And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(30)

Back in town, he delivered divorce papers to Kay Wells at her home. She and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Mike, owned a bait and tackle shop. The rumor in town was that Kay had been having an affair with the guy who drove the Coca-Cola truck that stocked the bait shop’s coolers. Packard knocked hard, and Kay came to the door with dark circles around her eyes, her mouth thin and drawn down. She looked disoriented. She took the manila envelope he offered and quietly closed the door in his face before he finished his speech about acting as law enforcement on behalf of Mr. Wells and his attorney.

***

Lunch was a turkey sandwich at Subway that tasted like food science. Packard ate mindlessly, staring out the window and thinking of Marcus. The look on Kay’s face when she opened the door reminded him of the haze he had moved through after Marcus was killed. Time had stopped making sense. There were times when he was in the car, wearing his uniform, when he couldn’t remember if he was on his way to work or heading home.

He and Marcus had met at the Minneapolis police academy and connected over the fact that they’d both been premed at one point in college, before switching majors and moving into criminal justice. The other recruits in their class called them the Twins, even though Marcus was as black as Packard was white. They were the same height and build, same buzzed haircuts, same intense personalities.

Marcus had grown up poor in Mississippi. He told Packard everyone in his immediate family—including his mother, father, a brother, and a sister—had all passed away from old age or violence. He never talked about the specifics. Packard took the hint that the subject was off-limits.

Besides the story about his brother Nick’s disappearance, he didn’t have much to say about his own family—parents alive, divorced, retired far from Minnesota. He had a younger sister in Wisconsin and an older brother who was a cop in the Saint Paul suburbs. Everyone had their own lives, and little effort was put into making them intersect.

After the academy, he and Marcus were assigned to precincts on the opposite ends of Minneapolis. They’d run into each other at a gym downtown and sometimes got together with the other recruits from their class. Packard sensed the connection between him and Marcus from the day they met—that knowing sense of what else they had in common that neither one was going to be the first to admit. Nothing happened for years. It was after a bachelor party for one of their mutual friends that Marcus invited Packard to crash at his place at the end of the night, and, finally, loosened by alcohol, they stood too close together just inside the door, toe-to-toe, hesitant until the last second, until something invisible slapped them together like strong magnets. They grabbed for each other and staggered toward the bedroom, fighting to get out of their clothes.

They kept their relationship hidden from everyone they knew. Lived separately. Met when they had time. They went on one vacation during the thirteen months they were together, lying to others about where they’d gone and who they’d been with. They never talked about what it was they were doing, or tried to put a name on it. It was what it was. Fun. Casual.

Or so Packard thought.

Four months before he was killed, Marcus took a job with the Saint Paul police. A domestic disturbance brought him to a run-down two-story house in the West Seventh neighborhood. As Marcus approached the house, he was shot with an automatic weapon from an upper window. Another officer who had responded separately was wounded just as he was getting out of his squad. The man inside had already shot his pregnant girlfriend. He shot himself last. Marcus died at the scene.

Once news spread of officers down and who they were, Packard went to the scene, but his Minneapolis badge barely got him past the yellow perimeter tape. They wanted him to stay back. After they loaded Marcus in an ambulance, he followed it to the hospital, hoping to get one last look at him. He was turned away there, too. The price of their secrecy was that Packard had no connection to the fallen officer. Not knowing what else to do, he went to Marcus’s house and got his dog and brought him home.

Things went completely upside down a few days later when he was called by the City of Saint Paul’s HR department and told that Marcus had listed him as his emergency contact, beneficiary, and legal representative in all matters, including power of attorney and health directives. Packard was stunned into silence. Marcus had never mentioned any of this. Had their relationship meant more to Marcus than he’d let on? Did it not mean enough to Packard? He consulted on the funeral arrangements but stayed in the background during all the media coverage of the fallen hero. Hundreds of officers lined the roads and followed the casket on its way to the cemetery.

In the weeks and months that followed, all the things said and unsaid, the things they did and didn’t do came flooding back to Packard. He was angry at Marcus for putting him in this position. For making him question what he should have been feeling when they were together and how he should feel now.

He sold Marcus’s house and possessions, donating the proceeds to the Fraternal Order of Police. He kept Marcus’s badge, his dog, Jarrett, and an album of family photos. Everyone in the pictures was dead now, including Marcus.

Packard got to where he couldn’t stand the job anymore. It wasn’t the fear of being ambushed like Marcus. It was an absence of any feeling at all. For his partner at work, his CO, the people of Minneapolis he was sworn to serve and protect. There were whispers and rumors about him and Marcus that probably had existed before Marcus was killed but seemed louder now. He overheard two cops refer to him as the widow Packard in the locker room when they didn’t know he was in the next row.