The Empty Chair

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.”

. . . chapter twenty-seven
    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 smalloutboard 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