The Empty Chair (31 page)

"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. Magneticand 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.