Lucy said to Jesse, “You know that path? The one those druggies scooted down after Frank Sturgis found ’em over last year?”

He nodded. He said to Sachs, “It’s about fifty yards north. That way.” He pointed. “Garrett’d know about it probably and it’s the best way to get through the woods and swamp here.”

“Let’s check it out,” Ned said.

Sachs wondered how to best handle the impending conflict and decided there was only one way: head-on. Being overly delicate wouldn’t work, not with three of them versus her alone (Jesse Corn being, she believed, only amorously in her camp). “We should stay here until we hear from Rhyme.”

Jesse kept a faint smile on his face, tasting a morsel of divided loyalty.

Lucy shook her head. “Garrett had to’ve taken that path.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Sachs said.

“It does get a little thick ’round here,” Jesse offered.

Ned said, “All that plume grass and tuckahoe and mountain holly. Lot of creeper too. You don’t take that path, there’s no way to get through here and make any time.”

“We’ll have to wait,” Sachs said, thinking of a passage from Lincoln Rhyme’s textbook on criminalistics, Physical Evidence:

More investigations involving a suspect at large are ruined by giving in to the impulse to move quickly and engage in hot pursuit when, in fact, in most cases, a slow examination of the evidence will point a clear path to the suspect’s door and permit a safer and more efficient arrest.

Lucy Kerr said, “It’s just that somebody from the city doesn’t really understand the woods. You head off that path it’d slow your time by half. He had to’ve stuck to it.”

“He could’ve doubled back to the riverbank,” Sachs pointed out. “Maybe he had another boat hidden up- or downstream.”

“That’s true,” Jesse said, earning a dark glance from Lucy.

A long moment of silence, the four people standing immobile while gnats strafed them and they sweated in the merciless heat.

Finally Sachs said simply, “We’ll wait.”

Sealing the decision, she sat on what was surely the most uncomfortable rock in the entire woods and, with feigned interest, studied a woodpecker drilling fiercely into a tall oak in front of them.

… chapter nine

“Primary scene first,” Rhyme called to Ben. “Blackwater.”

He nodded at the cluster of evidence on the fiberboard table. “Let’s do Garrett’s running shoe first. The one he dropped when he snatched Lydia.”

Ben picked it up, unzipped the plastic bag, started to reach inside.

“Gloves!” Rhyme ordered. “Always wear latex gloves when handling evidence.”

“Because of fingerprints?” the zoologist asked, hurriedly pulling them on.

“That’s one reason. The other’s contamination. We don’t want to confuse places you’ve been with places the perp has been.”