The Empty Chair

“They think I’m fucked-up. They think I’m stupid. When you’re different that’s what people think. But I’m not.”
    “But we are going to Mary Beth?”
    “Sure. Just not the way they think.”
    Once again Garrett’s confidence and caginess troubled her but her attention slipped back to the road and they continued on in silence. In twenty minutes they were within a half mile of the intersection where Canal Road ended at Route 112—the place where Billy Stail had been killed.
    “Listen!” he whispered, gripping her arm with his cuffed hands.
    She cocked her head but heard nothing.
    “Into the bushes.” They slipped off the road into a stand of scratchy holly trees.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Shhhh.”
    A moment later a large flatbed truck came into view behind them.
    “That’s from the factory,” he whispered. “Up ahead there.”
    The sign on the truck was for Davett Industries. She recognized the name of the man who’d helped them with the evidence. When it was past they returned to the road.
    “How did you hear that?”
    “Oh, you gotta be cautious all the time. Like moths.”
    “Moths? What do you mean?”
    “Moths’re pretty cool. They, like, sense ultrasound waves. They have these radar detector things. When a bat shoots out a beam of sound to find them, moths fold their wings and drop to the ground and hide. Magnetic and electronic fields too—insects can feel them. Like, things we aren’t even aware of. You know you can lead some insects around with radio waves? Or make ’em go away too, depending on the frequency.” He fell silent, head turned away, frozen in position. Then he looked back at her. He said, “You have to listen all the time. Otherwise they can sneak up on you.”
    “Who?” she asked uncertainly.
    “You know, everybody.” Then he nodded up the road, toward Blackwater Landing and the Paquenoke. “Ten minutes and we’ll be safe. They’ll never find us.”
    She was wondering what, realistically, would happen to Garrett when they found Mary Beth and returned to Tanner’s Corner. There would still be some charges against him. But if Mary Beth corroborated the story of the real murderer—the man in the tan overalls—then the D.A. might accept that Garrett had kidnapped her for her own good. Defense of others was recognized by all criminal courts as a justification. And he’d probably drop the charges.
    And who was the man in the overalls? Why was he prowling the forests of Blackwater Landing? Had he been the one who’d killed those other residents over the past few years and was trying to blame Garrett for the deaths? Had he scared young Todd Wilkes into killing himself? Was there a drug ring that Billy Stail had been involved in? She knew that drug problems in small towns were as serious as in the city.
    Then something else occurred to her: that Garrett could identify Billy Stail’s real murderer—the man in the overalls, who by now might’ve heard about the escape and be out looking for Garrett and for her too. To silence them. Maybe they should—
    Suddenly Garrett froze, an alarmed look on his face. He spun around.
    “What?” she whispered.
    “Car, moving fast.”
    “Where?”
    “Shhh.”
    A flash of light from behind them caught their eyes.
    You have to listen all the time. Otherwise they can sneak up on you.
    “No!” Garrett cried in dismay and pulled her into a stand of sedge.
    Two Paquenoke County squad cars were racing along Canal Road. She couldn’t see who was driving the first one but the deputy in the passenger seat—the black deputy who’d set up the chalkboard for Rhyme—wassquinting as he scanned the woods. He held a shotgun. Lucy Kerr was driving the second car. Jesse Corn sat beside her.
    Garrett and Sachs lay flat, hidden by broom grass.
    Moths fold their wings and drop to the ground. . . .
    The cars sped past and skidded to a stop where Canal Road met Route 112. They parked perpendicular to the road, blocking both lanes, and the deputies got out, weapons ready.
    “Roadblock,” she muttered. “Hell.”
    “No, no, no,” Garrett muttered, dumbfounded. “They were supposed to think we were going the other way—east. They had to think that!”
    A passenger car passed them, slowing at the end of the road. Lucy flagged down the car and questioned the driver. Then they made him get out of the vehicle and open the trunk, which they searched carefully.
    Garrett huddled in the nest of grass. “How the fuck d’they figure