And There He Kept Her by Joshua Moehling

Author:Joshua Moehling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Packard radioed ahead to Detective Thielen with the combination to the safe and the news that he had permission from Dan Gherlick to search the blue house. Thielen had him wait while she tried the code. His phone vibrated in the cup holder where he’d stashed it. Susan Wheeler wanting to know if there was any news. There was plenty of news, Packard thought, but he wasn’t sure if it was related or if Susan should even be told. She’d have to wait.

“Combination worked,” Thielen said. “It’s open.”

“Bag the contents and show me when I get there. I’m on my way.”

The fire department crew was loading their gear when he pulled up twenty minutes later. He stopped to talk to the shift captain, Chuck Otts, about how they’d jacked up the car and got the body on a board so EMS could transport it to the county hospital. EMS had taken Sam’s unconscious sister separately while waiting for the fire department to arrive and do its thing.

Thielen had dismissed Deputy Shepard after reviewing his photos on the digital camera and supervising while he dusted for prints. The front of the red Mustang and its door handles, Sam’s iPod, and some of the tools on the workbench were all covered in black medium. Thielen had grabbed a set of prints from the body before it left the scene.

She led Packard through the kitchen and the living room (the video game was still paused, the soldiers still unsure what to do) back to Sam’s bedroom. One by one she held up the evidence bags spread out on his bed. “Five hundred fifty-seven dollars in cash. Sixty-two individual pills in small bags, sorted by kind. I don’t know all the markings and colors. If we take them back to the station and show Blake, he’ll know what we’re looking at. A small amount of weed. There’s a .22 handgun. I called in the serial number and am waiting for a call back.”

She held up the last bag. “This is what’s most interesting. There are five different prescription bottles all with different names on them. All dated within the last two years. No pills inside any of them. None with the last name Gherlick. No bottle with the name Shaw on it either. Four are for painkillers. One is anti-anxiety.”

“So he’s stealing the drugs he’s selling.”

“Or he’s buying from kids in these families who are stealing on his behalf,” Thielen suggested.

“Maybe. The more people involved in the operation, the harder it is to keep a secret. Maybe it was well known in the school that Sam was a dealer, but that’s not the impression I got. It seemed like he was being more careful than that. More careful than Jesse.”

Packard hunched over and looked inside the open safe. “What else is in there?”

“That thing still in there is some kind of silicone masturbation device. I made an executive decision that it didn’t need to be bagged.”

“Christ. Okay. Let’s see what else we can find.

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