And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(82)

“I’ll get the complete list of Sam’s Meals on Wheels customers,” Thielen said. “We’ll interview every single one of them if we have to.”

“We might. Did you get Mac’s message about the gun from Emmett Burr’s house?”

“Yeah. It’s weird that he didn’t report it missing. On the other hand, I carried his groceries from his car to the front door of his house yesterday. He wouldn’t let me in. If the inside of his house is anything like the inside of his car, it’s probably just this side of a dump. The whole place looks like it’s one wet spring away from sinking into the ground.”

“Can you drop in on him again today?” Packard asked. “Tell him we found his gun and let him know how he can get it back. I’d go but I’m on my way out to Cora Shaker’s place.”

“She and Gary at it again?”

“Not this time. She says her husband’s missing. Says there’s blood all over the front door.”

“Blood?”

“Blood,” Packard repeated.

“Damn. Call me when you know more.”

“I will.”





Chapter Twenty-Six


Emmett’s belief that the worst was behind him lasted as long as it took him to walk a hundred yards. He shuffled away from the quarry, arms swaying as he propelled himself forward one step at a time on knees that barely bent. He’d dressed with the idea of staying warm while riding in a vehicle, not warm enough to walk a mile and a half at night covered in blood through damp grass.

He’d had the foresight to bring two Vicodins in his pocket. The pills came out stuck together and felt fuzzy to the touch. He worked up a mouth of spit and then swallowed the pills without confirming whether it was Carl’s blood that had made them sticky or the damp night air. Better not to know.

He walked beneath the transmission towers clutching their thick cables on each side like giants marching toward the horizon. It took him more than an hour to reach the wrecked cars Carl had stacked in his junkyard. Feeling like he couldn’t take another step, Emmett sat down in the front seat of a Chevy Blazer with no doors and no wheels. The shattered windshield had a forehead-shaped dent in it that pressed out from the inside.

He took off his yellow hat and set it on the seat beside him. How could he be sweaty and freezing at the same time? He pulled up the legs of his sweatpants and saw how full of fluid his feet and calves were. Cracks and sores in the tight, red skin radiated heat. His left foot was numb except for the tingling in his toes.

He lit a cigarette and stared over the trees at the top of Carl’s house up the hill, dark save for a single bulb beside the back door. The cold weight of Carl’s gun in his pocket made Emmett think it might be a good idea to kill Carl’s family once he got up to the house. If Carl had told them anything about his plans for the night, mentioned Emmett’s name at all, the cops would be right back at his place once Carl was reported missing.

Emmett sat for as long as he dared. He listened to frogs and things moving in the tall grass. The sun was far from coming up but he could tell the darkest part of the night was over. The bloodstains on the front of his clothes looked darker and were still wet from the moisture in the air. He rubbed his hand on his front and it came back red and damp. He wiped it on the side of the seat and rubbed his tired eyes, knowing he was getting blood all over his face but unable to do anything about it.

He still had a long walk ahead of him, all of it uphill.

He started walking again, keeping his eyes to the ground so he wouldn’t have to see how much farther he had to go, or how the ground rose up the closer it got to Carl’s. The Vicodins did nothing for the pain he felt. The insides of his thighs were chafed raw. His hurt was so intense he felt like he was glowing in the dark from the heat of it.

Finally, he reached a point where he could see his white Cadillac, and the distance remaining felt conquerable. He looked behind him and saw the low land filled with fog. He was going to make it. He heard dogs barking in the building behind Carl’s neighbor’s house. Did they smell him? The blood on him?

At the house, it took everything he had to walk by his car and go for the front door, gun in hand. His shoes were soaking wet, his feet ice cold and completely numb. Every breath was a gasp.

He grabbed the door handle and pushed. Locked. He leaned all his weight on the door but it didn’t budge. Shoot the door? Shoot the lock? He’d lose the element of surprise and end up chasing two women around the house, trying to shoot them like pigs in a pen. He looked at the wide smear of blood he’d left on the front door where he’d leaned against it. The sound of the dogs barking seemed to get louder. This whole night was two minutes from going tits up. If he didn’t get out now, everything he’d accomplished since leaving home would be for nothing.

He wiped the door handle with his sleeve and got in his car. He started the engine, backed away from Carl’s house, and pointed the Cadillac in the direction of the slowly brightening horizon.

***

It was full-on dawn by the time Emmett eased past his garage—wide open and free of dead bodies—and stopped in front of his house. Relief overcame him almost to the point of tears. He was home. It was over. Check the last box on the list. Drive home.

His knees screamed as he climbed the front stairs to the deck. Inside, he bumped the thermostat up, stepped out of his wet shoes on the way to the fridge to get a beer and his pills by the kitchen sink. He took an eighty-milligram OxyContin and washed it down with half a beer that burned his parched throat like battery acid. He let the bubbles fizz out, finished the beer in two more gulps, and opened a new one. To the bedroom, whimpering with every step. Oh, Jesus Christ. Goddamn. He dragged the blanket off his bed back to the recliner and pulled it over himself. He drank the second beer and lit a cigarette. He smelled sweat and blood and the stink of his body raised by the heat of his efforts. He belched and smelled beer.