“Why don’t you think he’d come this way?” Amelia asked.

“Look what’s growing here.” She pointed. “More and more swamp plants. And now we’re on this rise we can see the ground better—look how marshy it’s getting. Come on, think about it, Jesse. Where’s this going to get Garrett? We’re headed right for the Great Dismal.”

“What’s that?” Amelia asked her. “The Great Dismal?”

“A huge swamp, one of the biggest on the East Coast,” Ned explained.

Lucy continued, “There’s no cover there, no houses, no roads. The best he could do would be to slog his way into Virginia but that’d take days.”

Ned Spoto added, “And this time of year, they don’t make enough insect repellent to keep you from getting eaten alive. Not to mention snakes.”

“Anyplace around here they could hide in? Caves? Houses?” Sachs looked around.

Ned said, “No caverns. Maybe a few old buildings. But what’s happened is the water table’s changed. The swamp’s coming this way and a lot of the old houses and cabins’re submerged. Lucy’s right. If Garrett came this way he’s heading for a dead end.”

Lucy said, “I think we ought to turn around.”

She thought that Amelia’d throw a hissy fit at this suggestion but the woman simply pulled out her cell phone and made a call. She said into the phone, “We’re in the pine forest, Rhyme. There’s a path but we can’t find any sign that Garrett came along here. Lucy says it doesn’t make any sense for him to come this way. She says it’s mostly swamp northeast of here. There’s no place for him to go.”

Lucy said, “I’m thinking he’d head west. Or south, back across the river.”

“That way he could get to Millerton,” Jesse suggested.

Lucy nodded. “Couple of big factories around there closed when the companies took their business to Mexico. Banks foreclosed on a lot of property. There’re dozens of abandoned houses he could hide in.”

“Or southeast,” Jesse suggested. “That’s where I’d go—follow Route 112 or the rail line. There’s a slew of old houses and barns that way too.”

Amelia repeated this to Rhyme.

As Lucy Kerr thought: What a strange man he is, so terribly afflicted and yet so supremely confident.

The policewoman from New York listened then hung up. “Lincoln says to keep going. The evidence doesn’t suggest he went in those directions.”

“Not like there aren’t any pine trees to the west and south,” Lucy snapped.

But the redhead was shaking her head. “That might be logical but it’s not what the evidence shows. We keep going.”