Page 54 of The First Gentleman

We rented a motel room where we could keep the equipment we’d need, then drove to a small feed and grain store—one with no surveillance cameras—and paid cash for two shovels, a couple pairs of heavy-duty work gloves, industrial-strength flashlights, and a forty-foot tape measure.

When we suited up to head out, I thought,I became a lawyer for this?

I decide now the question is not worth answering. My gloved hands hurt from carrying the shovel along the wooded paths. I’ve got burrs stuck in my hair. I’m as far out of my comfort zone as a city girl can possibly get. I like my nature in small doses and in broad daylight when I can see what’s coming at me, not in the New Hampshire backwoods in darkness.

Garrett puts black tape over the lenses of our flashlights, leaving narrow slits to light our way as we bushwhack through brambles and low branches. He shines his slit beam onto the map. Its visual markers are crudely drawn, yet identifiable: Rock. Picnic tables. Stream.

“We should be there any minute,” Garrett says.

By now, my night vision is pretty sharp. We push through another tangle of bushes and into a small clearing. On one side are two beat-up picnic tables. On the other is a large boulder.

“This is it,” says Garrett.

He leads the way to the boulder and shines the light onto a weathered brass plaque. I can barely make out the words:

ON THIS SPOT THE REVEREND BONUS WEARE PREACHED HIS FIRST SERMON AFTER THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST COLONISTS IN 1638

ERECTED BY SEABROOK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1938

Garrett checks the map and puts down his shovel. He pulls out the tape measure and places the start of it at the base of the boulder, right under the plaque. Then he walks backward, letting the tape out as he moves through a tangle of brush at theedge of the clearing. The foliage closes around him and he’s out of sight.

“Garrett!”

A few seconds later, he calls out in a low voice, “Brea! Over here!”

For a second, I flash back to the video of Suzanne, that gorgeous young woman with her whole life ahead of her. And I realize that I might be standing on her grave.

After all these years, there’d be little left but bones. Though we knew that when we came here, I’m overcome with emotion. My cheeks are suddenly wet with tears.Suzanne, we’re going to find you.

Garrett extends the forty-foot tape until it’s at its limit, then grabs a stick and jabs it into the ground to mark the spot. He reels the tape back into its case.

“This is where we dig,” he says.

CHAPTER

46

Garrett shines his flashlight around the edge of the area. “Hold on,” he says. “The soil is loose, not hard-packed.”

He bends down under a bush and comes back up with a handful of soil. “This is recent.”

“Somebody was here, Garrett. Somebody got here first!”

Garrett wipes his brow. “Maybe we read the map wrong.”

I grab his arm. “Stop. We’re in the right spot. Somebody dug a hole. And recently, somebody dug it up again. If there was anything here, it’s gone. Somebody took it. Tookher.”

Garrett blades his shovel through the loose soil. “There has to be something here.”

I shine my flashlight where he’s working. Then my foot slips and I fall. My nose is so close to the dirt, I can smell it.

Shit. What’s this?I rip the tape off the flashlight so I can actually see. I brush away the fresh dirt.A flash of red. It could be evidence! Or it could be trash left over from a picnic.

Garrett kneels next to me. “What is that?”

While he holds the flashlight, I use my shovel to comb through the dirt. A shape appears. A small clump of something. Not dirt. Not a rock. My chest is pounding. I reach down between my feet and pick it up.

I hold it in front of the flashlight beam and rub the dirt away, just enough to see what I’m holding.

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