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 we're going to go fast. That all right with you?" she asked Sachs, who had no problem momentarily yielding command to the deputy.
"You bet it is."
... chapter fifteen
Lydia had seen this look in men's eyes a hundred times.
A need. A desire. A hunger.
Sometimes, a pointless itch. Sometimes, an inept expression of love.
This big girl, with stringy hair, a spotted face in her teens and a pocked face now, believed she had little to offer men. But she knew too that they would, for a few years at least, ask one thing from her and she'd decided long ago that to get by in the world she would have to exploit the little power that she had. And so Lydia Johansson was now on a playing field that was very familiar to her.
They were back in the mill, in the dark office once again. Garrett was standing over her, his scalp glistening with sweat through the patchy crew cut. His erection was obvious through his slacks.
His eyes slid over her chest, where her soaked, translucent uniform had ripped open in her fall down the sluice (or had he done it when he grabbed her on the trail?), her bra strap snapped (or had he torn it?).
Lydia eased away from him, wincing at the pain in her ankle. Pressing against the wall, sitting, legs splayed, as she studied that look in the boy's eyes. Feeling a cold, spidery repulsion.
And yet she thought: Should I let him?
He was young. He'd come instantly and it would be over with. Maybe afterward he'd fall asleep and she could find that knife of his and cut her hands free. Then knock him out and tape him up.
But those red bony hands of his, his welty face next to her cheek, his disgusting breath and body stench.... How could she face it? Lydia closed her eyes momentarily. Uttered a prayer as insubstantial as her Blue Sunset eye shadow. Yes or no?
But any angels in the vicinity remained silent on this particular decision.
All she'd have to do was smile at him. He'd be inside her in a minute. Or she could take him into her mouth .... It wouldn't mean anything.
Fuck me fast then let's watch a movie. ... A joke between her boyfriend and her. She'd greet him at the door, in the red teddy she'd bought mail-order from Sears. She'd throw her arms around his shoulders and whisper those words to him.
You do this, she thought to herself, and you might be able to escape.
But I can't!
Garrett's eyes were locked on to her. Coursing over her body. His prick couldn't violate her any more thoroughly than his red eyes were doing right now. Jesus, he wasn't just an insect--he was a mutation out of one of Lydia's horror books, something that Dean Koontz or Stephen King could have made up.
Fingernails clicking.
He was examining her legs now, round and smooth--her best feature, she believed.
Garrett snapped, "Why're you crying? It's your fault you hurt yourself. You shouldn't've run. Let me see it." Nodding toward her swollen ankle.
"It's okay," Lydia said quickly but then, almost involuntarily, she held her foot out to him.
"Some assholes at school pushed me down the hill behind the Mobil station last year," he said. "Sprained my ankle. Looked like that. Hurt like a bitch."
Get it over with, she told herself. You'll be that much closer to home.
Fuck me fast...
No!
But she didn't pull away when Garrett sat down in front of her. He took her leg. His long fingers--God, they were huge--were gripping her around the calf, then around the ankle. He was trembling. Looking at the holes in her white pantyhose, where her pink flesh ballooned out. He studied her foot.
"It's not cut. But it's all black. What's that all about?"
"Might be broken."
He didn't respond, didn't seem sympathetic. It was as if her pain was meaningless to him. As if he couldn't understand that a human being might be suffering. His concern was just an excuse to touch her.
She extended her leg farther, her muscles quivering from the effort of elevating the limb. Her foot touched Garrett's body near his groin.
His eyelids lowered. His breathing was fast.
Lydia swallowed.
He moved her foot. It brushed against his penis through the wet cloth. He was hard as the wooden paddle of the waterwheel that she'd smacked trying to escape.
Garrett slid his hand farther up her leg. She felt his nails snag her pantyhose.
No...
Yes...
Then he froze.
His head tilted back and his nostrils flared. He inhaled deeply. Twice.
Lydia sniffed the air too. A sour smell. It took a moment before she recognized it. Ammonia.
"Shit," he whispered, eyes wide with horror. "How'd they get here this fast?"
"What?" she asked.
He leapt up. "The trap! They've tripped it! They'll be here in ten minutes! How the fuck d'they get here so fast?" He leaned into her face and she'd never seen so much anger and hatred in anyone's eyes. "You leave anything on the trail? Send 'em a message?"
She cringed, sure he was about to kill her. He seemed completely out of control. "No! I swear! I promise."
Garrett started toward her. Lydia shrank back but he walked past her quickly. He was frantic, ripping the material as he pulled his shirt and slacks off, his underwear, socks. She stared at his lean body, the substantial erection only slightly diminished. Naked, he ran to the corner of the room. There were some other clothes, folded, resting on the floor. He put these on. Shoes too.
Lydia lifted her head and looked out the window, through which the smell of the chemical was strong. So his trap hadn't been a bomb--he'd used the ammonia as a weapon itself; it had rained down on the search party, burning and blinding them.
Garrett continued, speaking almost in a whisper, "I have to get to Mary Beth."
"I can't walk," Lydia said, sobbing. "What are you going to do with me?"
He pulled the folding knife from the pocket of his pants. Opened it up with a loud click. Turned toward her.
"No, no, please ...."
"You're hurt. Like, there's no way you can keep up with me."
Lydia stared at the blade. It was stained and nicked. Her breath came in short gasps.
Garrett walked closer. Lydia started to cry.
How had they gotten here so fast? Garrett Hanlon wondered again, jogging from the front door of the mill to the stream, the panic he felt so often prickling his heart the way the poison oak hurt his skin.
His enemies had covered the ground from Blackwater Landing to the mill in just a few hours. He was astonished; he'd thought it would take them at least a day, probably two, to find his trail. The boy looked toward the path leading from the quarry. No sign of them. He turned in the opposite direction and started slowly down another trail--this one led away from the quarry, downstream from the mill.
Clicking his nails, asking himself: How, how, how?
Relax, he told himself. There was plenty of time. After the ammonia bottle crashed down on the rocks the police would be moving slow as dung beetles on balls of shit, worried about other traps. In a few minutes he'd be in the bogs and they'd never be able to follow him. Even with dogs. He'd be with Mary Beth in eight hours. He--
Then Garrett
stopped.
On the side of the path was a plastic water bottle, empty. It looked as if somebody had just dropped it. He sniffed the air, picked up the bottle, smelled the inside. Ammonia!
An image snapped into his mind: a fly stuck in a spider's web. He thought: Shit! They tricked me!
A woman's voice barked, "Hold it right there, Garrett." A pretty redheaded woman in jeans and a black T-shirt stepped out of the bushes. She was holding a pistol and pointing it directly at his chest. Her eyes went to the knife in his hand then back to his face.
"He's over here," the woman shouted. "I've got him." Then her voice dropped and she looked into Garrett's eyes. "Do what I say and you won't get hurt. I want you to toss the knife away and lie down on the ground, face first."
But the boy didn't lie down.
He merely stood still, slouching awkwardly, fingernail and thumbnail of his left hand clicking compulsively. He looked utterly scared and desperate.
Amelia Sachs glanced again at the stained knife, held firmly in his hand. She kept the sight of the Smith & Wesson on Garrett's chest.
Her eyes stung from the ammonia and the sweat. She wiped her face with her sleeve.
"Garrett ...." Speaking calmly. "Lie down. Nobody's going to hurt you if you do what we say."
She heard distant shouting. "I got Lydia," Ned Spoto called. "She's okay. Mary Beth's not here."
Lucy's voice was calling, "Where, Amelia?"
"On the path to the stream," Sachs shouted. "Throw the knife over there, Garrett. On the ground. Then lie down."
He stared at her cautiously. Red blotches on his skin, eyes wet.
"Come on, Garrett. There're four of us here. There's no way out."
"How?" he asked. "How'd you find me?" His voice was childlike, younger than most sixteen-year-olds'.
She didn't share with him that how they'd found the ammonia trap and the mill had been Lincoln Rhyme, of course. Just as they'd started down the center path at the crossroads in the woods the criminalist had called her. He'd said, "One of the feed-and-grain clerks Jim Bell talked to said that you don't see corn used as feed around here. He said it probably came from a gristmill and Jim knew about an abandoned one that'd burned last year. That'd explain the scorch marks."
Bell got on the phone and told the search party how to get to the mill. Then Rhyme had come back on and added, "I've got a thought about the ammonia too."
Rhyme had been reading Garrett's books and found an underlined passage about insects' using smells to communicate warnings. He'd decided that since the ammonia wasn't found in commercial explosives, like the kind used at the quarry, Garrett had possibly rigged some ammonia on a fishing-line trip wire. This was so that when the pursuers spilled it the boy could smell that they were close and could escape.
After they found the trap it'd been Sachs's idea to fill one of Ned's water bottles with ammonia, quietly surround the mill and pour the chemical on the ground outside the mill--to flush the boy.
And flush him it had.
But he still wasn't listening to her instructions. Garrett looked around and then studied her face, as if trying to decide if she really would shoot him.
He scratched at a rash on his face and wiped sweat, then adjusted his grip on the knife, looking right and left, eyes filling with despair and panic.
Afraid to startle him into running--or attacking her--Sachs tried to sound like a mother coercing her child to sleep. "Garrett, do what I'm asking. Everything'll be fine. Just do what I'm asking. Please."
"You got a shot? Take it," Mason Germain was whispering.
A hundred yards away from where that bitchy redhead from New York was confronting the killer, Mason and Nathan Groomer were on the crest of a bald hill.
Mason was standing. Nathan was prone on the hot ground. He'd sandbagged the Ruger on a low rise of helpful rocks and was concentrating on controlling his breathing, the way hunters of elks and geese and human beings are supposed to do before they shoot.
"Go on," Mason urged. "There's no wind. You got a clear view. Take the shot!"
"Mason, the boy's not doing anything."
They saw Lucy Kerr and Jesse Corn walk into the clearing, joining the redhead, their guns also pointed at the boy. Nathan continued, "Everybody's got him covered and it's only a knife he's got. A little pissant knife. It looks like he's going to give up."
"He's not going to give up," spat out Mason Germain, who shifted his slight weight from one foot to the other in impatience. "I told you--he's faking. He's gonna kill one of 'em as soon as their guard's down. It don't mean anything to you that Ed Schaeffer's dead?" Steve Farr had called with this sad news a half-hour ago.
"Come on, Mason. I'm as tore up about that as anybody. That doesn't have a thing to do with the rules of engagement. Besides, look, will you? Lucy and Jesse're six feet away from him."
"You worried about hitting them? Fuck, you could hit a dime at this range, Nathan. Nobody shoots better'n you. Take it. Take your shot."
"I--"
Mason was watching the curious little play going on in the clearing. The redhead lowered her gun and took a step forward. Garrett was still holding the knife. Head swiveling back and forth.
The woman took another step toward him.
Oh, that's helpful, bitch.
"She in your line of fire?"
"No. But, I mean," Nathan said, "we're not even supposed to be here."
"That's not the issue," Mason muttered. "We are here. I authorized backup to protect the search party and I'm ordering you to take a shot. Your safety off?"
"Yeah, it's off."
"Then shoot."
Peering through the 'scope.
Mason watched the gun barrel of the Ruger freeze, as Nathan grew into his weapon. Mason had seen this before--when he hunted with friends who were far better sportsmen than he was. It was an eerie thing that he didn't quite understand. Your weapon becomes part of you just before the gun fires, almost by itself.
Mason waited for the booming report of the long gun.
Not a breath of wind. A clean target. A clear backdrop.
Shoot, shoot, shoot! was Mason's silent message.
But instead of the crack of a rifle shot he heard a sigh. Nathan lowered his head. "I can't."
"Gimme the fucking gun."
"No, Mason. Come on."
But the expression in the senior deputy's eyes silenced the marksman and he handed over the rifle and rolled aside.
"How many in the clip?" Mason snapped.
"I--"
"How many rounds in the clip?" Mason said as he dropped to his belly and took up a position identical to his colleague's a moment before.
"Five. But nothing personal, Mason, you ain't the best rifle shot in the world and there're three innocents in the field of target and if you ..." But his voice faded. There was only one place for this sentence to go and Nathan didn't want to accompany it there.
True, Mason knew, he wasn't the best shot in the world. But he'd killed a hundred deer. And he'd fired high scores on the state police range in Raleigh. Besides, good shot or bad, Mason knew that the Insect Boy had to die and had to die now.
He too breathed steadily, curled his finger around the
ribbed trigger. And found that Nathan had been lying; he'd never unsafetied the rifle. Mason now angrily pushed the button and started controlling his breathing once more.
In, out
He rested the crosshairs on the boy's face.
The redhead moved closer to Garrett and for a moment her shoulder was in the line of fire.
Jesus my Lord, you are making it difficult, lady. She swayed back out of view. Then her neck appeared in the center of the scope. She swayed to the left but remained close to the center of the crosshairs.
Breathe, breathe.
Mason, ignoring the fact that his hands were shaking far more than they ought to, concentrated on the blotchy face of his target.
Lowered the crosshairs to Garrett's chest.
The redh
ead cop swayed once more into the line of fire. Then she eased out again.
He knew he should squeeze the trigger gently. But, as so often in his life, anger took over and made the decision for him. He pulled the sliver of metal with a jerk.
... chapter sixteen
Behind Garrett a plug of dirt shot into the air and he slapped his hand to his ear, where he, like Sachs, had felt the zip of a bullet streak past.
An instant later the booming sound of the gun filled the clearing.
Sachs spun around. From the delay between the sound of the bullet itself and the muzzle report she knew the shot hadn't come from Lucy or Jesse but from a hundred yards or so behind them. The deputies too were looking back, guns raised, trying to spot the shooter.
Crouching, Sachs glanced at Garrett's face and she saw his eyes--the terror and confusion in them. For a moment, only an instant, he wasn't a killer who'd crushed a boy's skull or a rapist who'd bloodied Mary Beth McConnell and invaded her body. He was a scared little boy, whimpering, "No, no!"
"Who is it?" Lucy Kerr called. "Culbeau?" They took cover in some bushes.
"Get down, Amelia," Jesse called. "We don't know who they're shooting at. Might be a friend of Garrett's, aiming for us."
But Sachs didn't think so. The bullet was meant for Garrett. She scanned the hilltops nearby, looking for signs of the sniper.
Another shot snapped past. This one was a wider miss.
"Holy Mary," Jesse Corn said, swallowing the apparently unaccustomed blasphemy. "Look, up there--it's Mason! And Nathan Groomer. On that rise."
"It's Germain?" Lucy asked bitterly, squinting. She furiously pressed the transmit button on her Handi-talkie and shouted, "Mason, what the hell're you doing? Are you there? Are you receiving? ... Central. Come in, Central. Goddamn, I can't get reception."
Sachs pulled out her cell phone and called Rhyme. He answered a moment later. She heard his voice, hollow, through the speakerphone. "Sachs, have you--?"
"We've got him, Rhyme. But that deputy, Mason Germain, he's on a hill nearby, firing at the boy. We can't get him on the radio."
"No, no, no, Sachs! He can't kill him. I checked the degradation of the blood on the tissue--Mary Beth was alive as of last night! If Garrett dies we'll never find her."
She shouted this to Lucy but the deputy still couldn't raise Mason on the radio.