And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(83)

He smoked the cigarette halfway down and lost consciousness with it pinched between his fingers. His neuropathy was so bad, his fingers so gnarled and callused that he didn’t flinch when it burned down to the filter and seared his skin before going out.

***

It was 10:00 a.m. when he snorted himself awake. The cold cigarette filter dropped from between his fingers and left a streak of ashes on the blanket on its way to the floor. Emmett rubbed at the dried blood on the back of his hands and watched it come off like dead skin.

The rawness between his thighs, his swollen legs, and his aching feet were on fire. He wanted to grab every spot that hurt, squeeze it, fan it.

He smoked a cigarette and finished the warm beer beside him, then heated up two breakfast sandwiches in the microwave. He took a pill and put four more in his pocket so he could keep taking them at regular intervals. The microwave buzzed and counted down the seconds while he absently rubbed his burned fingers.

Going down the basement stairs with the sandwiches on a plate, he felt like he was seeing things with new eyes. It had been less than a week since he’d thrown open the door and blasted the boy standing where he was now with the shotgun. The wall at the bottom was cratered from the second blast. There was still plaster dust and smears of blood and rolling bits of lead shot at the bottom of the stairs.

He caught of glimpse of himself in the mirror by the sink and realized too late that he was still in his clothes from last night and that he had Carl’s blood all over him, even on his face. He looked at what he was carrying and saw too that he’d made the girl the old food, not anything that he’d bought yesterday. If she didn’t want a sandwich, maybe she could read him more of that book while he ate. He’d bring her oatmeal or whatever she wanted later.

He pulled the bolt back and opened the door. It took him a second to figure out what was wrong. It was the darkness. The timer for the lamp was set so the light would be on by now. He opened the door wider until he could see the empty bed where the girl was supposed to be.

“Where are y—”

Something wet splashed him in the face. He dropped the plate. The girl slipped between him and the doorframe just as he realized he’d been hit with the contents of the toilet bucket.

He was a second too late reaching for her. She was unsteady on her feet as she tried to get her bearings. She wobbled and leaned against the side of the cage, long red T-shirt, bare legs, a newborn foal trying to stand and walk for the first time. The rocker he’d pulled inside while she read to him last night blocked the shortest path to the back door. She stopped, pivoted, her foot slipping on the wet floor, then stumbled toward the long way around, grabbing for anything she could reach for balance, pinballing in one direction then another. She made it to the toilet and the sink, around the shelving unit, heading toward the light from outside coming through the basement door.

He was after her now. When she stopped to paw the door handle with her good hand, Emmett shoved the towering stack of shelves between them in her direction. Cement blocks and sagging planks and everything stacked on them—tools and magazines and cardboard boxes and paint cans—smashed to the floor. The higher shelves came down closest to the girl. Cement blocks skidded in front of the door. She crouched with her hands over her head, then reached again for the door handle. Even if she could have unlocked the door, there was too much blocking it, and she only had one hand to move it.

When she turned in Emmett’s direction, he had Carl’s gun pointed at her. He saw her glance toward the basement stairs—the direction she should have gone instead of toward the promise of the outside light.

“You ain’t fast enough, girl,” he said.

She started wailing, knowing she had failed. She sank to the floor in her red Coke T-shirt, holding on to the door handle like there was still hope.

Emmett smelled the piss and shit on him. He smelled Carl’s blood and those goddamned microwaved breakfast sandwiches. He stared at the girl down the length of the trembling barrel.

You knew it was always going to come to this, old man.

He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.





Chapter Twenty-Seven


Packard parked just beyond Cora’s driveway. Shepard had pulled his car practically to the front door, doing a nice job of obscuring any tire tracks that might have told them if someone had come and gone during the night. That fool would drive over a dead body if it meant fewer steps to the crime scene.

Packard got out just as Shepard came through the door with Cora and Greta right behind him. Cora looked like a gray-haired mouse between them, wearing a plain, green house dress with large front pockets that looked like she’d made it herself. Greta was as big as a door with greasy hair pulled back in a braid, wearing camouflage pants and a gray hooded sweatshirt with a Green Bay Packers jersey over it. Her unibrow was so pronounced it seemed confrontational. It dared you not to stare at it.

“It sure took you long enough,” Cora said. She was holding a television remote in one hand that she jabbed in Shepard’s direction. “This one ain’t done nothing but walk around the yard and scratch his ass since he got here. You pay this guy a salary? For what, I’d like to know.”

Packard often asked himself the same question, but he wasn’t about to take Cora’s side against one of his deputies. “What do you know so far?” he asked Shepard.

“Cora says her old man was home when she went to bed last night. Earlier in the evening, one of the guys from the garage dropped off the wrecker and drove home in Carl’s truck. This morning Carl and the wrecker are gone. They’ve been calling his cell phone and the truck’s radio because they had tows scheduled and there’s no response. No sign of Carl at either scheduled pickup.”