The Empty Chair

herself. And she reverently set the flowers in the crook of a gnarly black willow not far from the eerie outline of the sprawled body, spattered with blood dark as the river water. She began praying once more.

    Across the Paquenoke River from the crime scene, Deputy Ed Schaeffer leaned against an oak tree and ignored the early morning mosquitoes fluttering near his arms in his short-sleeved uniform shirt. He shrank down to a crouch and scanned the floor of the woods again for signs of the boy.
    He had to steady himself against a branch; he was dizzy from exhaustion. Like most of the deputies in the county sheriff’s department he’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, searching for Mary Beth McConnell and the boy who’d kidnapped her. But while, one by one, the others had gone home to shower and eat and get a few hours’ sleep Ed had stayed with the search. He was the oldest deputy on the force and the biggest (fifty-one years old and two hundred sixty-four pounds of mostly unuseful weight) but fatigue, hunger and stiff joints weren’t going to stop him from continuing to look for the girl.
    The deputy examined the ground again.
    He pushed the transmit button of his radio. “Jesse, it’s me. You there?”
    “Go ahead.”
    He whispered, “I got footprints here. They’re fresh. An hour old, tops.”
    “Him, you think?”
    “Who else’d it be? This time of morning, this side of the Paquo?”
    “You were right, looks like,” Jesse Corn said. “I didn’t believe it at first but you hit this one on the head.”
    It had been Ed’s theory that the boy would come back here. Not because of the cliché—about returning to the scene of the crime—but because Blackwater Landing had always been his stalking ground and whatever kind of trouble he’d gotten himself into over the years he always came back here.
    Ed looked around, fear now replacing exhaustion and discomfort as he gazed at the infinite tangle of leaves and branches surrounding him. Jesus, the deputy thought, the boy’s here someplace. He said into his radio, “The tracks look to be moving toward you but I can’t tell for sure. He was walking mostly on leaves. You keep an eye out. I’m going to see where he was coming from.”
    Knees creaking, Ed rose to his feet and, as quietly as a big man could, followed the boy’s footsteps back in the direction they’d come—farther into the woods, away from the river.
    He followed the boy’s trail about a hundred feet and saw it led to an old hunting blind—a gray shack big enough for three or four hunters. The gun slots were dark and the place seemed to be deserted. Okay, he thought. Okay. . . . He’s probably not in there. But still . . .
    Breathing hard, Ed Schaeffer did something he hadn’t done in nearly a year and a half: unholstered his weapon. He gripped the revolver in a sweaty hand and started forward, eyes flipping back and forth dizzily between theblind and the ground, deciding where best to step to keep his approach silent.
    Did the boy have a gun? he wondered, realizing that he was as exposed as a soldier landing on a bald beachhead. He imagined a rifle barrel appearing fast in one of the slots, aiming down on him. Ed felt an ill flush of panic and he sprinted, in a crouch, the last ten feet to the side of the shack. He pressed against the weathered wood as he caught his breath and listened carefully. He heard nothing inside but the faint buzzing of insects.
    Okay, he told himself. Take a look. Fast.
    Before his courage broke, Ed rose and looked through a gun slot.
    No one.
    Then he squinted at the floor. His face broke into a smile at what he saw. “Jesse,” he called into his radio excitedly.
    “Go ahead.”
    “I’m at a blind maybe a quarter mile north of the river. I think the kid spent the night here. There’s some empty food wrappers and water bottles. A roll of duct tape too. And guess what? I see a map.”
    “A map?”
    “Yeah. Looks to be of the area. Might show us where he’s got Mary Beth. What do you think about that?”
    But Ed Schaeffer never found out his fellow deputy’s reaction to this good piece of police work; the woman’s screaming filled the woods and Jesse Corn’s radio went silent.

    Lydia Johansson stumbled backward and screamed again as the boy leapt from the tall sedge and grabbed her arms with his pinching fingers.
    “Oh, Jesus Lord, please don’t hurt me!” she begged.
    “Shut up,” he raged in a whisper, looking around,