And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(85)

He had no choice but to overcome his resistance to driving Shepard’s car so he could get back to the house. “I need to talk to Cora. Stay here and wait for the diver,” he told Shepard.

Shepard looked like he was being abandoned on the side of the road miles from anywhere. “How am I supposed to get back?”

“You can ride back with the diver or walk.”

“What am I supposed to do until then?”

Packard popped the trunk and took out the camera and the evidence collection kit. “Document everything. Everything you’ve seen and heard from the minute you got to Cora’s. Try not to walk over the tire tracks or the blood.”

“There’s blood?”

“There’s blood. Find it and photograph it.”

Packard drove with the windows down. Past the junkyard he spotted the back of Gary Bushwright’s house and the cab of his semi parked beside it. Tshirts and several pairs of overalls hung motionless from a clothesline in the backyard.

He had a bad feeling about what was hiding in the black water back at the quarry. Cora’s husband could have taken the wrecker anywhere between the time she went to bed and now. He could have been out of cell phone range all morning, and that’s why no one could reach him. It wasn’t hard to do up here. He might also have been deliberately not responding. Packard would have held fast to either of those options if he hadn’t noticed on the way to the quarry that the bent grass was all lying in one direction.

Based on the tracks, two cars went down there. Neither one came back.

***

Back at the house, Packard had a seat at the kitchen table. He asked Cora and Greta to tell him everything about the night before. He made notes in tiny script in his notebook. After twenty minutes he had a few more names, times, and details but no new information. When they were done, he asked Cora to try to call Carl’s cell phone again from their home phone. After four rings Carl’s voice told her to leave a message. She called down to the garage, too. Still no word from Carl there either.

Dave McCarthy, a local diver in his early fifties with a tumbleweed of thinning hair, showed up in a battered white pickup with oxygen tanks riding in a custom wooden rack behind the cab. Packard met him on the driveway and gave him directions back to the quarry. He told him about the gas and oil on the surface of the water. “I think there’s one or more vehicles down there.”

“Bodies?” Dave asked.

“I sure as hell hope not,” Packard said.

Back in the house, he and Cora and Greta stood on a small square of linoleum looking at the smear of blood on the front door. It was a steel door painted gray with a peephole drilled through it. In part of the blood, near level with the doorknob, he could see the weave of the fabric of whatever had pressed against the door. Higher up was a swipe where it looked like someone had leaned a shoulder against the door, then turned away.

“How tall is your husband?”

“He’s big. Six four,” Cora said.

“Same as me,” Packard said. He looked at Greta, who was maybe an inch shorter than her dad. For some reason he had a sudden vision of her in a singlet, climbing the turnbuckle in a wrestling ring and coming down on top of her opponent like a landslide.

“Whoever rubbed up against this door was a lot shorter. If this swipe here is near his shoulder height, then I’m guessing this person was five eight. Maybe less. Either one of you touch this outer doorknob?”

They both shook their heads, but he could tell neither one was sure she was telling the truth.

“Keep it that way.”

Cora found the tissue in her pocket again and wiped her nose. The three of them stared at the shape on the door like they might recognize who left it if they squinted long enough. Packard debated whether to share what was coming together in his mind. Not yet, he decided.

Motion outside caught his eye right then. The sound of barking dogs got noticeably louder as Gary came out of the kennel’s steel building pulling a wire basket on wheels.

“Cora, put your shoes on and come with me,” Packard said.

“Why? Am I arrested?”

“No, you aren’t arrested. Why would you think I’m arresting you?”

Cora threw her hands up. “You’re always threatening to arrest me.”

“Yeah, well, whose fault is that?”

“The sodomite’s.”

“The last time I was here was because you shot the sodomite’s house with a crossbow.”

“On accident,” Cora insisted.

“I don’t care. You’re not arrested, but you’re not going to like where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?”

“Next door to Gomorrah.”

***

They caught up to Gary in his backyard by the clothesline. Cora was wearing rubber rain boots and an orange quilted vest over her green house dress. She walked five steps behind Packard to make her reluctance known to Jesus and anyone else watching. In her arms she had a black bound book with the words HOLY BIBLE facing out like a talisman. Packard was surprised she’d left her crucifix and wooden stake back at the house.

Gary kept one eye on them while he pinned up the laundry. His wheeled wire basket was full of wet blankets.

“I see the two of you coming, and I don’t know if I should bar the door or put out tea.”