“Well, we don’t know for certain,” Mason responded coolly. “Weren’t any stopped clocks like on the Titanic, you know.”

“Had to’ve been before eight,” Jesse Corn offered. “Billy—the boy was killed—was out jogging and the crime scene is a half hour away from home. He was making up some credits in summer school and had to be back by eight-thirty to shower and get to class.”

Good, Rhyme thought, nodding. “Go on.”

Mason continued. “Mary Beth had some class project, digging up old Indian artifacts at Blackwater Landing.”

“What’s that, a town?” Sachs asked.

“No, just an unincorporated area on the river. ’Bout three dozen houses, a factory. No stores or anything. Mostly woods and swamp.”

Rhyme noticed numbers and letters along the margins of the map. “Where?” he asked. “Show me.”

Mason touched Location G-10. “Way we see it, Garrett comes by and grabs Mary Beth. He’s going to rape her but Billy Stail’s out jogging and sees them from the road and tries to stop it. But Garrett grabs a shovel and kills Billy. Beats his head in. Then he takes Mary Beth and disappears.” Mason’s jaw was tight. “Billy was a good kid. Really good. Went to church regular. Last season he intercepted a pass in the last two minutes of a tied game with Albemarle High and ran it back—”

“I’m sure he was a fine boy,” Rhyme said impatiently. “Garrett and Mary Beth, they’re on foot?”

“That’s right,” Lucy answered. “Garrett wouldn’t drive. Doesn’t even have a license. Think it was because of his folks’ dying in a car crash.”

“What physical evidence did you find?”

“Oh, we got the murder weapon,” Mason said proudly. “The shovel. Were real buttoned up about handling it too. Wore gloves. And we did the chain of custody thing, like’s in the books.”

Rhyme waited for more. Finally he asked, “What else did you find?”

“Well, some footprints.” Mason looked at Jesse, who said, “Oh, right. I took pictures of ’em.”

“That’s all?” Sachs asked.

Lucy nodded, tight-lipped at the Northerner’s implicit criticism.

Rhyme: “Didn’t you search the scene?”

Jesse said, “Sure we did. Just, there wasn’t anything else.”

Wasn’t anything else? At a scene where a perp kills one victim and abducts another there’d be enough evidence to make a movie of who did what to whom and probably what each member of the cast had been doing for the last twenty-four hours. It seemed they were up against two perpetrators: the Insect Boy and law enforcement incompetence. Rhyme caught Sachs’s eye and saw she was thinking the same.

“Who conducted the search?” Rhyme asked.

“I did,” Mason said. “I got there first. I was nearby when the call came in.”

“And when was that?”

“Nine-thirty. A truck driver saw Billy’s body from the highway and called nine-one-one.”