“Why don’t I give you two a minute,” says Washington. He rises from his desk, walks into a small bathroom attached to his office, closes the door, and turns on the faucet. Primitive white noise.

I pull my chair closer to Garrett’s. He grabs a slim letter opener from Washington’s desk and slices through the tape on the envelope. He pulls out a single sheet of paper and unfolds it, then stares at it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I lean over to see what’s on the page.

It looks like a treasure map drawn by a mental patient.

CHAPTER
45

Seabrook, New Hampshire

After we deciphered the map, we thought about driving directly to the police station in Seabrook to turn it over. But then we realized they would ask where we got it. Garrett said he wasn’t ready to unravel that knot.

Not yet.

“Let’s see where the map leads us,” he said. “Then we can decide.”

The big fat arrow pointing to a location in Seabrook was the obvious part. It was only an hour’s drive from Boston. The map was very specific about a particular landmark, but Garrett insisted on waiting until most people would be asleep, then taking a roundabout route to the spot.

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