III . KNUCKLE TIME

23

Running. As best she could. Her legs ached from the waves of arthritic pain coursing through her body. She was drenched in sweat and was already dizzy from the heat and dehydration.

And she was still in shock at the thought of what she'd done.

Garrett was beside her, jogging silently through the forest outside Tanner's Corner.

This is way past stupid, lady…

When Sachs had gone into the cell to give Garrett The Miniature World she'd watched the boy's happy face as he'd taken the book from her. A moment or two passed and, almost as if someone else were forcing her to, she'd reached through the bars, taken the boy by the shoulders. Flustered, he'd looked away. "No, look at me," she'd instructed. "Look."

Finally he had. She'd studied his blotched face, his twitching mouth, the dark pits of eyes, the thick brows. "Garrett, I need to know the truth. This is only between you and me. Tell me – did you kill Billy Stail?"

"I swear I didn't. I swear! It was that man – the one in the tan overalls. He killed Billy. That's the truth!"

"It's not what the facts show, Garrett."

"But people can see the same thing different," he'd responded in a calm voice. "Like, the way we can look at the same thing a fly sees but it doesn't look the same."

"What do you mean?"

"We see something moving – just a blur when somebody's hand's trying to swat the fly. But the way a fly's eyes work is he sees a hand stopping in midair a hundred times on its way down. Like a bunch of still pictures. It's the same hand, same motion, but the fly and us see it way different. And colors… We look at something that's just solid red to us but some insects see a dozen different types of red."

The evidence suggests he's guilty, Rhyme. It doesn't prove it. Evidence can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.

"And Lydia," Sachs had persisted, gripping the boy even more firmly, "why'd you kidnap her?"

"I told everybody why… 'Cause she was in danger too. Blackwater Landing… it's a dangerous place. People die there. People disappear. I was just protecting her."

Of course it's a dangerous place, she'd thought. But is it dangerous because of you!

Sachs had then said, "She said you were going to rape her."

"No, no, no… She jumped into the water and her uniform got wet and torn. I saw her, you know, on top. Her chest. And I got kind of… turned on. But that's all."

"And Mary Beth. Did you hurt her, rape her?"

"No, no, no! I told you! She hit her head and I cleaned it off with that tissue. I'd never do that, not to Mary Beth."

Sachs had stared at him a moment longer.

Blackwater Landing… it's a dangerous place.

Finally she'd asked, "If I get you out of here will you take me to Mary Beth?"

Garrett had frowned. "I do that, then you'd bring her back to Tanner's Corner. And she might get hurt."

"It's the only way, Garrett. I'll get you out if you take me to her. We can make sure she'll be safe, Lincoln Rhyme and I."

"You can do that?"

"Yes. But if you don't agree you'll stay in jail for a long time. And if Mary Beth dies because of you it'll be murder, same as if you shot her. And you'll never get out of jail."

He'd looked out the window. It seemed that his eyes were following the flight of an insect. Sachs couldn't see it. "All right."

"How far away is she?"

"On foot, it'll take us eight, ten hours. Depending."

"On what?"

"On how many they got coming after us and how careful we are getting away."

Garrett said this quickly and his assured tone troubled Sachs – it was as if he'd been anticipating that someone would break him out or that he'd escape and he'd already considered avoiding pursuit.

"Wait here," she'd told him. And stepped back into the office. She'd reached into the lockbox, pulled out her gun and knife and, against all training and sense, turned the Smith & Wesson on Nathan Groomer.

"I'm sorry to do this," she whispered. "I need the key to his cell and then I need you to turn around and put your hands behind your back."

Wide-eyed, he'd hesitated, perhaps debating whether or not to go for his sidearm. Or – she realized now – probably not even thinking at all. Instinct or reflex or just plain anger might've driven him to pull the weapon from his holster.

"This is way past stupid, lady," he'd said.

"The key."

He opened the drawer and tossed it on the desk. He put his hands behind his back. She cuffed him with his own handcuffs and ripped the phone from the wall.

She'd then freed Garrett, cuffed him too. The back door to the lockup seemed to be open but she thought she heard footsteps and a running car engine outside. She opted for the front door. They'd made a clean escape, undetected.

Now, a mile from downtown, surrounded by brush and trees, the boy directed her along an ill-defined path. The chains of the cuffs clinked as he pointed in the direction they should go.

She was thinking: But, Rhyme, there was nothing I could do! Do you understand? I had no choice. If the detention center in Lancaster was like what she expected he'd be raped and beaten his first day there and perhaps killed before a week passed. Sachs knew too that this was the only way to find Mary Beth. Rhyme had exhausted the possibilities with the evidence and the defiance in Garrett's eyes told her that he'd never cooperate.

(No, I'm not confusing being maternal with being concerned, Dr. Penny. All I know is that if Lincoln and I had a son he'd be as single-minded and stubborn as we are and that if anything happened to us I'd pray for someone to look out for him the way I'm looking out for Garrett…)

They moved quickly. Sachs was surprised at how elegantly the boy slipped through the woods, despite having his hands cuffed. He seemed to know exactly where to put his feet, what plants you could easily push through and which offered resistance. Where the ground was too soft to walk on.

"Don't step there," he said sternly. "That's clay from a Carolina bay. It'll hold you like glue."

They hiked for a half-hour until the ground grew soupy and the air became fragrant with the smells of methane and decay. The route finally became impassable – the path ended in a thick bog – and Garrett led them to a two-lane asphalt road. They started through the brush beside the shoulder.

Several cars drove by leisurely, their drivers oblivious to the felony they were passing.

Sachs watched them enviously. On the lam for only twenty minutes, she reflected, and already she felt a heart-wrenching tug at the normalcy of everyone else's life – and at the dark turn hers had taken.

This is way past stupid, lady.


• • •

"Hey there!"

Mary Beth McConnell jerked awake.

With the heat and oppressive atmosphere in the cabin she'd fallen asleep on the smelly couch.

The voice, nearby, called again. "Miss, are you all right? Hello? Mary Beth?"

She leapt from the bed and walked quickly toward the broken window. She felt dizzy, had to lower her head for a minute, steady herself against the wall. The pain in her temple throbbed ferociously. She thought: Fuck you, Garrett.

The pain subsided, her vision cleared. And she continued to the window.

It was the Missionary. He had his friend with him, a tall, balding man in gray slacks and a work shirt. The Missionary carried an ax.

"Thank you, thank you!" she whispered.

"Miss, you all right?"

"I'm fine. He hasn't come back." Her voice was still painfully raw. He handed her another canteen of water and she drank the whole container down.

"I called the town police," he told her. "They're on their way. They'll be here in fifteen, twenty minutes. But we aren't gonna wait for them. We're gonna get you out now, the two of us."

"I can't thank you enough."

"Stand back a little. I been chopping wood all my life and that door's gonna be a stack of firewood in one minute. This's Tom. He's working for the county too."

"Hi, Tom."

"Hi. Your head okay there?" he asked, frowning.

"Looks worse than it is," she said, touching the scab.

Thunk, thunk.

The ax drove into the door. From the window she could see the blade as it lifted high into the air and caught the sunlight. The cutting edge of the tool glistened, meaning it was very sharp. Mary Beth used to help her father chop wood for their fireplace. She remembered how much she loved watching him edge the ax with a grinding stone on the end of his drill – the orange sparks would fly into the air like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

"Who's this boy who kidnapped you?" Tom asked. "Some kind of pervert?"

Thunk… thunk.

"He's a high school kid from Tanner's Corner. He's scary. Look at all this." She waved at the insects in the jars.

"Gosh," Tom said, leaning close to the window, looking in.

Thunk.

A crack as the Missionary worked a large splinter out of the door.

Thud.

Mary Beth glanced at the door. Garrett must have reinforced it, maybe nailing two doors together. She said to Tom, "I feel like I'm one of his damn bugs myself. He – " Mary Beth saw a blur as Tom's left arm shot through the window and gripped the collar of her shirt. His right hand socketed onto her breast. He yanked her forward against the bars and planted his wet, beery-tobacco mouth on her lips. His tongue darted out and ran hard into her teeth.

He probed her chest, pinching, trying to find her nipple through her shirt as she twisted her head away from him, spitting and screaming.

"What the hell're you doing?" the Missionary cried, dropping the ax. He ran to the window.

But before he could pull Tom off, Mary Beth gripped the hand that spidered across her chest and pulled downward, hard. She ran Tom's wrist into a stalagmite of glass rising from the window frame. He cried out in pain and shock and let go of her, stumbling backward.

Wiping her mouth, Mary Beth ran from the window to the middle of the room.

The Missionary shouted at Tom, "What the fuck'd you do that for?"

Hit him! Mary Beth was thinking. Nail him with the ax. He's crazy. Turn him over to the police too.

Tom wasn't listening. He was squeezing his bloody arm, examining the slash. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…"

The Missionary muttered, "I told you to be patient. We woulda had her out in five minutes and spread-eagle at your place in a half hour. Now we got a mess."

Spread-eagle…

His comment registered in Mary Beth's thoughts an instant before its corollary arrived: that there'd been no call to the police; there was no one coming to rescue her.

"Man, look at this. Look!" Tom held up his split wrist, blood cascading down his arm.

"Fuck," the Missionary muttered. "We gotta get that stitched up. You dumb shit. Why couldn't you wait? Come on, let's get it taken care of."

Mary Beth watched Tom stagger into the field. He stopped ten feet away from the window. "You fucking bitch! You get yourself ready. We'll be back." He glanced down and crouched out of view for a moment. He stood up again, holding a rock the size of a large orange in his good hand. He flung it through the bars. Mary Beth stumbled backward as it sailed into the room, missing her by a scant foot. She sank onto the couch, sobbing.

As they walked toward the woods she heard Tom call again, "Get yourself ready!"


• • •

They were at Harris Tomel's house, a nice five-bedroom colonial on a good-sized cut of grass the man'd never done a lick of work to. Tomel's idea of lawn decorations was parking his F- 250 in the front yard and his Suburban in the back.

He did this because, being the sort-of college boy of the trio and owning more sweaters than plaid shirts, Tomel had to try a little harder to seem like a shit-kicker. Oh, sure, he'd done fed time but it was for some crappy scam in Raleigh where he sold stocks and bonds in companies whose only problem was that they didn't exist. He could shoot good as a sniper but Culbeau'd never known him to whale on anybody by himself, skin on skin, at least nobody who wasn't tied up. Tomel also thought about things too much, spent too much time on his clothes, asked for call liquor, even at Eddie's.

So unlike Culbeau, who worked hard on his own split-level, and unlike O'Sarian, who worked hard picking up waitresses who'd keep his trailer nice, Harris Tomel just let the house and yard go. Hoping, Culbeau assumed, that it'd goose the impression that he was a mean fuck.

But that was Tomel's business and the three men weren't at the house with its scruffy yard and Detroit lawn ornaments to discuss landscaping; they were here for one reason only. Because Tomel had inherited the gun collection to end all gun collections when his father went into Spivy Pond ice fishing on New Year's Eve a few years ago and didn't surface till the next tax day.

They stood in the man's paneled den, looking over the gun cases the same way Culbeau and O'Sarian had stood at the penny candy rack in Peterson's Drugs on Maple Street twenty years ago, deciding what to steal.

O'Sarian picked the black Colt AR-15, the civvy version of the M-16, because he was always yammering on and on about Vietnam and watched every war movie he could find.

Tomel took the beautiful Browning shotgun with the inlay, which Culbeau coveted as much as he coveted any woman in the county, even though he himself was a rifle man and would rather drill a hole in a deer's heart from three hundred yards than blow a duck into a dust of feathers. For himself, today, he chose Tomel's nifty Winchester.30-06 with a 'scope the size of Texas.

They packed plenty of ammo, water, Culbeau's cell phone and food. 'Shine of course.

Sleeping bags, too. Though none of them expected the hunt to last very long.

24

A grim Lincoln Rhyme wheeled into the dismantled forensic lab in the Paquenoke County Building.

Lucy Kerr and Mason Germain stood beside the fiberboard table that had held the microscopes. Their arms were crossed and, as Thom and Rhyme entered, both deputies regarded the criminalist and his aide with a blend of contempt and suspicion.

"How the hell could she do it?" Mason asked. "What was she thinking of?"

But these were two of many questions about Amelia Sachs and what she'd done that couldn't be answered, not yet, and so Rhyme asked merely, "Was anybody hurt?"

"No," Lucy said. "But Nathan was pretty shook up, looking down the barrel of that Smith and Wesson. Which we were crazy enough to give her."

Rhyme struggled to remain outwardly calm, yet his heart was pierced with fear for Sachs. Lincoln Rhyme trusted evidence before all else and the evidence showed clearly that Garrett Hanlon was a kidnapper and killer. Sachs, tricked by his calculated facade, was as much at risk as Mary Beth or Lydia.

Jim Bell entered the room.

"Did she take a car?" Rhyme continued.

"I don't think so," Bell said. "I asked around. No vehicles missing yet."

Bell looked at the map, still taped to the wall. "This isn't an easy area to get out of and not get seen. Lot of marshland, not many roads. I've -"

Lucy said, "Get some dogs, Jim. Irv Wanner runs a couple hounds for the state police. Call Captain Dexter in Elizabeth City and get Irv's number. He'll track 'em down."

"Good idea," Bell said. "We'll -"

"I want to propose something," Rhyme interrupted.

Mason gave a cold laugh.

"What?" Bell asked.

"I'll make a deal with you."

"No deals," Bell said. "She's a fleeing felon. And armed, to boot."

"She's not going to shoot anybody," Thom said.

Rhyme continued, "Amelia's convinced there's no other way to find Mary Beth. That's why she did it. They're going to where she's being held."

"Doesn't matter," Bell said. "You can't go breaking murderers out of jail."

"Give me twenty-four hours before you call the state police. I'll find them for you. We can work something out with the charges. But if troopers and dogs get involved we all know they'll play it by the book and that means there's a good chance of people getting hurt."

"That's a hell of a deal, Lincoln," Bell said. "Your friend busts out our prisoner -"

"He wouldn't be your prisoner if it weren't for me. You never would've found him on your own."

"No damn way," Mason said. "We're wasting time and they're getting farther away every minute we've wasted talking. I'm of a mind to get every man in town out looking for ' em now. Deputize the lot. Do what Henry Davett suggested. Pass out rifles and -"

Bell interrupted him and asked Rhyme, "If we give you your twenty-four hours then what's in it for us?"

"I'll stay and help you find Mary Beth. However long it takes."

Thom said, "The operation, Lincoln…"

"Forget the operation," he muttered, feeling the despair as he said this. He knew that Dr. Weaver's schedule was so tight that if he missed his appointed date on the table he'd have to go back on the waiting list. Then it crossed his mind that one reason Sachs had done this was to keep Rhyme from having the surgery. To buy a few more days and give him a chance to change his mind. But he pushed this thought aside, raging to himself: Find her, save her. Before Garrett adds her to the list of his victims.

Stung 137 times.

Lucy said, "We're looking at a bit of, what would you say, divided loyalty here, aren't we?"

Mason: "Yeah, how do we know you aren't gonna send us 'round Robin Hood's barn and let her get away?"

"Because," Rhyme said patiently, "Amelia's wrong. Garrett is a murderer and he just used her to break out of jail. Once he doesn't need her he'll kill her."

Bell paced for a moment, gazing up at the map. "Okay, we'll do it, Lincoln. You've got twenty-four hours."

Mason sighed. "And how the hell're you going to find her in that wilderness?" He motioned toward the map. "You just going to call her up and ask where she is?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do. Thom, let's get the equipment set up again. And somebody get Ben Kerr back here!"


• • •

Lucy Kerr stood in the office adjacent to the war room, on the phone.

"North Carolina State Police, Elizabeth City," the woman's crisp voice answered. "How can I help you?"

"Detective Gregg."

"Hold, please."

"'Lo?" asked a man's voice after a moment.

"Pete, s'Lucy Kerr over in Tanner's Corner."

"Hey, Lucy, how's it going? What's with those missing girls?"

"Got that under control," she said, her voice calm, though she was enraged that Bell had insisted she recite the words Lincoln Rhyme had dictated to her. "But we do have another little problem."

Little problem…

"Whatcha need? A couple troopers?"

"No, just a cell phone trace."

"Got a warrant?"

"Magistrate's clerk's faxing it to you right now."

"Gimme the phone and serial numbers."

She gave him the information.

"What's that area code, two one two?"

"It's a New York number. Party's roaming now."

"Not a problem," Gregg said. "You want a tape of the conversation?"

"Just location."

And a clear line of sight to the target…

"When… wait. Here's the fax…" A pause as he read. "Oh, just a missing person?"

"That's all," she said reluctantly.

"You know it's expensive. We'll have to bill you."

"I understand."

"Okay, hold the line, I'll call my tech people." There was a faint click.

Lucy sat on the desk, shoulders slumped, flexing her left hand, staring at fingers ruddy from years of gardening, an old scar from the metal strap on a pallet of mulch, the indentation in her ring finger from five years of wedding band.

Flex, straighten.

Watching the veins and muscles beneath the skin, Lucy Kerr realized something. That Amelia Sachs' crime had tapped into an anger within her that was more intense than anything she'd ever felt.

When they took part of her body away she'd felt ashamed and then forlorn. When her husband left she'd felt guilty and resigned. And when she finally grew mad at those events she was angry in a way that suggested embers – an anger that radiates immense heat but never bursts into flames.

But for a reason she couldn't understand, this woman cop from New York had let the simple white-hot fury burst from Lucy's heart – like the wasps that had streamed out of the nest and killed Ed Schaeffer so horribly.

White-hot fury at the betrayal of Lucy Kerr, who never intentionally caused a soul pain, who was a woman who loved plants, a woman who'd been a good wife to her man, a good daughter to her parents, a good sister, a good policewoman, a woman who wanted only the harmless pleasures life gave freely to everyone else but seemed determined to withhold from her.

No more shame or guilt or resignation or sorrow.

Simple fury – at the betrayals in her life. The betrayal by her body, by her husband, by God.

And now by Amelia Sachs.

"Hello, Lucy?" Pete asked from Elizabeth City. "You there?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"You… are you okay? You sound funny."

She cleared her throat. "Fine. You set up?"

"You're good to go. When's the subject going to be making a call?"

Lucy looked into the other room. Called, "Ready?"

Rhyme nodded.

Into the phone she said, "Any time now."

"Stay on the line," Gregg said. "I'll liaise."

Please let this work, Lucy thought. Please… Then she added a footnote to her prayer: And, dear Lord, give me one clear shot at my Judas.


• • •

Thom fitted the headset over Rhyme's head. The aide then punched in a number.

If Sachs' phone was shut off it would ring only three times and the pleasant lilt of the voice-mail lady would start to speak.

One ring… two…

"Hello?"

Rhyme didn't believe he'd ever felt such relief, hearing her voice. "Sachs, are you all right?"

A pause. "I'm okay."

In the other room he saw Lucy Kerr's sullen face nod.

"Listen to me, Sachs. Listen to me. I know why you did it but you have to give yourself up. You… are you there?"

"I'm here, Rhyme."

"I know what you're doing. Garrett's agreed to take you to Mary Beth."

"That's right."

"You can't trust him," Rhyme said. (Thinking in despair: Or me either. He saw Lucy moving her finger in a circle, meaning: Keep her on the line.) "I've made a deal with Jim. If you bring him back in they'll work something out with the charges against you. The state's not involved yet. And I'll stay here as long as it takes to find Mary Beth. I've postponed the operation."

He closed his eyes momentarily, pierced with guilt. But he had no choice. He pictured what the death of that woman in Blackwater Landing had been like, the death of Deputy Ed Schaeffer… Imagining the hornets swarming over Amelia's body. He had to betray her in order to save her.

"Garrett's innocent, Rhyme. I know he is. I couldn't let him go to the detention center. They'd kill him there."

"Then we'll arrange for him to be held someplace else. And we'll look at the evidence again. We'll find more evidence. We'll do it together. You and me. That's what we say, Sachs, right? You and me… Always you and me. There's nothing we can't find."

There was a pause. "There's nobody on Garrett's side. He's all by himself, Rhyme."

"We can protect him."

"You can't protect somebody from a whole town, Lincoln."

"No first names," Rhyme said. "That's bad luck, remember?"

"This whole thing has been bad luck."

"Please, Sachs…"

She said, "Sometimes you just have to go on faith."

"Now who's dispensing maxims?" He forced himself to laugh – in part to reassure her. In part, himself.

Faint static.

Come home, Sachs, he was thinking. Please! We can still salvage something from this. Your life is as precarious as the thread of the nerve in my neck – the tiny fiber that still works.

And as precious to me.

She said, "Garrett tells me we can get to Mary Beth by tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll call you when we have her."

"Sachs, don't hang up yet. One thing. Let me say one thing."

"What?"

"Whatever you think about Garrett, don't trust him. You think he's innocent. But just accept that maybe he isn't. You know how we approach crime scenes, Sachs."

"With an open mind," she recited the rule. "No preconceptions. Believing that anything's possible."

"Right. Promise me you'll remember that."

"He's cuffed, Rhyme."

"Keep him that way. And don't let him near your weapon."

"I won't. I'll call you when we have Mary Beth."

"Sachs -"

The line went dead.

"Damn," the criminalist muttered. He closed his eyes, tried to shake off the headset in fury. Thom reached forward and lifted the unit off his head. With a brush he smoothed Rhyme's dark hair.

Lucy hung up the phone in the other room and stepped inside. Rhyme could tell from her expression that the trace hadn't worked.

"Pete said they're within three miles of downtown Tanner's Corner."

Mason muttered, "They can't do any better than that?"

Lucy said, "If she'd been on the line a few minutes longer they could've pinpointed her down to fifteen feet."

Bell was examining the map. "Okay, three miles outside of downtown."

"Would he go back to Blackwater Landing?" Rhyme asked.

"No," Bell said. "We know they're headed for the Outer Banks and Blackwater Landing'd take him in the opposite direction."

"What's the best way to get to the Banks?" the criminalist asked.

"They can't do it on foot," Bell said, walking to the map. "They'll have to take a car or car and a boat. There're two ways to get there. They could go Route 112 south to 17. That'll take them to Elizabeth City and they could get a boat or keep on 17 all the way to 158 and drive to the beaches. Or they could take Harper Road… Mason, you take Frank Sturgis and Trey and get over to 112. Set up a roadblock at Belmont."

Rhyme noticed this was Location M-10 on the map.

The sheriff continued, "Lucy, you and Jesse take Harper down to Millerton Road. Set up there."

This was H-14.

Bell called his brother-in-law into the room. "Steve, you coordinate communications and get everybody Handi-talkies if they don't already have them."

"Sure thing, Jim."

Bell said to Lucy and Mason, "Tell everybody that Garrett's in one of our detention jumpsuits. They're blue. What's your girl wearing? I don't remember."

"She's not my girl," Rhyme said.

"Sorry."

Rhyme said, "Jeans, black T-shirt."

"She have a hat?"

"No."

Lucy and Mason headed out the door.

A moment later the room was empty except for Bell, Rhyme and Thom.

The sheriff called the state police and told the detective who'd helped them with the mobile locator to keep somebody on that frequency, that the missing person might call in later.

Rhyme noticed Bell pause. He glanced at Rhyme and said into the phone, "Appreciate the offer, Pete. But so far it's just a missing person. Nothing serious."

He hung up. Muttered, "Nothing serious. Jesus, our Lord…"

Fifteen minutes later Ben Kerr walked into the office. He actually seemed glad to be back though he was visibly upset at the news that necessitated his return.

Together he and Thom finished unpacking the state police's forensic equipment while Rhyme stared up at the map and the evidence charts on the wall.


FOUND AT PRIMARY CRIME SCENE -

BLACKWATER LANDING


Kleenex with Blood

Limestone Dust

Nitrates

Phosphate

Ammonia

Detergent

Camphene


FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

GARETT'S ROOM


Skunk Musk

Cut Pine Needles

Drawings of Insects

Pictures of Mary Beth and Family

Insect Books

Fishing Line

Money

Unknown Key

Kerosene

Ammonia

Nitrates

Camphene


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


FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

MILL


Map of Outer Banks

Ocean Beach Sand

Oak/Maple Leaf Residue


As Rhyme gazed at the last chart he realized how little evidence Sachs had found at the mill. This was always a problem when you locate obvious clues at crime scenes – like the map and the sand. Psychologically your attention flags and you search less diligently. He now wished they had more evidence from the scene.

Then Rhyme recalled something. Lydia had said that Garrett'd changed his clothes at the mill when the search party was closing in. Why? The only reason was that he knew that the clothes he'd hidden there could reveal where he'd hidden Mary Beth. He glanced at Bell. "Did you say Garrett was wearing a prison jumpsuit?"

"That's right."

"You have what he was wearing when he was arrested?"

"It'd be over at the lockup."

"Could you have them sent over here?"

"The clothes? Right away."

"Have them put in a paper bag," he ordered. "Don't unfold them."

The sheriff called the lockup, told a deputy to bring them over. From the one-sided conversation Rhyme deduced that the deputy was more than happy to participate in helping to find the woman who'd hog-tied and shamed him.

Rhyme stared at the map of the Eastern shore. They could narrow the search to old houses – because of the camphene lamp – and to ones set back from the beach itself – because of the maple and oak leaf trace. But the sheer size of the place was daunting. Hundreds of miles.

Bell 's phone rang. He answered and spoke for a minute then hung up. Walked to the map. "They've got the roadblocks set up. Garrett and Amelia might move inland here to get around them" – he tapped Location M-10 – "but from where Mason and Frank are they've got a good view of this field and they'd be seen."

Rhyme asked, "What about that railroad line south of town?"

"Not used for passenger travel. It's a freight line and there's no set schedule for the trains. But they could hike along it. That's why I set up the block at Belmont. My bet is they'll go that way. I'm also thinking Garrett might hide out for a while in the Manitou Falls Wildlife Preserve – with his interest in bugs and nature and stuff. He probably spends a lot of time there." Bell tapped spot T-10.

Farr asked, "What about that airport?"

Bell looked at Rhyme. "Can she hot-wire an airplane?"

"No, she doesn't fly."

Rhyme noticed a reference on the map. He asked, "What's that military base?"

"Used it to store weapons in the sixties and seventies. It's been closed for years. But there're tunnels and bunkers all over the place. We'd need two-dozen men to search the place and he could still probably find a nook to hide in."

"Is it patrolled?"

"Not anymore."

"What's that square area? At spot E-5 and E-6?"

"That? Probably that old amusement park," Bell said, looking at Farr and Ben.

"Right," said Ben. "My brother and I used to go there when I was a kid. It was called, what? Indian Ridge or something."

Bell nodded. "It was a re-creation of an Indian village. Went outa business a few years ago – nobody went. Williamsburg and Six Flags were a lot more popular. Good place to hide but it's in the opposite direction of the Outer Banks. Garrett wouldn't go there."

Bell touched spot H-14. "Lucy's here. And Garrett and Amelia'd have to stick to Harper Road in those parts. They go off the road and it's swampland filled with clay. Take 'em days to get through it – if they survived, which they probably wouldn't. So… I guess we just wait and see what happens."

Rhyme nodded absently, his eyes moving like his friend – the skittish fly, now departed – from one topographical landmark in Paquenoke County to another.

25

Garrett Hanlon led Amelia down a wide asphalt road. They were walking slower than before, exhausted from the exertion and the heat.

There was a familiarity about the area and she realized this was Canal Road – the one that they'd taken from the County Building that morning to search the crime scenes at Blackwater Landing. Ahead she could see the dark rippling of the Paquenoke River. Across the canal were those large, beautiful houses she'd commented on earlier to Lucy.

She looked around. "I don't get it. This is the main road into town. Why aren't there any roadblocks?"

"They think we're going a different way. They've set up the roadblocks south and east of here."

"How do you know that?"

Garrett answered, "They think I'm fucked-up. They think I'm stupid. When you're different that's what people think. But I'm not."

"But we are going to Mary Beth?"

"Sure. Just not the way they think."

Once again Garrett's confidence and caginess troubled her but her attention slipped back to the road and they continued on in silence. In twenty minutes they were within a half-mile of the intersection where Canal Road ended at Route 112 – the place where Billy Stail had been killed.

"Listen!" he whispered, gripping her arm with his cuffed hands.

She cocked her head but heard nothing.

"Into the bushes." They slipped off the road into a stand of scratchy holly trees.

"What?" she asked.

"Shhhh."

A moment later a large flatbed truck came into view behind them.

"That's from the factory," he whispered. "Up ahead there."

The sign on the truck was for Davett Industries. She recognized the name of the man who'd helped them with the evidence. When it was past they returned to the road.

"How did you hear that?"

"Oh, you gotta be cautious all the time. Like moths."

"Moths? What do you mean?"

"Moths're pretty cool. They, like, sense ultrasound waves. They have these radar detector things. When a bat shoots out a beam of sound to find them, moths fold their wings and drop to the ground and hide. Magnetic and electronic fields too – insects can feel them. Like, things we aren't even aware of. You know you can lead some insects around with radio waves? Or make 'em go away too, depending on the frequency." He fell silent, head turned away, frozen in position. Then he looked back at her. He said, "You have to listen all the time. Otherwise they can sneak up on you."

"Who?" she asked uncertainly.

"You know, everybody." Then he nodded up the road, toward Blackwater Landing and the Paquenoke. "Ten minutes and we'll be safe. They'll never find us."

She was wondering what, realistically, would happen to Garrett when they found Mary Beth and returned to Tanner's Corner. There would still be some charges against him. But if Mary Beth corroborated the story of the real murderer – the man in the tan overalls – then the D.A. might accept that Garrett had kidnapped her for her own good. Defense of others was recognized by all criminal courts as a justification. And he'd probably drop the charges.

And who was the man in the overalls? Why was he prowling the forests of Blackwater Landing? Had he been the one who'd killed those other residents over the past few years and was trying to blame Garrett for the deaths? Had he scared young Todd Wilkes into killing himself? Was there a drug ring that Billy Stail had been involved in? She knew that drug problems in small towns were as serious as in the city.

Then something else occurred to her: that Garrett could identify Billy Stail's real murderer – the man in the overalls, who by now might've heard about the escape and be out looking for Garrett and for her too. To silence them. Maybe they should -

Suddenly Garrett froze, an alarmed look on his face. He spun around.

"What?" she whispered.

"Car, moving fast."

"Where?"

"Shhh."

A flash of light from behind them caught their eyes.

You have to listen all the time. Otherwise they can sneak up on you.

"No!" Garrett cried in dismay and pulled her into a stand of sedge.

Two Paquenoke County squad cars were racing along Canal Road. She couldn't see who was driving the first one but the deputy in the passenger seat – the black deputy who'd set up the chalkboard for Rhyme – was squinting as he scanned the woods. He held a shotgun. Lucy Kerr was driving the second car. Jesse Corn sat beside her.

Garrett and Sachs lay flat, hidden by broom grass.

Moths fold their wings and drop to the ground…

The cars sped past and skidded to a stop where Canal Road met Route 112. They parked perpendicular to the road, blocking both lanes, and the deputies got out, weapons ready.

"Roadblock," she muttered. "Hell."

"No, no, no," Garrett muttered, dumbfounded. "They were supposed to think we were going the other way – east. They had to think that!"

A passenger car passed them, slowing at the end of the road. Lucy flagged down the car and questioned the driver. Then they made him get out of the vehicle and open the trunk, which they searched carefully.

Garrett huddled in the nest of grass. "How the fuck d'they figure out we were coming this way?" he whispered. "How?"

Because they've got Lincoln Rhyme, Sachs answered silently.


• • •

"They don't see anything yet, Lincoln," Jim Bell told him.

"Amelia and Garrett aren't going to be walking down the middle of Canal Road," Rhyme said testily. "They'll be in the bushes. Keeping a low profile."

"There's a roadblock set up and they're searching every car," Jim Bell said. "Even if they know the drivers."

Rhyme looked again at the map on the wall. "There's no other way for them to go west from Tanner's Corner?"

"From the lockup the only way through the marshes is Canal Road to Route 112." But Bell sounded doubtful. "I gotta say, though, this's a big risk, Lincoln – committing everybody to Blackwater Landing. If they really are headed east to the Outer Banks they're gonna get past us now and we'll never find them. This idea of yours, well, it's a little far-fetched."

But Rhyme believed it was right. As he'd stared at the map twenty minutes before, tracing the route the boy had taken with Lydia – which led toward the Great Dismal Swamp and very little else – he had started wondering about Lydia's abduction. He had remembered what Sachs had told him when they were in the field pursuing Garrett this morning.

Lucy says it doesn't make any sense for him to come this way.

And that had made him ask a question that no one had yet answered satisfactorily. Why exactly did Garrett kidnap Lydia Johansson? To kill her as a substitute victim was Dr. Penny's answer. But, as it turned out, he hadn't killed her even though he'd had plenty of time to. Or raped her. Nor was there any other motive for abducting her. They were strangers, she'd never taunted him, he didn't seem to have an obsession with her, she wasn't a witness to Billy's murder. What could his point have been?

Then he had recalled how Garrett had willingly told Lydia that Mary Beth was being held on the Outer Banks – and how she was happy, how she didn't need to be rescued. Why would he volunteer that information? And the evidence at the mill – the ocean sand, the map of the Outer Banks…

Lucy had found it easily, according to Sachs. Too easily. The scene, he had decided, had been staged, as forensic scientists call evidence planted to lead investigators off.

Rhyme had shouted bitterly, "We've been set up!"

"What do you mean, Lincoln?" Ben had asked.

"He tricked us," the criminalist had said. A sixteen-year-old boy had fooled them all. From the beginning. Rhyme had explained that Garrett had intentionally kicked off one shoe at the scene when he kidnapped Lydia. He'd filled it with limestone dust, which would lead anyone with knowledge of the area – Davett, for instance – to think of the quarry, where he'd planted the other evidence, the scorched bag and corn – that in turn led to the mill.

The searchers were supposed to find Lydia, along with the rest of the planted evidence – to convince them that Mary Beth was being held in a house on the Outer Banks.

Which meant of course that she was being held in the opposite direction – west of Tanner's Corner.

Garrett's plan was brilliant but he had made one mistake – assuming that it would take the search party several days to find Lydia (which is why he'd left all the food for her). By then he'd have been with Mary Beth in the real hiding place and the searchers would be combing the Outer Banks.

And so Rhyme had asked Bell what was the best route west from Tanner's Corner. "Blackwater Landing," the sheriff had answered. "Route 112." And Rhyme had ordered Lucy and the other deputies there as fast as possible.

There was a chance that Garrett and Sachs had been through the intersection already and were on their way west. But Rhyme had calculated distances and didn't think that on foot – and keeping under cover – they could have gotten that far in so little time.

Lucy now called in from the roadblock. Thom put the call on the speakerphone. The policewoman, undoubtedly still suspicious and wondering whose side Rhyme was really on, said skeptically, "I don't see any sign of them here and we've checked every car that's come by. Are you sure about this?"

"Yes," he announced. "I'm sure."

And whatever she chose to think of this arrogant response she said nothing other than "Let's hope you're right. There's a chance for some real sorrow here." She hung up.

A moment later Bell 's phone rang. He listened. Looked up at Rhyme. "Three more deputies just got to Canal Road, about a mile south of 112. They're going to do a sweep north on foot toward Lucy and the others and pin Garrett and Sachs in." He listened into the phone for a moment longer. Glanced at Rhyme, then away, and continued into the phone: "Yeah, she's armed… And, yeah, I hear tell she's a good shot."


• • •

Sachs and Garrett crouched in the bushes, watching the passenger cars waiting to get through the roadblock.

Then, behind them, another sound that even without a moth's sensitive hearing Sachs could detect: sirens. They saw a second set of flashing lights – coming from the other – the southern – end of Canal Road. Another squad car parked and three more deputies got out, also armed with shotguns. They started slowly through the bushes, moving toward Garrett and Sachs. In ten minutes they'd walk right through the nest of sedge where the fugitives were hiding.

Garrett looked at her expectantly.

"What?" she asked.

He glanced at her gun.

"Aren't you going to use that?"

She stared at him in shock. "No. Of course not."

Garrett nodded toward the roadblock. "They will."

"Nobody's going to be doing any shooting!" she whispered fiercely, horrified that he'd even consider it. She looked behind her into the woods. It was marshy and impossible to get through without being seen or heard. Ahead of them was the chain-link fence surrounding Davett Industries. Through the mesh she saw the cars in the parking lot.

Amelia Sachs had worked street crimes for a year. That experience, combined with what she knew about cars, meant that she could break into and hot-wire a vehicle in under thirty seconds.

But even if she boosted wheels how could they get out of the factory grounds? There was a delivery and shipping entrance to the factory but it too opened onto Canal Road. They'd still have to drive past the roadblock. Could they steal a four-by-four or pickup and make it through the fence where nobody could see them, then drive off the road to Route 112? There were steep hills and sharp drop-offs into marshes everywhere around Blackwater Landing; could they escape without rolling a truck and killing themselves?

The deputies on foot were now only two hundred feet away.

Whatever they were going to do, now was the time. Sachs decided they had no choice. "Come on, Garrett. We've got to get over the fence."

Crouching, they moved forward toward the parking lot.

"Are you thinking of a car?" he said, noticing where they were headed.

Sachs glanced back. The deputies were a hundred yards away.

Garrett continued, "I don't like cars. They scare me."

But she wasn't paying attention. She kept hearing his earlier words, circulating through her thoughts.

Moths fold their wings and drop to the ground.

• • •

"Where are they now?" Rhyme demanded. "The deputies making the sweep?"

Bell relayed the question into his phone, listened then touched a spot on the map about halfway up square G-10. "They're close to here. That's the entrance to Davett's company. Eighty, a hundred yards, moving north."

"Can Amelia and Garrett get around the factory to the east?"

"Naw, Davett's property's all fenced. Beyond that it's serious swamp. If they went west they'd have to swim the canal and they probably couldn't climb the banks. Anyway there's no cover there. Lucy and Trey'd spot 'em for sure."

Waiting was so hard. Rhyme knew that Sachs would scratch and pick at her flesh in an attempt to relieve the anxiety that was a dark corollary to her drive and talent. Destructive habits, yes, but how he envied her them. Before the accident Rhyme himself would bleed off tension by pacing and walking. Now he had nothing to do but stare at the map and obsess about how much at risk she was.

A secretary stuck her head in the door.

"Sheriff Bell, state police on line two."

Jim Bell stepped into the office across the hall and took the call. He spoke for a few minutes then trotted back into the lab. He said excitedly, "We've got 'em! They pinpointed her cell phone signal. She's on the move, going west on Route 112. They got past the roadblock."

Rhyme asked, "How?"

"Looks like they snuck into Davett's parking lot and stole a truck or four-by-four then drove off the road for a while and got back on the highway. Man, that took some serious driving."

That's my Amelia, Rhyme thought. That woman can drive up walls…

Bell continued, "She's going to ditch the car and get another one."

"How do you know?"

"She's on the phone with a car rental company in Hobeth Falls. Lucy and the others're after her, silent pursuit. We're talking to Davett's people to see who's missing a vehicle from the lot. But we don't need a description if she just stays on the line a little longer. Another few minutes and the tech people'll have the exact location."

Lincoln Rhyme stared at the map – though it was by now imprinted on his mind. After a moment he sighed then muttered, "Good luck."

But whether that wish was directed toward predator or toward prey, he couldn't have said.

26

Lucy Kerr nudged the Crown Victoria up to eighty. You drive fast, Amelia? Well, so do I.

They were speeding along Route 112, the gumball machine on top of the car spinning madly with its red, white and blue lights. The siren was off. Jesse Corn was beside her, on the phone with Pete Gregg in the Elizabeth City state police office. In the squad car directly behind them were Trey Williams and Ned Spoto. Mason Germain and Frank Sturgis – a quiet man and a recent grandfather – were in the third car.

"Where are they now?" Lucy asked.

Jesse asked the state police this question and nodded as he received an answer. He said, "Only five miles away. They turned off the highway, heading south."

Please, Lucy offered yet another prayer, please, stay on the phone just a minute more.

She nudged the accelerator closer to the floor.

You drive fast, Amelia. I drive fast.

You're a good shot.

But I'm a good shot too. I don't make a show of it like you do, what with all that fancy quick-draw crap, but I've lived with guns all my life.

Recalling that when Buddy left her she took every round of live ammo in the house and pitched them into the murky waters of Blackwater Canal. Worrying that she might wake up one night, glance at his empty side of the bed and then wrap her lips around the oily barrel of her service revolver and send herself to the place where her husband, and nature, seemed to want her to be.

Lucy had gone around for three and a half months with an unloaded service pistol, collaring 'shiners and militiamen and big, snotty teens huffed to oblivion on butane. And she'd handled them all on bluff alone.

Then she woke up one morning and, as if a fever had passed, had gone to Shakey's Hardware on Maple Street and bought a box of Winchester.357 shells. ("Jeez, Lucy, the county's in worser shape than I thought, making you buy your own ammo.") She'd gone home and loaded her weapon and kept it that way ever since.

It was a significant event for her. The reloaded gun was an emblem of survival.

Amelia, I shared my darkest moments with you. I told you about the surgery – which is the black hole of my life. I told you about my shyness with men. About my love for children. I backed you up when Sean O'Sarian got your gun. I apologized when you were right and I was wrong.

I trusted you. I –

A hand touched her shoulder. She glanced at Jesse Corn. He was giving her one of his gentle smiles. "The highway curves up ahead," he said. "I'd just as soon we made that curve too."

Lucy exhaled slowly and sat back in the seat, let her shoulders slump. She eased off on the speed.

Still, when they made the curve Jesse'd mentioned, which was posted forty, she was doing sixty-five.


• • •

"A hundred feet up the road," Jesse Corn whispered.

They were out of their cars, the deputies, and were clustered around Mason Germain and Lucy Kerr.

The state police had finally lost the signal from Amelia's cell phone but only after it'd been stationary for about five minutes at the location they were now looking at: a barn fifty feet from a house in the woods – a mile off Route 112. It was, Lucy noted, west of Tanner's Corner. Just as Lincoln Rhyme had predicted.

"You don't think Mary Beth's in there, do you?" asked Frank Sturgis, brushing at his yellow-stained moustache. "I mean, it's all of seven miles from downtown. I'd feel pretty foolish, he's been keeping the girl that close to town."

"Naw, they're just waiting for us to go past," Mason said. "Then they're gonna go on to Hobeth Falls and pick up the rental car."

"Anyway," Jesse said, "somebody lives here." He'd called in the address of the house. "Pete Hallburton. Anybody know him?"

"Think so," said Trey Williams. "Married. No connection to Garrett that I know of."

"They have kids?"

Trey shrugged. "Think they might. Seem to recall a soccer game last year…"

"It's summer. The youngsters might be home," Frank muttered. "Garrett might've taken 'em hostage inside."

"Maybe," Lucy said. "But the triangulation on Amelia's phone signal placed them in the barn, not the house. They could've gone inside but I don't know… I can't see 'em takin' hostages. Mason's right, I think: They're just hiding out here until they think it's safe to get up to Hobeth for that rental car."

"Whatta we do?" Frank asked. "Block the drive with our cars?"

"We pull up, do that, they'll hear us," Jesse said.

Lucy nodded. "I think we should just hit the barn on foot – fast – from two directions."

"I've got CS gas," Mason said. CS-38 – a powerful military tear gas kept under lock and key in the Sheriff's Department. Bell hadn't distributed any and Lucy wondered how Mason had gotten his hands on some.

"No, no," Jesse protested. "Might make 'em panic."

Lucy believed that wasn't his concern at all. She bet he didn't want to expose his new girlfriend to the vicious gas. Still, she agreed, feeling that, since the deputies didn't have masks, gas might work against them. "No gas," she said. "I'll go in the front. Trey, you take the -"

"No," Mason said evenly. "I go in the front."

Lucy hesitated then said, "Okay. I'll go in the side door. Trey and Frank, you're on the back and far side." She looked at Jesse. "I want you and Ned to keep an eye on the front and back doors of the house. There."

"Got it," Jesse said.

"And the windows," Mason said sternly to Ned. "I don't want anybody sighting down on our backs from inside."

Lucy said, "If they come out driving, just take out the tires or if you've got a Magnum like Frank there aim for the engine block. Don't shoot Garrett or Amelia unless you have to. You all know the rules of engagement." She was looking at Mason when she said this, thinking of his sniper attack at the mill. But the deputy seemed not to hear her. She called in on her Handi-talkie and told Jim Bell they were about to storm the barn.

"I've got the ambulance standing by," he said.

"This isn't a SWAT operation," Jesse said, overhearing the transmission. "We've gotta be damn careful about any shooting."

Lucy clicked off the radio. She nodded toward the building. "Let's move out."

They ran, crouching, using the oaks and pine for cover. Her eyes were fastened on the dark windows of the barn. Twice she was sure she saw movement inside. It might have been the reflection of trees and clouds as she ran but she couldn't be sure. As they approached she paused and switched her gun to her left hand, wiped her palm. Took the weapon once more in her shooting hand.

The deputies clustered at the windowless back of the barn. Lucy was thinking that she'd never done anything like this.

This isn't a SWAT operation…

But you're wrong, Jesse – that's exactly what it is.

Dear Lord, give me one clear shot at my Judas.

A fat dragonfly strafed her. She brushed it away with her left hand. It returned and hovered nearby ominously, as if Garrett had sent the creature out to distract her.

Stupid thought, she told herself. Then swatted furiously at the bug again.

The Insect Boy…

You're going down, Lucy thought – the message meant for both fugitives.

"I'm not going to say anything," Mason said. "I'm just going in. When you hear me kick in the door, Lucy, you go through the side."

She nodded. And as concerned as she was about Mason being too eager, as desirous as she was to get Amelia Sachs, she was still happy to share some of the burden of this hard job.

"Let me make sure the side door's open," she whispered.

They dispersed, jogging into position. Lucy ducked under one of the windows and hurried to the side door. It wasn't locked and was open a crack. She nodded to Mason, who stood at the corner, watching her. He nodded back and held up ten fingers, meaning, she assumed, to count the seconds down until he went through the door, and then disappeared.

Ten, nine, eight…

She turned to the door, smelling the musty wood scent laced with the sweet aroma of gasoline and oil that flowed from inside the barn. She listened carefully. She heard a tapping – the noise of the engine of the car or truck Amelia had stolen.

Five, four, three…

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Another.

Ready, she told herself.

Then there was a loud crash from the front of the building as Mason kicked inside. "Sheriff's office!" he cried. "Nobody move!"

Go! she thought.

Lucy kicked the side door. But it moved only a few inches and stopped fast – hitting a large riding lawn mower parked just inside the door. It wouldn't go any farther. She slammed into it with her shoulder twice but the door held.

"Shit," she whispered and ran around to the front of the barn.

Before she got halfway there she heard Mason call out, "Oh, Jesus."

And then she heard a gunshot.

Followed a moment later by a second one.

• • •

"What's going on?" Rhyme demanded.

"Okay," Bell said uncertainly, holding the phone. There was something about his stance that alarmed Rhyme; the sheriff stood with the phone pressed hard against his ear, his other fist clenched and away from his body. He nodded as he listened. Looked at Rhyme. "There've been shots."

"Shots?"

"Mason and Lucy went into the barn. Jesse said there were two shots." He looked up, shouted into the other room. "Get the ambulance over to the Hallburton place. Badger Hollow Road, off Route 112."

Steve Farr called, "It's on its way."

Rhyme pressed his head back into the headrest of the chair. Glanced at Thom, who said nothing.

Who was shooting? Who'd been hit?

Oh, Sachs…

An edge in his voice, Bell said, "Well, find out, Jesse! Is anybody down? What the hell's going on?"

"Is Amelia all right?" Rhyme shouted.

"We'll know in a minute," Bell said.

But it felt more like days.

Finally Bell stiffened again as Jesse Corn or somebody came on the phone. He nodded. "Jesus, he did what?" He listened a moment longer then looked at Rhyme's alarmed face. "It's all right. Nobody's hurt. Mason kicked his way into the barn and saw some overalls hung up on the wall. A rake or shovel or something in front of it. It was real dark. He thought it was Garrett with a gun. He fired a couple times. That's all."

"Amelia's all right?"

"They weren't even there. It was just the truck they stole that was inside. Garrett and Amelia must've been in the house but they probably've heard the shots and took off into the woods. They can't get too far. I know the property – it's all surrounded by bogs."

Rhyme said angrily, "I want Mason off the case. That was no mistake – he shot on purpose. I told you he was too hotheaded."

Bell obviously agreed. Into the phone he said, "Jesse, put Mason on…" There was a short pause. "Mason, what the hell is this all about?… Why'd you fire?… Well, what if it'd been Pete Hallburton standing there? Or his wife or one of his kids?… I don't care. You head back here right now. That's an order… Well, let them search the house. Get in your cruiser and head back… I'm not telling you again. I – "

"Shit." Bell hung up. A moment later the phone rang again. "Lucy, what's going on?…" The sheriff listened, frowning, eyes on the floor. He paced. "Oh, Jesus… You're sure?" He nodded then said, "Okay, stay there. I'll call you back." He hung up.

"What happened?"

Bell shook his head. "I don't believe it. We got suckered. She did a number on us, your friend."

"What?"

Bell said, "Pete Hallburton's there. He's home – in his house. Lucy and Jesse just talked to him. His wife works the three-to-eleven shift over at Davett's company and she forgot her supper so he dropped it off a half hour ago and drove home."

"He drove home? Were Amelia and Garrett hiding in the trunk?"

Bell gave a disgusted sigh. "He's got a pickup. No place to hide. Not for them anyway. But there was plenty of room for her cell phone. Behind a cooler he had in the back."

Rhyme too now barked a cynical laugh. "She called the rental company, got put on hold and hid the phone in the truck."

"You got that right," Bell muttered.

Thom said, "Remember, Lincoln, she called that rental place this morning. She was mad because she was on hold for so long."

"She knew we'd have a locator on the phone," Bell said. "They waited till Lucy and the squad cars left Canal Road and then went on their merry goddamn way." He looked at the map. "They've got forty minutes on us. They could be anywhere."

27

After the police cruisers had abandoned the roadblock and disappeared west down Route 112, Garrett and Sachs jogged to the end of Canal Road and crossed the highway.

They skirted the Blackwater Landing crime scenes then turned left and moved quickly through brush and an oak forest, following the Paquenoke River.

A half-mile into the forest they came to a tributary of the Paquo. It was impossible to go around and Sachs had no desire to swim across the dark water, dotted with insects and slime and trash.

But Garrett had made other arrangements. He pointed his cuffed hands to a place on the shore. "The boat."

"Boat? Where?"

"There, there." He pointed again.

She squinted and could just make out the shape of a small boat. It was covered with brush and leaves.

Garrett walked to it, and working as best he could with the handcuffs on, began stripping off the foliage hiding the vessel. Sachs helped him.

"Camouflage," he said proudly. "I learned it from insects. There's this little cricket in France – the truxalis. This is totally cool – it changes its color three times a summer to match the different greens of grass during the season. Predators can hardly see it."

Well, Sachs too had used some of the boy's esoteric knowledge about insects. When Garrett had commented on the moths – their ability to sense electronic and radio signals – she'd realized that of course Rhyme had set up a locator on her cell phone. She'd remembered that she'd been on hold for a long time at Piedmont-Carolina Car Rental that morning. Then she'd snuck into the Davett Industries parking lot, called the rental company and slipped the phone, playing interminable Muzak, into the back of an unoccupied pickup truck whose motor'd been running, parked in front of the employee entrance to the building.

The trick had apparently worked. The deputies took off after the truck when it left the grounds.

As they uncovered the boat Sachs now asked Garrett, "The ammonia? And the pit with the wasps' nest. You learned those from the insects too?"

"Yeah," he said.

"You weren't going to hurt anybody, were you?"

"No, no, the ant-lion pit was just to scare you, to slow you up. I put an empty nest in there on purpose. The ammonia was to warn me if you got close. That's what insects do. Smells're, like, an early-warning system or something for them." His red, watery eyes shone with a curious admiration. "That was pretty cool, what you did, finding me at the mill. I, like, never thought you'd get there fast as you did."

"And you left that fake evidence in the mill – the map and the sand – to lead us off."

"Yeah, I told you – insects're smart. They've gotta be."

They finished uncovering the battered boat. It was painted dark gray, was about ten feet long and had a small outboard motor on it. Inside were a dozen plastic gallon bottles of spring water and a cooler. Sachs tore open one of the waters and drank a dozen mouthfuls. She handed the bottle to Garrett and he drank too. Then he opened the cooler. Inside were boxes of crackers and chips. He looked them over carefully to make sure everything was accounted for and undamaged. He nodded then climbed into the boat.

Sachs followed, sat with her back to the bow, facing him. He gave her a knowing grin, as if acknowledging that she didn't trust him enough to turn her back on him, and pulled the starter rope. The engine sputtered to life. He pushed off from the shore and, like modern Huck Finns, they started down the river.

Sachs reflecting: This is knuckle time.

A phrase her father had used. The trim, balding man, a beat patrolman in Brooklyn and Manhattan most of his life, had had a serious talk with his daughter when she'd told him she wanted to give up modeling and get into police work. He'd been all for the decision but had said this about the profession: "Amie, you have to understand: sometimes it's a rush, sometimes you get to make a difference, sometimes it's boring. And sometimes, not too often, thank God, it's knuckle time. Fist to fist. You're all by your lonesome, with nobody to help you. And I don't mean just against the perps. Sometimes it'll be you against your boss. Sometimes against their bosses. Could be you against your buddies too. You gonna be a cop, you got to be ready to go it alone. There's no getting around it."

"I can handle it, Pop."

"That's my girl. Let's go for a drive, honey."

Sitting in this rickety boat, being piloted by a troubled young man, Sachs had never felt so alone in her life.

Knuckle time… fist to fist.

"Look there," Garrett said quickly. Pointing to an insect of some kind. "It's my favorite of all. The water boatman. It flies under the water." His face lit up with unbridled enthusiasm. "It really does! Hey, that'd be pretty neat, wouldn't it? To fly underwater. I like water. It feels good on my skin." The smile faded and he rubbed his arm. "This fucking poison oak… I get it all the time. It itches bad sometimes."

They began threading their way through small inlets, around islands, roots and gray trees, half-submerged, always returning to a westerly course, toward the lowering sun.

A thought came to Sachs, an echo of something that had occurred to her earlier, in the boy's cell just before she broke him out of jail: By hiding a boat filled with provisions, gassed up, Garrett had anticipated that he would somehow escape from jail. And that her role in this journey was part of an elaborate, premeditated plan.

"Whatever you think about Garrett, don't trust him. You think he's innocent. But just accept that maybe he isn't. You know how we approach crime scenes, Sachs."

"With an open mind. No preconceptions. Believing that anything's possible."

But then she looked at the boy once again. His eyes bright and skipping happily from sight to sight as he guided the boat through the channels, looking nothing at all like an escaped criminal but for all the world like an enthusiastic teenager on a camping trip, content and excited about what he might find around the next bend in the river.


• • •

"She's good, Lincoln," Ben said, referring to the cell phone trick.

She is good, the criminalist thought. Adding, to himself: She's as good as I am. Though he conceded grimly – and to himself alone – that she'd been better than he this time.

Rhyme was furious with himself for not anticipating it. This isn't a game, he thought, an exercise – like the way he'd challenge her sometimes when she was walking the grid or when they were analyzing evidence back in his lab in New York. Her life was in danger. She had perhaps only hours before Garrett assaulted or killed her. He couldn't afford to slip up again.

A deputy appeared in the doorway, carrying a paper Food Lion bag. It contained Garrett's clothes from the lockup.

"Good!" Rhyme said. "Do a chart, somebody. Thom, Ben… do a chart. 'Found at the Secondary Crime Scene – the Mill.' Ben, write, write!"

"But we've got one," Ben said, pointing to the chalkboard.

"No, no, no," Rhyme snapped. "Erase it. Those clues were fake. Garrett planted them to lead us off. Just like the limestone in the shoe he left behind when he snatched Lydia. If we can find some evidence in his clothes" – nodding at the bag – "that'll tell us where Mary Beth really is."

"If we're lucky," Bell said.

No, Rhyme thought, if we're skillful. He said to Ben, "Cut a piece of the pants – near the cuff – and run it through the chromatograph."

Bell stepped out of the office to talk to Steve Farr about getting priority frequencies on the radios without tipping the state police about what was happening, which Rhyme had insisted he do.

Now the criminalist and Ben waited for the results from the chromatograph. As they did, Rhyme asked, "What else do we have?" Nodding toward the clothes.

"Brown paint stains on Garrett's pants," Ben reported as he examined them. "Dark brown. Looks recent."

"Brown," Rhyme repeated, examining them. "What's the color of Garrett's parents' house?"

"I don't know," Ben began.

"I didn't expect you to be a storehouse of Tanner's Corner trivia," Rhyme grumbled. "I meant: Call them."

"Oh." Ben found the number in the case file and called. He spoke to someone for a moment then hung up. "That's one uncooperative son of a bitch… Garrett's foster dad. Anyway, their house is white and there's nothing painted dark brown on the property."

"So, it's probably the color of the place where he's got her."

The big man asked, "Is there a paint database somewhere we can compare it to?"

"Good idea," Rhyme responded. "But the answer's no. I have one in New York but that won't do us any good here. And the FBI database is automotive. But keep going. What's in the pockets, anything? Put on -"

But Ben was already pulling on the latex gloves. "This what you were going to say?"

"It was," Rhyme muttered.

Thom said, "He hates to be anticipated."

"Then I'll try to do it more," Ben said.

"Ah, here's something." Rhyme squinted at several small white objects the young man dug out of Garrett's pocket.

"What are they?"

Ben sniffed. "Cheese and bread."

"More food. Like the crackers and -"

Ben was laughing.

Rhyme frowned. "What's funny?"

"It's food – but it's not for Garrett."

"What do you mean?"

"Haven't you ever fished?" Ben asked.

"No, I've never fished," Rhyme grumbled. "If you want fish you buy it, you cook it, you eat it. What the hell does fishing have to do with cheese sandwiches?"

"They're not from sandwiches," Ben explained. "They're stinkballs. Bait for fishing. You wad up bread and cheese and let 'em get good and sour. Bottom feeders love 'em. Like catfish. The smellier the better."

Rhyme's eyebrow lifted. "Ah, now that's helpful."

Ben examined the cuffs. He brushed a small amount out onto a People magazine subscription card and then looked at it under the microscope. "Nothing much distinctive," he said. "Except little flecks of something. White."

"Let me see."

The zoologist carried the large Bausch & Lomb microscope over to Rhyme, who looked through the eyepieces. "Okay, good. They're paper fibers."

"They are?" Ben asked.

"It's obvious they're paper. What else would they be? Absorbent paper too. Don't have a clue what the source is, though. Now, that dirt is very interesting. Can you get some more? Out of the cuffs?"

"I'll try."

Ben cut the stitching securing the cuff and unfolded it. He brushed more dirt out onto the card.

"'Scope it," Rhyme ordered.

The zoologist prepared a slide and slipped it onto the stage of the compound microscope, which he again held rock-steady for Rhyme, who peered into the eyepieces. "There's a lot of clay. I mean, a lot. Feldspathic rock, probably granite. And – what's that? Oh, peat moss."

Impressed, Ben asked, "How d'you know all this?"

"I just do." Rhyme didn't have time to go into a discussion of how a criminalist must know as much about the physical world as he does about crime. He asked, "What else was in the cuffs? What's that?" Nodding toward something resting on the subscription card. "That little whitish-green thing?"

"It's from a plant," Ben said. "But that's not my expertise. I studied marine botany but it wasn't my favorite subject. I'm more into life forms that've got a chance to get away when you're collecting them. Seems more sporting."

Rhyme ordered, "Describe it."

Ben looked it over with a magnifying glass. "A reddish stalk and a dot of liquid on the end. It looks viscous. There's a white, bell-shaped flower attached to it… If I had to guess -"

"You do," Rhyme snapped. "And quickly."

"I'm pretty sure it's from a sundew."

"What the hell's that? Sounds like dish soap."

Ben said, "It's like a Venus flytrap. They eat insects. They're fascinating. When I was a kid we'd sit and watch 'em for hours. The way they eat is -"

"Fascinating," Rhyme repeated sarcastically. "I'm not interested in their dining habits. Where're they found? That's what would be fascinating to me."

"Oh, all over the place here."

Rhyme scowled. "Useless. Shit. All right, run a sample of that dirt through the chromatograph after the cloth sample's done." He then looked at Garrett's T-shirt, which was lying, spread open, on a table. "What're those stains?"

There were several reddish blotches on the shirt. Ben studied them closely and shrugged, shook his head.

The criminalist's thin lips curved into a wry smile. "You game to taste it?"

Without hesitation Ben lifted the shirt and licked a small portion of the stain.

Rhyme called, "Good man."

Ben lifted an eyebrow. "I assumed that was standard procedure."

"No way in hell would I have done that," Rhyme responded.

"I don't believe that for a minute," Ben said. He licked it again. "Fruit juice, I'd guess. Can't tell what flavor."

"Okay, add that to the list, Thom." Rhyme nodded at the chromatograph. "Let's get the results from the scraps of pants cloth and then run the dirt from the cuffs."

Soon the machine had told them what trace substances were embedded in Garrett's clothes and what had been found in the dirt in his cuffs: sugar, more camphene, alcohol, kerosene and yeast. The kerosene was in significant amounts. Thom had added these to the list and the men examined the chart.


FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

MILL


Brown Paint on Pants

Sundew Plant

Clay

Peat Moss

Fruit Juice

Paper Fibers

Stinkball Bait

Sugar

Camphene

Alcohol

Kerosene

Yeast


What did all this mean? Rhyme wondered. There were too many clues. He couldn't see any relationships among them. Was the sugar from the fruit juice or from a separate location the boy had been to? Had he bought the kerosene or had he just happened to hide in a gas station or barn where the owner stored it? Alcohol was found in more than three thousand common household and industrial products – from solvents to aftershave. The yeast had undoubtedly been picked up in the gristmill, where grain had been ground into flour.

After a few minutes Lincoln Rhyme's eyes flicked to another chart.


FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

GARETT'S ROOM


Skunk Musk

Cut Pine Needles

Drawings of Insects

Pictures of Mary Beth and Family

Insect Books

Fishing Line

Money

Unknown Key

Kerosene

Ammonia

Nitrates

Camphene


Something that Sachs had mentioned when she was searching the boy's room came back to him.

"Ben, could you open that notebook there, Garrett's notebook? I want to look at it again."

"You want me to put it in the turning frame?"

"No, just thumb through it," Rhyme told him.

The boy's stilted drawings of the insects flipped past: a water boatman, a diving bell spider, a water strider.

He remembered that Sachs had told him that, except for the wasp jar – Garrett's safe – the insects in his collection were in jars containing water. "They're all aquatic."

Ben nodded. "Seem to be."

"He's attracted to water," Rhyme mused. He looked at Ben. "And that bait? You said it's for bottom feeders."

"Stinkballs? Right."

"Saltwater or fresh?"

"Well, fresh. Of course."

"And the kerosene – boats run on that, right?"

"White gas," Ben said. "Small outboards do."

Rhyme said, "How's this for a thought? He's going west by boat on the Paquenoke River?"

Ben said, "Makes sense, Lincoln. And I'll bet there's so much kerosene because he's been refueling a lot – making runs back and forth between Tanner's Corner and the place he's got Mary Beth. Getting it ready for her."

"Good thinking. Call Jim Bell in here, would you?"

A few minutes later Bell returned and Rhyme explained his theory.

Bell said, "Water bugs gave you that idea, huh?"

Rhyme nodded. "If we know insects, we'll know Garrett Hanlon."

"It's no crazier than anything else I've heard today," Jim Bell said.

Rhyme asked, "Have you got a police boat?"

"No. But it wouldn't do us any good anyway. You don't know the Paquo. From the map it looks like any other river – with banks and all. But it's got a thousand inlets and branches flowing into and out of marshes. If Garrett's on it he's not staying to the main channel. I guarantee you that. It'd be impossible to find him."

Rhyme's eyes followed the Paquenoke west. "If he was moving supplies to the place where he's got Mary Beth that means it's probably not too far off the river. How far west would he have to go to be in an area that was habitable?"

"Have to be a ways. See up there?" Bell touched a spot around Location G-7. "That's north of the Paquo; nobody'd live there. South of the river it gets pretty residential. He'd be seen for sure."

"So at least ten miles or so west?"

"You got that right," Bell said.

"That bridge?" Rhyme nodded toward the map. Looking at spot E-8.

"The Hobeth Bridge?"

"What're the approaches to it like? The highway?"

"Just landfill. But there's a lot of it. The bridge's about forty feet high so the ramps leading up to it are long. Oh, wait… You're thinking Garrett'd have to sail back to the main channel to get under the bridge."

"Right. Because the engineers would've filled in the smaller channels on either side when they built the approaches."

Bell was nodding. "Yep. Makes sense to me."

"Get Lucy and the others there now. To the bridge. And, Ben, call that fellow – Henry Davett. Tell him we're sorry but we need his help again."

WWJD…

Thinking once again of Davett, Rhyme now offered a prayer – though not to any deities. It was directed to Amelia Sachs: Oh, Sachs, be careful. It's only a matter of time until Garrett comes up with an excuse for you to take the cuffs off him. Then to lead you to someplace deserted. Then he'll manage to get a hold of your gun… Don't let the passing hours lull you into trusting him, Sachs. Don't let your guard down. He's got the patience of a mantis.

28

Garrett knew the waterways like an expert river pilot and steered the boat up what seemed to be dead ends yet he always managed to find creeks, thin as spiderweb strands, that led them steadily west through the maze.

He pointed out river otter, muskrat and beaver to Sachs – sightings that might have excited amateur naturalists but left her cold. Her wildlife was the rats and pigeons and squirrels of the city – and only to the extent they were useful in helping her and Rhyme in their forensic work.

"Look there!" he cried.

"What?"

He was pointing to something she couldn't see. He stared at a spot near the shore, lost in whatever tiny drama was being played out on the water. All Sachs could see was some bug skipping over the surface.

"Water strider," he told her then sat back as they eased past. His face grew serious. "Insects're, like, a lot more important than us. I mean, when it comes to keeping the planet going. See – I read this someplace – if all the people on earth disappeared tomorrow the world'd keep going just fine. But if the insects all went away then life'd be over with way fast – like, one generation. The plants'd die then the animals and the earth'd turn into this big rock again."

Despite his adolescent vernacular Garrett spoke with the authority of a professor and the verve of a revivalist. He continued, "Yeah, some insects're a pain in the ass. But that's only a few of them, like one or two percent." His face grew animated and he said proudly, "And the ones that eat crops and stuff, well, I have this idea. It's pretty cool. I want to breed this special kind of golden lacewing to control the bad ones, instead of poisons – so the good insects and other animals don't die. The lacewing'd be the best. Nobody's done that yet."

"You think you can, Garrett?"

"I don't exactly know how yet. But I'm gonna learn."

She recalled what she'd read in his book, E. O. Wilson's term, biofilia – the affection people have for other types of life on the planet. And as she listened to him telling her this trivia – all proof of a love of nature and learning – foremost in her thoughts was this: anyone who could be so fascinated by living creatures and, in his odd way, could love them couldn't possibly be a rapist and killer.

Amelia Sachs held on tightly to this thought and it sustained her as they navigated the Paquenoke, escaping from Lucy Kerr and from the mysterious man in the tan overalls and from the simple, troubled town of Tanner 's Corner.

Escaping from Lincoln Rhyme too. And from his impending operation and the terrible consequences it might have for both of them.

The narrow boat eased through the tributaries, no longer black water but golden, camouflaged – reflecting the low sunlight – just like that French cricket Garrett had told her about. Finally the boy steered out of the back routes and into the main channel of the river, hugging the shore. Sachs looked behind them, to the east, to see if there were police boats in pursuit. She saw nothing except one of the big Davett Industries barges, headed upstream – away from them. Garrett throttled back on the motor and eased into a little cove. He peered through an overhanging willow branch, looking west toward a bridge that ran across the Paquenoke.

"We have to go under it," he said. "We can't get around." He studied the span. "You see anybody?"

Sachs looked. She saw a few flashes of light. "Maybe. I can't tell. There's too much glare."

"That's where the assholes'd be waiting for us," he said uneasily. "I always worry about the bridge. People looking for you."

Always?

Garrett beached the boat and shut the motor off. He climbed out and unscrewed a turn-bolt securing the outboard, which he pulled off and hid in the grass, along with the gas tank.

"What're you doing?" she asked.

"Can't take a chance of getting spotted."

Garrett took the cooler and the water jugs out of the boat and lashed the oars to the seats with two pieces of greasy rope. He poured the water out of a half-dozen of the jugs and recapped them, set them aside. He nodded toward the bottles. "Too bad about the water. Mary Beth doesn't have any. She'll need some. But I can get some for her from this pond near the cabin." Then he waded into the river and gripped the boat by the side. "Help me," he said. "We've got to capsize it."

"We're going to sink it?"

"No. Just turn her upside down. We'll put the jugs underneath. She'll float fine."

"Upside down?"

"Sure."

Sachs realized what Garrett had in mind. They'd get up underneath the boat and float past the bridge. The dark hull, low in the water, would be almost impossible to see from the bridge. Once they were past they could right the boat and row the rest of the way to where Mary Beth was.

He opened the cooler and found a plastic bag. "We can put our things in it that we don't want to get wet." He dropped his book, The Miniature World, inside it. Sachs added her wallet and the gun. She tucked her T-shirt into her jeans and slipped the bag down the front of her shirt.

Garrett said, "Can you take my cuffs off?" He held his hands out.

She hesitated.

"I don't want to drown," he said, eyes imploring.

I'm scared. Make him stop!

"I won't do anything bad. I promise."

Reluctantly Sachs fished the key from her pocket and undid the cuffs.


• • •

The Weapemeoc Indians, native to what is now North Carolina, were, linguistically, part of the Algonquin nation and were related to the Powhatans, the Chowans and the Pamlico tribes in the Mid-Atlantic portion of the United States.

They were excellent farmers and were envied among their fellow Native Americans for their fishing prowess. They were peaceful to an extreme and had little interest in arms. Three hundred years ago the British scientist Thomas Harriot wrote, "Those weapons that they have, are onlie bowes made of Witch hazle, and arrows of reeds; neither have they anything to defend themselves but targets made of barcks; and some armours made of sticks wickered together with thread."

It took British colonists to turn these people militant and they did so quite efficiently by, simultaneously, threatening them with God's wrath if they didn't convert immediately to Christianity, decimating the population by importing influenza and smallpox, demanding food and shelter they were too lazy to provide for themselves and murdering one of the tribe's favorite chiefs, Wingina, who, the colonists were convinced, erroneously, as it happened, was plotting an attack on the British settlements.

To the colonists' indignant surprise, rather than accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into their hearts, the Indians declared allegiance to their own deities – spirits called Manitous – and then war against the British, the opening action of which (according to history as writ by young Mary Beth McConnell) was the assault on the Lost Colonists at Roanoke Island.

After the settlers fled, the tribe – anticipating British reinforcements – took a new look at weaponry and began to use copper, which had been used only for decoration, in making arms. Metal arrowheads were much sharper than flint and easier to make. However, unlike in the movies, an arrow fired by an unpulleyed bow usually won't penetrate very far into the skin and is rarely fatal. To finish off his wounded adversary the Weapemeoc warrior would apply the coup de grace – a blow to the head with a club called, appropriately, a "coup stick," which the tribe became very talented in making.

A coup stick is nothing more than a large, rounded rock bound into the split end of a stick and lashed into place with a leather thong. It's a very efficient weapon, and the one that Mary Beth McConnell was now making, based on her knowledge of Native American archaeology, was surely as deadly as the ones that – in her theory – had crushed the skulls and snapped the spines of the Roanoke settlers as they fought their last battle on the shores of the Paquenoke at what was now called Blackwater Landing.

She'd made hers out of two curved support rods from the old dinner table chair in the cabin. The rock was the one that Tom, the Missionary's friend, had flung at her. She'd mounted it in between the two rods and bound it with long strips of denim torn from her shirttail. The weapon was heavy – six or seven pounds – but it wasn't too heavy for Mary Beth, who regularly lifted thirty- and forty-pound rocks at archaeological digs.

She now rose from the bed and swung the weapon several times, pleased with the power the club gave her. A skittish sound registered in her hearing – the insects in the jars. It made her think of Garrett's disgusting habit of snapping his fingernails together. She shivered in rage and lifted the coup stick to bring it down on the jar closest to her.

But then she paused. She hated the insects, yes, but her anger wasn't really directed at them. It was Garrett she was furious with. She left the jars alone and walked to the door then slammed the stick into it several times – near the lock. The door didn't budge. Well, she hadn't expected it to. But the important thing was that she'd tied the rock to the head of the club very firmly. It hadn't slipped.

Of course if the Missionary and Tom returned with a gun, the club wouldn't do much good against them. But she decided that if they got inside she'd keep the stick hidden behind her and the first one who touched her would get a broken skull. The other might kill her but she'd take one of them with her. (She imagined that this was how Virginia Dare had died.)

Mary Beth sat down and looked out the window, at the low sun on the line of trees where she'd first seen the Missionary.

What was the feeling coursing through her? Fear, she supposed.

But then she decided that it wasn't fear at all. It was impatience. She wanted her enemies to return.

Mary Beth lifted the coup stick into her lap.

Get yourself ready, Tom had told her.

Well, that she had.


• • •

"There's a boat."

Lucy leaned forward through the leaves of a pungent bay tree on the shore near the Hobeth Bridge. Her hand was on her weapon.

"Where?" she asked Jesse Corn.

"There." Pointing upstream.

She could vaguely see a slight darkness on the water, a half-mile away. Moving in the current.

"What do you mean, boat?" she asked. "I don't see -"

"No, look. It's upside down."

"I can hardly see it," she said. "You've got good eyes."

"Is it them?" Trey asked.

"What happened? Did it capsize?"

But Jesse Corn said, "Naw, they're underneath it."

Lucy squinted. "How do you know?"

"Just have a feeling," he said.

"There's enough air under there?" Trey asked.

Jesse said, "Sure. It's high enough in the water. We used to do that with canoes on Bambert Lake. When we were kids. We'd play submarine."

Lucy said, "What do we do? We need a boat or something to get to them." She looked around.

Ned pulled his police utility belt off, handed it to Jesse Corn. "Hell, I'll just go out and kick it back into shore."

"You can swim that?" she asked.

The man took his boots off. "I swum this river a million times."

"We'll cover you," Lucy said.

"They're underwater," Jesse said. "I wouldn't worry too much about them shooting anybody."

Trey pointed out, "A little grease on the shells and they'll last for weeks underwater."

"Amelia's not gonna shoot," said Jesse Corn, Judas' defender.

"But we're not taking any chances," Lucy said. Then to Ned: "Don't flip it over. Just swim out and steer it over this way. Trey, you go over there, by the willow, with the scattergun. Jesse and I'll be over there on the shore. We'll have 'em in a crossfire if anything happens."

Ned, barefoot and shirtless, walked gingerly on the rocky embankment down to the mud beach. He looked around carefully – for snakes, Lucy supposed – and then eased into the water. Ned breast-stroked out toward the boat, swimming very quietly, keeping his head above water. Lucy pulled her Smith & Wesson from the holster. Cocked the hammer. Glanced at Jesse Corn, who looked at her weapon uneasily. Trey was standing beside a tree, holding the shotgun, muzzle-up. He noticed her cocked pistol and he racked a round into the chamber of the Remington. The boat was thirty feet from them, near midstream.

Ned was a strong swimmer and he was closing the distance quickly. He'd be there in -

The gunshot was loud and close. Lucy jumped as a spume of water shot into the air a few feet from Ned.

"Oh, no!" Lucy called, bringing up her weapon, looking for the shooter.

"Where, where?" Trey called, crouching and adjusting his grip on the shotgun.

Ned dove under the surface.

Another shot. Water flew into the air. Trey lowered the scattergun and started firing at the boat. Panic fire. The twelve-gauge didn't have a plugged tube; it was loaded with seven rounds. The deputy emptied it in seconds, hitting the boat squarely with every round, sending splinters of wood and water flying everywhere.

"No!" Jesse cried. "There're people under there!"

"Where're they shooting from?" Lucy called. "Under the boat? The other side of it? I can't tell. Where are they?"

"Where's Ned?" Trey asked. "Is he hit? Where's Ned?"

"I don't know," Lucy shouted, voice raw with panic. "I can't see him."

Trey reloaded and aimed at the boat once more.

"No!" Lucy ordered. "Don't fire. Cover me!"

She ran down the embankment and waded into the water. Suddenly, near the shore, she heard a choking gasp as Ned bobbed to the surface. "Help me!" He was terrified, looking behind him, scrabbling out of the water.

Jesse and Trey aimed their weapons at the far shore and stepped slowly down the incline to the river. Jesse's dismayed eyes were fixed on the riddled vessel – the terrible, ragged holes in the hull.

Charging into the water, Lucy holstered her gun and grabbed Ned's arm, dragged him to the shore. He'd stayed under as long as he dared and was pale and weak from lack of oxygen.

"Where are they?" he struggled to ask, choking.

"Don't know," she said, pulling him into a stand of bushes. He collapsed on his side, spitting and coughing. She looked him over carefully. He hadn't been hit.

They were joined by Trey and Jesse, both of them crouching, eyes gazing across the river, looking for their attackers.

Ned was still choking. "Fucking water. Tastes like shit."

The boat was slowly easing toward them, half submerged now.

"They're dead," whispered Jesse Corn, staring at the boat. "They have to be."

The boat floated closer. Jesse slipped his utility belt off and started forward.

"No," Lucy said, eyes on the far shore. "Let it come to us."

29

The capsized boat floated into an uprooted cedar, extending into the river, and stopped.

The deputies waited a few moments. There was no movement other than the rocking of the shattered vessel. The water was ruddy but Lucy couldn't tell if the color was due to blood or was from the fiery sunset.

Pale, troubled Jesse Corn glanced at Lucy, who nodded. All three of the other deputies kept their guns on the boat as Jesse waded out and flipped it over.

The remnants of several torn water jugs bobbed out and floated leisurely downstream. There was no one underneath.

"What happened?" Jesse asked. "I don't get it."

"Hell," Ned muttered bitterly. "They set us up. It was a goddamn ambush."

Lucy hadn't believed that her anger could get any more consuming. But it now seized her like raw electric current.

Ned was right; Amelia had used the boat like one of Nathan Groomer's decoys and ambushed them from the far shore.

"No," Jesse protested. "She wouldn't do that. If she shot it was just to scare us. Amelia knows her way 'round firearms. She could've hit Ned, she'd wanted to."

"Goddamnit, Jesse, open your eyes, will you?" Lucy snapped. "Firing from heavy cover like that? Doesn't matter how good a shot you are; she still could've missed. And on water? There could've been a ricochet. Or Ned might've panicked and swum into a bullet."

Jesse Corn had no response for that. He rubbed his face with his palms and stared out over the far shore.

"Okay, here's what we're doing," Lucy said in a low voice. "It's getting late. We're going as far as we can while there's still some light. Then we'll have Jim bring us some supplies for the night. We'll be camping out. We're going to assume they're gunning for us and we're going to act accordingly. Now, let's get across the bridge and look for their trail. Everybody locked and loaded?"

Ned and Trey said they were. Jesse Corn stared at the shattered boat for a moment then slowly nodded.

"Then let's go."

The four deputies started over the fifty yards of unprotected bridge – but they didn't walk in a cluster. They were in a long line so that if Amelia Sachs were to shoot again she couldn't hit more than one of them before the others got to cover and could return fire. The formation was Trey's idea, one that he got from a World War II movie, and because he'd thought of it he assumed he'd take the point position. But that was the spot Lucy Kerr insisted on taking for herself.


• • •

"You came damn close to hitting him."

Harris Tomel said, "No way."

But Culbeau persisted. "I said, scare 'em. You'd hit Ned, you know what kinda shit we'd be in?"

"I know what I'm doing, Rich. Give me a little credit, okay?"

Fucking schoolboy, Culbeau thought.

The three men were on the north shore of the Paquo, trekking along a path that followed the river.

In fact, while Culbeau was pissed that Tomel had fired too close to the deputy swimming out to the boat, he was sure the sniping had worked. Lucy and the other deputies'd be skittish as sheep now and would move nice and slow.

The shooting also had another beneficial effect – Sean O'Sarian was spooked and was being quiet for a change.

They walked for twenty minutes then Tomel asked Culbeau, "You know the boy's going in this direction?"

"Yep."

"But you don't have any idea where he's gonna end up."

"'Course not," Culbeau said. "If I did we could just go there direct, right?"

Come on, schoolboy. Use your fucking noggin.

"But -"

"Don't worry. We're gonna find him."

"Can I have some water?" O'Sarian finally asked.

"Water? You want water?"

O'Sarian said complacently, "Yeah, that's what I'd like."

Culbeau glanced at him suspiciously and handed him a bottle. He'd never known the scrawny young man to actually drink something that wasn't beer, whisky or 'shine. He drank it down, wiped a mouth surrounded by freckles and tossed the bottle aside.

Culbeau sighed. He said sarcastically, "Hey now, Sean, you sure you want to leave something with your fingerprints on the trail?"

"Oh, right." The skinny man scurried into the brush and retrieved it. "Sorry."

Sorry? Sean O'Sarian apologizing? Culbeau stared for a moment in disbelief then nodded them all forward again.

They came to a bend in the river and, being on high ground, they could see for miles downstream.

Tomel said, "Hey, look up there. There's a house. Bet the boy and the redhead've headed that way."

Culbeau sighted through the 'scope of his deer rifle. About two miles down the valley was an A-frame vacation house, just about on the river. It'd be a logical hiding place for the boy and the woman cop to hole up. He nodded. "Bet they are. Let's go."


• • •

Downstream from the Hobeth Bridge, the Paquenoke River makes a sharp bend to the north.

It's shallow here, near the shore, and the muddy shoals are piled high with driftwood and vegetation and trash.

Like skiffs adrift, two human forms floating in the water now missed the turn and were eased by the current into this refuse heap.

Amelia Sachs let go of the plastic water jug – her improvised flotation device – and reached out a wrinkled hand to grip a branch. She then realized that this wasn't a very smart thing to do because her pockets were filled with rocks for ballast and she felt herself being tugged downward into the dusky water. But she straightened her legs and found the river bottom only four feet below the surface. She stood unsteadily and slogged forward. Garrett appeared beside her a moment later and helped her out of the water onto the muddy ground.

They crawled up a slight incline, through a tangle of bushes, and collapsed in a grassy clearing, lay there for a few minutes, caught their breath. She pulled the plastic bag out of her shirt. It had leaked slightly but there wasn't any serious water damage. She handed him his insect book and opened the cylinder of her gun, then rested it on a clump of brittle, yellow grass to dry.

She'd been wrong about what Garrett had planned. They had slipped empty water jugs under the overturned boat for buoyancy but then he'd shoved it into midstream without getting underneath it. He'd told her to fill her pockets with rocks. He'd done the same and they hurried downstream past the boat, fifty feet or so, and slipped into the water, each holding a half-full water jug for flotation. Garrett showed her how to lean her head back.

With the rocks for ballast only their faces were above the water. They'd float downstream on the current ahead of the boat.

"The diving bell spider does this," he'd told her. "Like a scuba diver. Carries his air around with him." He'd done this several times in the past to "get away," though – just like earlier – he didn't elaborate on why he'd been escaping and from whom. Garrett had explained that if the police weren't at the bridge they'd swim over to the boat, beach it, drain out the water and continue on their way, rowing with the oars. If the deputies were on the bridge their attention would be on the boat and they wouldn't notice Garrett and Amelia floating ahead of it. Once past the bridge they'd kick to shore and continue their journey on foot.

Well, he'd been right about that part; they'd gotten under the bridge undetected. But Sachs was still shocked at what had happened next – unprovoked, the deputies had fired round after round at the overturned boat.

Garrett too was badly shaken by the gunshots. "They thought we were under there," he whispered. "Fuckers tried to kill us."

Sachs said nothing.

He added, "I've done some bad things… but I'm no phymata."

"What's that?"

"An ambush bug. Lies in wait and kills. That's what they were going to do with us. Just, like, shoot us. Not give us any chance at all."

Oh, Lincoln, she thought, what a mess this is. Why did I do it? I should just surrender now. Wait here for the deputies, give it up. Go back to Tanner's Corner and try to make amends.

But she looked over at Garrett, hugging himself, shivering with fear. And she knew she couldn't turn back now. She'd have to keep going, play this crazy game out.

Knuckle time…

"Where do we go now?"

"See that house there?"

A brown A-frame.

"Is Mary Beth there?"

"Naw, but they've got a little trolling boat we can borrow. And we can get dry and get some food."

Well, what did a count of breaking and entering matter after tallying up her criminal charges today?

Garrett suddenly picked up her pistol. She froze, watching the blue-black gun in his hands. Knowingly he looked in the chambers and saw it was loaded with six rounds. He clicked the cylinder into the frame of the gun and balanced it in his hand with a familiarity that unnerved her.

Whatever you think about Garrett, don't trust him…

He glanced at her and gave a grin. Then he handed her the gun butt-first. "Let's go this way." Nodding toward a path.

She replaced the weapon in her holster, feeling the flutter of her heart from the scare.

They walked toward the house. "It's empty?" Sachs asked, nodding toward the structure.

"Nobody's there now." Garrett paused and looked back. After a moment he muttered, "They're pissed now, the deputies. And they're after us. With all their guns and things. Shit." He turned and led her along a path to the house. He was silent for a few minutes. "You wanta know something, Amelia?"

"What?"

"I was thinking about this moth – the grand emperor moth?"

"What about it?" she asked absently, hearing in her memory the terrible shotgun blasts, meant for her and this boy. Lucy Kerr, trying to kill her. The echoes of the shots obscured everything else in her mind.

"The coloring on its wings?" Garrett told her. "Like, when they're open, they look just like an animal's eyes. I mean, it's pretty cool – there's even a white dot in the corner like a reflection of light in the pupil. Birds see that and think it's a fox or a cat and it scares them off."

"Can't the birds smell that it's a moth and not an animal?" she asked, not concentrating on the conversation.

He looked at her for a moment to see if she was joking. He said, "Birds can't smell," as if she'd just asked if the world was flat. He looked behind them, up the river again. "We'll have to slow ' em down. How close you think they are?"

"Very close," she said.

With all their guns and things.

• • •

"It's them."

Rich Culbeau was looking at the footprints in the mud of the shore. "The trail's only ten, fifteen minutes old."

"And they're heading for the house," Tomel said.

They moved cautiously up a path.

O'Sarian still wasn't acting weird. Which for him actually was weird. And scary. He hadn't snuck any hits of 'shine, hadn't been pranking, hadn't even been talking – and Sean was the number-one motormouth in Tanner's Corner. The shooting at the river had really shaken him. Now, as they walked through the woods, he swung the muzzle of the black soldier rifle around fast at every sound from the brush. "Did you see that nigger shoot?" he said finally. "Must've put ten slugs in that boat in less than a minute."

"Was pellets," Harris Tomel corrected.

And instead of challenging him and trying to impress them with what he knew about guns (and acting like the all-purpose asshole he was), O'Sarian just said, "Oh, buckshot. Right. I should've thought of that." And nodded like a kid in school who'd just learned something new and interesting.

They moved closer to the house. It looked like a nice place, Culbeau thought. A vacation house probably – maybe some lawyer's or doctor's from Raleigh or Winston-Salem. A good hunting lodge, full bar, nice bedrooms, a freezer for venison.

"Hey, Harris," O'Sarian asked.

Culbeau'd never known the boy to use anybody's first name.

"What?"

"This thing shoot high or low?" Holding up the Colt.

Tomel glanced at Culbeau, probably also trying to figure out where the weird part of O'Sarian had gone.

"First one's right on the money but it'll kick higher than you're used to. Drop the muzzle for the next shots."

"Because the stock's plastic," O'Sarian asked, "so it's lighter than wood?"

"Yeah."

He nodded again, his face even more serious than earlier. "Thanks."

Thanks?

The woods ended and the men could see a large clearing around the house – easily fifty yards in all directions without even a sapling for cover. The approach'd be tough.

"Think they're inside?" Tomel asked, kneading his gorgeous shotgun.

"I don't – Wait, get down!"

The three men crouched fast.

"I saw something downstairs. Through that window to the left." Culbeau looked through the 'scope on the deer rifle. "Somebody's moving around. On the ground floor. I can't see too good, with the blinds. But there's definitely somebody there." He scanned the other windows. "Shit!" A panicked whisper. He dropped to the ground.

"What?" O'Sarian asked, alarmed, gripping his gun and spinning around.

"Get down! One of 'em's got a rifle with a 'scope. They're sighting right at us. Upstairs window. Damn."

"Gotta be the girl," Tomel said. "That boy's too much of a faggot to know which end the bullet comes out."

"Fuck that bitch," Culbeau muttered. O'Sarian was easing behind a tree, hugging his ' Nam gun close to his cheek.

"She's got the whole field covered from here," Culbeau said.

"We wait till it's dark?" Tomel asked.

"Oh, with little miss tit-less deputy coming up behind us? I don't think that'll work, now, Harris, will it?"

"Well, can you hit her from here?" Tomel nodded toward the window.

"Probably," Culbeau said, sighing. He was about to start ragging on Tomel when O'Sarian said in a weirdly normal voice, "But if Rich shoots, then Lucy and th'others'll hear. I think we oughta flank 'em. Go around the side and try and get inside. A shot'd be a lot quieter in there."

Which was just what Culbeau was about to say.

"That'll take a half hour," Tomel snapped, probably pissed at being outthought by O'Sarian.

Who remained at the top of his uncrazy form. The young man clicked the safety off his gun and squinted toward the house. "Well, I'd say we gotta make it take less than half an hour. Whatta you think, Rich?"

30

Steve Farr led Henry Davett into the lab once again. The businessman thanked Farr, who left, and nodded to Rhyme.

"Henry," Rhyme said, "thank you for coming."

As before, the businessman paid no attention to Rhyme's condition. This time, though, Rhyme took no comfort from his attitude. His concern for Sachs was consuming him. He kept hearing Jim Bell's voice.

You usually have twenty-four hours to find the victim; after that they become dehumanized in the kidnapper's eyes and he doesn't think anything about killing them.

This rule, which had applied to Lydia and Mary Beth, now encompassed Amelia Sachs' fate too. The difference was, Rhyme believed, that Sachs might have far fewer than twenty-four hours.

"I thought you'd caught that boy. That's what I heard."

Ben said, "He got away from us."

"No!" Davett frowned.

"Sure did," Ben offered. "Old-fashioned jailbreak."

Rhyme: "I've got some more evidence but I don't know what to make of it. I was hoping you could help again."

The businessman sat down. "I'll do what I can."

A glance at his WWJD tie bar.

Rhyme nodded toward the chart, said, "Could you look that over? The list on the right."

"The mill – is that where he was? That old mill northeast of town?"

"Right."

"I knew about the place." Davett grimaced angrily. "I should've thought of it."

Criminalists can't let the verb "should have" creep into their vocabulary. Rhyme said, "It's impossible to think of everything in this business. But take a look at the chart. Does anything on it seem familiar to you?"

Davett read carefully.


FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

MILL

Brown Paint on Pants

Sundew Plant

Clay

Peat Moss

Fruit Juice

Paper Fibers

Stinkball Bait

Sugar

Camphene

Alcohol

Kerosene

Yeast


As he gazed at the list he said in a distracted voice, "It's like a puzzle."

"That's the nature of my job," Rhyme said.

"How much can I speculate?" the businessman asked.

"As much as you'd like," Rhyme said.

"All right," Davett said. He thought for a moment then said, "A Carolina bay."

Rhyme asked, "What's that? A horse?"

Davett glanced at Rhyme to see if he was joking. Then said, "No, it's a geologic structure you see on the Eastern Seaboard. Mostly, though, they're found in the Carolinas. North and South. They're basically oval ponds, about three or four feet deep, freshwater. They could be a half-acre big or a couple of hundred. The bottom of them is mostly clay and peat. Just what's on the chart there."

"But clay and peat – they're pretty common around here," Ben said.

"They are," Davett agreed. "And if you'd found just those two things I wouldn't have a clue where they came from. But you found something else. See, one of the most interesting characteristics about Carolina bays is that insect-killer plants grow around them. You see hundreds of Venus flytraps, sundews and pitcher plants around bays – probably because the ponds promote insects. If you found a sundew along with clay and peat moss then there's no doubt the boy's spent time around a Carolina bay."

"Good," Rhyme said. Then, gazing at the map, asked, "What does 'bay' mean? An inlet of water?"

"No, it refers to bay trees. They grow around the ponds. There're all sorts of myths about them. Settlers used to think they were carved out of the land by sea monsters or witches casting spells. Meteorites were a theory for a few years. But they're really just natural depressions caused by wind and currents of water."

"Are they unique to a particular area around here?" Rhyme asked, hoping that they'd help narrow down the search.

"To some extent." Davett rose and walked to the map. With his finger he circled a large area to the west of Tanner's Corner. Locations B-2 to E-2 and F-13 to B-12. "You'll find them mostly here, in this area, just before you get to the hills."

Rhyme was discouraged. What Davett had circled must have included seventy or eighty square miles.

Davett saw Rhyme's reaction. He said, "Wish I could be more helpful."

"No, no, I appreciate it. It will be helpful. We just need to narrow down more of the clues."

The businessman read, "Sugar, fruit juice, kerosene…" He shook his head, unsmiling. "You have a difficult job, Mr. Rhyme."

"These are the tough cases," Rhyme explained. "When you have no clues you're free to speculate. When you have a lot of them you can usually get the answer pretty quickly. But having a few clues, like this…" Rhyme's voice faded.

"We're hog-tied by the facts," Ben muttered.

Rhyme turned to him. "Exactly, Ben. Exactly."

"I should be getting home," Davett said. "My family's expecting me." He wrote a phone number on a business card. "You can call me anytime."

Rhyme thanked him again and turned his gaze back to the evidence chart.

Hog-tied by the facts…


• • •

Rich Culbeau sucked the blood off his arm from where the brambles had scratched it deeply. He spit against a tree.

It had taken them twenty minutes of hard slogging through the brush to get to the side porch of the A-frame vacation house without being seen by the bitch with the sniper gun. Even Harris Tomel, who normally looked like he'd just stepped off a country club patio, was bloody and dust-stained.

The new Sean O'Sarian, quiet and thoughtful and, well, sane, was waiting back on the path, lying on the ground with his black gun like an infantry grunt at Khe Sahn, ready to slow up Lucy and the other Vietcong with a few shots over their heads in case they came up the trail toward the house.

"You ready?" Culbeau asked Tomel, who nodded.

Culbeau eased open the knob of the mudroom door and pushed the door inside, his gun up and ready.

Tomel followed. They were skittish as cats, knowing that the redheaded cop with the deer rifle she surely knew how to use could be waiting for them anywhere in the house.

"You hear anything?" Culbeau whispered.

"Just music." It was soft rock – the sort Culbeau listened to because he hated country-western.

The two men moved slowly down the dim hallway, guns up and cocked. They slowed. Ahead of them was the kitchen, where Culbeau had seen somebody – probably the boy – moving when he'd sighted on the house through the rifle 'scope. He nodded toward the room.

"Don't think they heard us," Tomel said. The music was up pretty high.

"We go in together. Shoot for their legs or knees. Don't kill him – we still gotta get him to tell us where Mary Beth is."

"The woman too?"

Culbeau thought for a moment. "Yeah, why not? We might want to keep her alive for a while. You know what for."

Tomel nodded.

"One, two… three."

They pushed fast into the kitchen and found themselves about to shoot a weatherman on a big-screen TV. They crouched and spun around, looking for the boy and the woman. Didn't see them. Then Culbeau looked at the set. He realized it didn't belong here. Somebody'd rolled it in from the living room and set it up in front of the stove, facing the windows.

Culbeau peered out through the blinds. "Shit. They put the set here so we'd see it from across the field, from the path. And think there was somebody in the house." He took off up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Wait," Tomel called. "She's up there. With the gun."

But of course the redhead wasn't up there at all. Culbeau kicked into the bedroom where he'd seen the rifle barrel and the telescopic sight aiming at them and he now found pretty much what he expected to find: a piece of narrow pipe on top of which was taped the ass end of a Corona bottle.

In disgust he said, "That's the gun and 'scope. Jesus Christ. They rigged it to bluff us out. It cost us a half fucking hour. And the goddamn deputies're probably five minutes away. We gotta get outa here."

He stormed past Tomel, who started to say, "Pretty smart of her…" But, seeing the fire in Culbeau's eyes, he decided not to finish his sentence.


• • •

The battery ran down and the tiny electric trolling engine fell silent.

Their narrow skiff they'd stolen from the vacation house drifted on the current of the Paquenoke, through the oily mist covering the river. It was dusk. The water was no longer golden but moody gray.

Garrett Hanlon picked up a paddle in the bottom of the boat and headed toward shore. "We gotta land someplace," he said. "Before it's, like, totally dark."

Amelia Sachs noticed that the landscape had changed.

The trees had thinned and large pools of marsh met the river. The boy was right; a wrong turn would take them into a back alley of some impenetrable bog.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, seeing her troubled expression.

"I'm a hell of a long way from Brooklyn."

"That's in New York?"

"Right," she said.

He clicked his nails. "And it bothers you not being there?"

"You bet it does."

Steering toward the shore, he said, "That's what scares insects the most."

"What's that?"

"Like, it's weird. They don't mind working and they don't mind fighting. But they get all freaked out in an unfamiliar place. Even if it's safe. They hate it, don't know what to do."

Okay, Sachs thought, I guess I'm a card-carrying insect. She preferred the way Lincoln phrased it: Fish out of water.

"You can always tell when an insect's really upset. They clean their antennas over and over again… Insects' antennas show their moods. Like our faces. Only the thing is," he added cryptically, "they don't fake it. Like we do." He laughed in an odd way – a sound she hadn't heard before.

He eased over the side of the boat into the water and pulled the boat onto the land. Sachs climbed out. He directed her through the woods and seemed to know exactly where he was going despite the darkness of dusk and the absence of any path that she could see. "How do you know where to go?" she asked.

Garrett said, "I guess I'm like the monarchs. I just know directions pretty good."

"Monarchs?"

"You know, the butterflies. They migrate a thousand miles and know exactly where they're going. It's really, really cool – they navigate by the sun and, like, change course automatically depending on where it is on the horizon. Oh, and when it's overcast or dark they use this other sense they have – they can feel the earth's magnetic fields."

When a bat shoots out a beam of sound to find them, moths fold their wings and drop to the ground and hide.

She was smiling at his enthusiastic lecture when she stopped suddenly and crouched. "Look out," she whispered. "There! There's a light."

Faint illumination reflecting off a murky pond. An eerie yellow light like a failing lantern. But Garrett was laughing. She looked at him quizzically. He said, "Just a ghost."

"What?" she asked.

"It's the Lady of the Swamp. Like, this Indian maiden who died the night before her wedding. Her ghost still paddles through the Dismal Swamp looking for the guy she was going to marry. We're not in the Great Dismal but it's near here." He nodded toward the glow. "What it is really is just fox fire – this gross fungus that glows."

She didn't like the light. It reminded her of the uneasiness she felt as they drove into Tanner's Corner that morning, seeing the small coffin at the funeral.

"I don't like the swamp, with or without ghosts," Sachs said.

"Yeah?" Garrett said. "Maybe you'll get to like it. Someday."

He led her along a road and after ten minutes he turned down a short, overgrown driveway. There was an old trailer sitting in a clearing. In the gloom she couldn't see clearly but it seemed to be a ramshackle place, leaning to the side, rusted, tires flat and overgrown with ivy and moss.

"This is yours?"

"Well, nobody's lived here for years so I guess it's mine. I have a key but it's at home. I didn't have a chance to get it." He went around to the side and managed to open a window, boosted himself up and through it. A moment later the door opened.

She walked inside. Garrett was rummaging through a cabinet in the tiny kitchen. He found some matches and lit a propane lantern. It gave off a warm, yellow glow. He opened another cabinet, peered inside.

"I had some Doritos but the mice got 'em." He pulled out some Tupperware and examined it. "Chewed right through. Shit. But I've got Farmer John macaroni. It's good. I eat it all the time. And some beans too." He started opening cans as Sachs looked around the trailer.

A few chairs, a table. In the bedroom she could see a dingy mattress. There was a thick mat and a pillow on the living room floor. The trailer itself radiated poverty: broken doors and fixtures, bullet holes in the walls, windows broken, carpet stained beyond cleaning. In her days as a patrol officer for the NYPD she'd seen many sad places like this – but always from the outside; now this was her temporary home.

Thinking of Lucy's words from that morning.

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.

Remembering the stunning blasts of the shotgun, intended for her and Garrett.

The boy hung pieces of greasy cloth over the windows to keep anyone from seeing the light inside. He stepped outside for a moment then came back with a rusty cup, filled, presumably, with rainwater. He held it out to her. She shook her head. "Feel like I drank half the Paquenoke."

"This's better."

"I'm sure it is. I'll still pass."

He drank the contents of the cup and then stirred the food as it heated on the small propane stove. In a soft voice he sang an eerie tune over and over, "Farmer John, Farmer John. Enjoy it fresh from Farmer John.. ." It was nothing more than an advertising jingle but the chant was unsettling and she was glad when he stopped. Sachs was going to pass on the food but she realized suddenly that she was famished. Garrett poured the contents into two bowls and handed her a spoon. She spit on the utensil and wiped it on her shirt. They ate for a few minutes in silence.

Sachs noticed a sound outside, a raucous, high-pitched noise. "What's that?" she asked. "Cicadas?"

"Yeah," he said. "It's just the males make that noise. Only the males. Make all that noise just from these little plates on their body." He squinted, reflected for a moment. "They live this totally weird life… The nymphs dig into the ground and stay there for, like, twenty years before they hatch. Then they come out and climb a tree. Their skin splits down the back and the adult crawls out. All those years in the ground, just hiding, before they come out and become adults."

"Why do you like insects so much, Garrett?" Sachs asked.

He hesitated. "I don't know. I just do."

"Haven't you ever wondered about it?"

He stopped eating. Scratched one of his poison oak welts. "I guess I got interested in them after my parents died. After that happened I was pretty unhappy. I felt funny in my head a lot. Confused and, I don't know, just different. The counselors at school just said it was because Mom and Dad and my sister died and they, like, told me I should work harder to get over it. But I couldn't. I just felt like I wasn't a real person. I didn't care about anything. All I did was lie in bed or go into the swamp or the woods and read. For a year that's all I did. Like, I hardly saw anybody. Just moved from foster home to foster home… But then I read something neat. In that book there."

Flipping open The Miniature World, he found a page. He showed it to her. He'd circled a passage headed Characteristics of Healthy Living Creatures. Sachs scanned it, read several of the list of eight or nine entries.


A healthy creature strives to grow and develop.

A healthy creature strives to survive.

– A healthy creature strives to adapt to its environment.


Garrett said, "I read that and it was like, wow, I could be like that. I could be healthy and normal again. I tried totally hard to follow the rules it said. And that made me feel better. So I guess I felt close to them – insects, I mean."

A mosquito landed on her arm. She laughed. "But they also drink your blood." She slapped it. "Got him."

"Her," Garrett corrected. "It's just the females drink blood. The males drink nectar."

"Really?"

He nodded then grew quiet for a moment. Looked at the dot of blood on her arm. "Insects never go away."

"What do you mean?"

He found another passage in the book and read aloud, "'If any creature could be called immortal it is the insect, which inhabited the earth millions of years before the advent of mammals and which will be here on earth long after intelligent life has vanished.'" Garrett put the book down and looked up at her. "See, the thing is, if you kill one there're always more. If my mom and dad and sister were insects and they died there'd be others just like them and I wouldn't be alone."

"Don't you have any friends?"

Garrett shrugged. "Mary Beth. She's sort of the only one."

"You really like her, don't you?"

"Totally. She saved me from this kid who was going to do something shitty to me. And, I mean, she talks to me…" He thought for a moment. "I guess that's what I like about her. Talking. I was thinking, like, maybe in a few years, when I'm older, she might wanta go out with me. We could do things like other people do. You know, go to movies. Or go on picnics. I was watching her on a picnic once. She was with her mother and some friends. They were having fun. I watched for, like, hours. I just sat under a holly bush with some water and Doritos and pretended I was with them. You ever go on a picnic?"

"I have, sure."

"I went with my family a lot. I mean, my real family. I liked it. Mom and Kaye'd set the table and cook stuff on this little grill from Kmart. Dad and me'd take our shoes and socks off and stand in the water to fish. I remember what the mud felt like and the cold water."

Sachs wondered if that was why he liked water and water insects so much. "And you thought you and Mary Beth would go on picnics?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Then he shook his head and offered a sad smile. "I guess not. Mary Beth's pretty and smart and a bunch older than me. She'll end up with somebody who's handsome and smart. But maybe we could be friends, her and me. But even if not, all I really care about is she's okay. She'll stay with me till it's safe. Or you and your friend, that man in the wheelchair everybody was talking about, you can help her go someplace where she'd be safe." He looked out the window and fell silent.

"Safe from the man in the overalls?" she asked.

He didn't answer for a moment then nodded. "Yeah. That's right."

"I'm going to get some of that water," Sachs said.

"Wait," he said. He tore some dry leaves off a small branch resting on the kitchen counter, told her to rub her bare arms and neck and cheeks with it. It gave off a strong herbal smell. "Citronella plant," he explained. "Keeps the mosquitoes away. You won't have to swat 'em anymore."

Sachs picked up the cup. She went outside, looked at the rainwater barrel. It was covered with a fine screen. Lifted it, filled the cup and drank. The water seemed sweet. She listened to the creaks and zips of the insects.

Or you and your friend, that man in the wheelchair everybody was talking about, you can help her go someplace where she'd be safe.

The phrase echoed in her head: The man in the wheelchair, the man in the wheelchair.

She returned to the trailer. Set down the cup. Looked around the tiny living room. "Garrett, would you do me a favor?"

"I guess."

"You trust me?"

"I guess."

"Go sit over there."

He looked at her for a moment then stood and walked to the old armchair she was nodding at. Sachs walked across the tiny room and picked up one of the rattan chairs in the corner. She carried it to where the boy sat and placed it on the floor, facing him.

"Garrett, you remember what Dr. Penny was telling you to do in jail? About the empty chair?"

"Talk to the chair?" he asked, eyeing it uncertainly. He nodded. "That game."

"That's right. I want you to do it again. Will you?"

He hesitated, wiped his hands on the legs of his pants. Stared at the chair for a moment. Finally he said, "I guess."

31

Amelia Sachs was thinking back to the interrogation room and the session with the psychologist. From her vantage point Sachs had watched the boy closely through the one-way mirror. She remembered how the doctor had tried to get him to imagine that Mary Beth was in the chair but that, while Garrett hadn't wanted to say anything to her, he did want to talk to somebody. She'd seen a look in his face, a longing, disappointment – and anger too, she believed – when the doctor turned him away from where he wanted to go.

Oh, Rhyme, I understand that you like hard, cold evidence. That we can't depend on those "soft" things – on words and expressions and tears and the look in someone's eyes as we sit across from them and listen to their stories… But that doesn't mean those stories are always false. I believe there's more to Garrett Hanlon than the evidence tells us.

"Look at the chair," she said. "Who do you want to imagine sitting there?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

She pushed the chair closer. Smiled to encourage him. "Tell me. It's okay. A girl? Somebody at school?"

He shook his head once more.

"Tell me."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe…" After a pause he blurted: "Maybe my father."

Sachs remembered, with irritation, the cold eyes and crude manners of Hal Babbage. She supposed that Garrett would have a lot to say to him.

"Just your father? Or both him and Mrs. Babbage?"

"No, no, not him. I mean, my real father."

"Your real father?"

Garrett nodded. He was agitated, nervous. Clicking his nails frequently.

Insects' antennas show their moods…

Looking at his troubled face, Sachs realized with concern that she had no idea what she was doing. There were surely all sorts of things psychologists did to draw patients out, to guide them, to protect them when they practiced any type of therapy. Was there a chance that she would make Garrett worse? Push him over a line so that he actually would do something violent and hurt himself or someone else? Nonetheless, she was going to try it. Sachs' nickname in the New York City Police Department was P.D. – for "the portable's daughter," the child of a beat patrolman – and she definitely took after her old man: his love of cars, love of police work, impatience with bullshit and especially his talent for street-cop psychology. Lincoln Rhyme disparaged her being a "people cop" and warned that it would be her downfall. He extolled her talent as a criminalist and, though she was a talented forensic scientist, in her heart she was just like her father; for Amelia Sachs the best type of evidence was that found in the human heart.

Garrett's eyes strayed to the window, where bugs thumped suicidally against the rusty screen.

"What was your father's name?" Sachs asked.

"Stuart. Stu."

"What did you call him?"

"'Dad' mostly. 'Sir' sometimes." Garrett smiled sadly. "If I'd done something wrong and thought I better be, like, on good behavior."

"You two got along?"

"Better'n most of my friends and their dads. They got whipped some and their dads were always yelling at them. You know: 'Why'd you miss that goal?' 'Why's your room so messy?' 'Why didn't you get your homework done?' But Dad was okay to me. Until…" His voice bled out.

"Go on."

"I don't know." Another shrug.

Sachs persisted. "Until what, Garrett?"

Silence.

"Say it."

"I don't want to tell you. It's stupid."

"Well, don't tell me. Tell him, your dad." She nodded toward the chair. "There's your father right there in front of you. Imagine it." The boy edged forward, staring at the chair, almost fearfully. "There's Stu Hanlon sitting there. Talk to him."

For an instant there was such a look of longing in the boy's eyes that Sachs wanted to cry. She knew they were close to something important and she was afraid he'd balk. "Tell me about him," she said, changing tack slightly. "Tell me what he looked like. What he wore."

After a pause the boy said, "He was tall and pretty thin. He had dark hair and it stuck up right after he'd get his hair cut. He had to put this stuff on that smelled good to keep it down for a couple days afterward. He always wore pretty nice clothes. He didn't even have a pair of jeans, I don't think. He always wore shirts with, you know, collars on them. And pants with cuffs." Sachs recalled noting when she searched his room that he had no jeans, only cuffed slacks. A faint smile bloomed on Garrett's face. "He used to drop a quarter down the side of his pants and try and catch it in his cuff and if he did then my sister or me could have it. It was, like, this game we played. On Christmas he'd bring home silver dollars for us and he'd keep sliding them down his pants until we got them."

The silver dollars in the wasp jar, Sachs recalled.

"Did he have any hobbies? Sports?"

"He liked to read. He'd take us to bookstores a lot and he read to us. A lot of history and travel books. And stuff about nature. Oh, and he fished. Almost every weekend."

"Well, imagine that he's sitting there in the empty chair and he's wearing his nice slacks and a shirt with a collar. And he's reading a book. Okay?"

"I guess."

"He puts the book down -"

"No, first he'd, like, mark the place he was reading. He had a ton of bookmarks. He sort of collected them. My sister and me got him one the Christmas before the accident."

"Okay, he marks his place and puts the book down. He's looking at you. Now you've got a chance to say something to him. What would you say?"

He shrugged, shook his head. Looked around the dim trailer nervously.

But Sachs wasn't going to let it go. Knuckle time…

She said, "Let's think about a specific thing you'd like to talk to him about. An incident. Something you're unhappy about. Was there anything like that?" But Dad was okay to me. Until… The boy was gripping his hands, rubbing them together, clicking his nails. "Tell him, Garrett."

"Okay, I guess there was something."

"What?"

"Well, that night… the night they died."

Sachs felt a faint shudder. Knew they were probably going very hard places with this. She thought for a moment about pulling back. But it wasn't in Amelia Sachs' nature to pull back and she didn't now. "What about that night? You want to talk to your father about something that happened?"

He nodded. "See, they were in the car going to dinner. It was Wednesday. Every Wednesday we went to Bennigan's. I liked the chicken fingers. I'd have the chicken fingers and fries and a Coke. And Kaye, my sister'd get onion rings and we'd split the fries and the rings and sometimes we drew pictures on an empty plate with the squeeze bottle of ketchup."

His face was pale and drawn. There was so much sorrow in his eyes, Sachs thought. She fought down her own emotions. "What do you remember about that night?"

"It was outside the house. In the driveway. They were in the car, Dad and Mom and my sister. They were going to dinner. And" – he swallowed – "what it was they were going to leave without me."

"They were?"

He nodded. "I was late. I'd been in the woods in Blackwater Landing. And I'd kinda lost track of time. I ran, like, a half-mile or something. But my father wouldn't let me in. He must've been mad because I was late. I wanted to get in so bad. It was really cold. I remember I was shivering and they were shivering. I remember there was frost on the windows. But they wouldn't let me in."

"Maybe your father didn't see you. Because of the frost."

"No, he saw me. I was right beside his side of the car. I was banging on the window and he saw me but he didn't open the door. He just kept frowning and shouting at me. And I kept thinking, He's mad at me and I'm cold and I'm not going to get my chicken fingers and French fries. I'm not going to have dinner with my family." Tears ran down his cheeks.

Sachs wanted to put her arm around the boy's shoulders but she remained where she was. "Go on." Nodding toward the chair. "Talk to your father. What do you want to say to him?"

He looked at her but she pointed toward the chair. Finally Garrett turned to it. "It's so cold!" he said, gasping. "It's cold and I want to get in the car. Why won't he let me in the car?"

"No, tell him. Imagine he's there."

Sachs was thinking: This is the same way Rhyme urged her to imagine herself as the perp at crime scenes. It was utterly harrowing and she now felt the boy's fear all too clearly. Still, she didn't let up. "Tell him – tell your father."

Garrett looked at the old chair uneasily. He leaned forward. "I…"

Sachs whispered, "Go ahead, Garrett. It's okay. I won't let anything happen to you. Tell him."

"I just wanted to go to Bennigan's with you!" he said, sobbing. "That's all. Like, just to have dinner, all of us. I just wanted to go with you. Why wouldn't you let me in the car? You saw me coming and you locked the door. I wasn't that late!" Then Garrett grew angry. "You locked me out! You were mad at me and it wasn't fair. What I did, being late… it wasn't that bad. I must've done something else to make you mad. What? Why didn't you want me to go with you? Tell me what I did." His voice was choked. "Come back and tell me. Come back! I want to know! What did I do? Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

Sobbing, he jumped up and kicked the empty chair hard. It sailed across the room and fell on its side. He grabbed the chair and, screaming in fury, smashed it into the floor of the trailer. Sachs pushed back, blinking in shock at the anger she'd unleashed. He slammed the chair down a dozen times until it was nothing but a shattered mass of wood and rattan. Finally Garrett collapsed on the floor, hugging himself. Sachs rose and put her arms around him as he sobbed and shook.

After five minutes the crying ended. He stood up, wiped his face on his sleeve.

"Garrett," she began in a whisper.

But he shook his head. "I'm going outside," he said. Then rose and pushed out the door.

She sat for a moment, wondering what to do. Sachs was utterly exhausted but she didn't lie down on the mat he'd left for her and try to sleep. She shut the lantern off and pulled the cloth off the window then sat in the musty armchair. She leaned forward, smelling the pungent aroma of the citronella plant, and watched the hunched-over silhouette of the boy, sitting outside on an oak stump and gazing intently at the moving constellations of lightning bugs that filled the forest around him.

32

Lincoln Rhyme muttered, "I don't believe it." He'd just spoken with a furious Lucy Kerr and had learned that Sachs had taken several shots at a deputy under the Hobeth Bridge.

"I don't believe it," he repeated in a whisper to Thom.

The aide was a master of dealing with broken bodies and spirits broken because of broken bodies. But this was a different matter, far worse, and the best he could do was offer, "It's a mix-up. It has to be. Amelia wouldn't do that."

"She wouldn't." Rhyme muttered. This time offering the denial to Ben. "There's no way. Not even to scare them off." He told himself that she'd never shoot at a fellow officer, even just to scare them. Yet he was also thinking about what desperate people did. The crazy risks they took. (Oh, Sachs, why do you have to be so impulsive and stubborn? Why do you have to be so much like me?)

Bell was in the office across the hall. Rhyme could hear him as he spoke endearments over the phone. He supposed that the sheriff's wife and family weren't used to late-night absences; law-enforcement in a town like Tanner's Corner probably didn't require as many hours as the Garrett Hanlon case had taken.

Ben Kerr sat beside one of the microscopes, his huge arms crossed over his chest. He was gazing at the map. Unlike the sheriff he hadn't made any calls home and Rhyme wondered if he had a wife or girlfriend or if the shy man's life was wholly consumed with science and the mysteries of the ocean.

The sheriff hung up. He walked back into the lab. "You have any more ideas, Lincoln?"

Rhyme nodded at the evidence chart.


FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

MILL


Brown Paint on Pants

Sundew Plant

Clay

Peat Moss

Fruit Juice

Paper Fibers

Stinkball Bait

Sugar

Camphene

Alcohol

Kerosene

Yeast


He reiterated what they knew about the house where Mary Beth was being kept. "There's a Carolina bay on the way to or near the place. Half the marked passages in his insect books are about camouflage and the brown paint on his pants's the color of tree bark so the place is probably in or next to a forest. The camphene lamps are from the 1800s so the place is old, probably Victorian era. But the rest of the trace isn't much help. The yeast would be from the mill. The paper fibers could be from anywhere. The fruit juice and sugar? From food or drinks Garrett had with him. I just can't -"

The phone rang.

Rhyme's left ring finger twitched on the ECU and he answered the call.

"Hello?" he said into the speakerphone.

" Lincoln."

He recognized the soft, exhausted voice of Mel Cooper.

"What do you have, Mel? I need some good news."

"I hope it's good. That key you found? We've been looking through sourcebooks and databases all night. Finally tracked it down."

"What is it?"

"It's to a trailer made by the McPherson Deluxe Mobile Home Company. The trailers were manufactured from 1946 through the early '70s. Company's out of business but according to the guide, the serial number on the key you've got fits a trailer that was made in '69."

"Any description?"

"No pictures in the guide."

"Hell. Tell me, does one live in these things in a trailer park? Or drive 'em around like a Winnebago?"

"Live in them, I'd guess. They measure eight by twenty. Not the sort of thing you'd cruise around in. Anyway, they're not motorized. You have to tow it."

"Thanks, Mel. Get some sleep."

Rhyme shut the phone off. "What do you think, Jim? Any trailer parks around here?"

The sheriff seemed doubtful. "There're a couple along Route 17 and 158. But they aren't even close to where Garrett and Amelia were headed. And they're crowded. Hard to hide out in a place like that. Should I send somebody to check them out?"

"How far?"

"Seventy, eighty miles."

"No. Garrett probably found a trailer abandoned someplace in the woods and took it over." Rhyme glanced at the map. Thinking: And it's parked somewhere in a hundred square miles of wilderness.

Wondering too: Had the boy gotten out of the handcuffs? Did he have Sachs' gun? Was she falling asleep just now, her guard down, Garrett waiting for the moment when she slipped into unconsciousness. He'd rise, crawl closer to her with a rock or a hornets' nest…

The anxiety racing through him, he stretched his head back, heard a bone pop. He froze, worried about the excruciating contractures that occasionally racked the muscles that were still connected to extant nerves. It seemed completely unfair that the same trauma that made most of your body numb also subjected the sensate part to agonizing tremors.

There was no pain this time but Thom noticed the alarm on his boss's face.

The aide said, " Lincoln, that's it… I'm taking your blood pressure and you're going to bed. No argument."

"All right, Thom, all right. Only we have to make one phone call first."

"Look at what time it is… Who's awake now?"

"It's not a matter of who's awake now," Rhyme said wearily. "It's a matter of who's about to be awake."


• • •

Midnight, in the swamp.

The sounds of insects. The fast shadows of bats. An owl or two. The icy light of the moon.

Lucy and the other deputies hiked four miles over to Route 30, where a camper awaited. Bell had pulled strings and "requisitioned" the vehicle from Fred Fisher Winnebagos. Steve Farr had driven it over here to meet the search party and give them a place to stay for the night.

They stepped inside the cramped quarters. Jesse, Trey and Ned hungrily ate the roast beef sandwiches that Farr had brought. Lucy drank a bottle of water, passed on the food. Farr and Bell – bless their hearts – had also dug up clean uniforms for the searchers.

She called in and told Jim Bell that they'd tracked the pair to an A-frame vacation house, which had been broken into. "Looked like they'd been watching TV, you can believe that."

But it had been too dark to follow the trail and they'd decided to wait until dawn to resume the search.

Lucy picked up the clean clothes and stepped inside the bathroom. In the tiny shower stall she let the weak stream of water course over her body. Her hands started with her hair and face and neck and then, as always, tentatively washed her flat chest, feeling the ridges of scar, then grew more certain as they moved to her belly and thighs.

She wondered again why she had such an aversion to silicone or the reconstructive surgery that, the doctor explained, took fat from her thighs or butt and remade the breasts. Even nipples could be reconstructed – or tattooed on.

Because, she told herself, it was fake. Because it wasn't real.

And, so, why bother?

But then, Lucy thought, look at that Lincoln Rhyme. He was only a partial man. His legs and arms were fake – a wheelchair and an aide. But thinking about him reminded her of Amelia Sachs and anger seared her again. She pushed those thoughts aside, dried herself and pulled on a T-shirt, thinking absently about the drawer of bras in the dresser in the guest room of her house – and recalled that she'd been meaning to throw them out for two years. But, for some reason, never had. Then she put on her uniform blouse and slacks. She stepped out of the bathroom. Jesse was hanging up the phone.

"Anything?"

"No," he said. "They're still working on the evidence, Jim and Mr. Rhyme."

Lucy shook her head at the food Jesse offered her then sat down at the table, pulled her service revolver out of its holster. "Steve?" she asked Farr.

The crew-cut young man looked up from the newspaper he was reading, lifted an eyebrow.

"You bring what I asked for?"

"Oh, yeah." He dug in the glove compartment and handed her a yellow-and-green box of Remington bullets. She ejected the round-point cartridges from her pistol and Speedloaders and replaced them with the new bullets – hollow points, which have more stopping power and cause much more damage to soft tissue when they hit a human being.

Jesse Corn watched her closely but it was a moment before he spoke, as she knew he'd do. "Amelia's not dangerous," he said, in a low voice, the words meant for her only.

Lucy set the gun down and looked into his eyes. "Jesse, everybody said Mary Beth was at the ocean but turns out she's in the opposite direction. Everybody said Garrett was just a stupid kid but he's smart as a snake and's conned us a half-dozen times. We don't know anything anymore. Maybe Garrett's got a store of weapons someplace and has some plan or another to take us out when we walk into his trap."

"But Amelia's with him. She wouldn't let that happen."

"Amelia's a damn traitor and we can't trust her an inch. Listen, Jesse, I saw that look on your face when you saw she wasn't under the boat. You were relieved. I know you think you like her and you're hoping she likes you… No, no, let me finish. But she busted a killer outa jail. And if you'd been the one out there in the river instead of Ned, Amelia'd have shot at you just as fast."

He began to protest but the chill look in her eyes kept him quiet.

"It's easy to get infatuated with somebody like that," Lucy continued. "She's pretty and she's from someplace else, someplace exotic… But she doesn't understand life down here. And she doesn't understand Garrett. You know him – that's one sick boy and it's just a fluke that he's not doing life right now."

"I know Garrett's dangerous. I'm not arguing there. It's Amelia I'm thinking of."

"Well, it's us that I'm thinking of and everybody else in Blackwater Landing that boy could be planning on killing tomorrow or next week or next year if he gets away from us. Which he might just do, thanks to her. Now, I need to know if I can count on you. If not, you can go on home and we'll have Jim send somebody else in your place."

Jesse glanced at the box of shells. Then back to her. "You can, Lucy. You can count on me."

"Good. You better mean that. 'Cause at first light I'm tracking them down and bringing 'em both back. I hope alive but, I tell you, that's become optional."


• • •

Mary Beth McConnell sat alone in the cabin, exhausted but afraid to sleep.

Hearing noises everywhere.

She'd given up on the couch. She was afraid that if she remained there she'd stretch out and fall asleep then wake to find the Missionary and Tom gazing at her through the window, about to break in. So she was perched at a dining-room chair, which was about as comfortable as brick.

Noises…

On the roof, on the porch, in the woods.

She didn't know what time it was. She was afraid to even push the light button on her wristwatch to glimpse the face – out of the crazy fear that the flash would somehow beckon to her attackers.

Exhausted. Too tired even to wonder again why this had happened to her, what she might have done to prevent it.

No good deed goes unpunished…

She stared out at the field in front of the cabin, now completely black. The window was like a frame around her fate: Whom would it show approaching through the field? Her killers or her rescuers?

She listened.

What was that noise: A branch on bark? Or the rasp of a match?

What was that dot of light in the woods: A firefly, or a campfire?

That motion: A deer goaded to run by the scent of bobcat or the Missionary and his friend settling in around the fire to drink beer and eat food then prowl through the woods to come for her and satisfy their bodies in other ways?

Mary Beth McConnell couldn't tell. Tonight, as in so much of life, she sensed only ambiguity.

You find relics of long-dead settlers but you wonder if maybe your theory is completely wrong.

Your father dies of cancer – a long, wasting death that the doctors say is inevitable but you think: Maybe it wasn't.

Two men are out there in the woods, planning to rape and kill you.

But maybe not.

Maybe they've given up. Maybe they're passed out on moonshine. Or were scared off at the thought of the consequences, deciding that their fat wives or callused hands are safer, or easier, than what they had planned with her.

Spread-eagle at your place…

A sharp crack filled the night. She jumped at the sound. A gunshot. It seemed to come from where she'd seen the firelight. A moment later there was a second shot. Closer.

Breathing heavily in fear, gripping the coup stick. Unable to look out the black window, unable not to. Terrified that she'd see Tom's pasty face appearing slowly in the frame, grinning. We'll be back.

The wind was up, bending the trees, the brush, the grass.

She thought she heard a man laughing, the sound soon lost in the hollow wind like the call of one of the Manitou spirits of the Weapemeocs.

She thought she heard a man calling, "Get yourself ready, get yourself ready…"

But maybe not.

• • •

"You hear shots?" Rich Culbeau asked Harris Tomel.

They sat around a dying campfire. They were uneasy and not nearly as drunk as if this'd been a normal hunting trip, not nearly as drunk as they wanted to be. The 'shine just wasn't taking.

"Pistol," Tomel said. "Large caliber. Ten millimeter or a.44,.45. Automatic."

"Bullshit," Culbeau said. "You can't tell it's an automatic or not."

"Can," Tomel lectured. "A revolver's louder – because of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. Logical."

"Bullshit," Culbeau repeated. Then asked, "How far?"

"Humid air. It's night… I make it four, five miles." Tomel sighed. "I want this thing to be over with. I'm sick of it."

"I hear that," Culbeau said. "Was easier in Tanner's Corner. Getting complicated now."

"Damn bugs," Tomel said, swatting a mosquito.

"Whatta you think somebody's shooting for this time of night? It's almost one."

"Raccoon in the garbage, black bear in a tent, man humping somebody else's wife."

Culbeau nodded. "Look – Sean's asleep. That man sleeps anytime, anyplace." He kicked through the embers to cool them.

"He's on fucking medication."

"He is? I didn't know that."

"That's why he sleeps anytime, anyplace. He's acting funny, don'tcha think?" Tomel asked, glancing at the skinny man as if he were a snoozing snake.

"Liked him better when you couldn't figure him out. Now he's all serious, it scares the shit outa me. Holding that gun like it's his dick and all."

"You're right 'bout that," Tomel muttered then stared into the murky forest for several minutes. He sighed then said, "Hey, you got the Six-Twelve? I'm getting eaten alive here. And hand me that bottle of 'shine while you're at it."


• • •

Amelia Sachs opened her eyes at the sound of the pistol shot.

She looked into the bedroom of the trailer, where Garrett was asleep on the mattress. He hadn't heard the noise.

Another shot.

Why was somebody shooting this late? she wondered.

The shots reminded her of the incident on the river – Lucy and the others firing at the boat they thought Sachs and Garrett were under. She pictured the geysers of water flying into the air from the stunning shotgun blasts.

She listened carefully but heard no more shots. Heard nothing other than the wind. And the cicadas, of course.

They live this totally weird life… The nymphs dig into the ground and stay there for, like, twenty years before they hatch… All those years in the ground, just hiding, before they come out and become adults.

But soon her mind was occupied once again with what she'd been considering before the gunshots interrupted her thoughts.

Amelia Sachs had been thinking of an empty chair.

Not Dr. Penny's therapy technique. Or what Garrett had told her about his father and that terrible night five years ago. No, she was thinking of a different chair – Lincoln Rhyme's red Storm Arrow wheelchair.

That's what they were doing down here in North Carolina, after all. Rhyme was risking everything, his life, what was left of his health, his and Sachs' life together, so that he could move closer to climbing out of that chair. Leaving it behind him, empty.

And, lying here in this foul trailer, a felon, alone in her own knuckle time, Amelia Sachs finally admitted to herself what had troubled her so about Rhyme's insistence on the operation. Of course, she was worried that he'd die on the table. Or that the operation would make him worse. Or that it wouldn't work at all and he'd be plunged into depression.

But those weren't her main fears. That wasn't why she'd done everything she could to stop him from having the operation. No, no – what scared her the most was that the operation would succeed.

Oh, Rhyme, don't you understand? I don't want you to change. I love you the way you are. If you were like everyone else what would happen to us?

You say, "It'll always be you and me, Sachs." But the you and me is based on who we are now. Me and my bloody nails and my itchy need to move, move, move… You and your damaged body and elegant mind that roams faster and further than I ever could in my stripped and rigged Camaro.

That mind of yours that holds me tighter than the most passionate lover ever could.

And if you become normal again? When you're your own arms and legs, Rhyme, then why would you want me? Why would you need me? I'd become just another portable, a beat cop with some talent for forensics. You'll meet another one of the treacherous women who've derailed your life in the past – another selfish wife, another married lover – and you'll fade away from me the way Lucy Kerr's husband left after her surgery.

I want you the way you are…

She actually shuddered at how appallingly selfish this thought was. Yet she couldn't deny it.

Stay in your chair, Rhyme! I don't want it empty… I want a life with you, a life the way it's always been. I want children with you, children who'll grow up to know you exactly the way you are.

Amelia Sachs found she was staring at the black ceiling. She closed her eyes. But it was an hour later before the sound of the wind and the cicadas, their thoracic plates singing like monotonous violins, finally seduced her to sleep.

33

Sachs woke just after dawn to the droning noise – which in her dream had been placid locusts but turned out to be her Casio wristwatch's alarm. She clicked it off.

Her body was in agony, an arthritic's response to sleeping on a thin pad over a riveted, metal floor.

But she felt oddly buoyant. Low sunlight streamed through the windows of the trailer and she took this as a good omen. Today they were going to find Mary Beth McConnell and return to Tanner's Corner with her. She'd confirm Garrett's story and Jim Bell and Lucy Kerr could start the search for the real killer – the man in the tan overalls.

She watched Garrett awaken in the bedroom and roll upright on the saggy mattress. With his lengthy fingers he combed his mussed hair into place. He looks just like any other teenager in the morning, she thought. Gangly and cute and sleepy. About to get dressed, about to take the bus to school and see his friends, to learn things in class, to flirt with girls, toss footballs. Watching him look around groggily for his shirt, she noticed his skinny frame and worried about getting him some good food – cereal, milk, fruit – and washing his clothes, making sure he took a shower. This, she thought, is what it would be like to have children of your own. Not to borrow youngsters from friends for a few hours – like her goddaughter, Amy's girl. But to be there every day when they wake up, with their messy rooms and difficult adolescent attitudes, to fix them meals, to buy them clothes, to argue with them, to take care of them. To be the hub of their lives.

"Morning." She smiled.

He smiled back. "We gotta go," he said. "Gotta get to Mary Beth. Been away from her for too long. She's got to be totally scared and thirsty."

Sachs climbed unsteadily to her feet.

He glanced at his chest, at the poison oak splotches, and seemed embarrassed. He pulled his shirt on quickly. "I'm going outside. Have to, you know, take care of business. And I'm gonna leave a couple of empty hornets' nests around. Might slow 'em up – if they come this way." Garrett stepped outside but returned just a moment later. He left a cup of water on the table beside her. Said shyly: "This's for you." He stepped out again.

She drank it down. Longing for a toothbrush and time for a shower. Maybe when they got to -

"It's him!" a man's voice called in a whisper.

Sachs froze, looked out the window. She saw nothing.

But from a tall stand of bushes near the trailer the forced whisper continued, "I've got him in my sights. I've got a clear shot."

The voice was familiar and she decided it sounded like Culbeau's friend, Sean O'Sarian. The skinny one. The redneck trio had found them – they were going to kill the boy or torture him into telling where Mary Beth was so they could get the reward.

Garrett hadn't heard the voice. Sachs could see him – he was about thirty feet away, setting an empty hornets' nest on the trail. She heard footsteps in the bushes pushing forward toward the clearing where the boy was.

She grabbed the Smith & Wesson and stepped quietly outside. She crouched, motioning desperately to Garrett. He didn't see her.

The footsteps in the bushes grew closer.

"Garrett," she whispered.

He turned, saw Sachs motioning for him to join her. He frowned, seeing the urgency in her eyes. Then he glanced to his left, into the bushes, and she saw terror blossom in his face. He held his hands out, a defensive gesture. He cried, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me!"

Sachs dropped into a crouch, curled her finger around the trigger, cocked the pistol and aimed toward the bushes.

It happened so quickly…

Garrett falling to his belly in fear, crying out, "Don't, don't!"

Amelia lifting her pistol, two-handed combat stance, pressure on the trigger, waiting for a target to present…

The man bursting from the bushes into the clearing, gun raised toward Garrett…

Just as Deputy Ned Spoto turned the corner of the trailer right beside Sachs, blinked in surprise and leapt toward her, arms outstretched. Startled, Sachs stumbled away from him. Her weapon fired, bucking hard in her hand.

And thirty feet away – beyond the faint cloud of smoke from the muzzle – she saw the bullet from her gun strike the forehead of the man who'd been in the bushes – not Sean O'Sarian at all but Jesse Corn. A black dot appeared above the young deputy's eye and, as his head jerked back, a horrible pink cloud puffed out behind him. Without a sound he dropped straight to the ground.

Sachs gasped, staring at the body, which twitched once and then lay completely still. She was breathless. She dropped to her knees, the gun tumbling from her hand.

"Oh, Jesus," Ned muttered, also staring in shock at the body. Before the deputy could recover and draw his gun, Garrett rushed him. The boy snagged Sachs' pistol from the ground and pointed it at Ned's head, then took the deputy's weapon and flung it into the bushes.

"Lie down!" Garrett raged at him. "On your face!"

"You killed him, you killed him," Ned muttered.

"Now!"

Ned did as he was told, tears running down his tanned cheeks.

"Jesse!" Lucy Kerr's voice called from nearby. "Where are you? Who's shooting?"

"No, no, no…" Sachs moaned. Watching an astonishing amount of blood pour from the dead deputy's shattered skull.

Garrett Hanlon glanced at Jesse's body. Then past it – toward the sound of approaching feet. He put his arm around Sachs. "We have to go."

When she didn't answer, when she simply stared, completely numb, at the scene in front of her – the end of the deputy's life, and the end of her own – Garrett helped her to her feet then took her hand and pulled her after him. They vanished into the woods.

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