And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(94)

“I imagine you always had a dog or two at the farm,” Packard said.

“Oh yes. My husband loved dogs. We always had a good herding dog and then another one, usually a mutt of some kind, to keep that one company. Corgis are good herders, I’ve heard,” she said and laughed at her own wordplay.

Back outside, Gary helped Olivia into her seat while Packard opened the rear door to the SUV and put the corgi in the dog kennel with a treat and a toy to distract it. He glanced over at Cora’s house as he closed the door. All the blinds were drawn. No vehicles out front. “You seen or talked to her lately?”

Gary shut Olivia’s door and shook his head. “Not a word. She and Greta are around. I heard they opted not to have a public funeral.”

Packard nodded. He wondered how long it had been since Sandy Lake had so many dead to bury at once. Jesse. Sam. Carl. Emmett. Plus the bodies from Emmett’s property that would need to be reburied.

“Seemed like you two might have had a thawing of the ice when we were looking at the security footage,” Packard said.

Gary shrugged, shook out a cigarette from the pack in his pants pocket. “We’ll see. I’m not going to hold my breath, or hold it against her if she’s crazier than before. She’s been through a lot.”

“That’s big of you. I’d appreciate not having to come out here and use the hose on you two.”

“Honey, come by any time. Bring your hose, bring your fur friend. I always like to see how my former charges are doing.”

“All right then. We’ll be back.”

“Listen to you,” Gary said as he lit his cigarette. “Already a ‘we.’ That’s what I like to hear.”

***

Already a “we.”

Gary’s words stuck with Packard over the next couple of days at home alone with his new dog. He still hadn’t come up with a name. He didn’t want anything obvious, like Tripod or Tilt. It would take some time together to decide on the right one. There was no hurry.

He brought the dog down to the lake when he went swimming. It was full-on summer now. The trees around the lake had exploded with leaves, and the water was warm enough that he didn’t need the wet suit. The great gray owl still watched over him and her nest from her spot high in the trees. He hadn’t seen any of the fledglings take flight yet, but he often saw their heads above the swirl of the nest when the smaller male swooped in at feeding time.

In the evenings, he took the dog for a walk and thought about Marcus and the years that had passed since he was killed. Packard had spent them like a monk lighting candles at an altar to a forgotten saint. It was time to let his regrets go, stop cataloging the whys and the what-ifs. That’s not what Marcus had asked of him.

The remorse he felt about moving to Sandy Lake was rooted in the realization that there was no outrunning his past or his problems. It was also hard to imagine making a life here if he couldn’t be himself. Knowing his big secret was out made it easier. His skin was thick enough to take the name-calling that was sure to come. If anyone wanted to take a swing at the faggot cop, they’d find out in short order that he was ready for them.

He’d come to Sandy Lake for a reason, he decided. His family had known good times here once. They might again if he could find out what happened to Nick. The women they’d found on Emmett’s property were proof that secrets don’t stay buried forever. Their families had gone without answers for almost as long as his family had. It took two teenagers breaking into the wrong man’s house to set in motion the events that uncovered the truth. The same could happen with his brother.

Packard didn’t have to wait for chance. Cold-case files were stored in a locked room in the lower level of the city building. Kelly had the only key. She also maintained the log of people who requested files, when she pulled them, and when they came back.

“There’s no file with that number,” she told him after he requested it.

“What do you mean? It’s in the system.”

“I know. I see a space for it on the shelf but it’s not there. I make the work-study kids do an audit every year comparing the system to the inventory. According to the audit, the file was there in February. There’s no record of it going out in my book since then. What’s the case?”

He thought back to the night when Gary asked him if he was related to the Packard boy who went missing. If Gary had made the connection, it stood to reason others had, too. Nick’s disappearance hadn’t come up in any of Packard’s interviews for the job. It hadn’t been mentioned by anyone in the department in the last eighteen months. Who else was suddenly interested in his brother’s case? Why pull the file without leaving a record? And why now?

“Never mind,” Packard said.

They were questions for another time. He was just coming off a case involving his family, and there was still a lot of work to do before Emmett’s file and the related cold cases could be closed. Packard needed a break before he took on something that intense again.

He called Michael, the nurse in Minneapolis, on his way home from running errands in town. “I have some time off but here’s the deal. I have a new dog and I can’t leave him behind to run to the Cities. What do you think about coming up here?”

“I could do that. When are you thinking?”

They compared schedules and made a plan for a three-day weekend. Michael asked if he would get to see him in uniform while they were together.