Page 92 of The Last Straw

Afterward, they went to the living room. Charlie headed straight to the desk, but Wyrick kept looking at the shelves of books. The titles told her nothing. They were a random assortment of fiction and nonfiction self-help books, and some on realty and flipping houses. There were no classics. No literature. And none of the books were in any kind of organization. They were just poked in the shelves without thought, almost as if they were there to fill up shelves...and hide something in plain sight.

The thought had come out of nowhere, and it startled her.

“Hey, Charlie...”

He paused, then looked up.

“Yeah?”

“We need to go through these books.”

“Really?”

She nodded and went to the bottom shelf on one side of the fireplace, started with the book at the end, pulled it out, leafed through it, then held it by the covers and shook it upside down.

Charlie followed her lead and started on the shelves on the other side of the fireplace. They were still going through books, and then tossing them on the floor, when Floyd and Mills walked in.

“What’s going on?” Floyd asked.

Wyrick shrugged. “Just following a gut feeling.”

“We’ll help,” they said, and soon all four of them were pulling books from the shelves and shaking them out before tossing them aside.

When they got to the top shelves, nobody could reach them but Charlie. So he began pulling down books and handing them to the trio below to search. He had just grabbed a handful and as he was pulling them down, a book that had been hidden behind them fell flat onto the shelf.

“Uh-oh,” Charlie said and handed Floyd the books.

“What?” Wyrick asked.

“There was a book behind those. It just fell.”

“What is it?” Wyrick asked.

Charlie felt along the shelf until it was beneath his fingers, then pulled it out and frowned.

“Weird. The Velveteen Rabbit is a kid’s book.”

“Is it? I’ve never heard of that,” Wyrick said and held out her hand. “May I?”

Charlie hid his shock as he handed it to her. Wyrick had never heard of The Velveteen Rabbit? And then he watched as she opened the cover and touched the inscription inside with a kind of reverence.

“There’s something written on the flyleaf. It says, To Sonny, with love, Granny.”

“Ah, just a keepsake,” Floyd said and kept searching.

But Wyrick wasn’t so sure. She turned the book upside down and shook it.

“A page fell out,” Charlie said.

She reached down and picked it up. “It’s not a page. It’s folded paper,” she said and even as she was unfolding it, she knew it had something to do with the missing women.

“It’s a map,” Charlie said. “But it’s not a road map. This was torn from a plat map. Those lines are section lines, and the other lines and notations are the way the sections of land have been surveyed and sold off. See, half section, quarter section and some even smaller. This is how rural land is mapped.”

Wyrick was still holding the paper, staring at it. What she’d first thought were just stains or mold spots in one area, she now saw as ink spots. She took the map over to the desk and spread it out, then laid her hand over the marks and closed her eyes. Almost immediately, she saw a woman’s face, and then a second, and then a third. And they were crying. She yanked her hand back as if she’d been burned and handed it to Floyd.

“I don’t know which county his grandparents’ farm is in, but these dots are where he buried the three missing women.”

Floyd looked at the paper.

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