The Empty Chair

nodded.
    “Then let’s go.”
    The four deputies started over the fifty yards of unprotected bridge—but they didn’t walk in a cluster. They were in a long line so that if Amelia Sachs were to shoot again she couldn’t hit more than one of them before the others got to cover and could return fire. The formation was Trey’s idea, one that he got from a World War II movie, and because he’d thought of it he assumed he’d take the point position. But that was the spot Lucy Kerr insisted on taking for herself.

    “You came damn close to hitting him.”
    Harris Tomel said, “No way.”
    But Culbeau persisted. “I said, scare ’em. You’d hit Ned, you know what kinda shit we’d be in?”
    “I know what I’m doing, Rich. Give me a little credit, okay?”
    Fucking schoolboy, Culbeau thought.
    The three men were on the north shore of the Paquo, trekking along a path that followed the river.
    In fact, while Culbeau was pissed that Tomel had fired too close to the deputy swimming out to the boat, he was sure the sniping had worked. Lucy and the other deputies’d be skittish as sheep now and would move nice and slow.
    The shooting also had another beneficial effect—Sean O’Sarian was spooked and was being quiet for a change.
    They walked for twenty minutes then Tomel asked Culbeau, “You know the boy’s going in this direction?”
    “Yep.”
    “But you don’t have any idea where he’s gonna end up.”
    “ ’Course not,” Culbeau said. “If I did we could just go there direct, right?”
    Come on, schoolboy. Use your fucking noggin.
    “But—”
    “Don’t worry. We’re gonna find him.”
    “Can I have some water?” O’Sarian finally asked.
    “Water? You want water?”
    O’Sarian said complacently, “Yeah, that’s what I’d like.”
    Culbeau glanced at him suspiciously and handed him a bottle. He’d never known the scrawny young man to actually drink something that wasn’t beer, whisky or ’shine. He drank it down, wiped a mouth surrounded by freckles and tossed the bottle aside.
    Culbeau sighed. He said sarcastically, “Hey now, Sean, you sure you want to leave something with your fingerprints on the trail?”
    “Oh, right.” The skinny man scurried into the brush and retrieved it. “Sorry.”
    Sorry? Sean O’Sarian apologizing? Culbeau stared fora moment in disbelief then nodded them all forward again.
    They came to a bend in the river and, being on high ground, they could see for miles downstream.
    Tomel said, “Hey, look up there. There’s a house. Bet the boy and the redhead’ve headed that way.”
    Culbeau sighted through the ’scope of his deer rifle. About two miles down the valley was an A-frame vacation house, just about on the river. It’d be a logical hiding place for the boy and the woman cop to hole up. He nodded. “Bet they are. Let’s go.”

    Downstream from the Hobeth Bridge, the Paquenoke River makes a sharp bend to the north.
    It’s shallow here, near the shore, and the muddy shoals are piled high with driftwood and vegetation and trash.
    Like skiffs adrift, two human forms floating in the water now missed the turn and were eased by the current into this refuse heap.
    Amelia Sachs let go of the plastic water jug—her improvised flotation device—and reached out a wrinkled hand to grip a branch. She then realized that this wasn’t a very smart thing to do because her pockets were filled with rocks for ballast and she felt herself being tugged downward into the dusky water. But she straightened her legs and found the river bottom only four feet below the surface. She stood unsteadily and slogged forward. Garrett appeared beside her a moment later and helped her out of the water onto the muddy ground.
    They crawled up a slight incline, through a tangle of bushes, and collapsed in a grassy clearing, lay there for a few minutes, caught their breath. She pulled the plastic bag out of her shirt. It had leaked slightly but there wasn’t any serious water damage. She handed him hisinsect book and opened the cylinder of her gun then rested it on a clump of brittle, yellow grass to dry.
    She’d been wrong about what Garrett had planned. They had slipped empty water jugs under the overturned boat for buoyancy but then he’d shoved it into midstream without getting underneath it. He’d told her to fill her pockets with rocks. He’d done the same and they hurried downstream past the boat, fifty feet or so, and slipped into the water, each holding a half-full