Some took the joking, in-your-face approach. Crip humor, no prisoners taken.

Some, like Henry Davett, ignored his condition completely.

Most did what Ben was doing—tried to pretend that Rhyme didn’t exist and prayed that they could escape at the earliest possible moment.

It was this response that Rhyme hated the most—it was one of the most blatant reminders of how different he was. But he had no time to dwell on his surrogate assistant’s attitude. Garrett was leading Lydia deeper and deeper into the wilderness. And Mary Beth McConnell might be close to dying from suffocation or dehydration or a wound.

Jim Bell walked into the room. “Maybe there’s some good news from the hospital. Ed Schaeffer said something to one of the nurses. Went unconscious again right after but I’m taking it as a good sign.”

“What’d he say?” Rhyme asked. “Something he’d seen on that map?”

“She said it sounded like ‘important.’ Then ‘olive.’ “Bell walked to the map. Touched a location to the southeast of Tanner’s Corner. “There’s a development here. They named the roads after plants and fruits and things. One of them’s Olive Street. But that’s way south of Stone Creek. Should I tell Lucy and Amelia to check it out? I think we ought to.”

Ah, the eternal conflict, Rhyme reflected: trust evidence or trust witnesses? If he picked wrong, Lydia or Mary Beth might die. “They should stay where they are, north of the river.”

“You sure?” Bell asked doubtfully.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Bell said.

The phone rang and with a firm press of his left ring finger Rhyme answered it.

Sachs’s voice clattered into his headset. “We’re at a dead end, Rhyme. There’re four or five paths here, going in different directions, and we don’t have a clue which way Garrett went.”

“I don’t have anything more for you, Sachs. We’re trying to identify more of the evidence.”

“Nothing more in the books?”

“Nothing specific. But it’s fascinating—they’re pretty serious reading for a sixteen-year-old. He’s smarter than I would have figured. Where are you exactly, Sachs?” Rhyme looked up. “Ben! Go to the map, please.”

He aimed his massive frame at the wall and took up a position beside it.

Sachs consulted someone else in the search party. Then said, “About four miles northeast of where we forded Stone Creek, pretty much in a straight line.”

Rhyme repeated this to Ben, who put his hand on a part of the map. Location J-7.

Near Ben’s massive forefinger was an unidentified L-shaped formation. “Ben, you have any idea what that square is?”

“Think that’s the old quarry.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Rhyme muttered, shaking his head in frustration.

“What?” Ben asked, alarmed that he’d done something wrong.

“Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me there was a quarry near there?”