vision for what happened that night.

Jesse had had to flush his stash days earlier. Pills or heroin—he’s not walking around school with a bag of smelly weed in his pockets. Might have flushed his money, too, if he’d been carrying enough to be incriminating.

What they’re doing has something to do with the drugs. If there’s a supplier he’s working for, why wait until the middle of the night to meet? And why bring Jenny? He wouldn’t want her there if it’s dangerous. Maybe she insists. Maybe she’s hoping to talk him out of whatever he has planned. Maybe he wants to be talked out of it.

It’s not his supplier they’re meeting. A supplier knows you’re coming.

He’s identified a source of something he needs. Something he can take if he shows up unexpected at three in the morning.

They’re both out of the car. It’s dark. It’s pouring rain.

Something happens.

Packard finished his workout with push-ups and crunches, then called Kelly on his way up the stairs from the basement. “Those phone records for Jesse’s phones come in yet?”

“They’re here. I didn’t know if you were coming in or if you wanted me to email them.”

“Email ’em to me. I’m heading up to the school to talk with the principal. Do me a favor and make sure she knows I’m coming. I’d like to see her at eight thirty.”

“Done.”

By the time he’d shaved and dressed in his uniform, there were two emails on his computer from Kelly. The first one said Principal Overby is expecting you at 830A in the subject line. He went to the kitchen, made toast and scrambled eggs, then came back to read the other email.

Packard printed the phone records on his home printer. The data was separated by phone and by calls and text messages. Jesse’s second phone had received only one text message. People who had the number were probably given explicit instructions not to send texts asking for drugs. Two nights before he and Jenny disappeared, Jesse had gotten a message from someone that said Whatup? When you going? Jesse’s response was Tomorrow night.

Someone else knew the plan. The message said When you going? Not Where you going? Not When you coming?

No more texts after that. The phone was still active. It had received eight more calls since that night, including two from the Whatup? number, three from Alissa’s phone, and one from Packard’s. None were returned. All were coming in on CT233A, a tower almost ten miles north of Sandy Lake that picked up a lot of the Lake Redwing traffic and points north of there. Packard knew a lot of factors could influence which tower picked up which calls. It wasn’t an exact science. If nothing else, it told him they had stayed nearby.