And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(93)
***
He drove them through town, around the Sandy Lake shoreline, then headed north. Mrs. McDonald told him about teaching math to sixth graders for forty years and about her husband who was a farmer for all that time and how he died of a brain aneurysm a decade ago while milking one of their cows. When he didn’t come in for his breakfast, she went to the barn and found him sitting on the ground, leaning against a heifer like he was listening to its heartbeat.
“How’s the Wheeler girl?” Mrs. McDonald asked.
“She’s home now. Her hand is going to require multiple surgeries to try to undo some of the nerve damage, but she should be fine physically. Mentally—we’ll have to wait and see, I guess.”
Jesse Crawford had been cremated. His mother held off on the funeral until Jenny was able to leave the hospital and attend. Jenny and Susan sat next to her and Alissa in the front. Most of the other people there were high school kids, friends of Jenny or Jesse or his sister. Packard saw Virginia Stevens there, the straight-A student with the tiny gold cross who’d bought Adderall from Jesse. The scrawny, unshaven man in the gray T-shirt and dirty jeans crying in the back was probably Jesse’s dad.
Jenny still hadn’t sat for an interview with anyone from the sheriff’s department or the district attorney’s office. With Emmett and Carl both dead there was no rush.
“That poor girl,” Olivia McDonald said. “I never knew Emmett Burr. My husband did. He came out and did some welding for us in the barn. Feed troughs and pen doors, things like that. I never would have imagined such a monster could live among us.”
Emmett had died from his gunshot wounds. There was some water in his lungs but not much, according to the coroner, meaning he was damn near dead by the time the Bobcat tipped over and sank into the mud. It had taken more than an hour for a truck with a winch to arrive, and another two hours before they were able to pull the Bobcat out of the lake. Emmett sat slumped inside the cab, covered in swamp mud and lake weeds, like a movie monster. It took six men to get him out and load him into the coroner’s van.
“How long before they identify the other women?” Olivia asked.
Packard made a noncommittal noise. A search of the area where Emmett was digging the hole for Jenny had turned up three bodies. Two of them were all but identified based on local missing persons cases and an initial examination of the remains. Dental records would take a bit longer. “A few days, I guess. You’ll hear about it on the news once they know for sure.”
Olivia pulled her sweater together in the front, suddenly chilled. “Listen to us talk about such horrible things as casually as the weather. And on such a beautiful day. You have a difficult job, Ben. I don’t envy you.”
“It’s usually not this bad, but you’re right. We should find more pleasant things to talk about.”
“How about this? You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“I have an errand I’ve been putting off that I thought you might enjoy.”
“Does it have anything to do with the dog cage in the back?”
“It does indeed.”
***
Gary Bushwright was in his front yard walking a three-legged corgi on a retractable leash and smoking a cigarette when Packard pulled in behind his rig. The dog stopped sniffing the ground long enough to watch the SUV pull up, then bounded straight up in the air when a white moth suddenly flushed in front of it. Packard smiled in what felt like the first time in weeks. He was about to be a dog owner again. It was time.
Gary thought so, too. “Honey, it’s about time. I mean—It’s. About. Time,” he said as Packard climbed out of the truck.
“Give me a break, Gary. You know I’ve been busy.”
“We’re all busy. Busy living, busy dreaming, busy dying. Who’s this you brought with you?”
“This is Mrs. Olivia McDonald.”
“Oh Lord. Olivia, I didn’t recognize you behind those giant sunglasses. I thought you were a movie star. Olivia and my mother worked on the church fundraising committee together,” he said to Packard. “Olivia, I still bolt up in bed some nights and call out for your chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. You still make that?”
“I don’t but I’ve taught my grandkids how to make it. You can ask them. They volunteer at the church.”
“I’ll be at the next bake sale with bells on,” Gary promised.
Packard took a seat on the front steps and held his hand out for the leash. It was harder to look Gary in the eye since he’d googled Johnny Hardwood—the name Gary used for his adult film work. Packard would have never known it was Gary if he hadn’t seen pictures of him as a young man in his house. Turned out Johnny Hardwood was somewhat of a gay porn legend in the late seventies and early eighties. The photos and movie clips Packard had seen made it clear why.
“Got everything you need at home?” Gary asked.
“I got your email and bought everything on the list that I didn’t already have.” Packard pulled a twisted plastic bag with dog treats from his pocket and fed one to the corgi. The dog gobbled it down, then sat and looked at him expectantly. “Dog food has gotten more expensive.”
“The good stuff costs money. You can feed him what you want. I only make suggestions.”
The three of them and the corgi took a stroll through the kennel, mainly so Olivia could see the other dogs under Gary’s care. He let some of the dogs out one at a time for Olivia to pet and feed treats. Oh for heaven’s sake, she said. Well, aren’t you the cutest thing, she said.