And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(11)

“Knock it off, Gary. You need to know I’m not on your side. I’m not on her side. I’m out here to represent the law. I’m tired of babysitting you two.”

“Honey, I know you’re tired. I’m tired, too. But am I supposed to just let her get away with this shit? Do you know what I’ve put up with over the years?”

“I do know. You’ve told me.”

Gary kept going without taking a breath. “I’ve been called names. I’ve been told I’m going to hell. I have had flaming bags of feces left on my doorstep. I had F-A-G-I-T spray-painted on my garage. Things have gotten better since I put in the security cameras and sent them a nice stack of photos showing them all the land covered by the system. But it feels like she and that Sasquatch daughter of hers are always testing my defenses.”

“I think she’ll behave. I threatened to arrest both of you and put you in a cell together.”

Gary tried to hide his smile behind his bushy beard, but it got away from him. He howled and slapped his leg. “I would love to share a cell with Cora. I could teach her how to knit.” He put his hands out, palms facing each other eighteen inches apart. “She could hold my yarn while I scandalized her with stories from my wild youth when I worked in the skin trade.”

Skin trade? Packard opened his mouth, closed it, deciding not to take the bait. “I gotta go,” he said. Gary and Cora could turn into a full-time job if he let them.

“Wait, you gotta see the dogs before you leave.”

“Gary, I don’t have time.”

“Honey, you have two minutes. Two. Minutes.”

“All right. I’ll look. But you gotta stop calling me honey. Seriously. You can call me Ben or Packard, you can call me Deputy—”

Gary gave him a dismissive wave. “Honey, I call everybody honey. You aren’t special.”

***

Packard followed Gary inside the kennel. The steel door made a sweeping sound as Gary pushed it open and closed it behind them. It smelled like dogs and dog food and laundry soap inside. Twelve fenced kennels filled half of the building. The rest of the building contained a business office, a table where dogs could be treated or examined, a supply room, a bathing station, and a washing machine and a dryer. A door at the far end led to the outdoor dog run.

“I got a black lab in number four, pretty old, arthritic, and the worst goddamn breath you ever smelled in your life. Lord have mercy,” Gary said.

Packard walked up the aisle between the kennels. Marcus had had a golden retriever named Jarrett—after Keith Jarrett, the jazz musician—that became Packard’s dog after Marcus was killed. Packard had brought the dog with him when he made the move to Sandy Lake. Jarrett used to sniff along the shoreline and wait at the end of the dock while Packard swam laps.

He stopped in front of the kennel holding Jack, a husky-poodle mix that looked all husky but was poodle-sized. He put the back of his hand out and let Jack lick it. In the next cage, a black Rottweiler-Lab mix named Captain came over to get his share of the attention.

Jarrett had developed a cancerous obstruction in his bowel and stopped eating last fall. He was twelve years old. Dr. Weiss, the vet in Sandy Lake, told Packard this was a common occurrence in the breed. When there was nothing else to be done, Packard sat with Jarrett on a blue blanket while Weiss gave him two injections. It took everything Packard had to keep it together long enough for Weiss to confirm Jarrett had no pulse, then leave him alone with his dog. Packard moved to Sandy Lake to get away from everyone and everything he knew. He’d wanted to be alone. But not this alone.

In the last cage on the right was a white-and-brown Welsh corgi gnawing on a pig’s ear pinched between his front legs. One of his legs was wrapped in a bandage and significantly shorter than the other. The whiteboard was blank.

“What happened to that dog?”

“Just came in yesterday from a puppy mill in Missouri. He was in a too-small cage and got his paw stuck between the bars. A dog in the next cage started eating it.”

The corgi’s other legs had white feet that looked like socks. His fur was brown and black across his back and white on the belly. “He looks like a cartoon. I’ve never seen a dog so…” He struggled to find the right word.

“He needs a forever home. And you need someone to keep you warm at night, Deputy.” Gary elbowed him.

Packard shook his head. “I just put in a sauna at my place. I’m good.”

“Oh Lord. Spare me the sauna talk, okay? You’re talking to a man who saw the inside of every bathhouse from LA to New York back in the day. I know from saunas.”

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

“What I’m saying is there’s no sauna that can keep you as warm as the love of a good dog. You had Jarrett so you already know that.”

The corgi hobbled to the cage door. Packard squatted and scratched the top of the dog’s head with his finger. He suddenly had a vision of their whole life together—walks through sun and leaves and snow. Dog bowls and leashes. Napping on the couch. He saw a table set for two with half-empty beer glasses and the corgi begging for table scraps.

Gary said, “You think you’re hiding behind those sunglasses, Deputy, but I see you. I think you just fell in love.”

Packard stood up. Yes, he was hiding. From his life and his past. Hiding who he was since moving to Sandy Lake. Police departments and small towns were notoriously conservative places. A certain amount of camouflage was always required. Even in Minneapolis, his relationship with Marcus had been very much on the down low in the interest of their careers. When he interviewed for the job in Sandy Lake, he’d kept his family’s connection to the area to himself. Most people still didn’t know he and Susan were related. His plan was to come in as an outsider, be the best deputy possible and nothing else. The solution for the pain and confusion caused by Marcus’s death was not to get involved like that again. In Sandy Lake, he wouldn’t have a choice.