And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(50)

Thielen almost laughed. “‘A connect?’ I’ve never heard you use that term before.”

“Jay Z. ‘Roc Boys.’”

“I know the song. I didn’t have you pegged as someone who listened to Jay Z.” Thielen was shocked.

“I listen to a little of everything. My point is this is total amateur hour. Look at this place. He’s living rent-free in a house his parents own, and it’s still a dump. This game system is five years old. These are not the trappings of a big-time dealer. If he was pushing serious drugs, we would have had him on our radar. Sam was a lazy rich kid getting money from his mom behind his dad’s back and supplementing it by selling what few drugs he could get his hands on. When he graduated he took on Jesse as some kind of partner because he still needed someone in the school. That’s his only market. So what happened Tuesday night? Sam sent Jesse on an errand. Sam probably didn’t know Jenny was with him. Or he didn’t care. Jesse went somewhere in the middle of the night to get…what? Drugs? Was he stealing them from someone’s house? Did he get caught? And if so, why didn’t the homeowner call us?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a homeowner with pills,” Thielen said. “Maybe Sam knew of someone with a stash. Another dealer. If so, this guy couldn’t very well call us and report that someone tried to steal his supply.”

Packard nodded. “Has to be something like that. Someone with a reason not to get the cops involved. Sam had to stay quiet when I called him for the same reason. He knew that Jesse and Jenny were missing, and he knew where Jesse was headed that night. He might not have known what happened to them, but he knew something that he couldn’t tell anyone because of the nature of what was going down.”

“So…did that someone come here and kill Sam then?” Thielen asked.

Packard thought about it for a minute. “Couldn’t have been the guy Sam was targeting. Why would Sam be under the car while that guy was walking around? There would have been a fight or confrontation of some kind. I guess the guy could have been lucky and just happened to pull up while Sam was working under the car, but that seems unlikely.”

“Too lucky.”

“Agreed. If someone killed Sam, it wasn’t Jesse’s target. It could have been someone associated with him that Sam didn’t know.”

“Still, why is he under the car while this stranger is walking around?” Thielen asked. “It doesn’t jibe. It seems like if he was working on the car while someone was here it had to be some he knew, someone he was comfortable with.”

“We don’t know for sure that someone pushed that car on top of him, but hell—it’s just too damn convenient if you ask me.”

Thielen nodded. They were both quiet. Packard could tell by the look on her face that they were thinking the same uncomfortable thought. Thielen said it out loud. “If someone came here to kill Sam to keep him quiet, Jesse and Jenny could already be dead.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. But we’re going to keep pushing on this like they’re still alive. That’s what I’m going to keep assuming until we have a reason not to.”

“It’s been three days,” Thielen said.

Packard’s phone rang just then. “Only three,” he said as he took a call from Kelly.

“Where are you? You called a press conference for four. It’s ten after.”

Packard dropped his forehead into his hand. “Shit. I forgot about the damn press conference. All right. I’m on my way. Write a statement for me to read, will ya? Just the details on Jenny and Jesse and the car. Doesn’t have to be any more than that.”

“It’s already done.”

“Thanks, Kelly.”

Thielen pushed together the step ladder and leaned it against the wall. “I can finish up here.”

“Thanks. Call in the gun from the ceiling and get us a list of names and addresses that go with the pill bottles. If you have time to hit any of them tonight, great. If not, we’ll split them up and hit ’em tomorrow.”

“I’ll do what I can. Get going. You don’t want to face a room full of pissy reporters who missed their deadline because you’re late.”

***

Ray Hanson sat in the front row at the press conference, looking smug. There were two television cameras and four other reporters besides him in the conference room at the police station. Not exactly a media event. Hanson had seen more press turn out when the new drive-through car wash in town opened. But still, everyone who was there was there because of him. Including Packard, standing in front of them behind a lectern on a table, flanked by a U.S. flag and a Minnesota state flag.

There’d have been no need for a press conference if that cocksucker had just answered his questions in the school parking lot. Since he wouldn’t, Ray called his contact at the St. Cloud TV station, a reporter named Brian Davis, who initially said he wasn’t interested. Ray tried to sell him on the story’s more prurient angles. “The boy’s mom is a known drunk; she used to appear in the police blotter in the Gazette damn near weekly. Works at Wellards now but back in the day, word was you could take her out behind Bob’s Bar and get your dick wet for twenty bucks.”

“Ferfucksake, Hanson. How the hell am I supposed to put that on TV? It’s not a story for us right now.”