The Empty Chair

speaking to the children she’d been so certain she and Buddy would one day have.
    Sometimes, after an assignment took her into the Carolina hinterland, serving a warrant or inquiring why the Honda or Toyota hidden in someone’s garage happened to be owned by someone else, Lucy would notice a fledgling plant and, the police work disposed of, would uproot it and take it home with her like a foundling. She’d adopted her Solomon’s seal this way. A tuckahoe plant too. And a beautiful indigo bush, which had grown six feet tall under her care.
    Her eyes now slipped to what she was presently passing on this anxious pursuit of theirs: an elderberry, a mountain holly, plume grass. They passed a nice evening primrose, then some cattails and wild rice—taller than any of the search party and with leaves sharp as knives. And here was a squaw root, a parasitic herb. Which Lucy Kerr also knew by another name: cancer root. She glanced at that one once then looked back to the trail.
    The path led to a steep hill—a series of rocks about twenty feet high. Lucy scaled the incline easily but at the top she stopped. Thinking, No, something’s wrong here.
    Beside her, Amelia Sachs climbed up to the plateau, paused. A moment later Jesse and Ned appeared. Jesse was breathing hard but Ned, a swimmer and outdoorsman, was taking the hike in stride.
    “What is it?” Amelia asked Lucy, assessing the frown.
    “This doesn’t make any sense. For Garrett to come this way.”
    “We’ve been following the path, like Mr. Rhyme told us,” Jesse said. “It’s the only stretch of pine we’ve come across. Garrett’s prints were leading this way.”
    “They were. But we haven’t seen them for a while.”
    “Why don’t you think he’d come this way?” Amelia asked.
    “Look what’s growing here.” She pointed. “More and more swamp plants. And now we’re on this rise we can see the ground better—look how marshy it’s getting. Come on, think about it, Jesse. Where’s this going to get Garrett? We’re headed right for the Great Dismal.”
    “What’s that?” Amelia asked her. “The Great Dismal?”
    “A huge swamp, one of the biggest on the East Coast,” Ned explained.
    Lucy continued, “There’s no cover there, no houses, no roads. The best he could do would be to slog his way into Virginia but that’d take days.”
    Ned Spoto added, “And this time of year, they don’t make enough insect repellent to keep you from getting eaten alive. Not to mention snakes.”
    “Anyplace around here they could hide in? Caves? Houses?” Sachs looked around.
    Ned said, “No caverns. Maybe a few old buildings. But what’s happened is the water table’s changed. The swamp’s coming this way and a lot of the old houses and cabins’re submerged. Lucy’s right. If Garrett came this way he’s heading for a dead end.”
    Lucy said, “I think we ought to turn around.”
    She thought that Amelia’d throw a hissy fit at this suggestion but the woman simply pulled out her cell phone and made a call. She said into the phone, “We’re in the pine forest, Rhyme. There’s a path but we can’t find any sign that Garrett came along here. Lucy says it doesn’t make any sense for him to come this way. She says it’s mostly swamp northeast of here. There’s no place for him to go.”
    Lucy said, “I’m thinking he’d head west. Or south, back across the river.”
    “That way he could get to Millerton,” Jesse suggested.
    Lucy nodded. “Couple of big factories around there closed when the companies took their business to Mexico. Banks foreclosed on a lot of property. There’re dozens of abandoned houses he could hide in.”
    “Or south east, ” Jesse suggested. “That’s where I’d go—follow Route 112 or the rail line. There’s a slew of old houses and barns that way too.”
    Amelia repeated this to Rhyme.
    As Lucy Kerr thought: What a strange man he is, so terribly afflicted and yet so supremely confident.
    The policewoman from New York listened then hung up. “Lincoln says to keep going. The evidence doesn’t suggest he went in those directions.”
    “Not like there aren’t any pine trees to the west and south,” Lucy snapped.
    But the redhead was shaking her head. “That might be logical but it’s not what the evidence shows. We keep going.”
    Ned and Jesse were looking from one woman to the other. Lucy glanced at Jesse’s face and saw the ridiculous crush; she obviously wasn’t going to get any support