The Empty Chair

the chair. Eyes on the evidence chart, eyes on the map, eyes back to the book. And all the while the green-and-black nutshell of a fly zipped around the room with an unfocused desperation that seemed to match his own.

    An animal nearby darted across the path and vanished.
    “What was that?” Sachs asked, nodding at it. To her the creature had looked like a cross between a dog and a large alley cat.
    “Gray fox,” Jesse said. “Don’t see ’em too often. But then I don’t usually go for walks north of the Paquo.”
    They moved slowly as they tried to follow the frail indications of Garrett’s passage. And all the while they kept their eyes out for more deadfall traps and ambush from the surrounding trees and brush.
    Once again Sachs felt the foreboding that had dogged her since they’d driven past the child’s funeral that morning. They’d left the pines behind and were in a different type of forest. The trees were what you’d see in a tropical jungle. When she asked about them Lucy told her they were tupelo gum, old-growth bald cypress, cedar. They were bound together with webby moss and clinging vines that absorbed sound like thick fog and accentuated her sense of claustrophobia. There were mushrooms and mold and fungus everywhere and scummy marshes all around them. The aroma in the air was that of decay.
    Sachs looked at the trodden ground. She asked Jesse, “We’re miles from town. Who makes these paths?”
    He shrugged. “Mostly bad pay.”
    “What’s that?” she asked, recalling that Rich Culbeau had used the phrase.
    “You know, somebody who doesn’t pay his debts. Basically, it just means trash. Moonshiners, kids, swamp people, PCP cookers.”
    Ned Spoto took a drink of water and said, “We get calls sometimes: there’s been a shooting, somebody’s screaming, calls for help, mysterious lights flashing signals. Stuff like that. Only by the time we get out here, there’s nothing. . . . No body, no perp, no complaining witness. Sometimes we find a blood trail but it don’t lead anywhere. We make the run—we have to—but nobody in the department ever comes out in these parts alone.”
    Jesse said, “You feel different out here. You feel that—this sounds funny—but you feel that life’s different, cheaper. I’d rather be arresting a couple of armed kids pumped up on angel dust at a mini-mart than come out here on a call. At least there, there’re rules. You kinda know what to expect. Out here . . .” He shrugged.
    Lucy nodded. “That’s true. And normal rules don’t apply to anybody north of the Paquo. Us or them. You can see yourself shooting before you read anybody their rights and that’d be perfectly all right. Hard to explain.”
    Sachs didn’t like the edgy talk. If the other deputies hadn’t been so somber and unnerved themselves she would have thought they were putting on a show to scare the city girl.
    Finally they stopped at a place where the path branched out into three directions. They walked about fifty feet down each but could find no sign of which one Garrett and Lydia had chosen. They returned to the crossroads.
    She heard Rhyme’s words echoing in her mind. Be careful, Sachs, but move fast. I don’t think we have much time left.
    Move fast. . . .
    But there was no hint of where they ought to be moving to and as Sachs looked down the choked paths it seemed impossible that anyone, even Lincoln Rhyme, could figure out where their prey had gone.
    Then her cell phone rang and both Lucy and Jesse Corn looked at her expectantly, hoping, as did Sachs, that Rhyme had come up with a new suggestion about which way to go.
    Sachs answered, listened to the criminalist and then nodded. Hung up. She took a breath and looked at the three deputies.
    “What?” asked Jesse Corn.
    “Lincoln and Jim just heard from the hospital about Ed Schaeffer. Looks like he woke up long enough to say, ‘I love my kids,’ and then he died. . . . They thought he’d said something earlier about ‘Olive’ Street but it turned out he was just trying to say ‘I love.’ That’s all he said. I’m so sorry.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” Ned muttered.
    Lucy lowered her head and Jesse put his arm around her shoulders. “What do we do now?” he asked.
    Lucy looked up. Sachs could see tears in her eyes. “We’re gonna get that boy, that’s what,” she said with a grim determination. “We’re going to pick the most logical path and keep in that direction till we find him. And