And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(72)

“How long was this going on?”

“I’ve been working at the drugstore for a year. Only at the pharmacy counter for maybe the last six months or so.”

“How often did you give him a name?”

“Rarely. We’d get caught if everyone who came into the pharmacy for the good shit got ripped off right away.”

“Did you text him the names?”

She gave him a look. “No records. Nothing in writing.”

“Did you tell him about somebody right before Jenny and Jesse disappeared?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe.”

“Who?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Male or female? Young or old.”

“Everyone who gets prescriptions filled is old,” she declared. “This whole fucking town is full of old people, taking pills and waiting to die.”

“Is that what you were doing the night before we found you? Taking pills? Waiting to die?”

“Yeah. Welcome to fucking Sandy Lake.”

Packard sipped his cold coffee. The burned flavor was more prominent now that there was no heat to hide behind. “It’s not this town that’s the problem. You’ve been raised to always get everything you want, no effort on your part, no consequences. You recoil at the word no. On the rare occasions you don’t get what you want, you make your world smaller so you don’t have to deal with that person or that situation again. Your options get more and more limited. Every day becomes the same as the one before it.”

Shannon picked at the tape holding her IV in. “Are you a cop or a shrink?”

“I just say what I see. Who did you tell Sam about last week?”

“I told you I don’t remember. I didn’t even see who came to pick them up. I saw the prescription bagged with a name on it in the cage where we keep the opiates for pickup. I called Sam and told him the name. I don’t know if I was even working when they went out the door.”

“What was the name?”

She sighed, rolled her eyes. For a second her face went blank as she time-traveled back to that day. “I don’t remember the name. I can’t even say if it was a man or a woman. That’s the truth.”

“What was the prescription for?”

She stopped to think again. Packard knew his chances of getting a court order forcing the pharmacy to show him a list of everyone who picked up a prescription for narcotics in the last ten days was almost zero. Even if he could get a judge to sign off on something like that, the pharmacist would have to get signed permission from everyone on the list before releasing it to comply with patient privacy regulations. That could take days, if not weeks, and be incomplete if people refused to cooperate.

“I think they were for eighty-milligram oxys. Sam always wanted to know about those.”

“How did Sam react when you gave him the name?”

“I don’t think he did. When I called him about this stuff, it was with a name and what they were getting. He’d usually hang up on me without even responding.”

Packard took out his phone and pulled up the list of names they had from the prescription bottles they’d found in the safe in Sam’s bedroom. “Tell me if any of these names ring a bell. Eunice Amberson? Martin Hughes? Emmett Burr? Olivia McDonald? Elizabeth Marsh?”

Shannon stared at him blankly. None of the names caused even a twitch in her expression. “I don’t know who any of those people are. I mean, you know some of those last names from living in this town forever, but I couldn’t put a face with any of them.”

“Could one of these names be the name you gave Sam?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember.”

Packard felt his frustration rising. I don’t remember. I don’t know. Maybe. He had a feeling if he asked her questions about the idiots on the television up in the corner, she’d be able to catalog Kardashian minutia in excruciating detail.

“Am I going to be charged for any of this?”

“That’s not my decision. It’ll be up to the DA once everything comes to light. It won’t hurt to have me on your side.”

“How do I do that?”

“Make better decisions than the ones you’ve made so far.”

“I’m not holding out on you.”

“I’m talking about the drug overdose and the neck tattoo.”

She tilted her head and raised her shoulder to hide the tattoo, sighed. “An ex gave me this tattoo a couple of years ago when we were super fucked up. He wanted everyone to know I was his princess. He marked me and I was too wrecked to stop him. I’m waiting for the lasers to get better so I don’t have a princess-shaped scar on my neck instead of a princess tattoo.”

“Did you press charges?”

“He wasn’t worth the trouble. Pressing charges wouldn’t undo what he did to me.”

“What are you going to do after rehab?”

“Stay in the Cities maybe. I need to get the hell out of this town.”

“What’s stopped you? Can’t be money. Your folks could bankroll anything you wanted to do.”

“I don’t know where to go. I don’t have any skills. I didn’t even graduate high school. My mom wanted us to hang out and party. She would say, ‘Books are for losers. You don’t need a diploma—we’re already rich.’”