Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

"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.