they took the same path out, presumably sometime later. But now Reed saw that they’d actually deviated slightly from the original path, seeming to stop at a spot closer to the door where more dust was disturbed. As Reed squinted down at the dirty concrete, he noticed that there appeared to be a large, loose section of cement. “Sarge,” he said, and his boss turned toward him. “Look at this.” Reed went over to the section of floor, reached into his pocket, and removed the gloves his sergeant had brought with him when he’d arrived and given to Reed. He maneuvered his fingers in the large cracks at each side until he was able to shift the piece of flooring. It lifted easily and Reed set it aside, both of them peering inside the dirt hole.
“Goddamn,” his sergeant mumbled. Inside were dozens of Polaroids of women, their faces tear-streaked, makeup running down their cheeks and rimming their eyes as they stared terrified into the camera. Reed picked one up, his heart beating dully as he took in the frightened expression of the woman in the picture. There was a name written at the top in black Sharpie, the letters square and blocky: Cora Hartsman, “Mimi.”
Reed stilled.
Hartsman.
Mimi.
The note, the one written to Charles Hartsman on the CPD tipster site. Charlie, I know where Mimi is. She’s my sweet pea, and she did not leave. Contact me.
And he had. This, this was what had lured Charles there.
Had Gordon Draper attempted to contact Charles, or had it been Axel Draper, the old man’s . . . what? Successor?
Mimi. Hartsman.
Charles’s mother.
Gordon Draper had murdered her.
Oh Jesus.
His mind raced as he tried to remember what he knew about Charles’s birth parents. Not much. Just that his mother had been a prostitute and his father a junkie. They’d abandoned him to the system, although later, his mother, apparently clean, attempted to get him back, but was a no-show at the court hearing, as often happened with addicts. Only . . . she hadn’t just been a no-show. Maybe she had been trying.
She hadn’t left him.
She’d been taken.
She’s my sweet pea and she did not leave.
Nausea washed over Reed in a sudden, shocking wave of sickness. He swallowed, focusing back on the photo of the young, scared-looking brunette with red lipstick smeared across her face. This woman is my grandmother. There was something paperclipped to it with a rusty paperclip, and when Reed pulled the photograph aside, he saw it was a seed packet. He stared, another memory tickling the edges of his mind.
I was out back in the garden.
I’d let it get so out of hand . . . untended. Gardening is not the easiest of pastimes for a man in my predicament.
Gardening.
His eyes moved slowly to the seed packet attached to the photo in his hand, already knowing what he would see.
Sweet pea.
“This is Charles Hartsman’s mother,” Reed said. “It has to be why he murdered Gordon Draper.”
His sergeant paused, his brow twitching as he took the photo from Reed and looked at it, obviously noting the last name. “We’ll check it out.”
Reed nodded numbly, picking up another photo.
Each photo in the dirt hole had a paperclip attaching a seed packet to it.
“The garden,” Reed said, meeting his sergeant’s eyes. “These women . . . they’re buried in his garden.”
They heard the sounds of footsteps on the stairs and stood, turning as the first of the criminalists entered the room. “Davies. You’re bound and determined to have us running all over town today, aren’t you?” Lewis said as he entered, coming to a standstill as he looked around at the chamber of death. “This isn’t good.”
“No disagreements here,” Reed muttered. “We’ll get out of your way. Let me know if you find anything noteworthy.”
As they climbed the stairs back toward where Ransom was still doing a walk-through of the house, performing a more thorough search of closets and cabinets, his sergeant was using his phone to call cadaver dogs. He hung up as they entered the upstairs hall. “Dogs’ll be here shortly.”
Reed turned, heading toward the kitchen where there was a back door. He opened it, stepping outside into the mild spring day, the sunshine above seeming wrong somehow. How could the sun still shine when rooms like the one he’d just been in existed? When evil like that walked the earth?
Hell. I just visited hell.
There was a patio directly off the back door and beyond that, a large yard stretched before him, twenty or