The Empty Chair

here.” She hung up.
    A moment later Bell’s phone rang. He listened. Looked up at Rhyme. “Three more deputies just got to CanalRoad, about a mile south of 112. They’re going to do a sweep north on foot toward Lucy and the others and pin Garrett and Sachs in.” He listened into the phone for a moment longer. Glanced at Rhyme, then away, and continued into the phone: “Yeah, she’s armed . . . And, yeah, I hear tell she’s a good shot.”

    Sachs and Garrett crouched in the bushes, watching the passenger cars waiting to get through the roadblock.
    Then, behind them, another sound that even without a moth’s sensitive hearing Sachs could detect: sirens. They saw a second set of flashing lights—coming from the other—the southern—end of Canal Road. Another squad car parked and three more deputies got out, also armed with shotguns. They started slowly through the bushes, moving toward Garrett and Sachs. In ten minutes they’d walk right through the nest of sedge where the fugitives were hiding.
    Garrett looked at her expectantly.
    “What?” she asked.
    He glanced at her gun.
    “Aren’t you going to use that?”
    She stared at him in shock. “No. Of course not.”
    Garrett nodded toward the roadblock. “ They will.”
    “Nobody’s going to be doing any shooting!” she whispered fiercely, horrified that he’d even consider it. She looked behind her into the woods. It was marshy and impossible to get through without being seen or heard. Ahead of them was the chain-link fence surrounding Davett Industries. Through the mesh she saw the cars in the parking lot.
    Amelia Sachs had worked street crimes for a year. That experience, combined with what she knew about cars, meant that she could break into and hot-wire a vehicle in under thirty seconds.
    But even if she boosted wheels how could they get out of the factory grounds? There was a delivery and shipping entrance to the factory but it too opened onto Canal Road. They’d still have to drive past the roadblock. Could they steal a four-by-four or pickup and make it through the fence where nobody could see them then drive off the road to Route 112? There were steep hills and sharp drop-offs into marshes everywhere around Blackwater Landing; could they escape without rolling a truck and killing themselves?
    The deputies on foot were now only two hundred feet away.
    Whatever they were going to do, now was the time. Sachs decided they had no choice. “Come on, Garrett. We’ve got to get over the fence.”
    Crouching, they moved forward toward the parking lot.
    “Are you thinking of a car?” he said, noticing where they were headed.
    Sachs glanced back. The deputies were a hundred yards away.
    Garrett continued, “I don’t like cars. They scare me.”
    But she wasn’t paying attention. She kept hearing his earlier words, circulating through her thoughts.
    Moths fold their wings and drop to the ground.

    “Where are they now?” Rhyme demanded. “The deputies making the sweep?”
    Bell relayed the question into his phone, listened then touched a spot on the map about halfway up square G-10. “They’re close to here. That’s the entrance to Davett’s company. Eighty, a hundred yards, moving north.”
    “Can Amelia and Garrett get around the factory to the east?”
    “Naw, Davett’s property’s all fenced. Beyond that it’s serious swamp. If they went west they’d have to swim thecanal and they probably couldn’t climb the banks. Anyway there’s no cover there. Lucy and Trey’d spot ’em for sure.”
    Waiting was so hard. Rhyme knew that Sachs would scratch and pick at her flesh in an attempt to relieve the anxiety that was a dark corollary to her drive and talent. Destructive habits, yes, but how he envied her them. Before the accident Rhyme himself would bleed off tension by pacing and walking. Now he had nothing to do but stare at the map and obsess about how much at risk she was.
    A secretary stuck her head in the door.
    “Sheriff Bell, state police on line two.”
    Jim Bell stepped into the office across the hall and took the call. He spoke for a few minutes then trotted back into the lab. He said excitedly, “We’ve got ’em! They pinpointed her cell phone signal. She’s on the move, going west on Route 112. They got past the roadblock.”
    Rhyme asked, “How?”
    “Looks like they snuck into Davett’s parking lot and stole a truck or four-by-four then drove off the road for a while and got back on the highway. Man,