The Missing Page 0,66

was a close-up photo of Rachel’s hands. The fingernails were caked with dirt, the skin cut up and bleeding not from fighting but from digging.

Darby ran down to the kitchen and grabbed the cordless. Coop answered on the sixth ring.

‘Coop, it’s Darby.’

‘What’s wrong? Is it your mother?’

‘No, it’s about Rachel Swanson. I think she hid something underneath the porch.’

‘We searched that area, including the trash, and didn’t find anything.’

‘But we didn’t search the ground,’ Darby said. ‘I think she buried something.’

Chapter 51

The rectangular-shaped area underneath the porch was about half the size of a small bedroom. The ground was still muddy. Darby couldn’t see any recent evidence of digging, so she started working in the far left-hand corner where she had first spotted Rachel.

Darby did the digging. She filled the bucket and handed it to Coop. He dumped the dirt on top of the sifter set up on a large garbage can lined with plastic.

They’d been at it for well over an hour, and the only thing they had to show for their efforts was a collection of rocks and glass shards.

Kneeling underneath the porch, her pants wet and soaked with mud, Darby handed Coop another bucketful for sifting. Carol’s mother stood on the neighbor’s back porch, watching them dig, her face twisted with worry and hope.

Coop ducked his head underneath the porch. ‘Just more rocks,’ he said, handing her the empty bucket. ‘What do you think?’

It was the third time Coop had asked the question.

‘I still think she buried something in here,’ Darby said.

‘I’m not saying you’re wrong. I looked at the same pictures you did, and I agree she dug in here with her hands. But I’m beginning to think maybe she buried something only she could see.’

‘You heard the tape. She kept mentioning a handcuff key.’

‘Maybe she believed she had a handcuff key. The woman was delusional, Darb. She thought you were Terry Mastrangelo. She thought the hospital room was her prison cell.’

‘We know, for a fact, she escaped the van. I think she had a handcuff key. It’s got to be around here somewhere.’

‘Okay, let’s say you’re right. What’s a handcuff key going to buy us in terms of evidence?’

‘What do you want to do, Coop? Sit around and wait for Carol Cranmore’s body to turn up?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘I know how badly you want to find something. But there’s nothing here.’

Darby grabbed the trowel and started digging at a feverish pace. She had to remind herself to slow down. She didn’t want to damage any evidence with the trowel.

Rachel Swanson might have been delusional, but it was brought on by real trauma and not some imagined event. The woman had suffered unimaginable horrors over the course of five years. Mixed up in her fear were grains of truth. Something was buried here, Darby could feel it.

‘I think the Dunkin’ Donuts is open,’ Coop said. ‘I’m going to grab a coffee. You want one?’

‘I’m all set.’

Coop crossed the backyard, walking past the crime scene vehicle, which was still parked in its original spot from this morning.

Darby dug up two more pails and sifted the damp dirt on the screen. More rocks.

Forty minutes later, Darby had dug up about three-quarters of the area underneath the porch. The muscles in her legs and lower back ached. She thought about hanging it up when something caught her eye – a folded, corner section of what looked like paper sticking out from the dirt.

Darby moved the portable light into the hole. She used her gloved fingers to scoop away the dirt and then switched to the brush.

A handcuff key sat on top of the folded piece of paper.

‘Looks like I owe you an apology,’ Coop said.

‘Buy me dinner and we’ll call it even.’

‘It’s a date.’

Once the photographs and documentation work were completed, Darby lifted the folded piece of paper out of the hole and set it up on top of the sifting screen.

Documents required special handling and care. Because paper was nothing more than pulverized wood and glue, when wet paper was allowed to dry, it turned to glue. Folded pages and papers stacked on top of one another would be stuck together and couldn’t be pried apart.

‘Any idea when these mobile forensic units are arriving?’ Coop asked.

‘I don’t know, but if we wait too long, these pages will start to stick together and we’ll be screwed.’

As it turned out, Darby didn’t have to wait long. By the time she finished bagging the handcuff key into