And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(89)

He thought he heard a woman call his name just as he started the engine again. Wanda and the jogger were buried directly beneath where he was sitting in the Bobcat. He thought of the coming night and hearing them call his name in the dark, the sound of their footsteps on the basement steps. Would Carl be there with a hole in his throat that whistled as he breathed in and out? How long before the girl joined the parade?

Some things would never go back to normal, he realized. Some things would stay with him the rest of his days.

He followed his tracks back to the garage, steering the ’cat through the gap in the bushes, and stopped short at the sight of the black Dodge Charger that had followed him home yesterday parked behind his Cadillac.

One look at the open door at the top of the stairs, and he knew nothing would ever go back to normal.





Chapter Twenty-Nine


The first change Thielen noticed at Emmett’s place was that the garage was open. She spotted sheets of bowed plywood leaning against one wall, heavy chain hanging in a loop, and cement blocks sitting on top of a crushed pallet.

She parked behind Emmett’s Cadillac and radioed in her location. Getting out, she noticed a gap in the bushes behind the garage that looked like the start of a trail where matted leaves and a fallen tree gave it its shape. The rapid-fire staccato of a woodpecker sounded nearby. It took her only a second to locate the bright-red head against a white paper birch. She heard a cardinal chirp and saw a pair of black-capped chickadees swoop over the top of Emmett’s house.

Her attention came back to the white car and a partial palm print on the doorframe. She’d seen enough dried blood in her life to know it when she saw it. At the top of the door, where someone might have held on while trying to lift his considerable bulk out of the seat, were bloody fingerprints. Thielen peered through the driver’s side window. Yesterday, when she grabbed the book from the front seat, she’d noticed the ring of gray grime on the car’s white leather interior that outlined where Emmett sat. Now she saw smeared blood on the seat back, on the steering wheel, and against the interior door panel.

She unsnapped the retaining strap on her holster. The feeling of familiarity from her trip yesterday was gone. Her antenna was fully up, heartbeat steadily rising. She had a hand on her firearm, now aware of every sound, every movement.

She drew her weapon as she approached the house, went up the warped stairs to the landing, and knocked on the glass sliding door. She called Emmett’s name. Standing off to one side with her back against the wall, she slid the door open by pushing it away from herself. “Emmett? It’s Detective Thielen. We met yesterday. Are you okay?” She waited. Nothing.

She entered the house.

The smell made her gag. She brought her arm in front of her nose to block the smell and keep herself from sneezing. Mold, mildew, garbage, cigarettes. She saw a shotgun on the floor next to a battered, brown recliner that looked like it had been dropped from up high into its current location. There was a console TV like she hadn’t seen since she was a kid, a VCR and a stack of video cassettes on top, mostly pornography. A couch with a sagging middle sat against the wall. Dust was thick on every flat surface. The windows were hazy from cigarette smoke, the carpet streaked with stains and dropped ashes.

On an end table next to the recliner, among empty beer cans and an overflowing ashtray, was a prescription bottle for 80-milligram oxycodone. The date on the label was only a week old. It matched what Packard had learned from Sam’s sister about someone picking up a prescription for these exact pills last week.

She swept the upstairs rooms quickly, looking for anyone. A bathroom covered in black mold. A bedroom with plywood screwed over the window and clear plastic taped over that, the bed covered in clothes and linens with just enough space for someone to sleep on the side closest to the door. Emmett didn’t really live in this house, she realized. He moved from spot to spot, huddling out of the elements. It was a lair. A burrow.

Back to the kitchen. She opened a green door with a porcelain handle. The light bulb at the top of the stairs was on. The handrail was splintered. At the bottom of the stairs she saw swipes of old blood that looked like someone had tried to clean up with a dry rag.

She started down the stairs. “Emmett, it’s Detective Thielen. Are you down here?” The steps flexed and creaked beneath her. On the fifth stair she was low enough to squat down and survey the basement over the top of the handrail. She saw toppled cement blocks and long boards and deduced the stacked shelving that had once segmented the room. Looking from up high, she spotted a rocking chair, a cascade of dirty magazines, the cluttered workbench. In the nearest corner she saw a wet floor near a toilet and a sink with a green hose running from the faucet. At the other end of the room, in the far back corner, was a steel door to a cement-block room.

She went down the rest of the stairs. It smelled worse in the basement, if that was possible. Like damp rot and an unflushed toilet and more cigarettes. Also faintly like shampoo. Like coconut shampoo.

Thielen moved past the exposed bathroom toward the room in the back corner. The toppled shelves had to be a recent occurrence. She saw beer cans sitting in puddles of spilled liquid. The back door was ajar and had what was clearly a bullet hole through it two feet up from the ground.

The toilet smell was worse by the steel door. She looked down and saw smeared feces and what she had to assume was spilled urine. She pulled the sliding bolt on the door, bracing herself for the worst but still not prepared for what she saw.