“That morning he was agitated. He was saying things like ‘You shouldn’t’ve come here by yourself, it’s dangerous, people die in Blackwater Landing.’ That sort of thing. He was freaking me out. I told him to leave me alone. I had work to do. He grabbed my hand and tried to make me leave. Then Billy Stail comes out of the woods and he goes, ‘You son of a bitch,’ or something, and he starts to hit Garrett with a shovel but he got it away from Billy and killed him. Then he grabbed me again and made me get into this boat and brought me to the cabin.”

“How long had Garrett been stalking you?”

Mary Beth laughed. “Stalking? No, no. You’ve been talking to my mother, I’ll bet. I was downtown about six months ago and some of the kids from his school were picking on him. I scared them off. That made me his girlfriend, I guess. He followed me around a lot but that was all. Admired me from afar, that sort of thing. I was sure he was harmless.” Her smile faded. “Until the other day.” Mary Beth glanced at her watch. “I should go. But I wanted to ask you—the other reason I came by—if you don’t need them anymore for evidence would it be okay if I took the rest of the bones?”

Rhyme, whose eyes were now gazing out his window as thoughts of Amelia Sachs slipped back into his mind, turned slowly to Mary Beth.

“What bones?” he asked.

“At Blackwater Landing? Where Garrett kidnapped me?”

Rhyme shook his head. “What do you mean?”

Mary Beth’s face furrowed with concern. “The bones—those were the relics I found. I was digging up the rest of them when Garrett kidnapped me. They’re very important… You don’t mean they’re missing?”

“Nobody recovered any bones at the crime scene,” Rhyme said. “They weren’t in the evidence report.”

She shook her head. “No, no … They can’t be gone!”

“What kind of bones?”

“I found the remains of some of the Lost Colonists of Roanoke. From the late fifteen hundreds.”

Rhyme’s knowledge of history was pretty much limited to New York City. “I’m not too familiar with that.”

Though when she explained about the settlers on Roanoke Island and their disappearance he nodded. “I do remember something from school. Why do you think it was their remains?”