And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(47)

Packard looked around for an exit. “How do I get out of here? How do I get down to the water?”

She said, “Go down either wing and through the first door you come to.” She leaped up and grabbed his wrist suddenly, trying to guide him down on the couch beside her. “No, wait—don’t go,” she said. He resisted and her hands slipped around his until she fell backward. “Just sit. Tell me what you want to tell my husband. I’ll tell him if I think he needs to know. If not, it’ll be a secret between us. Let’s have a secret from my husband.”

“I have a better idea. You wait here. I’ll be back,” Packard said.

“Whatever you say, Ossiffer,” Patty said with a big purple grin. She pulled up the hood of her pink sweatshirt and pulled the strings until it closed into a tight circle around her face. Her eyes and nose and lips were scrunched into the opening. “I wouldn’t want to get in trouble wiff the law.” She could barely get the words out before she started laughing. Cackling. She fell sideways on the couch and buried her face in the overstuffed cushions. She laughed and rolled on her back and laughed some more. She was still howling when he headed for the exit.

***

The Gherlicks’ boathouse was painted navy blue with white trim. Inside were two slips with motorized lifts that could lift a pontoon and a speedboat out of the water. The dock looked like wood but was made from aluminum painted to look like boards.

Packard found Dan Gherlick leaning over the back of the pontoon, staring into the motor with its top housing removed. When he saw Packard in his uniform with the lake at his back, the look on Dan’s face was that of a man with too many things waiting to crash down around him to know which one had just hit the floor. He looked fearful but not at all surprised. He straightened up slowly. “What happened?”

“Dan, there’s been an accident.”

“What happened?” Dan asked again.

“I just came from Sam’s house. He was working underneath his car when it came down on top of him. He’s gone, Dan. I’m sorry.”

Dan Gherlick blanched. He looked like the air was being let out of him from a valve in his back. He said, “What? He what? What happened?”

“He was underneath his car when it fell off the jacks. He was pinned underneath.”

Dan crumpled and went down on his elbows on the back of the pontoon. “Oh my god,” he said. “My boy,” he said. He moaned and made a sound like he was trying to swallow something too big to go down.

Packard waited. Below them the lake water lapped and splashed and echoed inside the boathouse. Small waves rhythmically shushed against the shoreline.

This part of the job always reminded Packard of the day a Sandy Lake sheriff’s deputy in a winter coat with wool lapels had shown up at his grandparents’ cabin with news about Nick. The deputy’s face was long forgotten. Packard had only seen it briefly when the deputy stepped inside and stomped his boots on the rug. The adults sent the kids upstairs, then shut themselves in the family room behind sliding oak doors.

Packard, his two siblings, and Susan, their cousin, went into the second-floor bathroom and arranged themselves on the floor around the cage that covered the cold-air return. The house’s ductwork funneled the voices from the family room directly to them. They heard the deputy say that they’d found Nick’s snowmobile submerged in the lake and a single glove frozen to the ice. They had divers in the water but hadn’t located a body yet.

The deputy’s tone was cold. He sounded as if Packard’s family had this news coming, had earned it by some course of action or inaction. He wanted to know how it was possible that no one in the house had any idea where Nick was going or who he was meeting that night. There were signs warning of open water near where the snowmobile was found. Someone would have had to be high on drugs or drunk to miss them. When Packard’s dad reminded the deputy it was the middle of the night and snowing when Nick left home, the deputy was silent. He closed with saying that divers would search again the next day. If they didn’t find Nick then, they’d wait for warmer temperatures and decomposition to bring the body to the surface in the spring.

This was the lake where it happened. Nick could still be down there somewhere, though in later years, the lack of a body had Packard wondering if the glove and the snowmobile might have been decoys. Awful convenient, that one glove. Packard still hadn’t looked at Nick’s file since coming to Sandy Lake. Hadn’t even mentioned his history to anyone in the department. It was another thing about himself he wanted to keep on a need-to-know basis.

After a couple of minutes, Dan Gherlick tried to straighten himself. “Take me to see Sam. I need to…to go get my boy.”

“You can’t see him yet, Dan. I’m sorry. Our people are processing the scene and will take Sam to Methodist when they’re done. Someone will call you when you can see him. I know this is a terrible shock, Dan, but I need to ask you a few questions about Sam. I would wait but there just isn’t time.”

Every time Packard said Sam’s name, Dan’s face twitched. Something scrunched his eyes and pulled at the corner of his mouth. He slid sideways and sat across the back lounger in the pontoon. He rubbed his face. “Tell me what happened again.”

Packard told him about pulling up to the house and finding Sam under the car. He told him he’d gone in the house to see who else was around and had found Shannon passed out in one of the bedrooms.