You usually have twenty-four hours to find the victim; after that they become dehumanized in ilie kidnapper’s eyes and he doesn’t think anything about killing them.

This rule, which had applied to Lydia and Mary Beth, now encompassed Amelia Sachs’s fate too. The difference was, Rhyme believed, that Sachs might have far fewer than twenty-four hours.

“I thought you’d caught that boy. That’s what I heard.”

Ben said, “He got away from us.”

“No!” Davett frowned.

“Sure did,” Ben offered. “Old-fashioned jailbreak.”

Rhyme: “I’ve got some more evidence but I don’t know what to make of it. I was hoping you could help again.”

The businessman sat down. “I’ll do what I can.”

A glance at his WWJD tie bar.

Rhyme nodded toward the chart, said, “Could you look that over? The list on the right.”

“The mill—is that where he was? That old mill northeast of town?”

“Right.”

“I knew about the place.” Davett grimaced angrily. “I should’ve thought of it.”

Criminalists can’t let the verb “should have” creep into their vocabulary. Rhyme said, “It’s impossible to think of everything in this business. But take a look at the chart. Does anything on it seem familiar to you?”

Davett read carefully.

FOUND AT THE SECONDARY CRIME SCENE-MILL

Brown Paint on Pants
Sundew Plant
Clay
Peat Moss
Fruit Juice
Paper Fibers
Stinkball Bait
Sugar
Camphene
Alcohol
Kerosene
Yeast

As he gazed at the list he said in a distracted voice, “It’s like a puzzle.”

“That’s the nature of my job,” Rhyme said.

“How much can I speculate?” the businessman asked.

“As much as you’d like,” Rhyme said.

“All right,” Davett said. He thought for a moment then said, “A Carolina bay.”

Rhyme asked, “What’s that? A horse?”

Davett glanced at Rhyme to see if he was joking. Then said, “No, it’s a geologic structure you see on the Eastern Seaboard. Mostly, though, they’re found in the Carolinas. North and South. They’re basically oval ponds, about three or four feet deep, freshwater. They could be a half acre big or a couple of hundred. The bottom of them is mostly clay and peat. Just what’s on the chart there.”

“But clay and peat—they’re pretty common around here,” Ben said.

“They are,” Davett agreed. “And if you’d found just those two things I wouldn’t have a clue where they came from. But you found something else. See, one of the most interesting characteristics about Carolina bays is that insect-killer plants grow around them. You see hundreds of Venus flytraps, sundews and pitcher plants around bays—probably because the ponds promote insects. If you found a sundew along with clay and peat moss then there’s no doubt the boy’s spent time around a Carolina bay.”

“Good,” Rhyme said. Then, gazing at the map, asked, “What does ‘bay’ mean? An inlet of water?”