The Empty Chair

13

Outside the window was a large hornets' nest. Resting her head against the greasy glass of her prison, an exhausted Mary Beth McConnell stared at it.

More than anything else about this terrible place, the nest – gray and moist and disgusting – gave her a sense of hopelessness.

More than the bars that Garrett had so carefully bolted outside of the windows. More than the thick oak door, secured with three huge locks. More than the memory of the terrible trek from Blackwater Landing in the company of the Insect Boy.

The wasps' nest was in the shape of a cone, the point facing toward the earth. It rested on a forked branch that Garrett had propped up near the window. The nest must've been home to hundreds of the glossy black-and-yellow insects that oozed in and out of the hole in the bottom.

Garrett had been gone when she'd wakened this morning and after lying in bed for an hour – groggy and nauseated from the vicious blow to her head last night – Mary Beth had climbed unsteadily to her feet and looked out the window. The first thing that she'd noticed was the nest outside the back window, near the bedroom.

The wasps hadn't made the nest here; Garrett had placed it outside the window himself. At first, she couldn't figure out why. But then, with a feeling of despair, she understood: her captor had left it as a flag of victory.

Mary Beth McConnell knew her history. She knew about warfare, knew about armies conquering other armies. The reason for flags and standards wasn't only to identify your side; it was to remind the vanquished who now controlled them.

And Garrett had won.

Well, he'd won the battle; the outcome of the war had yet to be decided.

Mary Beth pressed the gash on her head. It had been a terrible blow to her temple, and had peeled away some skin. She wondered if it would become infected.

She found a rubber band in her backpack and tied her long brunette hair into a ponytail. Sweat trickled down her neck and she felt a fierce aching of thirst. She was breathless from the stifling heat in the closed rooms and thought about taking off her thick denim shirt – worried about snakes and spiders, she always wore long sleeves when she was on a dig around brush or tall grass. But despite the heat now she decided to leave the shirt on. She didn't know when her captor would return; she wore only a lacy pink bra underneath the shirt and Garrett Hanlon sure didn't need any encouragement in that department.

With a last glance at the nest Mary Beth stepped away from the window. Then walked around the three-room shack once more, searching futilely for a breach in the place. It was a solid building, very old. Thick walls – a combination of hand-hewn logs and heavy boards nailed together. Outside the front window was a large field of tall grass that ended in a line of trees a hundred yards away. The cabin itself was in another stand of thick trees. Looking out the back window – the hornets' nest window – she could just see through the trunks to the glistening surface of the pond they'd skirted yesterday to get here.

The rooms themselves were small but surprisingly clean. In the living room was a long brown-and-gold couch, several old chairs around a cheap dining-room table, a second table on which were a dozen quart juice jars covered with mesh and filled with insects he'd collected. A second room contained a mattress and a dresser. The third room was empty, except for several half-full cans of brown paint sitting in the corner; it seemed that Garrett had painted the exterior of the cabin recently. The color was dark and depressing and she couldn't understand why he'd picked it – until she realized it was the same shade as the bark of the trees that surrounded the cabin. Camouflage. And it occurred to her again what she'd thought yesterday – that the boy was much cagier, and more dangerous, than she'd thought.

In the living room were stacks of food – junk food and rows of canned fruits and vegetables – Farmer John brand. From the label a stolid farmer smiled at her, the image as outdated as the 1950s Betty Crocker. She searched the cabin desperately for water or soda – anything to drink – but couldn't find a thing. The canned fruits and vegetables would be packed in juice but there was no opener or any sort of tool or utensil to open them. She had her backpack with her but had left her archaeological tools at Blackwater Landing. She tried banging a can on the side of the table to split it open but the metal didn't give.

Downstairs was a root cellar that you reached via a door in the floor of the shack's main room. She glanced at it once and shivered with disgust, felt her skin crawl. Last night – after Garrett had been gone for some time – Mary Beth had worked up her courage and walked down the rickety stairs into the low-ceilinged basement, looking for a way out of the horrible cabin. But there'd been no exit – just dozens of old boxes and jars and bags.

She hadn't heard Garrett return and suddenly, in a rush, he'd charged down the stairs toward her. She'd screamed and tried to flee but the next thing she remembered was lying on the dirt floor, blood spattered on her chest and clotted in her hair, and Garrett, smelling of unwashed adolescence, walking up slowly, wrapping his arms around her, his eyes fixed on her breasts. He'd lifted her and she'd felt his hard penis against her as he carried her slowly upstairs, deaf to her protests…

No! she now told herself. Don't think about it.

Or about the pain. Or the fear.

And where was Garrett now?

As frightened as she'd been with him padding around the cabin yesterday she was nearly as scared now that he'd forget about her. Or would get killed in an accident or shot by the deputies looking for her. And she'd die of thirst here. Mary Beth McConnell remembered a project she and her graduate adviser had been involved in: a North Carolina State Historical Society-sponsored disinterment of a nineteenth-century grave to run DNA tests on the body inside, to see if the corpse was that of a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, as a local legend claimed. To her horror, when the top of the coffin was lifted off, the arm bones of the cadaver were upraised and there were scratch marks on the inside of the lid. The man had been buried alive.

This cabin would be her coffin. And no one -

What was that? Looking out the front window, she thought she saw motion just inside the edge of the forest in the distance. Through the brush and leaves she believed it might be a man. Because his clothes and broad-brimmed hat seemed dark and there was something confident about his posture and gait she thought: He looks like a missionary in the wilderness.

But wait… Was someone really there? Or was it just the light on the trees? She couldn't tell.

"Here!" she cried. But the window was nailed shut and even if it had been open she doubted he could hear her scream, feeble from her dry throat, from this distance.

She grabbed her backpack, hoping she still had the whistle that her paranoid mother had bought her for protection. Mary Beth had laughed at the idea – a rape whistle in Tanner's Corner? – but she now searched desperately for it.

But the whistle was gone. Maybe Garrett had found it and taken it when she'd been passed out on the bloody mattress. Well, she'd scream for help anyway – scream as loudly as she could, despite her parched throat. Mary Beth grabbed one of the insect jars, intending to smash it through the window. She drew it back like a pitcher about to let fly the last ball of a no-hitter. Then her hand lowered. No! The Missionary was gone. Where he'd been was just a dark willow trunk, grass and a bay tree, swaying in the hot wind.

Maybe that was all she'd seen.

Maybe he hadn't been there at all.

To Mary Beth McConnell – hot, scared, racked with thirst – truth and fiction now blended together and all the legends she'd studied about this eerie North Carolina countryside seemed to become real. Maybe the Missionary was just another in the cast of imaginary characters, like the Lady of Drummond Lake.

Like the other ghosts of the Great Dismal Swamp.

Like the White Doe in the Indian legend – a tale that was becoming alarmingly like her own.

Head throbbing, dizzy in the heat, Mary Beth lay on the musty couch and closed her eyes, watching the wasps hover close, then enter the gray nest, the flag of her captor's victory.

Lydia felt the bottom of the stream beneath her feet and kicked to the surface.

Choking, spitting water, she found herself in a swampy pool about fifty feet downstream from the mill. Hands still taped behind her back, she kicked hard to right herself, wincing in pain. She'd either sprained or broken her ankle on the wooden paddle of the waterwheel as she'd leapt into the sluice. But the water here was six or seven feet deep and if she didn't kick she'd drown.

The pain in her ankle was astonishing but Lydia forced her way to the surface. She found that by filling her lungs and rolling on her back she could float and keep her face above water as she kicked with her good foot toward the shore.

She'd gone five feet when she felt a cold slithering on the back of her neck, curling around her head and ear, heading for her face. Snake! she realized in panic. Flashing back to a case in the emergency room last month – a man brought in with a water moccasin bite, his arm swollen nearly double; he'd been hysterical with pain. She now spun around and the muscular snake slithered across her mouth. She screamed. But with empty lungs and no buoyancy she sank beneath the surface and began to choke. She lost sight of the snake. Where is it, where? she thought furiously. A bite on the face could blind her. On the jugular or the carotid, she'd die.

Where? Was it above her? About to strike?

Please, please, help me, she thought to the guardian angel.

And maybe the angel heard. Because when she bobbed once again to the surface there was no sign of the creature. She finally touched the muck of the stream bottom with her stockinged feet – she'd lost her shoes in the dive. She paused, catching her breath, trying to calm down. Slowly she struggled toward the shore, up a steep incline of mud and slick sticks and decaying leaves that eased her back a foot for every two that she managed to stagger forward. Watch the Carolina clay, she reminded herself; it'll hold you like quicksand.

Just as she staggered out of the water a gunshot, very close, split the air.

Jesus, Garrett has a gun! He's shooting!

She dropped back into the water and sank beneath the surface. She stayed for as long as she could but finally had to surface. Gasping for breath, she broke from the water just as the beaver slapped its tail once more, making a second loud crack. The animal vanished toward its dam – a big one, two hundred feet long. She felt a hysterical laugh rise up in her from the false alarm but managed to control the urge.

Then Lydia stumbled into the sedge and mud and lay on her side, gasping, spitting water. After five minutes she'd caught her breath. She rolled into a sitting position and looked around her.

No sign of Garrett. She struggled to her feet. Tried to pull her hands apart but the duct tape held tight, despite the soaking. She could see the burnt chimney of the mill from here. She oriented herself and decided which direction to go in to find the path that would take her back south of the Paquo, back home. She wasn't that far from it; her swim in the creek hadn't taken her downstream much from the mill.

But Lydia couldn't will herself to move.

She felt paralyzed from the fear, from the hopelessness.

Then she thought of her favorite TV show – Touched by an Angel – and when she thought of the program she had another memory, of the last time she'd watched the show. Just as it was over and a commercial came on, the door to her town house swung open and there was her boyfriend with a six-pack. He hardly ever dropped by for surprise visits and she'd been ecstatic. They'd spent a glorious two hours together. She decided that her angel had given her this memory just now as a sign that there was hope when you least expected it.

Clutching this thought firmly in her mind, Lydia rolled awkwardly to her feet and started through the sedge and swamp grass. From nearby she heard a guttural sound. A faint growling. She knew there were bobcats here, north of the river. Bears too and wild boars. But even though she was limping painfully, Lydia moved as confidently toward the path as if she were making the rounds at work, dispensing pills and gossip and cheering up the patients under her care.

Jesse Corn found a bag.

"Here! Look here. I've got something. A crocus sack." Sachs started down a rocky incline along the edge of the quarry to where the deputy stood, pointing at something on a ledge of limestone that had been blasted flat. She could see the grooves from where the drills had tapped into the dull stone to pack with dynamite. No wonder Rhyme had found so much nitrate; this place was one big demolition field.

She walked up to Jesse. He was standing in front of an old cloth bag. "Rhyme, can you hear me?" Sachs called into her phone.

"Go ahead. There's a lot of static but I can just hear you."

"We've got a bag here," she told him. Then asked Jesse, "What'd you call it?"

"Crocus sack. What they call a burlap bag down here."

She said to Rhyme, "It's an old burlap bag. Looks like there's something in it."

Rhyme asked, "Garrett leave it?"

She looked at the ground. Where the stone floor met the walls. "It's definitely Garrett's and Lydia 's footprints. They lead up an incline to the rim of the quarry."

"Let's get after them," Jesse said.

"Not yet," Sachs said. "We need to examine the bag."

"Describe it," the criminalist ordered.

"Burlap. Old. About twenty-four by thirty-six inches. Not much inside. It's closed up. Not tied, just twisted."

"Open it carefully, remember the traps."

Sachs eased a corner of the bag down, peered inside.

"It's clear, Rhyme."

Lucy and Ned came down the path and all four of them stood around the bag as if it were the body of a drowned man pulled from the quarry.

"What's in it?"

Sachs pulled on her latex gloves, which were very soft because of the sun. Immediately her hands began to sweat and tingle from the heat.

"Empty water bottles. Deer Park. No store price or inventory stickers on them. Wrappers from two packages of Planters peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers. No store stickers on them either. You want UPC codes to trace the shipments?"

"If we had a week, maybe," Rhyme muttered. "No, don't bother. More details on the bag," he ordered.

"There's a little printing on it. But it's too faded to read. Anybody make it out?" she asked the others.

No one could read the lettering.

"Any idea what was inside originally?" Rhyme asked.

She picked up the bag and smelled it. "Musty. Been inside someplace for a long time. Can't tell what was in it." Sachs turned the bag inside out and hit it hard with the flat of her hand. A few old, shriveled corn kernels fell onto the ground.

"Corn, Rhyme."

"My namesake." Jesse laughed.

Rhyme asked, "Farms around here?"

Sachs relayed the question to the search party.

"Dairy, not corn," Lucy said, looking at Ned and Jesse, who nodded.

Jesse said, "But you'd feed corn to cows."

"Sure," Ned said. "I'd guess it came from a feed-and-grain store someplace. Or a warehouse."

"You hear that, Rhyme?"

"Feed and grain. Right. I'll get Ben and Jim Bell on that. Anything else, Sachs?"

She looked at her hands. They were blackened. She turned the bag over. "Looks like there's scorch on the bag, Rhyme. It wasn't burned itself but it was sitting in something that had."

"Any idea what?"

"Bits of charcoal, looks like. So I'd guess wood."

"Okay," he said. "It's going on the list."

She glanced at Garrett's and Lydia 's footprints. "We're going after them again," she told Rhyme. "I'll call when I have some more answers." Sachs announced to the search party, "Back up to the top." Feeling the shooting pains in her knees she gazed up to the lip of the quarry, muttering, "Didn't seem that high when we got here."

"Oh, hey, that's a rule – hills're always twice as tall going up as coming down," said Jesse Corn, the resident storehouse of aphorisms, as he politely let her precede him up the narrow path.

14

Lincoln Rhyme, ignoring a glistening black-and-green fly that strafed nearby, was gazing at the latest evidence chart.

FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

QUARRY

Old Burlap Bag – Unreadable Name on It

Corn – Feed and Grain?

Scorch Marks on Bag

Deer Park Water

Planters Cheese Crackers

The most unusual evidence is the best evidence. Rhyme was never happier at a crime scene than when he found something completely unidentifiable. Because it meant that if he could identify it there'd be limited sources he could trace it back to.

But these items – the evidence Sachs had found at the quarry – were common. If the printing on the bag had been legible then he might have traced that to a single source. But it wasn't. If the water and crackers had price stickers they might have been traced to the stores that sold them and to a clerk who recalled Garrett and might have some information about where to find him. But they didn't. And scorched wood? That led to every barbecue in Paquenoke County. Useless.

The corn might be helpful – Jim Bell and Steve Farr were on phones right now, calling feed-and-grain outlets – but Rhyme doubted the clerks would have anything more to say than "Yeah. We sell corn. In old burlap bags. Like everybody does."

Damn! He had no sense of this place at all. He needed weeks – months – to get a feel for the area.

But, of course, they didn't have weeks or months.

Eyes moving from chart to chart, fast as the fly.

FOUND AT PRIMARY CRIME SCENE -

BLACKWATER LANDING

Kleenex with Blood

Limestone Dust

Nitrates

Phosphate

Ammonia

Detergent

Camphene

Nothing more to be deduced from that one.

Back to the insect books, he decided.

"Ben, that book there – The Miniature World. I want to look at it."

"Yessir," the young man said absently, eyes on the evidence chart. He picked it up and held it out to Rhyme.

A moment passed as the book hovered in the air over the criminalist's chest. Rhyme cast a wry gaze at Ben, who glanced at him and, after a beat, gave a sudden jerk and reared back, realizing that he was offering something to a man who'd need divine intervention to take it.

"Oh, my, Mr. Rhyme… look," Ben blurted, his round face red. "I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking, sir. Man, that was stupid. I really -"

"Ben," Rhyme said evenly, "shut the fuck up."

The huge man blinked in shock. Swallowed. The book, tiny in his massive hand, lowered. "It was an accident, sir. I said I was -"

"Shut. Up."

Ben did. His mouth closed. He looked around the room for help but there was no help on the horizon. Thom was standing against the wall, silent, arms crossed, not about to become a U.N. peacekeeper.

Rhyme continued in a low growl, "You're walking on eggshells and I'm sick of it. Quit your goddamn cringing."

"Cringing? I was just trying to be decent to somebody who's… I mean -"

"No, you weren't. You've been trying to figure out how to get the hell out of here without looking at me any more than you have to and without upsetting your own delicate little psyche."

The massive shoulders stiffened. "Well, now, sir, I don't think that's completely fair."

"Bullshit. It's about time I took the gloves off…" Rhyme laughed viciously. "How do you like that metaphor? Me, taking off gloves? Something I'm not going to be able to do very fast, am I now?… How's that for a crip joke?"

Ben was desperate to escape – to flee out the door – but his massive legs were rooted like oak trunks.

"What I've got isn't contagious," Rhyme snapped. "You think it's going to rub off? Doesn't work that way. You're walking around here like you breathe the air and they're going to have to cart you off in a wheelchair. Hell, you're even afraid if you look my way you're going to end up like me!"

"That's not true!"

"Isn't it? I think it is… How come I scare the hell out of you?"

"You don't!" Ben snarled. "No way!"

Rhyme raged, "Oh, yes, I do. You're terrified to be in the same room with me. You're a fucking coward."

The big man leaned forward, spittle flying from his lips, jaw trembling, as he shouted back, "Well, fuck you, Rhyme!" He was speechless with rage for a moment. Then continued, "I come over here as a favor to my aunt. It messes up all my plans and I'm not getting paid a penny! I listen to you boss people around like you're some kind of fucking prima donna. I mean, I don't know where the hell you get off, mister…" His voice faded and he squinted at Rhyme, who was laughing hard.

"What?" Ben snapped. "What the hell're you laughing at?"

"See how easy it is?" Rhyme asked, chuckling now. Thom too was having trouble suppressing a smile.

Breathing heavily, straightening up, Ben wiped his mouth. Angry, wary. He shook his head. "What do you mean? What's easy?"

"Looking me in the eye and telling me I'm a prick." Rhyme continued in a placid voice, "Ben, I'm just like anybody else. I don't like it when people treat me like a china doll. And I know they sure as hell don't like to worry that they're going to break me."

"You suckered me. You said those things just to get my goat."

"Let's say: just to get through to you." Rhyme wasn't sure that Ben would ever become a Henry Davett – a man who cared only about the core, the spirit, of a human being and ignored the packaging. But Rhyme had at least managed to push the zoologist a few steps in the direction of enlightenment.

"I oughta walk out that door and not come back."

"A lot of people would, Ben. But I need you. You're good. You've got a flair for forensics. Now, come on. We broke the ice. Let's get back to work."

Ben began to mount The Miniature World in the turning frame. As he did he glanced at Rhyme and asked, "So there's really a lot of people who look you in the eye and call you a son of a bitch?"

Rhyme, staring at the cover of the book, deferred to Thom, who said, "Oh, sure. Of course that's only after they get to know him."

Lydia was still only a hundred feet from the mill.

She was moving as quickly as she could toward the path that would take her to freedom but her ankle throbbed in pain and hampered her progress significantly. Also, she had to move slowly – truly silent travel through brush requires the use of your hands. But, like some of the brain-lesion victims she'd worked with at the hospital, she had limited equilibrium and could only stumble from clearing to clearing, making far more noise than she wanted to.

She circled wide around the front of the mill. Pausing. No sign of Garrett. No sound at all except for the flushing of the diverted stream water into the ruddy swamp.

Five more feet, ten.

Come on, angel, she thought. Stay with me a little longer. Help me get through this. Please… Just a few minutes and we'll be home – free.

Oh, man alive, that hurts. She wondered if a bone was broken. Her ankle was swollen and she knew that, if it was a fracture, walking unsupported like this could make it ten times worse. The color of the skin was darkening too – which meant broken vessels. Blood poisoning was a possibility. She thought of gangrene. Amputation. If that happened what would her boyfriend say? He'd leave her, she supposed. Their relationship was casual at best – at least on his part. Besides, she knew, from her job in oncology, how people disappeared from patients' lives once they started losing body parts.

She paused and listened, looked around her. Had Garrett fled? Had he given up on her and gone to the Outer Banks to be with Mary Beth?

Lydia kept moving toward the path that led back to the quarry. Once she found it she'd have to move even more carefully – because of the ammonia trap. She didn't remember exactly where he'd rigged it.

Another thirty feet… and there it was – the path that led back home.

She paused again, listening. Nothing. She noticed a dark-skinned, placid snake sunning itself on the stump of an old cedar. So long, she thought to it. I'm going home.

Lydia started forward.

And then the Insect Boy's hand lashed out from underneath a lush bay tree and snagged her good ankle. Unstable anyway, hands useless, Lydia could do nothing but try to twist to the side so that her solid rump took the force of the fall. The snake awoke at the sound of her scream and vanished.

Garrett climbed on top of her, pinning her to the ground, face red with anger. He must've been lying there for fifteen minutes. Keeping silent, not moving an inch until she was within striking distance. Like a spider waiting for its next kill.

"Please," Lydia muttered, breathless from the shock and horrified that she'd been betrayed by her angel. "Don't hurt -"

"Quiet," he raged in a whisper, looking around. "I'm at the end of my row with you." He pulled her roughly to her feet. He could've taken her by the arm or rolled her onto her back and eased her up that way. But he didn't; he reached around her from behind, his hands over her breasts, and lifted her to her feet. She felt his taut body rub disgustingly against her back and butt. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he released her but wrapped his bony fingers around her arm and pulled her after him toward the mill, oblivious to her sobbing. He paused only once, to examine a long line of ants carrying tiny eggs across the path. "Don't hurt them," he muttered. And watched her feet carefully to make sure she didn't.

• • •

With a sound that Rhyme had always thought was that of a butcher sharpening a knife, the turning frame swished another page of The Miniature World, which was, to judge from its battered condition, Garrett Hanlon's favorite book.

Insects are astonishingly adept at survival. The birch moth, for example, is naturally white but in the areas surrounding industrial Manchester, England, the species' coloring changed to black to blend in with the soot on the white tree trunks and appear less obvious to its enemies.

Rhyme flipped through more pages, his staunch left ring finger tapping the ECU controller and moving the pages, hiss, hiss, blade on steel. Reading the passages Garrett had marked. The paragraph about the ant-lion pit had saved the search party from falling into one of the boy's traps and Rhyme was trying to draw more conclusions from the book. As fish psychologist Ben Kerr had told him, animal behavior is often a good model for human – especially when it comes to matters of survival.

Praying mantises rub their abdomens against their wings, producing an unearthly noise, which disorients pursuers. Mantises, by the way, will eat any living creature smaller than themselves, including birds and mammals…

Dung beetles are credited with giving ancient man the idea for the wheel…

A naturalist named Reaumur observed in the seventeen hundreds that wasps make paper nests from wood fiber and saliva. That gave him the idea to make paper from wood pulp, not cloth, as paper manufacturers had been doing up until then…

But what among this was revealing to the case? Was there anything that could help Rhyme find two human beings on the run somewhere in a hundred square miles of forest and swampland?

Insects make great use of the sense of smell. For them it is a multidimensional sense. They actually "feel" smells and use them for many things. For education, for intelligence, for communication. When an ant finds food it returns to the nest leaving a scented trail, sporadically touching the ground with its abdomen. When other ants come across the line they follow it back to the food. They know which direction to go in because the scent is "shaped"; the narrow end of the smell points toward the food like a directional arrow. Insects also use smells to warn of approaching enemies. Since an insect can detect a single molecule of scent miles away insects are rarely surprised by their enemies …

Sheriff Jim Bell walked quickly into the room. On his beleaguered face was a smile. "Just heard from a nurse at the hospital. There's some news about Ed. Looks like he's coming out of that coma and said something. His doctor's gonna be calling in a few minutes. I'm hoping we'll find out what he meant by 'olive' and if he saw anything specific on that map in the blind."

Despite his skepticism about human testimony Rhyme decided that he'd now be happy for a witness. The helplessness, the fish-on-dry-land disorientation, was weighing heavily on him.

Bell paced slowly in the lab, glancing expectantly toward the doorway every time footsteps approached.

Lincoln Rhyme stretched again, pressing his head back into the headrest of the chair. Eyes on the evidence chart, eyes on the map, eyes back to the book. And all the while the green-and-black nutshell of a fly zipped around the room with an unfocused desperation that seemed to match his own.

An animal nearby darted across the path and vanished.

"What was that?" Sachs asked, nodding at it. To her the creature had looked like a cross between a dog and a large alley cat.

"Gray fox," Jesse said. "Don't see 'em too often. But then I don't usually go for walks north of the Paquo."

They moved slowly as they tried to follow the frail indications of Garrett's passage. And all the while they kept their eyes out for more deadfall traps and ambush from the surrounding trees and brush.

Once again Sachs felt the foreboding that had dogged her since they'd driven past the child's funeral that morning. They'd left the pines behind and were in a different type of forest. The trees were what you'd see in a tropical jungle. When she asked about them Lucy told her they were tupelo gum, old-growth bald cypress, cedar. They were bound together with webby moss and clinging vines that absorbed sound like thick fog and accentuated her sense of claustrophobia. There were mushrooms and mold and fungus everywhere and scummy marshes all around them. The aroma in the air was that of decay.

Sachs looked at the trodden ground. She asked Jesse, "We're miles from town. Who makes these paths?"

He shrugged. "Mostly bad pay."

"What's that?" she asked, recalling that Rich Culbeau had used the phrase.

"You know, somebody who doesn't pay his debts. Basically, it just means trash. Moonshiners, kids, swamp people, PCP cookers."

Ned Spoto took a drink of water and said, "We get calls sometimes: there's been a shooting, somebody's screaming, calls for help, mysterious lights flashing signals. Stuff like that. Only by the time we get out here, there's nothing… No body, no perp, no complaining witness. Sometimes we find a blood trail but it don't lead anywhere. We make the run – we have to – but nobody in the department ever comes out in these parts alone."

Jesse said, "You feel different out here. You feel that – this sounds funny – but you feel that life's different, cheaper. I'd rather be arresting a couple of armed kids pumped up on angel dust at a mini-mart than come out here on a call. At least there, there're rules. You kinda know what to expect. Out here…" He shrugged.

Lucy nodded. "That's true. And normal rules don't apply to anybody north of the Paquo. Us or them. You can see yourself shooting before you read anybody their rights and that'd be perfectly all right. Hard to explain."

Sachs didn't like the edgy talk. If the other deputies hadn't been so somber and unnerved themselves she would have thought they were putting on a show to scare the city girl.

Finally they stopped at a place where the path branched out into three directions. They walked about fifty feet down each but could find no sign of which one Garrett and Lydia had chosen. They returned to the crossroads.

She heard Rhyme's words echoing in her mind. Be careful, Sachs, but move fast. I don't think we have much time left.

Move fast…

But there was no hint of where they ought to be moving to and as Sachs looked down the choked paths it seemed impossible that anyone, even Lincoln Rhyme, could figure out where their prey had gone.

Then her cell phone rang and both Lucy and Jesse Corn looked at her expectantly, hoping, as did Sachs, that Rhyme had come up with a new suggestion about which way to go.

Sachs answered, listened to the criminalist and then nodded. Hung up. She took a breath and looked at the three deputies.

"What?" asked Jesse Corn.

"Lincoln and Jim just heard from the hospital about Ed Schaeffer. Looks like he woke up long enough to say, 'I love my kids,' and then he died… They thought he'd said something earlier about 'Olive' Street but it turned out he was just trying to say 'I love.' That's all he said. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, Jesus," Ned muttered.

Lucy lowered her head and Jesse put his arm around her shoulders. "What do we do now?" he asked.

Lucy looked up. Sachs could see tears in her eyes. "We're gonna get that boy, that's what," she said with a grim determination. "We're going to pick the most logical path and keep in that direction till we find him. And we're going to go fast. That all right with you?" she asked Sachs, who had no problem momentarily yielding command to the deputy. "You bet it is."

15

Lydia had seen this look in men's eyes a hundred times.

A need. A desire. A hunger.

Sometimes, a pointless itch. Sometimes, an inept expression of love.

This big girl, with stringy hair, a spotted face in her teens and a pocked face now, believed she had little to offer men. But she knew too that they would, for a few years at least, ask one thing from her and she'd decided long ago that to get by in the world she would have to exploit the little power that she had. And so Lydia Johansson was now on a playing field that was very familiar to her.

They were back in the mill, in the dark office once again. Garrett was standing over her, his scalp glistening with sweat through the patchy crew cut. His erection was obvious through his slacks.

His eyes slid over her chest, where her soaked, translucent uniform had ripped open in her fall down the sluice (or had he done it when he grabbed her on the trail?), her bra strap snapped (or had he torn it?).

Lydia eased away from him, wincing at the pain in her ankle. Pressing against the wall, sitting, legs splayed, as she studied that look in the boy's eyes. Feeling a cold, spidery repulsion.

And yet she thought: Should I let him?

He was young. He'd come instantly and it would be over with. Maybe afterward he'd fall asleep and she could find that knife of his and cut her hands free. Then knock him out and tape him up.

But those red bony hands of his, his welty face next to her cheek, his disgusting breath and body stench… How could she face it? Lydia closed her eyes momentarily. Uttered a prayer as insubstantial as her Blue Sunset eye shadow. Yes or no?

But any angels in the vicinity remained silent on this particular decision.

All she'd have to do was smile at him. He'd be inside her in a minute. Or she could take him into her mouth… It wouldn't mean anything.

Fuck me fast then let's watch a movie … A joke between her boyfriend and her. She'd greet him at the door, in the red teddy she'd bought mail-order from Sears. She'd throw her arms around his shoulders and whisper those words to him.

You do this, she thought to herself, and you might be able to escape.

But I can't!

Garrett's eyes were locked onto her. Coursing over her body. His prick couldn't violate her any more thoroughly than his red eyes were doing right now. Jesus, he wasn't just an insect – he was a mutation out of one of Lydia 's horror books, something that Dean Koontz or Stephen King could have made up.

Fingernails clicking.

He was examining her legs now, round and smooth – her best feature, she believed.

Garrett snapped, "Why're you crying? It's your fault you hurt yourself. You shouldn't've run. Let me see it." Nodding toward her swollen ankle.

"It's okay," Lydia said quickly but then, almost involuntarily, she held her foot out to him.

"Some assholes at school pushed me down the hill behind the Mobil station last year," he said. "Sprained my ankle. Looked like that. Hurt like a bitch."

Get it over with, she told herself. You'll be that much closer to home.

Fuck me fast…

No!

But she didn't pull away when Garrett sat down in front of her. He took her leg. His long fingers – God, they were huge – were gripping her around the calf, then around the ankle. He was trembling. Looking at the holes in her white pantyhose, where her pink flesh ballooned out. He studied her foot.

"It's not cut. But it's all black. What's that all about?"

"Might be broken."

He didn't respond, didn't seem sympathetic. It was as if her pain was meaningless to him. As if he couldn't understand that a human being might be suffering. His concern was just an excuse to touch her.

She extended her leg farther, her muscles quivering from the effort of elevating the limb. Her foot touched Garrett's body near his groin.

His eyelids lowered. His breathing was fast.

Lydia swallowed.

He moved her foot. It brushed against his penis through the wet cloth. He was hard as the wooden paddle of the waterwheel that she'd smacked trying to escape.

Garrett slid his hand farther up her leg. She felt his nails snag her pantyhose.

No…

Yes…

Then he froze.

His head tilted back and his nostrils flared. He inhaled deeply. Twice.

Lydia sniffed the air too. A sour smell. It took a moment before she recognized it. Ammonia.

"Shit," he whispered, eyes wide with horror. "How'd they get here this fast?"

"What?" she asked.

He leapt up. "The trap! They've tripped it! They'll be here in ten minutes! How the fuck d'they get here so fast?" He leaned into her face and she'd never seen so much anger and hatred in anyone's eyes. "You leave anything on the trail? Send 'em a message?"

She cringed, sure he was about to kill her. He seemed completely out of control. "No! I swear! I promise."

Garrett started toward her. Lydia shrank back but he walked past her quickly. He was frantic, ripping the material as he pulled his shirt and slacks off, his underwear, socks. She stared at his lean body, the substantial erection only slightly diminished. Naked, he ran to the corner of the room. There were some other clothes, folded, resting on the floor. He put these on. Shoes too.

Lydia lifted her head and looked out the window, through which the smell of the chemical was strong. So his trap hadn't been a bomb – he'd used the ammonia as a weapon itself; it had rained down on the search party, burning and blinding them.

Garrett continued, speaking almost in a whisper, "I have to get to Mary Beth."

"I can't walk," Lydia said, sobbing. "What are you going to do with me?"

He pulled the folding knife from the pocket of his pants. Opened it up with a loud click. Turned toward her.

"No, no, please…"

"You're hurt. Like, there's no way you can keep up with me."

Lydia stared at the blade. It was stained and nicked. Her breath came in short gasps.

Garrett walked closer. Lydia started to cry.

• • •

How had they gotten here so fast? Garrett Hanlon wondered again, jogging from the front door of the mill to the stream, the panic he felt so often prickling his heart the way the poison oak hurt his skin.

His enemies had covered the ground from Blackwater Landing to the mill in just a few hours. He was astonished; he'd thought it would take them at least a day, probably two, to find his trail. The boy looked toward the path leading from the quarry. No sign of them. He turned in the opposite direction and started slowly down another trail – this one led away from the quarry, downstream from the mill.

Clicking his nails, asking himself: How, how, how?

Relax, he told himself. There was plenty of time. After the ammonia bottle crashed down on the rocks the police would be moving slow as dung beetles on balls of shit, worried about other traps. In a few minutes he'd be in the bogs and they'd never be able to follow him. Even with dogs. He'd be with Mary Beth in eight hours. He -

Then Garrett stopped.

On the side of the path was a plastic water bottle, empty. It looked as if somebody had just dropped it. He sniffed the air, picked up the bottle, smelled the inside. Ammonia!

An image snapped into his mind: a fly stuck in a spider's web. He thought: Shit! They tricked me!

A woman's voice barked, "Hold it right there, Garrett." A pretty redheaded woman in jeans and a black T-shirt stepped out of the bushes. She was holding a pistol and pointing it directly at his chest. Her eyes went to the knife in his hand then back to his face.

"He's over here," the woman shouted. "I've got him."

Then her voice dropped and she looked into Garrett's eyes. "Do what I say and you won't get hurt. I want you to toss the knife away and lie down on the ground, face-first."

But the boy didn't lie down.

He merely stood still, slouching awkwardly, fingernail and thumbnail of his left hand clicking compulsively. He looked utterly scared and desperate.

Amelia Sachs glanced again at the stained knife, held firmly in his hand. She kept the sight of the Smith & Wesson on Garrett's chest.

Her eyes stung from the ammonia and the sweat. She wiped her face with her sleeve. "Garrett…" Speaking calmly. "Lie down. Nobody's going to hurt you if you do what we say."

She heard distant shouting. "I got Lydia," Ned Spoto called. "She's okay. Mary Beth's not here."

Lucy's voice was calling, "Where, Amelia?"

"On the path to the stream," Sachs shouted. "Throw the knife over there, Garrett. On the ground. Then lie down."

He stared at her cautiously. Red blotches on his skin, eyes wet.

"Come on, Garrett. There're four of us here. There's no way out."

"How?" he asked. "How'd you find me?" His voice was childlike, younger than most sixteen-year-olds'.

She didn't share with him that how they'd found the ammonia trap and the mill had been Lincoln Rhyme, of course. Just as they'd started down the center path at the crossroads in the woods the criminalist had called her. He'd said, "One of the feed-and-grain clerks Jim Bell talked to said that you don't see corn used as feed around here. He said it probably came from a gristmill and Jim knew about an abandoned one that'd burned last year. That'd explain the scorch marks."

Bell got on the phone and told the search party how to get to the mill. Then Rhyme had come back on and added, "I've got a thought about the ammonia too."

Rhyme had been reading Garrett's books and found an underlined passage about insects' using smells to communicate warnings. He'd decided that since the ammonia wasn't found in commercial explosives, like the kind used at the quarry, Garrett had possibly rigged some ammonia on a fishing-line tripwire. This was so that when the pursuers spilled it the boy could smell that they were close and could escape.

After they found the trap it'd been Sachs' idea to fill one of Ned's water bottles with ammonia, quietly surround the mill and pour the chemical on the ground outside the mill – to flush the boy.

And flush him it had.

But he still wasn't listening to her instructions. Garrett looked around and then studied her face, as if trying to decide if she really would shoot him.

He scratched at a rash on his face and wiped sweat, then adjusted his grip on the knife, looking right and left, eyes filling with despair and panic.

Afraid to startle him into running – or attacking her – Sachs tried to sound like a mother coercing her child to sleep. "Garrett, do what I'm asking. Everything'll be fine. Just do what I'm asking. Please."

• • •

"You got a shot? Take it," Mason Germain was whispering.

A hundred yards away from where that bitchy redhead from New York was confronting the killer, Mason and Nathan Groomer were on the crest of a bald hill.

Mason was standing. Nathan was prone on the hot ground. He'd sandbagged the Ruger on a low rise of helpful rocks and was concentrating on controlling his breathing, the way hunters of elks and geese and human beings are supposed to do before they shoot.

"Go on," Mason urged. "There's no wind. You got a clear view. Take the shot!"

"Mason, the boy's not doing anything."

They saw Lucy Kerr and Jesse Corn walk into the clearing, joining the redhead, their guns also pointed at the boy. Nathan continued, "Everybody's got him covered and it's only a knife he's got. A little pissant knife. It looks like he's going to give up."

"He's not going to give up," spat out Mason Germain, who shifted his slight weight from one foot to the other in impatience. "I told you – he's faking. He's gonna kill one of 'em as soon as their guard's down. It don't mean anything to you that Ed Schaeffer's dead?" Steve Farr had called with this sad news a half-hour ago.

"Come on, Mason. I'm as tore up about that as anybody. That doesn't have a thing to do with the rules of engagement. Besides, look, will you? Lucy and Jesse're six feet away from him."

"You worried about hitting them! Fuck, you could hit a dime at this range, Nathan. Nobody shoots better'n you. Take it. Take your shot."

"I -"

Mason was watching the curious little play going on in the clearing. The redhead lowered her gun and took a step forward. Garrett was still holding the knife. Head swiveling back and forth.

The woman took another step toward him.

Oh, that's helpful, bitch.

"She in your line of fire?"

"No. But, I mean," Nathan said, "we're not even supposed to be here."

"That's not the issue," Mason muttered. "We are here. I authorized backup to protect the search party and I'm ordering you to take a shot. Your safety off?"

"Yeah, it's off."

"Then shoot."

Peering through the 'scope.

Mason watched the gun barrel of the Ruger freeze, as Nathan grew into his weapon. Mason had seen this before – when he hunted with friends who were far better sportsmen than he was. It was an eerie thing that he didn't quite understand. Your weapon becomes part of you just before the gun fires, almost by itself.

Mason waited for the booming report of the long gun.

Not a breath of wind. A clean target. A clear backdrop.

Shoot, shoot, shoot! was Mason's silent message.

But instead of the crack of a rifle shot he heard a sigh. Nathan lowered his head. "I can't."

"Gimme the fucking gun."

"No, Mason. Come on."

But the expression in the senior deputy's eyes silenced the marksman and he handed over the rifle and rolled aside.

"How many in the clip?" Mason snapped.

"I -"

"How many rounds in the clip?" Mason said as he dropped to his belly and took up a position identical to his colleague's a moment before.

"Five. But nothing personal, Mason, you ain't the best rifle shot in the world and there're three innocents in the field of target and if you…" But his voice faded. There was only one place for this sentence to go and Nathan didn't want to accompany it there.

True, Mason knew, he wasn't the best shot in the world. But he'd killed a hundred deer. And he'd fired high scores on the state police range in Raleigh. Besides, good shot or bad, Mason knew that the Insect Boy had to die and had to die now.

He too breathed steadily, curled his finger around the ribbed trigger. And found that Nathan had been lying; he'd never unsafetied the rifle. Mason now angrily pushed the button and started controlling his breathing once more.

In, out.

He rested the crosshairs on the boy's face.

The redhead moved closer to Garrett and for a moment her shoulder was in the line of fire.

Jesus my Lord, you are making it difficult, lady. She swayed back out of view. Then her neck appeared in the center of the 'scope. She swayed to the left but remained close to the center of the crosshairs.

Breathe, breathe.

Mason, ignoring the fact that his hands were shaking far more than they ought to, concentrated on the blotchy face of his target.

Lowered the crosshairs to Garrett's chest.

The redhead cop swayed once more into the line of fire. Then she eased out again.

He knew he should squeeze the trigger gently. But, as so often in his life, anger took over and made the decision for him. He pulled the sliver of metal with a jerk.

16

Behind Garrett a plug of dirt shot into the air and he slapped his hand to his ear, where he, like Sachs, had felt the zip of a bullet streak past.

An instant later the booming sound of the gun filled the clearing.

Sachs spun around. From the delay between the sound of the bullet itself and the muzzle report she knew the shot hadn't come from Lucy or Jesse but from a hundred yards or so behind them. The deputies too were looking back, guns raised, trying to spot the shooter.

Crouching, Sachs glanced at Garrett's face and she saw his eyes – the terror and confusion in them. For a moment, only an instant, he wasn't a killer who'd crushed a boy's skull or a rapist who'd bloodied Mary Beth McConnell and invaded her body. He was a scared little boy, whimpering, "No, no!"

"Who is it?" Lucy Kerr called. "Culbeau?" They took cover in some bushes.

"Get down, Amelia," Jesse called. "We don't know who they're shooting at. Might be a friend of Garrett's, aiming for us."

But Sachs didn't think so. The bullet was meant for Garrett. She scanned the hilltops nearby, looking for signs of the sniper.

Another shot snapped past. This one was a wider miss.

"Holy Mary," Jesse Corn said, swallowing the apparently unaccustomed blasphemy. "Look, up there – it's Mason! And Nathan Groomer. On that rise."

"It's Germain?" Lucy asked bitterly, squinting. She furiously pressed the transmit button on her Handi-talkie and shouted, "Mason, what the hell're you doing? Are you there? Are you receiving?… Central. Come in, Central. Goddamn, I can't get reception."

Sachs pulled out her cell phone and called Rhyme. He answered a moment later. She heard his voice, hollow, through the speakerphone. "Sachs, have you -?"

"We've got him, Rhyme. But that deputy, Mason Germain, he's on a hill nearby, firing at the boy. We can't get him on the radio."

"No, no, no, Sachs! He can't kill him. I checked the degradation of the blood on the tissue – Mary Beth was alive as of last night! If Garrett dies we'll never find her."

She shouted this to Lucy but the deputy still couldn't raise Mason on the radio.

Another shot. A rock shattered, spraying them with dust.

"Stop it!" Garrett sobbed. "No, no… I'm scared. Make him stop!"

Sachs said to Rhyme, "Ask Bell if Mason's got a cell phone and have him call, tell him to stop the shooting."

"Okay, Sachs…"

Rhyme hung up.

If Garrett dies we'll never find her…

Amelia Sachs made a fast decision and tossed her gun on the ground behind her then stepped forward, facing Garrett, a foot from him, directly in between Mason's gun and the boy. Thinking: In the time it took to do this Mason might've pulled the trigger, and the bullet, preceding the sound wave of the gunshot, might be headed directly toward my back.

She stopped breathing. Imagining she could feel the slug streaking at her.

A moment passed. There was no shot.

"Garrett, you've got to put the knife down."

"You tried to kill me! You tricked me!"

She wondered if he'd stab her – in anger or panic. "No. We didn't have anything to do with it. Look, I'm in front of you. I'm protecting you. He won't shoot again."

Garrett studied her face carefully with his twitchy eyes.

She wondered if Mason was waiting for her to move aside just enough so that he could sight on Garrett. He was obviously a bad shot and she imagined a bullet shattering her spine.

Ah, Rhyme, she thought, you're here for your operation to try to be more like me; maybe today I'll become more like you…

Jesse Corn was sprinting through the brush up the hill, waving his arms and calling, "Mason, stop shooting! Stop shooting!"

Garrett continued to examine Sachs closely. Then he tossed the knife aside and started compulsively clicking his fingernails over and over.

As Lucy ran forward and cuffed Garrett, Sachs turned to the hill where Mason had been shooting from. She saw him stand, speaking on his phone. He glanced directly at her, it seemed, then shoved the phone into his pocket and started down the hill.

"What the hell were you thinking of?" Sachs raged at Mason. She walked straight up to him. They stood only a foot apart and she was an inch taller than he was.

"Saving your ass, lady," Mason replied harshly. "Didn't you happen to notice he had a weapon?"

"Mason" – Jesse Corn tried to diffuse the situation – "she was trying to calm things down is all. She got him to give up."

But Amelia Sachs didn't need any big brothers. She said, "I've been doing takedowns for years. He wasn't going to move on me. The only threat was from you. You could've hit one of us."

"Oh, bullshit." Mason leaned close to her and she could smell the musky aftershave he seemed to have poured on.

She eased away from the cloud of scent and said, "And if you'd killed Garrett, Mary Beth probably would've starved or suffocated to death."

"She's dead," Mason snapped. "That girl is lying in a grave somewhere and we'll never find her body."

" Lincoln got a report on her blood," Sachs responded. "She was alive as of last night."

This gave him a moment's pause. He muttered, "Last night ain't now."

"Come on, Mason," Jesse said. "It worked out okay."

But he wasn't calming. He lifted his arms and slapped his thighs. He looked into Sachs's eyes, said, "I don't know what the fuck we need you down here for anyway."

"Mason," Lucy Kerr cut in, "it's over with. We wouldn't've found Lydia, it hadn't been for Mr. Rhyme and Amelia here. We have them to thank. Let it go."

"She's the one not letting it go."

"When somebody puts me in the line of fire there better be a pretty good reason," Sachs said evenly. "And it's no reason at all that you're gunning for that boy because you haven't been able to make a case against him."

"You got no business talking about how I do my job. I -"

"Okay, we got to wrap this up here," Lucy said, "and get back to the office. We're still working on the assumption that Mary Beth isn't dead and we've got to find her."

"Hey," Jesse Corn called. "There's the chopper."

A helicopter from the medical center landed in a clearing near the mill and the medics brought Lydia out on a stretcher; she was suffering from minor heatstroke and had a badly sprained ankle. The woman had been hysterical at first – Garrett had come at her with a knife and even though it turned out he had used it just to cut a piece of duct tape to gag her she was still very shaken. She managed to calm down enough to tell them that Mary Beth wasn't anywhere near the mill. Garrett had her hidden near the ocean somewhere, on the Outer Banks. She didn't know where exactly. Lucy and Mason had tried to get Garrett to say but he'd remained mute and sat, hands cuffed behind him, staring morosely at the ground.

Lucy said to Mason, "You, Nathan and Jesse walk Garrett over to Easedale Road. I'll have Jim send a car there. The Possum Creek turnoff. Amelia wants to search the mill. I'll help her. Send another car over to Easedale in a half hour or so for us."

Sachs was happy to hold Mason's eyes for as long as he wanted to have a pissing contest. But he turned his attention to Garrett, looking the scared boy up and down like a guard studying a death-row prisoner. Mason nodded to Nathan. "Lessgo. Those cuffs on tight, Jesse?"

"They're tight, sure," Jesse said.

Sachs was glad Jesse would be with them to keep Mason on his good behavior. She'd heard stories about "escaping" prisoners being beaten by their transporting officers. Occasionally they ended up dead.

Mason gripped Garrett roughly by the arm and pulled him to his feet. The boy cast a hopeless look at Sachs. Then Mason led him down the path.

Sachs said to Jesse Corn, "Keep an eye on Mason. You may need all of Garrett's cooperation to find Mary Beth. And if he's too scared or mad you won't get anything out of him."

"I'll make sure of it, Amelia." A glance her way. "That was gutsy, what you did. Stepping in front of him. I wouldn't've done that."

"Well," she said, not in the mood for any more adoration. "Sometimes you just act and don't think."

He nodded brightly as if adding that expression to his repertoire. "Oh, hey, I was gonna ask – you have a nickname you go by?"

"Not really."

"Good. I like 'Amelia' just the way it is."

For a ridiculous moment she thought he was going to kiss her to celebrate the capture. Then he started off after Mason, Nathan and Garrett.

Brother, thought exasperated Amelia Sachs, watching Jesse turn to give her a cheerful wave: One of the deputies wants to shoot me and one of them's just about got the church reserved and the caterer lined up.

• • •

Sachs walked the grid carefully inside the mill – concentrating on the room where Garrett had kept Lydia. Walking back and forth, one step at a time.

She knew there were some clues here as to where Mary Beth McConnell was being held. Yet sometimes the connection between a perp and a location was so tenuous that it existed only microscopically and as Sachs traversed the room she found nothing helpful – only dirt, bits of hardware and burnt wood from the walls that had collapsed during the mill fire, food, water, empty wrappers and the duct tape that Garrett had brought (all without store labels). She found the map that poor Ed Schaeffer had gotten a look at. It showed Garrett's route to the mill but no destinations beyond that were marked.

Still, she searched twice. Then once more. Part of this was Rhyme's teaching, part of it was her own nature. (And was part of it, she wondered, a delaying tactic? To postpone as long as possible Rhyme's appointment with Dr. Weaver?)

Then Lucy's voice called, "I've got something."

Sachs had suggested that the deputy search the grinding room. That was where Lydia had told them she'd tried to escape from Garrett and Sachs had reasoned that if there'd been a struggle something might have fallen from Garrett's pockets. She'd given the deputy a fast course in walking the grid, told her what to look for and how to properly handle evidence.

"Look," Lucy said enthusiastically as she carried a cardboard box over to Sachs. "Found this hidden behind the millstone."

Inside was a pair of old shoes, a waterproof jacket, a compass and a map of the North Carolina coastline. Sachs also noticed a dusting of white sand in the shoes and in the folds of the map.

Lucy started to open up the map.

"No," Sachs said. "There could be some trace inside. Wait till we're back with Lincoln."

"But he could've marked the place where he's got her."

"He might've. But it'll still be marked when we get back to the lab. We lose trace now, we lose it forever." Then she said, "You keep searching inside. I want to check out the path he was going down when we stopped him. It led to the water. Maybe he had a boat hidden there. There might be another map or something."

Sachs left the mill and hiked down toward the stream. As she passed the rise where Mason had been shooting from she turned the corner and found two men staring at her. They carried rifles.

Oh, no. Not them.

"Well," Rich Culbeau said. Brushed away a fly that landed on his sun-burnt forehead. He tossed his head and his thick, shiny braid swung like a horse's tail.

"Thanks loads, ma'am," the other one said to her with mild sarcasm.

Sachs recalled his name: Harris Tomel – the one who resembled a Southern businessman as much as Culbeau looked like a biker.

"No reward for us," Tomel continued. "And out all day in the hot sun."

Culbeau said, "The boy tell you where Mary Beth is?"

"You'll have to talk to Sheriff Bell about that," Sachs said.

"Just thought he might've said."

Then she wondered: How had they found the mill? They might've followed the search party but they might also have had a tip – from Mason Germain maybe, hoping for a little backup for his renegade sniper operation.

"I was right," Culbeau continued.

"What's that?" Sachs asked.

"Sue McConnell upped the reward to two thousand." He shrugged.

Tomel added, "So near yet so far."

"You'll excuse me, I've got some work to do." Sachs started past them, thinking, And where's the other one of this gang? The skinny –

A fast noise behind her and she felt her pistol being lifted out of her holster. She spun around, crouching, as the gun disappeared into the hand of scrawny, freckled Sean O'Sarian, who danced away from her, grinning like the class cutup.

Culbeau shook his head. "Sean, come on."

She held her hand out. "I'd like that back."

"Just looking. Fine piece. Harris here collects guns. This's a nice one, don't you think, Harris?"

Tomel said nothing, just sighed and wiped sweat off his forehead.

"You're borrowing trouble," Sachs said.

Culbeau said, "Give it back t'her, Sean. Too hot for your pranking."

He pretended to hand it to her, butt-first, then grinned and pulled his hand away. "Hey, honey, where you from exactly? New York, I heard. What's it like there? Wild place, I'll bet."

"Quit fooling with the goddamn gun," Culbeau muttered. "We're out the money. Let's just live with it and get back to town."

"Give me back the weapon now," Sachs muttered.

But O'Sarian was dancing around, sighting on trees as if he were a ten-year-old playing cops and robbers. "Pow, pow…"

"Okay, forget about it." Sachs shrugged. "It's not mine anyway. When you're through playing just take it back to the Sheriff's Department." She turned to walk past O'Sarian.

"Hey," he said, frowning with disappointment that she didn't want to play anymore. "Don't you -"

Sachs dodged to his right, ducked and came up behind him fast, catching him in a one-armed neck lock. In half a second the switchblade was out of her pocket, the blade open and the point tapping out red dots on the underside of his chin.

"Oh, Jesus, what the hell're you doing?" he blurted then realized that speaking pushed his throat against the tip of the knife. He shut up.

"Okay, okay," Culbeau said, holding up his hands. "Let's not -"

"Drop your weapons on the ground," Sachs said. "All of you."

"I didn't do anything," Culbeau protested.

"Listen, miss," Tomel said, trying to sound reasonable, "we didn't mean any trouble. Our friend here is – "

The knife tip poked his stubbly chin.

"Ahh, do it, do it!" O'Sarian said desperately, teeth together. "Put the fucking guns down."

Culbeau eased his rifle to the ground. Tomel too.

Repulsed by O'Sarian's unclean smell, Sachs slid her hand along his arm and seized her gun. He released it.

She stepped back, shoved O'Sarian away, kept the pistol pointed at him.

"I was just pranking," O'Sarian said. "I do that. I fool around. I don't mean nothing. Tell her I fool around -"

"What's going on here?" Lucy Kerr said, walking down the path, hand on her pistol grip.

Culbeau shook his head. "Sean was being an asshole."

"Which is gonna get him killed someday," Lucy said.

Sachs closed the switchblade one-handed and put it back into her pocket.

"Look, I'm cut. Look, blood!" O'Sarian held up a stained finger.

"Damn," Tomel said reverently, though Sachs had no idea what he was referring to.

Lucy looked at Sachs. "You want to do anything about this?"

"Take a shower," she responded.

Culbeau laughed.

Sachs added, "We don't have time to waste on them."

The deputy nodded to the men. "This is a crime scene. You boys're out your reward." She nodded at the rifles. "You want to hunt, do it elsewhere."

"Oh, like anything's in season," O'Sarian asked sarcastically, dishing on Lucy for the stupidity of her comment. "I mean, hell – ohhh."

"Then head back to town – 'fore you bollix up your lives any more'n you already have."

The men picked up their guns. Culbeau lowered his head to O'Sarian's ear and spoke quiet, angry words to him. O'Sarian gave a shrug and grinned. For a moment Sachs thought Culbeau was going to hit him. But then the tall man calmed and turned back to Lucy. "You find Mary Beth?"

"Not yet. But we got Garrett and he'll tell us."

Culbeau said, "Wish we got the reward but I'm glad he's caught. That boy's trouble."

When they were gone Sachs asked, "You find anything else in the mill?"

"No. Thought I'd come down here to help you look for a boat."

As they continued down the path Sachs said, "One thing I forgot about. We ought to send somebody back to that trap – the hornets' nest. Kill 'em and fill in the hole."

"Oh, Jim sent Trey Williams, one of our deputies, over there with a can of wasp spray and a shovel. But there weren't any wasps. It was an old nest."

"Empty?"

"Right."

So it wasn't a trap at all, just a trick to slow them down. Sachs reflected too that the ammonia bottle wasn't intended to hurt anybody either. Garrett could have rigged it to spill on his pursuers, blinding them. But he'd perched it on the side of a small cliff. If they hadn't found the fishing line first and tripped it, the bottle would've fallen onto rocks ten feet below the path, warning Garrett with the smell of the ammonia but not hurting anyone.

She had an image of Garrett's wide, frightened eyes once more.

I'm scared. Make him stop!

Sachs realized Lucy was talking to her. "I'm sorry?"

The deputy said, "Where'd you learn how to use that toad sticker of yours – that knife?"

"Wilderness training."

"Wilderness? Where?"

"Place called Brooklyn," Sachs responded.

Waiting.

Mary Beth McConnell stood beside the grimy window. She was edgy and dizzy – from the close heat of her prison and the bristling thirst. She hadn't found a drop of any liquid to drink in the entire house. Glancing out the back window of the cabin, past the wasps' nest, she could see empties of bottled water in a trash heap. They taunted her and the sight made her feel all the more thirsty. She knew she couldn't last more than a day or two in this heat without something to drink.

Where are you? Where? She spoke silently to the Missionary.

If there had been a man there – and he wasn't just a creation of her desperate, thirst-crazed imagination.

She leaned against the hot wall of the shack. Wondered if she'd faint. Tried to swallow but there wasn't a bit of moisture in her mouth. The air enwrapped her face, stifling as hot wool.

Then thinking angrily: Oh, Garrett… I knew you'd be trouble. She remembered the old saw: No good deed goes unpunished.

I should never have helped him out… But how could I not! How could I not save him from those high school boys? She recalled seeing the four of them, watching Garrett on the ground after he'd fainted on Maple Street last year. One tall, sneering boy, a friend of Billy Stail's from the football team, unzipped his Guess! jeans, pulled out his penis and was about to urinate on Garrett. She'd stormed up to them, given them hell and snatched one boy's cell phone to call an ambulance for Garrett.

I had to do it, of course.

But once I'd saved him, I was his…

At first, after that incident, Mary Beth was amused that he would shadow her like a shy admirer. Calling her at home to tell her things he'd heard on the news, leaving presents for her (but what presents: a glistening green beetle in a tiny cage; clumsy drawings of spiders and centipedes; a dragonfly on a string – a live one!).

But then she began to notice him nearby a little too often. She'd hear footsteps behind her as she walked from the car to the house, late at night. See a figure in the trees near her house in Blackwater Landing. Hear his high, eerie voice muttering words she couldn't make out, talking or singing to himself. He'd spot her on Main Street and make a beeline to her, rambling on, taking up precious time, making her feel more and more uneasy. Glancing – both embarrassed and desirous – at her breasts and legs and hair.

"Mary Beth, Mary Beth… did you know that if a spiderweb was, like, stretched all around the world it'd weigh less than an ounce… Hey, Mary Beth, you know that a spiderweb is something like five times stronger than steel? And it's way more elastic than nylon? Some webs are really cool – they're like hammocks. Flies lie down in them and never wake up."

(She should have noticed, she now reflected, that much of his trivia was about spiders and insects snaring prey.)

And so she rearranged her life to avoid running into him, finding new stores to shop in, different routes home, different paths to ride her mountain bike on.

But then something happened that would negate all her efforts to distance herself from Garrett Hanlon: Mary Beth made a discovery. And it happened to be on the banks of the Paquenoke River right in the heart of Blackwater Landing – a place that the boy had staked out as his personal fiefdom. Still, it was a discovery so important that not even a gang of moonshiners, let alone a skinny boy obsessed with insects, could keep her away from the place.

Mary Beth didn't know why history excited her so much. But it always had. She remembered going to Colonial Williamsburg when she was a little girl. It was only a two-hour drive from Tanner's Corner and the family went there often. Mary Beth memorized the roads near the town so that she'd know when they were almost to their destination. Then she'd close her eyes and after her father had parked the Buick she made her mother lead her by the hand into the park so that she could open her eyes and pretend that she was actually back in Colonial America.

She'd felt this same exhilaration – only a hundred times greater – when she'd been walking along the banks of the Paquenoke in Blackwater Landing last week, eyes on the ground, and noticed something half-buried in the muddy soil. She'd dropped to her knees and started moving aside dirt with the care of a surgeon exposing an ailing heart. And, yes, there they were: old relics – the evidence that a stunned twenty-three-year-old Mary Beth McConnell had been searching desperately for. Evidence that could prove her theory – which would rewrite American history.

Like all North Carolinians – and most schoolchildren in America – Mary Beth McConnell had studied the Lost Colony of Roanoke in history class: In the late 1500s a settlement of English colonists landed on Roanoke Island, between the mainland of North Carolina and the Outer Banks. After some mostly harmonious contact between the settlers and the local Native Americans, relations deteriorated. With winter approaching and the colonists running short on food and other provisions Governor John White, who'd founded the colony, sailed back to England for relief. But by the time he returned to Roanoke the colonists – more than a hundred men, women and children – had disappeared.

The only clue as to what had happened was the word "Croatoan" carved in tree bark near the settlement. This was the Indian name for Hatteras, about fifty miles south of Roanoke. Most historians believed the colonists died at sea en route to Hatteras or were killed when they arrived, though there was no record of them ever landing there.

Mary Beth had visited Roanoke Island several times and had seen the reenactment of the tragedy performed at a small theater there. She was moved – and chilled – by the play. But she never thought much about the story until she was older and studying at the University of North Carolina in Avery, where she read about the Lost Colony in depth. One aspect of the story that raised unanswered questions about the fate of the colonists involved a girl named Virginia Dare and the legend of the White Doe.

It was a story that Mary Beth McConnell – an only child, a bit of a renegade, single-minded – could understand. Virginia Dare was the first English child born in America. She was Governor White's granddaughter and was one of the Lost Colonists. Presumably, the history books reported, she died with them at, or on the way to, Hatteras. But as Mary Beth continued her research she learned that not long after the disappearance of the colonists, when more British began to settle on the Eastern Seaboard, local legends about the Lost Colony began to spring up.

One tale was that the colonists weren't killed right away but survived and continued to live among the local tribes. Virginia Dare grew into a beautiful young woman – blond and fair-skinned, strong-willed and independent. A medicine man fell in love with her but she rejected him and not long after that she disappeared. The medicine man claimed he hadn't harmed her but, because she rejected his love, he'd turned her into a white deer.

No one believed him, of course, but soon people in the area began seeing a beautiful white doe who seemed to be the leader of all the animals in the woods. The tribe, frightened by the doe's apparent powers, held a contest to capture her.

One young brave managed to track her down and made a nearly impossible shot with a silver-tipped arrow. It pierced her chest and as she lay dying the doe looked up at the hunter with chillingly human eyes.

He stammered, "Who are you?"

"Virginia Dare," the deer whispered and died.

Mary Beth had decided to look into the story of the White Doe in earnest. Spending long days and nights in academic archives at UNC at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, reading old diaries and journals from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she found a number of references to "white deer" and mysterious "white beasts" in northeastern North Carolina. But the sightings weren't on either Roanoke or Hatteras. The creatures were seen along the "Blackwater banks where the Serpentine river flowes west from the Great Swamp."

Mary Beth knew the power of legend and how there is often truth in even the most fanciful tales. She reasoned that maybe the Lost Colonists, afraid of attack by the local tribes, had left the word "Croatoan" to lead off their attackers and escaped not south but west, where they settled along the banks of the, yes, serpentine Paquenoke River – near Tanner's Corner in what was now called Blackwater Landing. There the Lost Colonists grew more and more powerful and the Indians – fearful of the threat – attacked and killed them. Virginia Dare, Mary Beth allowed herself to speculate, interpreting the legend of the White Doe, might have been one of the last settlers alive, fighting to the death.

Well, this was her theory but Mary Beth had never found any proof to support it. She'd spent days prowling around Blackwater Landing with ancient maps, trying to figure out exactly where the colonists might've landed and where their settlement had been. Then finally last week, walking along the banks of the Paquo, she found evidence of the Lost Colony.

She remembered her mother's horror when the girl had told her that she was going to be doing some archaeological work at Blackwater Landing.

"Not there," the doughy woman had said bitterly, as if she herself were in danger. "That's where the Insect Boy kills people. He'll find you, he'll hurt you."

"Mother," she'd snapped back, "you're like those assholes at school who tease him."

"You said that word again. I asked you not to. The 'A' word."

"Mom, come on – you sound like a hard-shell Baptist sitting on the anxious bench." Meaning the front row in church, where sat those parishioners particularly worried about their own, or – more likely – someone else's, moral standing.

"Even the name is scary," Sue McConnell muttered. "Blackwater."

And Mary Beth explained that there were dozens of Blackwaters in North Carolina. Any river that flowed from marshlands was referred to as a blackwater river because it was darkened by deposits of decaying vegetation. The Paquenoke was fed by the Great Dismal Swamp and surrounding bogs.

But this information didn't relieve her mother one bit.

"Please, don't go, honey." Then the woman fired her own silver-tipped arrow of guilt: "Now that your father's gone, if anything happened to you I wouldn't have anyone… I'd be alone. I wouldn't know what to do. You don't want that, do you?"

But Mary Beth, fired by the adrenaline that had excited explorers and scientists forever, had packed up her brushes and collection jars and bags and gardener's spade and headed off yesterday morning in the wet, yellow heat to continue her archaeological work.

And what had happened? She'd been assaulted and kidnapped by the Insect Boy. Her mother had been right.

Now, sitting in this hot, disgusting cabin, in pain, sick and half-delirious with thirst, she thought about her mother. Having lost her husband to wasting cancer, the woman's life was falling apart. She'd given up her friends, her volunteer work at the hospital, any semblance of routine and normalcy in her life. Mary Beth found herself assuming the role of parent, while her mother slipped into the world of daytime TV and junk food. Pudgy and insensate and needy, she was nothing more than a pathetic child.

But one of the things her father had taught Mary Beth – by his life as well as by his arduous death – was that you do what you're destined for and don't alter your course for anyone. Mary Beth hadn't dropped out of school as her mother had begged and gotten a job close to home. She balanced her mother's need for support with her own – the need to get her grad degree and, when she graduated next year, to find a job doing serious fieldwork in American anthropology. If that happened to be nearby, fine. But if it was conducting Native American digs in Santa Fe, or Eskimo in Alaska, or African-American in Manhattan, then that was where she'd go. She'd always be there for her mother but she had her own life to look forward to.

Except that now when she should be unearthing and collecting more evidence at Blackwater Landing, conferring with her grad adviser and writing proposals, running tests on the relics she'd found, she was trapped in a psychotic teenager's love nest.

A wave of hopelessness coursed through her.

She felt the tears.

But then she stopped them cold.

Stop it!… Be strong. Be your father's daughter, fighting his illness every single minute of the day, never resting. Not your mother's.

Be Virginia Dare, who rallied the Lost Colonists.

Be the White Doe, the queen of all the animals in the forest.

And then, just as she was thinking of an illustration of the majestic deer in a book about North Carolina legends, there was another flash of motion at the edge of the forest. The Missionary came out of the woods, a large backpack over his shoulder.

He was real!

Mary Beth grabbed one of Garrett's jars, which held a dinosaur-like beetle, and slammed it against the window. The jar crashed through the glass and shattered on the iron bars outside.

"Help me!" she screamed in a voice barely audible because of her sand-dry throat. "Help!"

A hundred yards away the man paused. Looked around.

"Please! Help me!" A long wail.

He looked behind him. Then into the woods.

She took a deep breath and tried to call again but her throat seized. She started choking, spit some blood.

And across the field the Missionary kept on walking into the woods. He disappeared from view a moment later.

Mary Beth sat heavily on the musty couch and leaned her head hopelessly against the wall. She glanced up suddenly; some motion had caught her eye again. It was nearby – in the cabin. The beetle in the jar – the miniature triceratops – had survived the trauma of losing his home. Mary Beth watched him troop doggedly up a summit of broken glass, open one set of wings, then spread a second set, which fluttered invisibly and lifted him off the windowsill to freedom.

17

"We've caught him," Rhyme said to Jim Bell and his brother-in-law, Deputy Steve Farr. "Amelia and me. That was the bargain. Now we have to get back to Avery."

"Well, Lincoln," Bell began delicately, "it's just that Garrett's not talking. He's not telling us anything about where Mary Beth is."

Ben Kerr stood nearby uncertainly, beside the glowing mountain range on the computer screen connected to the chromatograph. His initial hesitancy had vanished and he now seemed to regret the end of his assignment. Amelia Sachs was in the lab too. Mason Germain wasn't, which was just as well – Rhyme was furious that he'd endangered Sachs' life with the sniping at the mill. Bell had angrily ordered the deputy to stay out of the case for the time being.

"I appreciate that," Rhyme said dismissively, responding to Bell 's implicit request for more help. "But it's not that she's in immediate danger." Lydia had reported that Mary Beth was alive and had told them the general location where she was being held. A concentrated search of the Outer Banks would probably find her within several days. And Rhyme was now ready for the operation. He clung, of all things, to a bizarre good-luck charm – the memory of Henry Davett's gruff argument with him, the man's tempered-steel gaze. The image of the businessman prodded him to return to the hospital, to finish the tests and to go under the knife. He glanced at Ben and was about to instruct him on how to pack up the forensic equipment when Sachs took up Bell 's cause. "We found some evidence at the mill, Rhyme. Lucy did, actually. Good evidence."

Rhyme said sourly, "If it's good evidence then somebody else'll be able to figure out where it leads to."

"Look, Lincoln," Bell began in his reasonable Carolinian accent, "I'm not going to push it but you're the only one 'round here's got experience at major crimes like this. We'd be at sea trying to figure out what that's telling us, for instance." He nodded at the chromatograph. "Or whether this bit of dirt or that footprint means anything."

Head rubbing against the Storm Arrow's pillowy rest, Rhyme glanced at Sachs' imploring face. Sighing, he finally asked, "Garrett's not saying anything?"

"He's talking," Farr said, tugging at one of his flag-like ears. "But he's denying killing Billy and he's saying he got Mary Beth away from Blackwater Landing for her own good. That's it. Won't say a word about where she is."

Sachs said, "In this heat, Rhyme, she could die of thirst."

"Or starve to death," Farr pointed out.

Oh, for God's sake…

"Thom," Rhyme snapped, "call Dr. Weaver. Tell her I'll be here for a little longer. Emphasize 'little.'"

"That's all we're asking, Lincoln," Bell said, relief in his lined face. "An hour or two. We sure appreciate it – we'll make you an honorary resident of Tanner's Corner," the sheriff joked. "We'll give you the key to the town."

All the faster to unlock the door and get the hell out of here, Rhyme thought cynically. He asked Bell, "Where's Lydia?"

"In the hospital."

"She all right?"

"Nothing serious. They're keeping her in for observation for a day."

"What'd she say – exactly?" Rhyme demanded.

Sachs said, "That Garrett told her he's got Mary Beth east of here, near the ocean. On the Outer Banks. He also said that he didn't really kidnap her. She went along willingly. He was just looking out for her and she was happy to be where she was. She also told me that we caught Garrett completely off guard. He never thought we'd get to the mill so fast. When he smelled the ammonia he panicked, changed his clothes, gagged her and ran out the door."

"Okay… Ben, we've got some things to look at."

The zoologist nodded, pulled on his latex gloves once more – without Rhyme's having to instruct him to do so, the criminalist observed.

Rhyme asked about the food and water found at the mill. Ben held them up. The criminalist observed, "No individual store labels. Like the others. Won't do us any good. See if there's anything adhering to the sticky sides of the duct tape."

Sachs and Ben bent over the roll and spent ten minutes examining it with a hand glass. She pulled fragments of wood from the side and Ben once again held the instrument so Rhyme could peer into the eyepieces. But under the microscope it was clear that they matched the wood in the mill. "Nothing," she said.

Ben then picked up the map that showed Paquenoke County. It was marked with Xs and arrows, indicating Garrett's path to the mill from Blackwater Landing. There was no price sticker on this either. And it gave no indication of where the boy had been headed once he'd left the mill.

Rhyme said to Bell, "You have an ESDA?"

"A what?"

"Electrostatic Detection Apparatus."

"Don't even know what that is."

"Picks up indented writing on paper. If Garrett had written something on top of the map, a town or address, we could see it."

"Well, we don't have one. Should I call the state police?"

"No. Ben, just shine a flashlight on the map at a low angle. See if there're any indentations."

Ben did this and though they searched every inch of the map they could see no evidence of writing or other marking.

Rhyme ordered Ben to examine the second map, the one Lucy had found in the gristmill. "Let's see if there's any trace in the folds. It's too big for magazine subscription cards. Open it over a newspaper."

More sand poured out. Rhyme noticed immediately that it was in fact ocean sand, the sort that would be found on the Outer Banks – the grains were clear, not opaque, as would have been the case with inland sand.

"Run a sample through the chromatograph. Let's see if there's any other trace that'll be helpful."

Ben started the noisy machine.

As they waited for the results he spread the map out on the table. Bell, Ben and Rhyme examined it carefully. It depicted the eastern shore of the U.S. from Norfolk, Virginia, and the Hampton Roads shipping lanes all the way down to South Carolina. They looked over every inch but Garrett hadn't circled or marked any location.

Of course not, Rhyme thought; it's never that easy. They used the flashlight on this map too. But found no indented writing.

The chromatograph results flashed up onto the screen. Rhyme glanced at it quickly. "Not much help. Sodium chloride – salt – along with iodine, organic material… All consistent with seawater. But there's hardly any other trace. Doesn't do us much good for tying the sand to a specific location." Rhyme nodded at the shoes that had been in the box with the map. He asked Ben, "Any other trace in those?"

The young man examined them carefully, even unlacing them – just as Rhyme was about to ask him to do. This boy has good criminalist potential, Rhyme thought. He shouldn't be wasting his talent on neurotic fish.

The shoes were old Nikes – so common that tracing them to a particular store where Garrett might have bought them was impossible.

"Flecks of dried leaves, looks like. Maple and oak. If I had to guess."

Rhyme nodded. "Nothing else in the box?"

"Nothing."

Rhyme looked up at the other evidence charts. His eye paused at the references to camphene.

"Sachs, in the mill, were there old-fashioned lamps on the walls? Or lanterns?"

"No," Sachs answered. "None."

"Are you sure," he persisted gruffly, "or did you just not notice?"

She crossed her arms and said evenly, "The floors were ten-inch-wide chestnut, the walls plaster and lath. There was graffiti on one of the walls in blue spray paint. It said, 'Josh and Brittany, luv always,' love spelled L-U-V. There was one Shaker-style table, cracked down the middle and painted black, three bottles of Deer Park water, a pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, five bags of Doritos, two bags of Cape Cod potato chips, six cans of Pepsi, four cans of Coke, eight packets of Planters peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers. There were two windows in the room. One was boarded over. In the unboarded window there was only one pane that was unbroken – the others had been smashed – and every doorknob and window latch in the place were stolen. There were old-fashioned raised electric switches on the walls. And, yes, I'm sure there were no old-fashioned lamps."

"Whoa, she got you there, Lincoln," Ben said, laughing.

Now being one of the gang, the young man was rewarded with a glower from Rhyme. The criminalist stared once more at the evidence then shook his head, said to Bell, "I'm sorry, Jim, the best I can tell you is that she's probably being held in a house not far from the ocean but – if the deciduous leaves are near the place – not on the water. Because oak and maple wouldn't grow in sand. And it's old – because of the camphene lamps. Nineteenth century. That's the best I can do, I'm afraid."

Bell was looking at the map of the Eastern shore, shaking his head. "Well, I'm going to talk to Garrett again, see if he'll cooperate. If not I'm gonna give the D.A. a call and think about trading a plea for information. Worse comes to worst I'll fix up a search of the Outer Banks. I tell you, Lincoln, you're a lifesaver. I can't thank you enough. You'll be here for a spell?"

"Only long enough to show Ben how to pack up the equipment."

Rhyme spontaneously thought again of his mascot, Henry Davett. But he found to his surprise that his elation that his job was now finished was tainted by his frustration that the ultimate answer to the puzzle of finding Mary Beth McConnell still eluded him. But, as his ex-wife used to say to him as he walked out the door of their apartment at one or two A.M. to run a crime scene, you can't save the entire world. "I wish you luck, Jim."

Sachs said to Bell, "You mind if I come with you? To see Garrett?"

"Feel free," the sheriff said. He seemed to want to add something – maybe about female charm helping them get some information out of the boy. But he then apparently – and wisely, Rhyme reflected – thought better of it.

"Let's get to work, Ben," Rhyme said. He wheeled to the table that held the density gradient tubes. "Now listen carefully. A criminalist's tools are like a tactical officer's weapons. They have to be packed and stored just right. You treat them as if somebody's life will depend on them because, believe me, it will. Are you listening, Ben?"

"I'm listening."

18

The Tanner's Corner lockup was a structure two long blocks away from the Sheriff's Department. Sachs and Bell walked along the blistering sidewalk toward the place. Again she was struck by the ghost-town quality of Tanner's Corner. The sickly drunks they'd noticed when they first arrived were still downtown, sitting on a bench, silent. A skinny, coiffed woman parked her Mercedes in an empty row of parking spaces, climbed out and walked into the nail salon. The glitzy car seemed completely out of place in the small town. There was no one else on the street. Sachs noticed a half-dozen businesses had gone under. One of them had been a toy store. A mannequin of a baby wearing a sun-bleached jumper lay in the window. Where, she thought again, were all the children?

Then she looked across the street and saw a face watching her from the dim recesses of Eddie's bar. She squinted. "Those three guys?" she said, nodding.

Bell looked. "Culbeau and his buddies?"

"Uh-huh. They're trouble. They got my weapon away from me," Sachs said. "One of them did. O'Sarian."

The sheriff frowned. "What happened?"

"I got it back," she answered shortly.

"You want me to bring him in?"

"No. Just thought you should know: they're upset about losing out on the reward. If you ask me, though, it's more than that. They're gunning for that boy."

"Them and the rest of the town."

Sachs said, "But the rest of the town doesn't carry around loaded weapons."

Bell chuckled and said, "Well, not all of 'em, anyway."

"I'm also a little curious how they happened to end up at the mill."

The sheriff thought about this for a moment. "Mason, you thinking?"

"Yep," Sachs said.

"Wish he'd take his vacation this week. But there's no chance of that happening. Well, here we are. Not much of a jail. But it works."

They walked inside the single-story cinder-block building. The groaning air-conditioner kept the rooms mercifully cool. Bell told her to drop her gun in the lockbox. He did the same and they walked into the interrogation room. He closed the door.

Wearing a blue jumpsuit, courtesy of the county, Garrett Hanlon sat at a fiberboard table, across from Jesse Corn. The deputy smiled at Sachs and she gave him a smaller smile in return. She then looked at the boy and was struck again at how sad and desperate he seemed.

I'm scared. Make him stop!

On his face and arms were welts that hadn't been there earlier. She asked, "What happened to your skin?"

He looked down at his arm and rubbed self-consciously. "Poison oak," he muttered.

In a kind voice Bell said, "You heard your rights, didn't you? Did Deputy Kerr read them to you?"

"Yeah."

"And you understand them?"

"I guess."

"There's a lawyer on his way. Mr. Fredericks. He's coming from a meeting in Elizabeth City and he'll be here pretty soon. You don't have to say anything until he gets here. You understand that?"

He nodded.

Sachs glanced at the one-way mirror. Wondered who was on the other side, manning the video camera.

"But we hope you'll talk to us, Garrett," Bell continued. "We have some real important things to ask you about. First of all, it's true? Mary Beth's alive?"

"Sure she is."

"Did you rape her?"

"Like, I'd never do that," he said, and the pathos momentarily gave way to indignation.

"But you kidnapped her," Bell said.

"Not really."

"Not really?"

"She, like, didn't get it that Blackwater Landing's dangerous. I had to get her away or she wouldn't be safe. That's all. I saved her. Like, sometimes you gotta make somebody do things they don't want to. For their own good. And, you know, then they catch on."

"She's near the beach somewhere, isn't she? The Outer Banks, right?"

He blinked at this, red eyes narrowing. He'd be realizing that they'd found the map and talked to Lydia. He looked down at the fiberboard table. Didn't say anything else.

"Where is she exactly, Garrett?"

"I can't tell you."

"Son, you're in serious trouble. You got a murder conviction staring you in the face."

"I didn't kill Billy."

"How'd you know it was Billy I was talking about?" Bell asked quickly. Jesse Corn lifted an eyebrow to Sachs, impressed at his boss's cleverness.

Garrett's fingernails clicked together. "Whole world knows Billy got killed." His fast eyes circled the room. Resting inevitably on Amelia Sachs. She could endure the imploring look for only a moment then had to look away.

"We got your fingerprints on the shovel that killed him."

"The shovel? That killed him?"

"Yep."

He seemed to think back to what had happened. "I remember seeing it lying there on the ground. I guess maybe I picked it up."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I wasn't thinking. I felt all weird seeing Billy lying there, like, all bloody and everything."

"Well, you have any idea who did kill Billy?"

"This man. Mary Beth told me that she was, like, doing this project for school there, by the river, and Billy stopped to talk to her. And then this man came up. He'd been following Billy and they started arguing and fighting and this guy grabbed the shovel and killed him. Then I came by and he ran off."

"You saw him?"

"Yessir."

"What were they arguing about?" Bell asked skeptically.

"Drugs or something, Mary Beth said. Sounded like Billy was selling drugs to the kids on the football team. Like, those steroid things?"

"Jeeez," said Jesse Corn, giving a sour laugh.

"Garrett," Bell said. "Billy wasn't into drugs. I knew him. And we never had any reports about steroids at the high school."

"I understand that Billy Stail ragged on you a lot," Jesse said. "Billy and a couple other boys on the team."

Sachs thought this wasn't right – two big deputies double-teaming him.

"That they made fun of you. Called you Bug Boy. You took a swing at Billy once and he and his friends beat you up bad."

"I don't remember."

"Principal Gilmore told us," Bell said. "They had to call security."

"Maybe. But I didn't kill him."

"Ed Schaeffer died, you know. He got stung to death by those wasps in the blind."

"I'm sorry that happened. That wasn't my fault. I didn't put the nest there."

"It wasn't a trap?"

"No, it was just there, in the hunting blind. I went there all the time – even slept there – and they didn't bother me. Yellow jackets only sting when they're afraid you're going to hurt their family."

"Well, tell us about this man you say killed Billy," the sheriff said. "You ever see him around here before?"

"Yessir. Two or three times the last couple years. Walking through the woods around Blackwater Landing. Then once I saw him near the school."

"White, black?"

"White. And he was tall. Maybe about as old as Mr. Babbage -"

"His forties?"

"Yeah, I guess. He had blond hair. And he was wearing overalls. Tan ones. And a white shirt."

"But it was just your and Billy's fingerprints on the shovel," Bell pointed out. "Nobody else's."

Garrett said, "Like, I think he was wearing gloves."

"Why'd he be wearing gloves this time of year?" Jesse said.

"Probably so he wouldn't leave fingerprints," Garrett shot back.

Sachs thought back to the friction-ridge prints on the shovel. She and Rhyme hadn't done the printing themselves. Sometimes it's possible to image grain prints from leather gloves. Cotton or wool glove prints were much less detectable although fabric fibers could slough off and get caught in the tiny splinters in a wooden surface like a tool handle.

"Well, what you say could've happened, Garrett," Bell said. "But it just doesn't seem like the truth to anybody."

"Billy was dead! I just picked up the shovel and looked at it. Which I shouldn't have. But I did. That's all that happened. I knew Mary Beth was in danger so I took her away to be safe." He said this to Sachs, gazing at her with imploring eyes.

"Let's get back to her," Bell said. "Why was she in danger?"

"Because she was in Blackwater Landing." He snapped his nails again… Different from my habit, Sachs reflected. I dig into my flesh, he clicks nail against nail. Which is worse? she wondered. Mine, she decided; it's more destructive.

He turned his damp, ruddy eyes back to Sachs.

Stop it! I can't take that look! she thought, glancing away.

"And Todd Wilkes? The boy who hung himself? Did you threaten him?"

"No!"

"His brother saw you shouting at him last week."

"He was dropping lit matches on anthills. That's shitty and mean and I told him to stop it."

"What about Lydia?" Bell said. "Why'd you kidnap her?"

"I was worried about her too."

"Because she was in Blackwater Landing?"

"Right."

"You were going to rape her, weren't you?"

"No!" Garrett started to cry. "I wasn't going to hurt her. Or anybody! And I didn't kill Billy! Everybody's trying to get me to say I did something that I didn't!"

Bell dug up a Kleenex and handed it to the boy. The door swung open fast and Mason Germain walked in. He'd probably been the one watching through the one-way mirror and from the look on his face it was clear he'd lost patience. Sachs smelled his raw cologne; she'd come to detest the cloying scent.

"Mason -" Bell began.

"Listen to me, boy, you tell us where that girl is and you tell us now! 'Cause if you don't you're going to Lancaster and you're going to stay there till they put your ass on trial… You heard about Lancaster, haven't you? Case you haven't, let me tell -"

"All right, that's enough," a high-pitched voice commanded.

A bantam strode into the room – a man even shorter than Mason, with razor-trimmed hair perfectly sprayed into place. A gray suit, all buttons snug, a baby-blue shirt and striped tie. He wore shoes with three-inch heels.

"Don't say another word," he said to Garrett.

"Hello, Cal," Bell said, not pleased the visitor was here. The sheriff introduced Sachs to Calvin Fredericks, Garrett's lawyer.

"What the hell're you doing interrogating my client without me being here?" He nodded at Mason. "And what the hell was that Lancaster stuff about? I should have you put away for talking to him like that."

"He knows where the girl is, Cal," Mason muttered. "He's not telling us. He had his rights read to him. He -"

"A sixteen-year-old boy? Well, I'm inclined to get this case thrown out right now and get on to an early supper." He turned to Garrett. "Hey, young man, how you doing?"

"My face itches."

"They Mace you?"

"Nosir, just happens."

"We'll get it taken care of. Get some cream or something. Now, I'm going to be your lawyer. The state appointed me. You don't have to pay. They read you your rights? Told you you didn't have to say anything?"

"Yessir. But Sheriff Bell wanted to ask me some questions."

He said to Bell, "Oh, this's cute, Jim. What were you thinking of? Four deputies in here?"

Mason said, "We were thinking of Mary Beth McConnell. Who he kidnapped."

"Allegedly."

"And raped," Mason muttered.

"I didn't!" Garrett shouted.

"We got a bloody tissue with his come all over it," Mason snapped.

"No, no!" the boy said, his face growing alarmingly red. "Mary Beth hurt herself. That's what happened. She hit her head and I, like, wiped off the blood with a Kleenex I had in my pocket. And about the other… sometimes I just, you know, touch myself… I know I shouldn't. I know it's wrong. But I can't help it."

"Shhhh, Garrett," Fredericks said, "you don't have to explain a single thing to anybody." To Bell he said, "Now, this interrogation is over with. Take him back to the cell."

As Jesse Corn was leading him out the door Garrett stopped suddenly and turned to Sachs. "Please, you have to do something for me. Please! My room at home – it's got some jars."

"Go on, Jesse," Bell commanded. "Take him out."

But Sachs found herself saying, "Wait." To Garrett: "The jars? With your insects?"

The boy nodded. "Will you put water in them? Or at least let them go – outside – so they have a chance. Mr. and Mrs. Babbage, they won't do anything to keep them alive. Please…"

She hesitated, sensing everyone's eyes upon her. Then nodded. "I'll do it. I promise."

Garrett gave her a faint smile.

Bell looked at Sachs with a cryptic gaze then nodded toward the door and Jesse led the boy out.

The lawyer started after him but Bell stuck a finger in his chest. "You're not going anywhere, Cal. We're sitting here till McGuire shows up."

"Don't touch me, Bell," he muttered. But he sat as ordered. "Jesus Lord, what's all this folderol here, you talking to a sixteen-year-old without -"

"Shut the hell up, Cal. I wasn't fishing for a confession, which he didn't give us and I wouldn't use if he did. We got more evidence than we need to put him away forever. All I care about is finding Mary Beth. She's on the Outer Banks somewhere and that's a hell of a big haystack to find somebody in without some help."

"No way. He's not saying another word."

"She could die of thirst, Cal, she could starve to death. Heatstroke, get sick…"

When the lawyer gave no response, the sheriff said, "Cal, that boy's a menace. He's got a slew of incident reports against him -"

"Which my secretary read to me on the way over here. Hell, they're mostly for truancy. Oh, and for peeping – when he, funnily enough, wasn't even on the property of the complaining party, just hanging out on the sidewalk."

"The hornets' nest a few years ago," Mason said angrily. "Meg Blanchard."

"You released him," the lawyer pointed out happily. "Not even indicted."

Bell said, "This one's different, Cal. We got eyewitnesses, we got hard evidence and now Ed Schaeffer's dead. We can do to this boy pretty much what we feel like."

A slim man in a wrinkled blue seersucker suit walked into the interrogation room. Thinning gray hair, a lined fifty-five-year-old face. He glanced at Amelia with a vacant nod and at Fredericks with a darker expression. "I heard enough of that to make me think this's one of the easiest cases of murder one, kidnapping and sexual assault I've had in years."

Bell introduced Sachs to Bryan McGuire, the Paquenoke County prosecutor.

"He's sixteen," Fredericks said.

In an unflappable voice the D.A. said, "Isn't a venue in this state wouldn't try him as an adult and put him away for two hundred years."

"So, giddyap, McGuire," Fredericks said impatiently. "You're fishing for a bargain. I know that tone."

McGuire nodded to Bell and Sachs deduced that a conversation between the sheriff and the district attorney had occurred earlier about this very subject.

"Of course we're bargaining," Bell continued. "There's a good chance that girl's alive and we want to find her 'fore she's not alive anymore."

McGuire said, "We got so many charges on this one, Cal, you'd be amazed at how flexible we can be."

"Amaze me," the cocky defense lawyer said.

"I could go with two counts unlawful detention and assault and two counts first-degree manslaughter – one for Billy Stail, one for the deputy who died. Yessir, I'm willing to do that. All conditioned on finding the girl alive."

"Ed Schaeffer," the lawyer countered. "That was accidental."

Mason raged, "It was a fucking trap the boy set."

"I'll give you first manslaughter for Billy," McGuire offered, "and negligent homicide for the deputy."

Fredericks chewed on this for a moment. "Lemme see what I can do." His heels tapping noisily, the lawyer vanished in the direction of the cells to consult with his client. He returned five minutes later and he wasn't happy.

"Whatsa story?" Bell asked, discouraged as he read the lawyer's expression.

"No luck."

"Stonewalling?"

"Completely."

Bell muttered, "If you know something and you're not telling us, Cal, I don't give a shit about attorney-client privilege -"

"No, no, Jim, for real. He says he's protecting the girl. He says she's happy where she is and you oughta go looking for this guy in tan overalls and a white shirt."

Bell said, "He doesn't even have a good description and if he gave us one it'd change tomorrow because he's making it up."

McGuire slicked back his already-slicked-back hair. The defense used Aqua Net, Sachs could smell. The prosecution, Brylcreem. "Listen, Cal, this's your problem. I'm offering you what I'm offering. You get us the girl's whereabouts and she's alive, I'll go with reduced counts. You don't, I'll take it to trial and go for the moon. That boy'll never see the outside of a prison again. We both know it."

Silence for a moment.

Fredericks said, "I've got a thought."

"Uh-huh," McGuire said skeptically.

"No, listen… I had a case in Albemarle a spell back, a woman claimed her boy'd run away from home. But it seemed fishy."

"The Williams case?" McGuire asked. "That black woman?"

"That was it."

"I heard of that one. You represented her?" Bell asked.

"Right. She was giving us pretty odd stories and had a history of mental problems. I hired this psychologist over in Avery, hoping he could give me an insanity opinion. He ran some tests on her. During one of 'em she opened up and told us what had happened."

"Hypnosis – that recovered-memory crap?" McGuire asked.

"No, it's something else. He called it empty chair therapy. I don't exactly know how it works but it really started her talking. Like all she needed was a little push. Let me give this guy a call and have him come over and talk to Garrett. The boy might see reason… But" – now the defense got to poke a finger in Bell 's chest – "everything they talk about's privileged and you don't get diddly unless the guardian ad litem and I say so first."

Bell caught McGuire's eye and nodded. The D.A. said, "Call him."

"Okay." Fredericks stepped toward the phone in the corner of the interrogation room.

Sachs said, "Excuse me?"

The lawyer turned to her.

"That case the psychologist helped you with? The Williams case?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened with her child? Did he run away?"

"Naw, the mother killed him. Baled him up in chicken wire and a cinder block and drowned him in a pond behind the house. Hey, Jim, how do I get an outside line?"

The scream was so loud that it stung her dry throat like fire and for all Mary Beth knew permanently damaged her vocal cords.

The Missionary, walking by the edge of the woods, paused. His backpack was over one shoulder, a tank like a weed sprayer in his hand. He glanced around himself.

Please, please, please, Mary Beth was thinking. Ignoring the pain, she tried again. "Over here! Help me!"

He looked at the cabin. Started to walk away.

She took a deep breath, thought of Garrett Hanlon's clicking fingernails, his wet eyes and hard erection, thought of her father's brave death, of Virginia Dare… And she gave the loudest scream she ever had.

This time the Missionary stopped, looked toward the cabin again. He pulled off his hat, left the rucksack and tank on the ground and started running toward her.

Thank you… She started to sob. Oh, thank you!

He was thin and well-tanned. In his fifties but in good shape. Clearly an outdoorsman.

"What's wrong?" he called, gasping, when he was fifty feet away, slowing to a trot. "Are you all right?"

"Please!" she rasped. The pain in her throat was overwhelming. She spit more blood.

He walked cautiously up to the broken window, looking at the shards of glass on the ground.

"You need some help?"

"I can't get out. Somebody's kidnapped me -"

"Kidnapped?"

Mary Beth wiped her face, which was wet with tears of relief and sweat. "A high school kid from Tanner's Corner."

"Wait… I heard about that. Was on the news. You're the one he kidnapped?"

"That's right."

"Where is he now?"

She tried to speak but her throat hurt too much. She breathed deeply and finally responded, "I don't know. He left last night. Please… do you have any water?"

"A canteen, with my gear. I'll get it."

"And call the police. You have a phone?"

"Not with me." He shook his head and grimaced. "I'm doing contract work for the county." He nodded toward the backpack and tank. "We're killing marijuana, you know, that kids plant out here. The county gives us those cell phones but I never bother with mine. You hurt bad?" He studied her head, the crusted blood.

"It's okay. But… water. I need water."

He trotted back to the woods and for a terrible moment she was afraid he'd keep going. But he picked up an olive drab canteen and ran back. She took it with trembling hands and forced herself to drink slowly. The water was hot and musty but she'd never had as wonderful a drink as this.

"I'm going to try and get you out," the man said. He walked to the front door. A moment later she heard a faint thud as he either kicked the door or tried to break it with his shoulder. Another. Two more. He picked up a rock and slammed it into the wood. It had no effect. He returned to the window. "It's not budging." He wiped sweat from his forehead as he examined the bars on the windows. "Man, he built himself a prison here. Hacksaw'd take hours. Okay, I'll go for help. What's your name?"

"Mary Beth McConnell."

"I'm going to call the police then come back and get you out."

"Please, don't be long."

"I got a friend isn't too far away. I'll call nine-one-one from his place and we'll come back. That boy… does he have a gun?"

"I don't know. I didn't see one. But I don't know."

"You sit tight, Mary Beth. You're gonna be okay. I don't run as a rule but I'll do some running today." He turned and started through the field.

"Mister… thank you."

But he didn't acknowledge her gratitude. He sprinted through the sedge and tall grass and disappeared in the woods, not even pausing to collect his gear. Mary Beth remained standing in front of the window, cradling the canteen as if it were a newborn baby.

19

On the street across from the lockup Sachs saw Lucy Kerr sitting on a park bench in front of a deli, drinking an Arizona iced tea. She crossed the street. The women nodded to each other.

Sachs noticed a sign on the front of the place. COLD BEER. She asked Lucy, "You have an open-container law in Tanner's Corner?"

"Yeah," Lucy said. "And we take it pretty serious. The law is if you're going to drink from a container it's got to be open."

Took just a second for the joke to register. Sachs laughed. She said, "You want something stronger?"

Lucy nodded at the iced tea. "This'll do fine."

Sachs came out a minute later with a Sam Adams ale foaming excessively in a large Styrofoam cup. She sat down next to the deputy. She told Lucy about the discussion between McGuire and Fredericks, about the psychologist.

"Hope that works," Lucy said. "Jim was figuring there's gotta be thousands of old houses on the Outer Banks. We'll have to narrow down the search some."

They said nothing for a few minutes. A lone teenager clattered past on a noisy skateboard and vanished. Sachs commented on the absence of children in town.

"True," Lucy said. "Hadn't thought about it but there aren't a lot of kids here. I think most of the young couples've moved away, places closer to the interstate maybe or bigger towns. Tanner's Corner's not the sort of place for anybody on the way up."

Sachs asked, "You have any? Children?"

"No. Buddy and I never did. Then we split up and I never met anybody after that. My big regret, I'll have to say. No kids."

"How long you been divorced?"

"Three years."

Sachs was surprised the woman hadn't remarried. She was very attractive – especially her eyes. When Sachs had been a professional model in New York, before she'd decided to follow in her father's law-enforcement career, she'd spent a lot of time with many gorgeous people. But so often their gazes were vacant; if the eyes aren't beautiful, Amelia Sachs had concluded, neither is the person.

Sachs told Lucy, "Oh, you'll meet somebody, have a family."

"I've got my job," Lucy said quickly. "Don't have to do everything in life, you know."

Something was going unsaid here – something that she felt Lucy wanted to divulge. Sachs wondered whether she should push it or not. She tried the oblique approach. "Must be a thousand men in Paquenoke County dying to go out with you."

After a moment Lucy said, "Fact is, I don't date much."

"Really?"

Another pause. Sachs looked up and down the dusty, deserted street. The skateboarder was long gone. Lucy took a breath to say something, opted for a long sip of iced tea instead. Then, on impulse, it seemed, the policewoman said, "You know that medical problem I told you about?"

Sachs nodded.

"Breast cancer. Wasn't too advanced but the doctor said they probably should do a double radical. And that's what they did."

"I'm sorry," Sachs said, frowning with sympathy. "You go through the treatments?"

"Yup. Was bald for a while. Interesting look." She sipped more of the iced tea. "I'm three and a half years in remission. So far, so good." Lucy continued, "Really threw me for a loop, that happening. No history of it in my family. Grandmother's healthy as a horse. My mom's still working five days a week at the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Reserve. She and my dad hike the Appalachian two, three times a year."

Sachs asked, "You can't have kids because of the radiation?"

"Oh, no, they used a shield. It's just… I guess I'm not inclined to date much. You know where a man's hand goes right after you kiss serious for the first time…"

Sachs couldn't argue with that.

"I'll meet some nice guy and we'll have coffee or something but in ten minutes I start to worry about what he's going to think when he finds out. And I end up not returning his phone calls."

Sachs said, "So you've given up on a family?"

"Maybe, when I'm older, I'll meet a widower with a couple grown kids. That'd be nice."

She said this casually but Sachs could hear in her voice that she'd repeated it to herself often.

Maybe every day.

Lucy lowered her head, sighed. "I'd give up my badge in a minute to have children. But, hey, life doesn't always go in the direction we want."

"And your ex left you after the operation? What's his name again?"

"Bud. Not right after. But eight months later. Hell, I can't blame him."

"Why do you say that?"

"What?"

"That you can't blame him?" Sachs asked.

"Just, I can't, I changed and ended up being different. I turned into something he hadn't bargained for."

Sachs said nothing for a moment then she offered, " Lincoln 's different. About as different as they come."

Lucy considered this. "So there's more to you two than just being, what would you say, colleagues?"

"That's right," Sachs said.

"Thought that might be the case." Then she laughed. "Hey, you're a tough cop from the big city… How do you feel about children?"

"I'd like some. Pop – my father – wanted grandkids. He was a cop too. Liked the idea of three generations on the force. Thought People magazine might do a story on us or something. He loved People."

"Past tense?"

"Died a few years ago."

"Killed on his beat?"

Sachs debated but finally answered, "Cancer."

Lucy said nothing for a moment. Looked at Sachs in profile, back to the lockup. "Can he have children? Lincoln?"

The foam was down in the cup of beer and she sipped in earnest. "Theoretically, yes."

And chose not to tell Lucy that this morning, when they were at the Neurologic Research Institute in Avery, the reason that Sachs had slipped out of the room with Dr. Weaver was to ask if the operation would affect Rhyme's chances of having children. The doctor had said that it wouldn't and had started to explain about the intervention necessary that would enable her to get pregnant. But just then Jim Bell had showed up with his plea for help.

Nor did she tell the deputy that Rhyme had deflected the subject of children every time it came up and she was left to speculate why he was so reluctant to consider the matter. It could have been any number of reasons, of course: his fear that having a family might interfere with his practice of criminalistics, which he needed to keep his sanity. Or his knowledge that quadriplegics, statistically at least, have a shorter life span than the non-disabled. Or maybe he wanted to have the freedom to wake up one day and decide that he'd had enough and that he didn't want to live any longer. Perhaps it was all of these, coupled with the belief that he and Sachs would hardly be the most normal of parents (though she would have countered: And what exactly is normal nowadays?).

Lucy mused, "I always wondered if I had kids would I keep working? How 'bout you?"

"I carry a weapon but I'm mostly crime-scene. I'd cut out the risky stuff. Have to drive slower too. I've got a Camaro that'll churn three hundred sixty horses sitting in my garage in Brooklyn right now. Can't really see having one of those baby seats in it." A laugh. "I guess I'd have to learn how to drive a Volvo station wagon with an automatic. Maybe I could take lessons."

"I can see you laying rubber pulling out of the Food Lion parking lot."

Silence fell between them, that odd silence of strangers who've shared complicated secrets and realize they can go no further with them.

Lucy looked at her watch. "I should get back to the station house. Help Jim make calls about the Outer Banks." She tossed the empty bottle into the trash. Shook her head. "I keep thinking about Mary Beth. Wondering where she is, if she's okay, if she's scared."

As she said this, though, Amelia Sachs was thinking not about the girl but about Garrett Hanlon. Because they'd been talking about children Sachs was imagining how she'd feel if she had a son who was accused of murder and kidnapping. Who was looking at the prospect of spending the night in jail. Maybe a hundred nights, maybe thousands.

Lucy paused. "You headed back?"

"In a minute or two."

"Hope to see you 'fore you leave." The deputy disappeared up the street.

A few minutes later the door to the lockup opened and Mason Germain walked out. She'd never once seen him smile and he wasn't smiling now. He looked around the street but didn't notice her. He strode over the broken sidewalk and disappeared into one of the buildings – a store or bar – on the way to the County Building.

Then a car pulled up across the street and two men got out. Garrett's lawyer, Cal Fredericks, was one and the other was a heavyset man in his forties. He was in a shirt and tie – the top button undone and the sloppy knot of his striped tie pulled down a few inches from his throat. His sleeves were rolled up and his navy sports jacket was draped over his arm. His tan slacks were savagely wrinkled. His face had the kindness of a grade-school teacher. They walked inside.

Sachs tossed the cup in an oil drum outside the deli. She crossed the empty street and followed them into the lockup.

20

Cal Fredericks introduced Sachs to Doctor Elliott Penny.

"Oh, you're working with Lincoln Rhyme?" the doctor asked, surprising Sachs.

"That's right."

" Cal told me it was mostly because of you two they caught Garrett. Is he here? Lincoln?"

"He's at the County Building right now. Probably won't be there long."

"We have a friend in common. I'd like to say hi. I'll stop by if I get a chance."

Sachs said, "He should be there for another hour or so." She turned to Cal Fredericks. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes'm," the defense lawyer said cautiously; Sachs was, in theory, working for the enemy.

"Mason Germain was talking to Garrett in the lockup earlier. He mentioned Lancaster. What's that?"

"The Violent Felony Detention Center. He'll be transferred there after the arraignment. Held there until the trial."

"It's juvenile?"

"No, no. Adult."

"But he's sixteen," Sachs said.

"Oh, McGuire'll try him as an adult – if we can't work out a plea."

"How bad is it?"

"What, Lancaster?" The lawyer shrugged his narrow shoulders. "He'll get hurt. No getting around that. I don't know how bad. But he will get hurt. A boy like him's gonna be at the bottom of the food chain at VFDC."

"Can he be segregated?"

"Not there. It's all general population. Just a big holding pen, basically. The best we can do is hope the guards look out for him."

"How 'bout bail?"

Fredericks laughed. "There's no judge in the world'd set bail in a case like this. He's a bond-jumper waiting to happen."

"Is there anything we can do to get him into a different facility? Lincoln 's got friends in New York."

" New York?" Fredericks gave her a genteel but wry Southern smile. "I don't think that carries much weight south of the Mason-Dixon line. Probably not even west of the Hudson." He nodded toward Doctor Penny. "No, our best bet is to get Garrett to cooperate then work out a plea."

"Shouldn't his foster parents be here?"

"Should be, yep. I called them but Hal said the boy's on his own. He wouldn't even let me talk to Maggie – his mother."

"But Garrett can't be making decisions on his own," Sachs said. "He's just a boy."

"Oh," Fredericks explained, "before the arraignment or plea deal's agreed to the court'll appoint a guardian ad litem. Don't worry, he'll be looked out for."

Sachs turned to the doctor. "What're you going to do? This empty chair test?"

Dr. Penny glanced at the lawyer, who nodded his okay to explain. "It's not a test. It's a type of Gestalt therapy – a behavioral technique that's known for getting very fast results in understanding certain types of behavior. I'm going to have Garrett imagine that Mary Beth is sitting in a chair in front of him and have him talk to her. Explain to her why he kidnapped her. I hope to get him to understand that she's upset and frightened and that what he did was wrong. That she'll be better off if he tells us where she is."

"And this'll work?"

"It's not really intended for this type of situation but I think it could get results."

The lawyer glanced at his watch. "You ready, Doctor?"

He nodded.

"Let's go." The doctor and Fredericks disappeared into the interrogation room.

Sachs hung back, got a cup of water from the cooler. Sipped it slowly. When the deputy at the front desk turned his attention back to his newspaper Sachs quickly stepped through the door of the observation room, where the video camera sat for taping suspects. The room was empty. She pulled the door shut and sat down, peered into the interrogation room. She could see Garrett in one chair in the middle of the room. The doctor sat at the table. Cal Fredericks was in the corner, his arms folded, ankle resting on a knee, revealing the height of his shoes' stubby heels.

A third chair, unoccupied, sat facing Garrett.

Cokes were on the table. The cans sweated with condensation.

Through the cheap, clattering speaker above the mirror Sachs heard their voices.

"Garrett, I'm Doctor Penny. How're you?"

No answer.

"It's a little warm in here, isn't it?"

Still Garrett said nothing. He looked down. Clicked the nails on his finger and thumb. Sachs couldn't hear the sound. She found her own thumbnail digging into the flesh of her index finger. Felt moisture, saw the blood. Stop it stop it stop it, she thought and forced herself to lower her hands to her sides.

"Garrett, I'm here to help you. I'm working with your lawyer, Mr. Fredericks here, and we're trying to get you a reduced sentence for what's happened. We can help you but we need your cooperation."

Fredericks said, "The doctor's going to talk to you, Garrett. We're going to try to find out a few things. But everything you say is going to be just between us. We won't tell anybody else without your permission. You understand that?"

He nodded.

"Remember, Garrett," the doctor said, "we're the good guys. We're on your side… Now, I want to try something."

Her eyes were on the boy's face. He scratched at a welt. He said, "I guess."

"See that chair there?"

Dr. Penny nodded toward the chair and the boy glanced at it. "I see it."

"We're going to play sort of a game. You're going to pretend there's somebody real important in that chair."

"Like the President?"

"No, I mean, somebody important to you. Somebody you know in real life. You're going to pretend they're sitting there in front of you. I want you to talk to them. And I want you to be real honest with them. You tell them whatever you want to say. Share your secrets with them. If you're mad at them you tell them that. If you love them tell them so. If you want them – like you'd want a girl – tell them. Remember it's okay to say anything at all. Nobody's going to be upset with you."

"Just talk to the chair?" Garrett asked the doctor. "Why?"

"For one thing, it'll help you feel better about the bad things that happened today."

"You mean, like, getting caught?"

Sachs smiled.

Dr. Penny seemed to repress his own smile and moved the empty chair a little closer to Garrett. "Now, imagine that somebody important is sitting right there. Let's say Mary Beth McConnell. And that you've got something you want to say to her and now's your chance. Something you've never said before because it was too hard. Something really important. Not just some bullshit."

Garrett looked nervously around the room, glanced at his lawyer, who nodded encouragingly. The boy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Okay. I guess I'm ready."

"Good. Now, picture Mary Beth in the -"

"But I don't want to say anything to her," Garrett interrupted.

"You don't?"

He shook his head. "I already told her everything I wanted to say."

"There isn't anything else?"

He hesitated. "I don't know… Maybe. Only… the thing is I'd rather imagine somebody else in the chair. Could we, like, do that?"

"Well, for now, let's stick with Mary Beth. You said maybe there's something you want to say to her. What is it? Do you want to tell her how she let you down or hurt you? Or made you angry? About how you want to get even with her? Anything at all, Garrett. You can say anything. It's all right."

Garrett shrugged. "Uhm, why can't it be someone else?"

"For now, let's say it has to be Mary Beth."

The boy turned suddenly to the one-way mirror and he looked right at where Sachs was sitting. Involuntarily she sat back, as if he knew she was there even though he couldn't possibly see her.

"Go on," the doctor encouraged.

The boy turned back to Dr. Penny. "Okay. I guess I'd say I'm glad she's safe."

The doctor beamed. "Good, Garrett. Let's start there. Tell her that you saved her. Tell her why." Nodding to the chair.

Garrett looked uneasily at the empty chair. He began, "She was in Blackwater Landing and -"

"No, remember you're talking to Mary Beth. Pretend she's sitting there in the chair."

He cleared his throat. "You were in Blackwater Landing. It was, like, really, really dangerous. People get hurt in Blackwater Landing, people get killed there. I was worried about you. I didn't want the man in the overalls to hurt you too."

"The man in the overalls?" the doctor asked.

"The one who killed Billy."

The doctor looked past Garrett to the lawyer, who was shaking his head.

Dr. Penny asked, "Garrett, you know, even if you did save Mary Beth she might think she did something to make you mad."

"Mad? She didn't do anything to make me mad."

"Well, you took her away from her family."

"I took her away to make sure she's safe." He remembered the rules of the game and looked back to the chair. "I took you away to make sure you were safe."

"I can't help but think," the doctor continued softly, "that there's something else you want to say. I sensed that earlier – that there's something pretty important to say but you don't want to."

Sachs too had seen this in the boy's face. His eyes were troubled but he was intrigued with the doctor's game. What was going through his mind? There was something he wanted to say. What was it?

Garrett looked down at his long, grimy fingernails. "Well, maybe there is something."

"Go on."

"This is… it's kinda hard."

Cal Fredericks was sitting forward, pen held over a pad of paper.

Dr. Penny said softly, "Let's set the scene… Mary Beth's right there. She's waiting. She wants you to say it."

Garrett asked, "She does? You think so?"

"I do," the doctor reassured him. "Do you want to tell her something about where she is now? Where you took her? What it's like? Maybe why you took her to that particular place?"

"No," Garrett said. "I don't want to say anything about that."

"Then what do you want to say?"

"I…" His voice faded. His nails clicked.

"I know it's difficult."

Sachs too was sitting forward in her chair. Come on, she found herself thinking, come on, Garrett. We want to help you. Meet us halfway.

Dr. Penny continued, his voice hypnotic. "Go ahead, Garrett. There's Mary Beth right there in the chair. She's waiting. She's wondering what you're going to say. Talk to her." The doctor pushed the soft drink closer to Garrett and he took several long drinks, the cuffs ringing against the can as he lifted it with both hands. After this momentary break the doctor continued. "What is there that you really want to say to her? That one important thing? I can see that you want to say it. I can see that you need to say it. And I think that she needs to hear it."

The doctor pushed the empty chair closer. "There she is, Garrett, sitting there right in front of you, looking at you. What's that one thing you'd say to her that you haven't been able to? Now's your chance. Go ahead."

Another swallow of Coke. Sachs noticed that the boy's hands were shaking. What was coming? she wondered. What was he about to say?

Suddenly, startling both the men in the room, Garrett leaned forward and blurted to the chair, "I really, really like you, Mary Beth. And… and I think I love you." He took several deep breaths, clicked his fingernails a few times then gripped the arms of the chair nervously and lowered his head, his face red as sunset.

"That's what you wanted to say?" the doctor asked.

Garrett nodded.

"Anything else?"

"Uhm, no."

This time it was the doctor who glanced at the lawyer and shook his head.

"Mister," Garrett began. "Doctor… I've, like, got this question?"

"Go ahead, Garrett."

"Okay… there's this book of mine I'd really like to have from my house. It's called The Miniature World. Would that be okay?"

"We'll see if that can be arranged," the doctor said. He looked past Garrett to Fredericks, who rolled his eyes in frustration. The men rose, pulled on their jackets. "That'll be it for now, Garrett." The boy nodded.

Sachs quickly rose and stepped outside into the lockup office. The desk deputy hadn't noticed her eavesdropping.

Fredericks and the doctor stepped outside as Garrett was led back into the cell.

Jim Bell pushed through the doorway. Fredericks introduced him to the doctor, and the sheriff asked, "Anything?"

Fredericks shook his head. "Not a thing."

Bell said grimly, "Was just over with the magistrate. They're gonna arraign him at six and get him over to Lancaster tonight."

"Tonight?" Sachs said.

"Better to get him out of town. There're a few people around here'd like to take matters into their own hands."

Dr. Penny said, "I can try again later. He's very agitated right now."

"'Course he's agitated," Bell muttered. "He just got himself arrested for murder and kidnapping. That'd make me agitated too. Do whatever you want in Lancaster but McGuire's slapping the charges on him and we're shipping him out 'fore dark. And by the way, Cal, I have to tell you: McGuire's going for murder one."

In the County Building, Amelia Sachs found Rhyme as ornery as she'd thought he'd be.

"Come on, Sachs, help poor Ben with the equipment and let's get on our way. I told Dr. Weaver I'd be at the hospital some time this year."

But she just stood at the window, looking out. Finally she said, "Rhyme."

The criminalist looked up, squinted as he studied her the way he'd study a bit of trace evidence he couldn't identify. "I don't like that, Sachs."

"What?"

"I don't like it one bit. Ben, no, you have to take the armature off before you pack it up."

"Armature?" Ben was struggling to close up the boxy ALS – alternative light source, used to image substances invisible to the unaided eye.

"The wand," Sachs explained and took over packing up the device.

"Thanks." Ben began to coil computer wire.

"That look of yours, Sachs. That's what I don't like. Your look and the tone of your voice."

"Ben," she asked, "could you give us a few minutes alone?"

"No, he couldn't," Rhyme snapped. "We don't have time. We've got to get packed up and out of here."

"Five minutes," she said.

Ben looked from Rhyme to Sachs and because Sachs stared at him with an imploring gaze, not an angry gaze, she won the contest and the big man stepped out of the room.

Rhyme tried to preempt her. "Sachs, we've done all we can do. We saved Lydia. We've caught the perp. He'll take a plea and tell them where Mary Beth is."

"He's not going to tell where she is."

"But that's not our problem. There's nothing more -"

"I don't think he did it."

"Killed Mary Beth? I agree. The blood shows she's probably alive but -"

"I mean, killed Billy."

Rhyme tossed his head, to flick an infuriating tail of hair off his forehead. "You believe that man-in-the-tan-overalls story that Jim mentioned?"

"Yes, I do."

"Sachs, he's a troubled boy and you feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for him. But -"

"That doesn't have anything to do with it."

"You're right, it doesn't," he snapped. "The only thing that's relevant is the evidence. And the evidence shows there's no man in overalls and that Garrett's guilty."

"The evidence suggests he's guilty, Rhyme. It doesn't prove it. Evidence can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. Besides, I've got some evidence of my own."

"Such as?"

"He asked me to take care of his insects for him."

"So?"

"Doesn't it seem a little odd that a cold-blooded killer would care what happened to some goddamn insects?"

"That's not evidence, Sachs. That's his strategy. It's psychological warfare, trying to break down our defenses. The boy's smart, remember. High IQ, good grades. And look at his reading matter. It's heady stuff – he's learned a lot from the insects. And one thing about them is that they have no moral code. All they care about is surviving. Those are the lessons he's learned. That's been his child development. It's sad, but it's not our problem."

"You know that trap he set. The pine-bough trap?"

Rhyme nodded.

"It was only two feet deep. And the hornets' nest inside? It was empty. No wasps. And the ammonia bottle wasn't rigged to hurt anybody. It was just so he'd have some warning when a search party was getting close to the mill."

"That's not empirical evidence, Sachs. Like the bloody tissue, for instance."

"He said he had been masturbating. And that Mary Beth hit her head and he wiped the wound with it. Anyway, if he raped her what would be the point of a tissue?"

"To clean up afterward."

"Doesn't fit any rape profile I know."

Rhyme quoted himself, from the foreword of his criminalistics textbook, "'A profile is a guide. Evidence is -'"

"- 'God,'" she completed the quotation. "Okay, then – there were plenty of footprints at the scene. Remember, it was trampled. Some of those might've been the overall man's."

"There are no other prints on the murder weapon."

"He claims the man wore gloves," she countered.

"But no leather grain prints either."

"Could've been cloth. Let me test it and -"

"'Could have, could have…' Come on, Sachs, this is pure speculation."

"But you should've heard him when he was talking about Mary Beth. He was concerned about her."

"He was acting. What's my number-one rule?"

"You have a lot of number-one rules," she muttered.

He continued unfazed, "You can't trust witnesses."

"He thinks he loves her, he cares for her. He really believes he's protecting her."

A man's voice interrupted. "Oh, he is protecting her." Sachs and Rhyme looked to the doorway. It was Dr. Elliott Penny. He added, "Protecting her from himself."

Sachs introduced them.

"I wanted to meet you, Lincoln," Dr. Penny said. "I specialize in forensic psychology. Bert Markham and I were on a panel together at the AALEO last year and he speaks highly of you."

"Bert's a good friend," Rhyme said. "Just appointed head of Chicago PD Forensics."

Dr. Penny nodded toward the corridor. "Garrett's lawyer's in there with the D.A. right now but I don't think the outcome's going to be very good for the boy."

"What did you mean just then, about protecting her from himself?" Sachs asked cynically. "Some kind of multiple personality crap?"

"No," replied the doctor, not at all troubled by her abrasive skepticism. "There's definitely some mental or emotional disturbance at work but it's nothing as exotic as multiple personalities. Garrett knows exactly what he did to Mary Beth and Billy Stail. I'm pretty sure he's hidden her someplace to keep her away from Blackwater Landing, where he probably did kill those other people over the past couple of years. And scared – what was his name? – the Wilkes boy into killing himself. I think he was planning to rape and kill Mary Beth at the same time he killed Billy but that the part of him that quote loves her wouldn't let him. He got her away from Blackwater Landing as fast as he could to keep from hurting her. I think he did rape her, though to him it's not rape, just the consummation of what he sees as their quote relationship. As normal to him as a husband and wife on their honeymoon. But he still felt the urge to kill her and so he went back to Blackwater Landing the next day and got a substitute victim, Lydia Johansson. He was undoubtedly going to murder her in place of Mary Beth."

"I hope you're not billing the defense," Sachs said acerbically, "if that's your sympathetic testimony."

Dr. Penny shook his head. "Based on the evidence I've heard that boy's going to jail with or without expert witnesses."

"I don't think he killed the boy. And I think the kidnapping's not as black-and-white as we're making it."

Dr. Penny shrugged. "My professional opinion is that he did. Obviously I haven't run all the tests but he exhibits clear dissocial and sociopathic behavior – and I'm thinking of all three major diagnostic systems. The International Classification of Diseases, The DSM-IV and The Revised Psychopathy Checklist. Would I have to run the complete battery of tests? Of course. But he clearly presents with an affect-less antisocial/criminal personality. He's got a high IQ, he exhibits strategic thinking patterns and organized-offender behavior, considers revenge acceptable, displays no remorse… he's a very dangerous person."

"Sachs," Rhyme said, "what's the point? This isn't our game anymore."

She ignored him and his piercing eyes. "But, Doctor -"

The doctor held up a hand. "Can I ask you a question?"

"What?"

"Do you have children?"

A hesitation. "No," she responded. "Why?"

"You understandably feel sympathy for him – I think we all do – but you might be confusing that with some latent maternal sense."

"What does that mean?"

The doctor continued, "I mean that if you have some desire to have children yourself you might not be able to take an objective view about a sixteen-year-old boy's innocence or guilt. Especially one who's an orphan and has had a tough time in life."

"I can take a perfectly objective role," she snapped. "There's just too much that doesn't add up. Garrett's motives don't make sense, he -"

"Motives are the weak leg of the evidentiary stool, Sachs, you know that."

"I don't need any more maxims, Rhyme," she snapped.

The criminalist sighed in frustration, glanced at the clock.

Dr. Penny continued. "I heard you asking Cal Fredericks about Lancaster, about what was going to happen to the boy."

She lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, I think you can help him," the doctor said. "The best thing you can do is to just spend some time with him. The county'll assign a caseworker to liaise with the guardian the court appoints and you'll have to get their approval but I'm sure it can be arranged. He might even open up with you about Mary Beth."

As she was considering this Thom appeared in the doorway. "Van's outside, Lincoln."

Rhyme glanced at the map one last time and then turned toward the doorway. "'Once more into the breach, dear friends.'"

Jim Bell walked into the room and rested his hand on Rhyme's insensate arm. "We're organizing a search of the Outer Banks. With a little luck we'll have her in a few days. Listen, I can't thank you enough, Lincoln."

Rhyme deflected the gratitude with a nod and wished the sheriff good luck.

"I'll come visit you at the hospital, Lincoln," Ben said. "I'll bring some scotch. When're they going to let you start drinking again?"

"Not soon enough."

"I'll help Ben finish up," Sachs told him. Bell said to her, "We'll get you a ride over to Avery." She nodded. "Thanks. I'll be there soon, Rhyme." But the criminalist had, it seemed, already departed from Tanner's Corner, mentally if not physically, and he said nothing. Sachs heard only the vanishing whine as the Storm Arrow steamed down the corridor.

Fifteen minutes later they had most of the forensic equipment put away and Sachs sent Ben Kerr home, thanking him for his volunteer efforts.

In his wake Jesse Corn had appeared at Sachs' side. She wondered if he'd been staking out the corridor, waiting for a chance to catch her alone.

"He's quite somebody, isn't he?" Jesse asked. "Mr. Rhyme." The deputy began stacking boxes that didn't need to be stacked.

"That he is," she said noncommittally.

"That operation he's talking about. Will it fix him?"

It'll kill him. It'll make him worse. It'll turn him into a vegetable.

"No."

She thought Jesse would ask, Then why's he doing it? But the deputy offered another one of his sayings: "Sometimes you just find yourself standing in need to do something. No matter it seems hopeless."

Sachs shrugged, thinking: Yeah, sometimes you just do.

She snapped the locks on a microscope case and coiled the last of the electrical cords. She noticed a stack of books on the table, the ones she'd found in Garrett's room in his foster parents' house. She picked up The Miniature World, the book that the boy had asked Dr. Penny for. She opened it. Flipped through the pages, read a passage.

There are 4,500 known species of mammals in the world but 980,000 known species of insects and an estimated two to three million more not yet discovered. The diversity and astonishing resilience of these creatures arouses more than simple admiration. One thinks of Harvard biologist and entomologist E. O. Wilson's coined term "Biofilia," by which he means the emotional affiliation humans feel toward other living organisms. There is certainly as great an opportunity for such a connection with insects as there is for a pet dog or prize racehorse, or indeed, other humans.

She glanced out into the corridor, where Cal Fredericks and Bryan McGuire were still engaged in their complicated verbal fencing match. Garrett's lawyer was clearly losing.

Sachs snapped the book shut. Hearing in her mind the doctor's words. The best thing you can do is to just spend some time with him.

Jesse said, "Say, might be a little hectic to go out to the pistol range. But you interested in some coffee?"

Sachs laughed to herself. So she'd got the Starbucks invite after all. "Probably shouldn't. I'm going to drop this book over at the lockup. Then I have to go over to the hospital in Avery. How 'bout a rain check?"

"You got it."

21

In Eddie's, the bar a block from the lockup, Rich Culbeau said sternly, "This ain't no game."

"I don't think it's a game," Sean O'Sarian said. "I only laughed. I mean, shit, was just a laugh. I was looking at that commercial there." Nodding at the greasy TV screen above the Beer Nuts rack. "Where this guy's trying to get to the airport and his car -"

"You do that too much. You prank around. You don't pay attention."

"All right. I'm listening. We're going in the back. The door'll be open."

"That's what I was gonna ask," Harris Tomel said. "The back door to the lockup's never open. It's always locked and it's got that, you know, bar on the inside."

"The bar'll be off and the door'll be unlocked. Okay?"

"You say so," Tomel said skeptically.

"It'll be open." Culbeau continued, "We go in. There'll be a key to his cell on the table, that little metal one. You know it?"

Of course they knew the table. Anybody who'd spent a night in the Tanner's Corner lockup had to've barked his shins on that fucking table bolted to the floor near the door, especially if they were drunk.

"Yeah, go ahead," O'Sarian said, now paying attention.

"We unlock the cell and go in. I'm going to hit the kid with the pepper spray. Put a bag over him – I got a crocus sack like I use for kittens in the pond, just put that over his head and get him out the back. He can shout if he wants but won't nobody hear him. Harris, you be waiting with the truck. Back it right up near the door. Keep it in gear."

"Where we gonna take him to?" O'Sarian asked.

"None of our places," Culbeau said, wondering if O'Sarian was thinking they were going to take a kidnapped prisoner to one of their houses. Which, if he did, meant the skinny kid was even more stupid than Culbeau thought he was. "The old garage, near the tracks."

"Good," O'Sarian offered.

"We get him out there. I got my propane torch. And we start on him. Five minutes is all it'll take, I figure, and he'll tell us where Mary Beth is."

"And then do we…" O'Sarian's voice faded.

"What?" Culbeau snapped. Then whispered, "You gonna say something you maybe don't want to say out loud in public?"

O'Sarian whispered back, "You were just talking 'bout using a torch on the boy. Doesn't seem to me that's any worse than what I'm asking – about afterward."

Which Culbeau had to agree with, though of course he didn't tell O'Sarian he may have a point. Instead he said only, "Accidents happen."

"They do," Tomel agreed.

O'Sarian toyed with a beer-bottle cap, dug some crud out from under his nails with it. He'd turned moody.

"What?" Culbeau asked.

"This's getting risky. Woulda been easier to take the boy in the woods. At the mill."

"But he's not in the woods at the mill anymore," Tomel said.

O'Sarian shrugged. "Just wondering if it's worth the money."

"You wanta back out?" Culbeau scratched his beard, thinking it was so hot he ought to shave it but then you could see his triple chin more. "I'd rather split it two ways than three."

"Naw, you know I don't want to. Ever'thing's fine." O'Sarian's eyes strayed to the TV again. A movie caught his attention and he shook his head, eyes wide, looking at one of the actresses.

"Hold on here," Tomel said, eyes out the window. "Take a look." He was nodding outside.

That redheaded policewoman from New York, the one so damn fast with the knife, was walking up the street, carrying a book.

Tomel said, "Nice-looking lady. I could use a little of that."

But Culbeau remembered her cold eyes and the steady point of the knife under O'Sarian's chin.

He said, "Juice ain't worth the squeeze."

The redhead walked into the lockup.

O'Sarian was looking too. "Well, that fucks things up a bit."

Culbeau said slowly, "No, it don't. Harris, get that truck over there. And keep the motor running."

"But what about her?" Tomel asked.

Culbeau said, "I got plenty of pepper spray."

• • •

Inside the lockup Deputy Nathan Groomer leaned back in the rickety chair and nodded at Sachs.

Jesse Corn's infatuation had grown tedious; Nathan's formal smile was a relief to her. "Hello, miss."

"It's Nathan, right?"

"Right."

"That's some decoy there." Sachs looked down at his desk.

"This old thing?" he asked humbly.

"What is it?"

"Female mallard. About a year old. The duck. Not the decoy."

"You make that yourself?"

"Hobby of mine. Have a couple others at my desk in the main building. Check 'em out, you want. Thought you were leaving."

"Will be soon. How's he doing?"

"He who? Sheriff Bell?"

"No, I mean Garrett."

"Oh, I dunno. Mason went back to see him, had a talk. Tried to get him to tell where the girl was. But he wouldn't say anything."

"Mason's back there now?"

"No, he left."

"How about Sheriff Bell and Lucy?"

"Nope, they're all gone. Back at the County Building. Anything I can help you with?"

"Garrett wanted this book." She held it up. "Is it okay if I give it to him?"

"What is it, a Bible?"

"No, it's about insects."

Nathan took it and searched it carefully – for weapons, she supposed. Then he handed it back. "Creepy, that boy is. Somethin' out of a horror movie. You oughta give him a Bible."

"I think this is all he's interested in."

"I guess you're right about that. Slip your weapon in the lockbox there and I'll let you in."

Sachs put the Smith & Wesson inside and stepped to the door but Nathan was looking at her expectantly. She lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, miss, I understand you got a knife too."

"Oh, sure. I forgot about it."

"Rules is rules, you know."

She handed over the switchblade. He dropped it in beside the gun.

"You want the cuffs too?" She touched her handcuff case.

"Nope. Can't get into much trouble with those. 'Course, we had us a reverend who did once. But that was only 'cause his wife come home early and found him hitched to the bedpost with Sally Anne Carlson atop him. Come on, I'll let you in."

Rich Culbeau, flanked by nervous Sean O'Sarian, stood beside a dying lilac bush at the back of the lockup.

The back door to the place overlooked a large field, filled with grass and trash and parts of old cars and appliances. More than a few limp condoms too.

Harris Tomel drove his sparkling Ford F-250 up over the curb and backed around. Culbeau thought he should've come the other way because this looked a little obvious but there was nobody out on the street and, besides, after the custard stand closed, there was no reason for anybody to come down here. At least the truck was new and had a good muffler; it was quiet.

"Who's in the front office?" O'Sarian asked.

"Nathan Groomer."

"That girl cop with him?"

"I don't know. How the hell do I know? But if she is she'll have her gun and that knife she was tattooing you with in the lockbox."

"Won't Nathan hear if the girl screams?"

Recalling the redhead's eyes and the flash of the blade once more, Culbeau said, "The boy'll be more likely to scream than her."

"Well, then, what if he does?"

"We'll get the bag over him fast. Here." Culbeau handed O' Sarian a red-and-white canister of pepper spray. "Aim low 'cause people duck."

"Does it?… I mean, will it get on us? The spray?"

"Not if you don't shoot yourself in the fucking face. It's a stream. Not like a cloud."

"Which of ' em should I take?"

"The boy."

"What if the girl's closer to me?"

Culbeau muttered, "She's mine."

"But – "

"She's mine."

"Okay," O'Sarian agreed.

They dipped their heads as they went past a filthy window in the back of the lockup and paused at the metal door. Culbeau noticed that it was open a half-inch. "See, it's unlocked," he whispered. Feeling he'd scored some kind of point against O'Sarian. Then wondering why he felt he needed to. "Now, I'll nod. Then we go in fast, spray 'em both – and be generous with that shit." He handed O'Sarian a thick bag. "Then throw that over his head."

O'Sarian gripped the canister firmly, nodded at the second bag, which had appeared in Culbeau's hand. "So we're taking the girl too."

Culbeau sighed, said an exasperated, "Yeah, Sean. We are."

"Oh. Okay. Just wondered."

"When they're down just drag 'em out fast. Don't stop for nothing."

"Okay… Oh, I was meaning to say. I got my Colt."

"What?"

"I got my.38. I brought it." He nodded toward his pocket.

Culbeau paused for a moment. Then he said, "Good." He closed his big hand around the door handle.

22

Would this be his last view? he wondered. From his hospital bed Lincoln Rhyme could see a park on the grounds of the University Medical Center in Avery. Lush trees, a sidewalk meandering through a rich, green lawn, a stone fountain that a nurse had told him was a replica of some famous well on the UNC campus at Chapel Hill.

From the bedroom in his townhouse on Central Park West in Manhattan, Rhyme could see sky and some of the buildings along Fifth Avenue. But the windows there were high off the floor and he couldn't see Central Park itself unless his bed was shoved right against the pane, which let him look down onto the grass and trees.

Here, perhaps because the facility had been built with SCI and neuro patients in mind, the windows were lower; even the views here were accessible, he thought wryly to himself.

Then wondered again whether or not the operation would have any success. Whether he'd even survive it.

Lincoln Rhyme knew that it was the inability to do the simple things that was the most frustrating.

Traveling from New York to North Carolina, for instance, had been such a project, so long anticipated, so carefully planned, that the difficulty of the journey had not troubled Rhyme at all. But the overwhelming burden of his injury was the heaviest when it came to the small tasks that a healthy person does without thinking. Scratching an itch on your temple, brushing your teeth, wiping your lips, opening a soda, sitting up in a chair to look out the window and watch sparrows bathe in the dirt of a garden…

He wondered again how foolish he was being.

He'd had the best neurologists in the country and was a scientist himself. He'd read, and understood, the literature about the near impossibility of neuro improvement in a patient with a C4 spinal cord injury. Yet he was determined to go ahead with Cheryl Weaver's operation – despite the chance that this bucolic setting outside his window in a strange hospital in a strange town might be the very last image of nature he ever saw in this life.

Of course there are risks.

So why was he doing it?

Oh, there was a very good reason.

Yet it was a reason that the cold criminalist in him had trouble accepting and one that he'd never dare utter out loud. Because it had nothing to do with being able to prowl over a crime scene searching for evidence. Nothing to do with brushing his teeth or sitting up in bed. No, no, it was exclusively because of Amelia Sachs.

Finally he'd admitted the truth: that he'd grown terrified of losing her. He'd brooded that sooner or later she'd meet another Nick – the handsome undercover agent who'd been her lover a few years ago. This was inevitable, he figured, as long as he remained as immobile as he was. She wanted children. She wanted a normal life. And so Rhyme was willing to risk death, to risk making his condition worse, in the hope that he could improve.

He knew of course that the operation wouldn't allow him to stroll down Fifth Avenue with Sachs on his arm. He was simply hoping for a minuscule improvement – to move slightly closer to a normal life. Slightly closer to her. But summoning up his astonishing imagination, Rhyme could picture himself closing his hand on hers, squeezing it and feeling the faint pressure of her skin.

A small thing to everyone else in the world, but to Rhyme, a miracle.

Thom walked into the room. After a pause he said, "An observation."

"I don't want one. Where's Amelia?"

"I'm going to tell you anyway. You haven't had a drink in five days."

"I know. It pisses me off."

"You're getting in shape for the operation."

"Doctor's orders," Rhyme said testily.

"When have those ever meant anything to you?"

A shrug. "They're going to be pumping me full of who knows what kind of crap. I didn't think it would be smart to add to the cocktail in my bloodstream."

"It wouldn't've been. You're right. But you paid attention to your doctor. I'm proud of you."

"Oh, pride – now there's a helpful emotion."

But Thom was a waterfall to Rhyme's rain. He continued, "But I want to say something."

"You're going to anyway whether I want you to or not."

"I've read a lot about this, Lincoln. The procedure."

"Oh, have you? On your time, I hope."

"I just want to say that if it doesn't work this time, we'll come back. Next year. Two years. Five years. It'll work then."

The sentiment within Lincoln Rhyme was as dead as his spinal cord but he managed: "Thank you, Thom. Now, where the hell is that doctor? I've been hard at work catching psychotic kidnappers for these people. I think they'd be treating me a little better than this."

Thom said, "She's only ten minutes late, Lincoln. And we did change the appointment twice today."

"It's closer to twenty minutes. Ah, here we go."

The door to the hospital room swung open. And Rhyme looked up, expecting to see Dr. Weaver.

But it wasn't the surgeon.

Sheriff Jim Bell, his face dotted with sweat, walked inside. In the corridor behind him was his brother-in-law, Steve Farr. Both men were clearly upset.

The criminalist's first thought was that they'd found Mary Beth's body. That the boy had in fact killed her.

And his next thought was how badly Sachs would react to this news, having had her faith in the boy shattered.

But Bell had different news. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Lincoln." And Rhyme knew the message was something closer to him personally than just Garrett Hanlon and Mary Beth McConnell. "I was going to call," the sheriff said. "But then I figured you should hear it from somebody in person. So I came."

"What, Jim?" he asked.

"It's Amelia."

"What?" Thom asked.

"What about her?" Rhyme couldn't, of course, feel his heart pounding in his chest but he could sense the blood surge through his chin and temples. "What? Tell me!"

"Rich Culbeau and those buddies of his went by the lockup. I don't know what they had in mind exactly – probably no good – but anyway, what they found was my deputy, Nathan, cuffed, in the front office. And the cell was empty."

"Cell?"

"Garrett's cell," Bell continued, as if this explained everything.

Rhyme still didn't understand the significance. "What -"

In a gruff voice the sheriff said, "Nathan said that your Amelia trussed him up at gunpoint and broke Garrett outa jail. It's a felony escape. They're on the run, they're armed and nobody has a clue where they are."