Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

I had to do it, of course.

But once I'd saved him, I was his…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stammered, "Who are you?"

"Virginia Dare," the deer whispered and died.

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

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

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

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