Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

"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."