And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(40)

“Who was in the crushed car? Locals?” Stan asked.

“Not that we can tell so far. The car’s plates were registered in Duluth, but the vehicle information doesn’t match the car involved in the accident. Both were probably stolen. The driver had an ID with a Fargo address. The female passenger had no ID at all.”

“What about those missing kids? Wasn’t them, was it?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Packard. He hadn’t had more than a quick look at the smashed and bloody bodies, but he was sure they weren’t teenagers. “Good question, but it’s not them. I’m still looking for those two.”

Packard filled Stan in on the time line so far. He was telling him about interviewing Darrel Johnson and Virginia Stevens at the high school when Marilyn came in with coffee in a white porcelain mug the size of a soup bowl.

“I just got these new mugs on Amazon,” she said. “You can use them for so many things.”

Packard took the mug with both hands and thanked her. He sipped his coffee. Marilyn stood there, waiting for the conversation to start up again.

Stan made a slight motion with his head. “Give us a couple minutes, honey. Would ya, please?”

“Oh sure. I understand. You let me know if you need a refill,” she said.

“It’ll be Wednesday before he needs a refill,” Stan said.

Packard set the mug down on the end table between them. Stan said, “Coffee gets cold too fast in a cup that big. Might as well serve it in a five-gallon bucket.”

“It’s fine. I appreciate it.”

Stan turned on his side, trying to get comfortable. His face and the loose skin on his neck seemed to hang free from the musculature underneath. Before he got sick, Stan weighed two bills. Now he looked like a buck and a quarter, if that. Bit by bit he was leaving them, picked up and carried away a little at a time.

Packard remembered the day he bumped into Stan hitching up his pants as he came out of the men’s room. “Packard, tell Kelly I’m heading over to see the doc,” he’d said. “I just took a mighty shit full of blood. That can’t be good.”

Packard had offered to drive him but Stan waved him off. “Nah. I’m fine. Just bleeding out of my bunghole. We’ll see what the doc says.”

The doc said it was colon cancer. They took out twenty-three inches of Stan’s intestines and sent him home with a colostomy bag as a parting gift.

“So the boyfriend is dealing. That puts an interesting twist on things.”

Packard nodded. He said, “Listen, Stan. I gotta ask you a sensitive question.”

“We still talking about them two kids or not?”

“We are. The story I got at the school is that Jesse was the new guy inside this year. Took over for the guy who graduated last year.”

“And who was that?”

Packard clasped his hands together, looking like he was about to arm wrestle himself. “One of the kids at the school seemed to think it was Sam Gherlick.”

Stan didn’t say anything at first. His eyes got flinty. He pressed his lips together and stuck them out like he was trying to form the words in his mouth before letting them out. “Let me tell you something about my grandson. About both of Patty’s kids. I wouldn’t give you five dollars for either one of ’em. She’s ruined those kids.”

Packard didn’t know what to say, so he drank his coffee and waited for Stan to continue.

“I was strict with my kids. Curfews, bedtimes, church every Sunday. You bet I whipped their asses when they had it coming. I pushed those kids to be the best they could be. The boys went to college, got good jobs, married nice gals, and have smart, respectful kids of their own. But my daughter. Goddamn.” He shook his head then coughed into his hand. He found a handkerchief somewhere under his blanket, wiped his hand, wiped his mouth, tucked it away again.

Stan said, “Ever since Patty turned eighteen and left home her every action and thought has been with the intention to rebuke me. She thinks she got a raw deal having to grow up in a small town the daughter of a cop. She holds me personally responsible for everything she felt left out of. She didn’t get invited to parties because her dad was a cop. She didn’t have more friends because her dad was a cop. She’s done the opposite of everything I wanted her to do. She knew I wanted her to go to college so she decided not to. I said, ‘Fine, take some time to figure out what you want to do. Just don’t get married and have kids right away.’ What does she do? She gets her claws into Danny Gherlick and she’s married and pregnant at twenty years old.”

Packard knew the Gherlick family had money dating back a generation or two from timber and mining rights on land the family owned further north. Danny and his brother had taken over the Sandy Lake Building and Supply business from their old man in the midnineties. They also owned a contracting business that had won the bid on just about every major construction project within one hundred miles. The family had wealth above and beyond almost every other family in Sandy Lake.

“So now she’s got a family and they got all the money in the world. Those kids were dolls growing up, but Patty went out of her way to parent them opposite of the way I would have. No rules. No confirmation in the Church. Never heard the word ‘no.’”

Packard had had a hard time imagining how the sheriff’s grandson ended up dealing drugs. The picture was getting clearer by the minute. A sense of entitlement. The idea that rules didn’t apply to him. Enough smarts to be discreet about it.