And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(7)

Packard resisted the urge to gape. He still thought of his cousin as the introverted, bookish girl shivering and scowling in a blue swimsuit at the cabin. Their shared childhood meant little after so many years apart. They had a blood connection, but they didn’t know each other at all.

“Does Sean have any kind of relationship with Jenny? Are they friendly?”

“No.”

“Did they spend time together while he was taking care of Tom?”

Packard could see Susan visibly start to shut down, either from exhaustion or frustration. “Jenny was gone from home as much as possible while Tom was going through the worst of it. Her interactions with Sean were limited.”

“Does she know about your relationship?”

“It’s not a relationship. But yes.”

“You told her.”

“No. She found out a few weeks ago from a text she saw on my phone. Nothing obscene. Just…confirmation that we were seeing each other in a capacity that had nothing to do with taking care of her dad.”

Packard made some more notes. “How do you know she didn’t show up at school today?”

“I got a text while I was at Sean’s from the school that she had an unexcused absence. I sent her more texts after that. I texted her boyfriend. No response from either one.”

“Who’s her boyfriend?”

“Jesse Crawford.”

“How long has she been going with Jesse?”

“Less than a year. Eight, nine months,” Susan said.

“What are your thoughts on that relationship?”

“They make each other happy. Do they smoke pot? Yes. Are they having sex? Yes.” Susan stared at him defiantly, like she was daring him to criticize her parenting.

“Any signs of physicality between them? Fights? Bruises? Yelling?”

“No. They think they’re in love.”

She gave him Jesse’s cell phone number and the numbers of Jenny’s two closest girlfriends who had already confirmed for Susan that they hadn’t seen Jenny or Jesse at school. Packard said he’d try contacting all of them again later in the day if Jenny didn’t show up. He asked Susan if she knew what car Jenny and Jesse were in.

“They’re not in Jenny’s,” she said. “Her car is in the garage. I don’t know what he drives. It’s red or maroon. Sedan of some kind.”

“Know anything about Jesse’s family?”

“Almost nothing. He lives with his mother. There might be a sister or a brother.”

Packard thought for a minute, circled the last name Crawford. “I only know a few Crawfords in town. I wonder if his mom is Ann Crawford.”

Susan said she didn’t know.

“Ann used to raise a lot of hell. She’s been banned from every bar in Sandy Lake. Does her drinking at home now. She had an old man who was trouble, too. He took off before my time.”

The more they talked, the more Packard had a feeling these were two kids tired of everyone’s bullshit who wanted to be alone together. He boiled it down for Susan. “You don’t need me to tell you Jenny’s been through a rough patch. Jesse… I don’t know. If his mother is Ann Crawford, his whole life has probably been a rough patch. Maybe they just want some time on their own and never mind where they’re supposed to be or who’s worried about where they are. I doubt they’ve gone far. They might be holed up in a cabin around—”

Susan angrily unzipped the padded case she was holding and laid it flat on the desk between them. “What about this? She needs this stuff to stay alive.”

Packard studied the case’s contents held in place under elastic bands: a blood glucose meter, syringes, glucose tabs. There were loose alcohol swabs and Band-Aids and test strips.

“She’s a type 1 diabetic?”

“Yes!” Susan said, like Packard was supposed to know this already.

“How long?”

“She was ten when she was diagnosed. We got her on a pump a year ago while we still had Tom’s insurance and were maxing out the deductible with his care.”

“The pump carries a supply of insulin, right?”

“About three days’ worth depending on her activity level and how well she eats. But she still needs to check her blood twice a day to make sure the sensor is calibrated.”

“Is there anything here she couldn’t buy in a drugstore if she needed to?”

“She could buy everything but the insulin. You need a prescription for insulin. There’s some older formulations that you can buy over the counter, but she’s never used them.”

“Do you know how much insulin was in the house before today? Do you know for sure she didn’t take some with her? Besides what was in her pump?”

“No.”

“Okay. Here’s what we know. Jenny’s snuck out before. She snuck out again last night at some point. We assume she’s with her boyfriend because neither of them is answering their phone. She didn’t go to school this morning and still isn’t there for all we know. She didn’t take her diabetes supplies with her. Given all that, you give me a number of how concerned you are from one to ten.”

“Seven.”

“Okay. I’m a seven, too.” He looked away quickly and wrote on his pad so she wouldn’t see in his eyes that he wasn’t a seven. He was a four. Susan’s first reaction after finding her daughter had snuck out in the night and still wasn’t home was to go for a bike ride and get laid. That didn’t sound like a seven to Packard. The situation might not warrant the full attention of the Sandy Lake Sheriff’s Department, but he was going to look into things because Susan was family. And because—as a family—they’d been through something like this before.