“What proceedings?”
He looked away, embarrassed. “Well, I still don’t know what will happen with the kidnapping charge. Whether it will become a state crime now Willem and Marion Mclary are dead, or…or if it can just be ignored.”
“When will you know?” I asked, following him and the female officer into the gloomy house with its feeble lighting in cobwebbed shades.
“Once this mess has been sorted out.”
“They’re dead children, Mr. Murray, not a mess,” Della said sternly. “And if you bring a case against Ren, I’ll contest it. I’m the only living Mclary left. And I say I wasn’t kidnapped.”
Martin squeezed the back of his neck, indicating his stress levels were as strained as ours. “Another topic for another day. For now, let’s focus on what we found.”
Together, we moved deeper into the house toward the narrow staircase leading upstairs.
The steps groaned and cracked as we trailed single file up and up, then followed obediently down the dingy corridor. I’d never been upstairs, and I guessed one of these rooms had been Della’s nursery once upon a time. Now, they were just store rooms with junk and miscellaneous boxes with a master at the end with a stripped mattress and stained carpet.
The sweet smell of decay hinted that this was where Marion Mclary had decided to do the deed.
“We found this,” the female detective said, marching to her colleague who was taking photos of a hidden panel in the wardrobe. “A cubby full of documents.”
“What sort of documents?” Della asked as we moved deeper into the room, peering at the scattered paperwork all over the bed and yet more coming from the secret hole in the wall.
“Birth certificates.”
I inhaled sharply, stalking toward the bed and fisting a few stained pages. Some were hand scribbled, and others were computer printed. Some girls. Some boys. Too many to count.
“They asked whoever sold their child to give them their birth certificate too?” Della stood next to me wrinkling her nose in disgust. “That’s not just sick. That’s…diabolical. It’s as if they fully believed they were buying an animal and had the bill of sale to prove it.”
Martin Murray nodded. “I agree. A case like this can’t explain the rationale of the people who committed the crimes.”
“How many?” I snapped, doing my best to rein in my hope that mine existed in the pile.
The female officer said, “We’ve counted. There’s one hundred and sixty-seven. Compared to the two hundred and seventeen names, I’m guessing some kids were born and never registered, some didn’t have their birth certificates, and a few were sold with the child, if what you say is true, Mr. Shaw, and they were moved on once they could no longer do the work required.”
“Have you found mine?” I asked quietly, wishing I didn’t have hope bubbling in my chest because I already tasted bitter disappointment.
But to finally have that piece of paper? To finally be free to marry Della? It would be a gift after such a grotesque day.
“No, I’m afraid not.” The female officer scanned the pages in front of us. “I mean, there’s always a chance we’ll find more, but not at this stage. However—” She turned to a colleague and collected a page protected by cloudy cellophane. “We did find this one.”
Della was the one to take it. Only right, seeing as it had her name on it.
In shaky calligraphy, her name, Della Donna Mclary, stated she was born on 27th of June to Willem and Marion Mclary.
She gave me a weak smile. “I’m going to scribble that out and make it Wild instead.”
I chuckled softly. “Or I could just marry you and make it legally Wild.”
Her face fell. “If you can somehow make Wild legally yours, first.”
“I’m working on it.”
She smiled sadly. “Work on making your birthday the same as mine, too. Can’t break a lifelong tradition now, can we?”
I ran a finger over her birth certificate, stopping on the date. “I don’t care when I was born. I’m sharing yours forever.”
Martin looked away as I glanced at him, he’d been listening but pretended to give us privacy and another moment or two to study her birth certificate before holding up yet another document.
This one was dog-eared and had been written on something soft, so the pen had almost pressed through the page, leaving embossed letters and not just ink. “This was in the secret cubby, too.” Passing it to me, he nodded for me to take it.
I did, gingerly.
I didn’t want to touch what they’d touched. I didn’t want to read what they’d written, but as my eyes fell to the top line, and I understood what it was, I passed it to Della.
I couldn’t have it against my skin.
And besides, something this important should be read correctly with no pauses or stumbles. Something this important should be burned and never read at all.