And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(42)

Packard was glad to know he wasn’t the only one who had it in for Ray Hanson.

“I told him the kids have been missing since Wednesday and that you’re looking for them. He said he was going to write a story for the Gazette website and reach out to his contacts at the regional newspapers to see if he could get them interested in the story. He said to me the Twin Cities papers won’t take an interest in missing teens until there’s a pedophile or a dead body involved.”

“Ray’s an asshole even when he thinks he’s helping,” Packard said.

He told Susan about the press conference and that she didn’t need to be there and hung up just as he pulled in front of the baby-blue house on County Road D. Four narrow arborvitae towered behind the house like the fingers on a hand raised in oath.

The garage door was open at the top of the sloped driveway. The red Mustang was backed into the stall with its hood open. Packard took off his sunglasses and started up the steep grade. “Hey, Sam, you around?”

Movement on the ground caught his eye. A trail of liquid came running down the driveway just to the left of his shoe. He followed it up and spotted the feet under the car, realizing at the same moment that the car was too low to the ground to have someone underneath.

“Goddamn it!” Packard clicked the two-way on his shoulder and requested an ambulance, Detective Thielen, and any available unit. He backed up from the garage a few steps until he could see the house numbers. “One sixty-five County Road D. Light-blue house near the intersection with 105th.” The trail of piss running down the driveway told him there was no hurry. It would take a time machine to save whoever was under the car.

Packard went around to the driver’s side of the car and got down on one knee. He put both hands down and leaned forward until he could see under the car. He recognized Sam even with the blue color to his face and blood running from his smashed nose. The wheels on this side of the creeper had pushed out from the weight of the car but hadn’t dropped low enough to keep the heat shield from smashing Sam’s face. Packard touched his wrist. The body was cooling but not cold. Packard noted two car jacks tipped backward and a wood block that might have been a chock for the back wheel slid out to the side.

He didn’t need a warrant to search the house for other victims or a suspect so he let himself in the back door of Sam’s house. He had his gun unstrapped, hand on the grip. “Anybody home?” he called from the landing just inside the door. A set of raw wood stairs went down to an unfinished basement. To his right two steps went up to the kitchen. The walls were the same baby blue as the house with white painted cabinets that were dirty around all the handles. Linoleum floor, unwashed dishes, old mail. A lot of empty beer cans for a guy only one year out of high school.

Through an arched doorway he went into the living room. It smelled like marijuana and microwaved burritos. A 50-inch flat-screen TV had a video game paused with armored soldiers wandering back and forth in the background. On the coffee table were a vaporizer and a baggie of weed. Packard used a pen to flip the lid of a cigar box sitting next to the vaporizer. Inside were a wooden dugout, a lighter, a marble-sized amount of white powder twisted into a plastic knot, and a tiny, clear zip bag with three green pills in it that he recognized as 80-milligram oxys.

He called out again and got no response. Sam’s bedroom door was open. It had plastic blinds, clothes all over the floor. In the closet he spotted a hotel safe on the floor. Locked. At the other end of a short hall was a bathroom, a bedroom full of old furniture and packed boxes, and finally a third bedroom with a sleeping woman twisted into the sheets of a twin bed.

Packard said, “Hey, miss. Wake up.”

She didn’t move. She was wearing boxer shorts and a white tank top. Her face was buried in a pillow and covered by greasy blond hair. He knew the slack stiffness of a corpse when he saw one. This woman wasn’t dead. Just completely passed out. He grabbed her exposed foot and shook it. She didn’t move. He put two fingers on her throat just above a green Princess tattoo. She had a faint pulse. She wasn’t cold.

He went back out the back door and saw an ambulance idling. Detective Jill Thielen arrived next in an unmarked Dodge Charger, lights flashing. Deputy Howard Shepard was right behind her in a sheriff’s car.

Packard was surprised to see Shepard, who was usually the last person to show up when there was actual work to be done. Responding to calls took him away from his primary duties of smoking cigarettes and spreading gossip from inside the sheriff’s department around town.

Packard motioned them over to the garage and filled them in on why he was there and what he’d found. Thielen was blond, five feet tall in shoes, and all business. To her he said, “There’s a nonresponsive female in the back bedroom. See if you can rouse her and find out who she is. She obviously doesn’t know what’s happened out here so…use your judgment on how much to tell her.”

Thielen nodded and headed for the house.

“Shepard, get your camera out. I want photos of everything before we raise the car. I want the hood and grille dusted for prints. Look for tracks before you go any further around the car. It’s pretty dusty and dirty in there. There might be something we can photo if not lift.”

Shepard was shaped like a snowman, circles stacked on circles, dressed in a deputy’s uniform. Bald. Goatee. He hitched up his pants and scratched the side of his face. “Why do you want prints? It’s pretty obvious that the car fell off the jacks on the poor bastard.”