The Empty Chair

by Jeffery Deaver

  As she was considering this Thom appeared in the doorway. "Van's outside, Lincoln."

  Rhyme glanced at the map one last time and then turned toward the doorway. "'Once more into the breach, dear friends....'"

  Jim Bell walked into the room and rested his hand on Rhyme's insensate arm. "We're organizing a search of the Outer Banks. With a little luck we'll have her in a few days. Listen, I can't thank you enough, Lincoln."

  Rhyme deflected the gratitude with a nod and wished the sheriff good luck.

  "I'll come visit you at the hospital, Lincoln," Ben said. "I'll bring some scotch. When're they going to let you start drinking again?"

  "Not soon enough."

  "I'll help Ben finish up," Sachs told him.

  Bell said to her, "We'll get you a ride over to Avery."

  She nodded. "Thanks. I'll be there soon, Rhyme."

  But the criminalist had, it seemed, already departed from Tanner's Corner, mentally if not physically, and he said nothing. Sachs heard only the vanishing whine as the Storm Arrow steamed down the corridor.

  Fifteen minutes later they had most of the forensic equipment put away and Sachs sent Ben Kerr home, thanking him for his volunteer efforts.

  In his wake Jesse Corn had appeared at Sachs's side. She wondered if he'd been staking out the corridor, waiting for a chance to catch her alone.

  "He's quite somebody, isn't he?" Jesse asked. "Mr. Rhyme." The deputy began stacking boxes that didn't need to be stacked.

  "That he is," she said noncommittally.

  "That operation he's talking about. Will it fix him?"

  It'll kill him. It'll make him worse. It'll turn him into a vegetable.

  "No."

  She thought Jesse would ask, Then why's he doing it? But the deputy offered another one of his sayings: "Sometimes you just find yourself standing in need to do something. No matter it seems hopeless."

  Sachs shrugged, thinking: Yeah, sometimes you just do.

  She snapped the locks on a microscope case and coiled the last of the electrical cords. She noticed a stack of books on the table, the ones she'd found in Garrett's room in his foster parents' house. She picked up The Miniature World, the book that the boy had asked Dr. Penny for. She opened it. Flipped through the pages, read a passage.

  There are 4,500 known species of mammals in the world but 980,000 known species of insects and an estimated two to three million more not yet discovered. The diversity and astonishing resilience of these creatures arouses more than simple admiration. One thinks of Harvard biologist and entomologist E. O. Wilson's coined term "Biofilia," by which he means the emotional affiliation humans feel toward other living organisms. There is certainly as great an opportunity for such a connection with insects as there is for a pet dog or prize racehorse, or indeed, other humans.

  She glanced out into the corridor, where Cal Fredericks and Bryan McGuire were still engaged in their complicated verbal fencing match. Garrett's lawyer was clearly losing.

  Sachs snapped the book shut. Hearing in her mind the doctor's words.

  The best thing you can do is to just spend some time with him.

  Jesse said, "Say, might be a little hectic to go out to the pistol range. But you interested in some coffee?"

  Sachs laughed to herself. So she'd got the Starbucks invite after all. "Probably shouldn't. I'm going to drop this book over at the lockup. Then I have to go over to the hospital in Avery. How 'bout a rain check?"

  "You got it."

  ... chapter twenty-one

  In Eddie's, the bar a block from the lockup, Rich Culbeau said sternly, "This ain't no game."

  "I don't think it's a game," Sean O'Sarian said. "I only laughed. I mean, shit, was just a laugh. I was looking at that commercial there." Nodding at the greasy TV screen above the Beer Nuts rack. "Where this guy's trying to get to the airport and his car--"

  "You do that too much. You prank around. You don't pay attention."

  "All right. I'm listening. We're going in the back. The door'll be open."

  "That's what I was gonna ask," Harris Tomel said. "The back door to the lockup's never open. It's always locked and it's got that, you know, bar on the inside."

  "The bar'll be off and the door'll be unlocked. Okay?"

  "You say so," Tomel said skeptically.

  "It'll be open." Culbeau continued, "We go in. There'll be a key to his cell on the table, that little metal one. You know it?"

  Of course they knew the table. Anybody who'd spent a night in the Tanner's Corner lockup had to've barked his shins on that fucking table bolted to the floor near the door, especially if they were drunk.

  "Yeah, go ahead," O'Sarian said, now paying attention.

  "We unlock the cell and go in. I'm going to hit the kid with the pepper spray. Put a bag over him--I got a crocus sack like I use for kittens in the pond, just put that over his head and get him out the back. He can shout if he wants but won't nobody hear him. Harris, you be waiting with the truck. Back it right up near the door. Keep it in gear."

  "Where we gonna take him to?" O'Sarian asked.

  "None of our places," Culbeau said, wondering if O'Sarian was thinking they were going to take a kidnapped prisoner to one of their houses. Which, if he did, meant the skinny kid was even more stupid than Culbeau thought he was. "The old garage, near the tracks."

  "Good," O'Sarian offered.

  "We get him out there. I got my propane torch. And we start on him. Five minutes is all it'll take, I figure, and he'll tell us where Mary Beth is."

  "And then do we..." O'Sarian's voice faded.

  "What?" Culbeau snapped. Then whispered, "You gonna say something you maybe don't want to say out loud in public?"

  O'Sarian whispered back, "You were just talking 'bout using a torch on the boy. Doesn't seem to me that's any worse than what I'm asking--about afterward."

  Which Culbeau had to agree with, though of course he didn't tell O'Sarian he may have a point. Instead he said only, "Accidents happen."

  "They do," Tomel agreed.

  O'Sarian toyed with a beer-bottle cap, dug some crud out from under his nails with it. He'd turned moody.

  "What?" Culbeau asked.

  "This's getting risky. Woulda been easier to take the boy in the woods. At the mill."

  "But he's not in the woods at the mill anymore," Tomel said.

  O'Sarian shrugged. "Just wondering if it's worth the money."

  "You wanta back out?" Culbeau scratched his beard, thinking it was so hot he ought to shave it but then you could see his triple chin more. "I'd rather split it two ways than three."

  "Naw, you know I don't want to. Ever-thing's fine." O'Sarian's eyes strayed to the TV again. A movie caught his attention and he shook his head, eyes wide, looking at one of the actresses.

  "Hold on here," Tomel said, eyes out the window. "Take a look." He was nodding outside.

  That redheaded policewoman from New York, the one so damn fast with the knife, was walking up the street, carrying a book.

  Tomel said, "Nice-looking lady. I could use a little of that."

  But Culbeau remembered her cold eyes and the steady point of the knife under O'Sarian's chin. He said, "Juice ain't worth the squeeze."

  The redhead walked into the lockup.

  O'Sarian was looking too. "Well, that fucks things up a bit."

  Culbeau said slowly, "No, it don't. Harris, get that truck over there. And keep the motor running."

  "But what about her?" Tomel asked.

  Culbeau said, "I got plenty of pepper spray."

  Inside the lockup Deputy Nathan Groomer leaned back in the rickety chair and nodded at Sachs.

  Jesse Corn's infatuation had grown tedious; Nathan's formal smile was a relief to her. "Hello, miss."

  "It's Nathan, right?"

  "Right."

  "That's some decoy there." Sachs looked down at his desk.

  "This old thing?" he asked humbly.

  "What is it?"

  "Female mallard. About a y
ear old. The duck. Not the decoy."

  "You make that yourself?"

  "Hobby of mine. Have a couple others at my desk in the main building. Check 'em out, you want. Thought you were leaving."

  "Will be soon. How's he doing?"

  "He who? Sheriff Bell?"

  "No, I mean Garrett."

  "Oh, I dunno. Mason went back to see him, had a talk. Tried to get him to tell where the girl was. But he wouldn't say anything."

  "Mason's back there now?"

  "No, he left."

  "How about Sheriff Bell and Lucy?"

  "Nope, they're all gone. Back at the County Building. Anything I can help you with?"

  "Garrett wanted this book." She held it up. "Is it okay if I give it to him?"

  "What is it, a Bible?"

  "No, it's about insects."

  Nathan took it and searched it carefully--for weapons, she supposed. Then he handed it back. "Creepy, that boy is. Somethin' out of a horror movie. You oughta give him a Bible."

  "I think this is all he's interested in."

  "I guess you're right about that. Slip your weapon in the lockbox there and I'll let you in."

  Sachs put the Smith & Wesson inside and stepped to the door but Nathan was looking at her expectantly. She lifted an eyebrow.

  "Well, miss, I understand you got a knife too."

  "Oh, sure. I forgot about it."

  "Rules is rules, you know."

  She handed over the switchblade. He dropped it in beside the gun.

  "You want the cuffs too?" She touched her handcuff case.

  "Nope. Can't get into much trouble with those. Course, we had us a reverend who did once. But that was only 'cause his wife come home early and found him hitched to the bedpost with Sally Anne Carlson atop him. Come on, I'll let you in."

  Rich Culbeau, flanked by nervous Sean O'Sarian, stood beside a dying lilac bush at the back of the lockup.

  The back door to the place overlooked a large field, filled with grass and trash and parts of old cars and appliances. More than a few limp condoms too.

  Harris Tomel drove his sparkling Ford F-250 up over the curb and backed around. Culbeau thought he should've come the other way because this looked a little obvious but there was nobody out on the street and, besides, after the custard stand closed, there was no reason for anybody to come down here. At least the truck was new and had a good muffler; it was quiet.

  "Who's in the front office?" O'Sarian asked.

  "Nathan Groomer."

  "That girl cop with him?"

  "I don't know. How the hell do I know? But if she is she'll have her gun and that knife she was tattooing you with in the lockbox."

  "Won't Nathan hear if the girl screams?"

  Recalling the redhead's eyes and the flash of the blade once more, Culbeau said, "The boy'll be more likely to scream than her."

  "Well, then, what if he does?"

  "We'll get the bag over him fast. Here." Culbeau handed O'Sarian a red-and-white canister of pepper spray. "Aim low 'cause people duck."

  "Does it? ... I mean, will it get on us? The spray?"

  "Not if you don't shoot yourself in the fucking face. It's a stream. Not like a cloud."

  "Which of 'em should I take?"

  "The boy."

  "What if the girl's closer to me?"

  Culbeau muttered, "She's mine."

  "But--"

  "She's mine."

  "Okay," O'Sarian agreed.

  They dipped their heads as they went past a filthy window in the back of the lockup and paused at the metal door. Culbeau noticed that it was open a half inch. "See, it's unlocked," he whispered. Feeling he'd scored some kind of point against O'Sarian. Then wondering why he felt he needed to. "Now, I'll nod. Then we go in fast, spray 'em both--and be generous with that shit." He handed O'Sarian a thick bag. "Then throw that over his head."

  O'Sarian gripped the canister firmly, nodded at the second bag, which had appeared in Culbeau's hand. "So we're taking the girl too."

  Culbeau sighed, said an exasperated, "Yeah, Sean. We are."

  "Oh. Okay. Just wondered."

  "When they're down just drag 'em out fast. Don't stop for nothing."

  "Okay.... Oh, I was meaning to say. I got my Colt." "What?"

  "I got my .38. I brought it." He nodded toward his pocket.

  Culbeau paused for a moment. Then he said, "Good." He closed his big hand around the door handle.

  ... chapter twenty-two

  Would this be his last view? he wondered.

  From his hospital bed Lincoln Rhyme could see a park on the grounds of the University Medical Center in Avery. Lush trees, a sidewalk meandering through a rich, green lawn, a stone fountain that a nurse had told him was a replica of some famous well on the UNC campus at Chapel Hill.

  From the bedroom in his town house on Central Park West in Manhattan, Rhyme could see sky and some of the buildings along Fifth Avenue. But the windows there were high off the floor and he couldn't see Central Park itself unless his bed was shoved right against the pane, which let him look down onto the grass and trees.

  Here, perhaps because the facility had been built with SCI and neuro patients in mind, the windows were lower; even the views here were accessible, he thought wryly to himself.

  Then wondered again whether or not the operation would have any success. Whether he'd even survive it.

  Lincoln Rhyme knew that it was the inability to do the simple things that was the most frustrating.

  Traveling from New York to North Carolina, for instance, had been such a project, so long anticipated, so carefully planned, that the difficulty of the journey had not troubled Rhyme at all. But the overwhelming burden of his injury was the heaviest when it came to the small tasks that a healthy person does without thinking. Scratching an itch on your temple, brushing your teeth, wiping your lips, opening a soda, sitting up in a chair to look out the window and watch sparrows bathe in the dirt of a garden....

  He wondered again how foolish he was being.

  He'd had the best neurologists in the country and was a scientist himself. He'd read, and understood, the literature about the near impossibility of neuro improvement in a patient with a C4 spinal cord injury. Yet he was determined to go ahead with Cheryl Weaver's operation--despite the chance that this bucolic setting outside his window in a strange hospital in a strange town might be the very last image of nature he ever saw in this life.

  Of course there are risks.

  So why was he doing it?

  Oh, there was a very good reason.

  Yet it was a reason that the cold criminalist in him had trouble accepting and one that he'd never dare utter out loud. Because it had nothing to do with being able to prowl over a crime scene searching for evidence. Nothing to do with brushing his teeth or sitting up in bed. No, no, it was exclusively because of Amelia Sachs.

  Finally he'd admitted the truth: that he'd grown terrified of losing her. He'd brooded that sooner or later she'd meet another Nick--the handsome undercover agent who'd been her lover a few years ago. This was inevitable, he figured, as long as he remained as immobile as he was. She wanted children. She wanted a normal life. And so Rhyme was willing to risk death, to risk making his condition worse, in the hope that he could improve.

  He knew of course that the operation wouldn't allow him to stroll down Fifth Avenue with Sachs on his arm. He was simply hoping for a minuscule improvement--to move slightly closer to a normal life. Slightly closer to her. But summoning up his astonishing imagination, Rhyme could picture himself closing his hand on hers, squeezing it and feeling the faint pressure of her skin.

  A small thing to everyone else in the world, but to Rhyme, a miracle.

  Thom walked into the room. After a pause he said, "An observation."

  "I don't want one. Where's Amelia?"

  "I'm going to tell you anyway. You haven't had a drink in five days."

  "I know. It pisses me off."

  "You're getting in shape for the oper
ation."

  "Doctor's orders," Rhyme said testily.

  "When have those ever meant anything to you?"

  A shrug. "They're going to be pumping me full of who knows what kind of crap. I didn't think it would be smart to add to the cocktail in my bloodstream."

  "It wouldn't've been. You're right. But you paid attention to your doctor. I'm proud of you."

  "Oh, pride--now there's a helpful emotion."

  But Thom was a waterfowl to Rhyme's rain. He continued, "But I want to say something."

  "You're going to anyway whether I want you to or not."

  "I've read a lot about this, Lincoln. The procedure."

  "Oh, have you? On your time, I hope."

  "I just want to say that if it doesn't work this time, we'll come back. Next year. Two years. Five years. It'll work then."

  The sentiment within Lincoln Rhyme was as dead as his spinal cord but he managed: "Thank you, Thom. Now, where the hell is that doctor? I've been hard at work catching psychotic kidnappers for these people. I think they'd be treating me a little better than this."

  Thom said, "She's only ten minutes late, Lincoln. And we did change the appointment twice today."

  "It's closer to twenty minutes. Ah, here we go."

  The door to the hospital room swung open. And Rhyme looked up, expecting to see Dr. Weaver. But it wasn't the surgeon.

  Sheriff Jim Bell, his face dotted with sweat, walked inside. In the corridor behind him was his brother-in-law, Steve Farr. Both men were clearly upset.

  The criminalist's first thought was that they'd found Mary Beth's body. That the boy had in fact killed her. And his next thought was how badly Sachs would react to this news, having had her faith in the boy shattered.

  But Bell had different news. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Lincoln." And Rhyme knew the message was something closer to him personally than just Garrett Hanlon and Mary Beth McConnell. "I was going to call," the sheriff said. "But then I figured you should hear it from somebody in person. So I came."

  "What, Jim?" he asked.

  "It's Amelia."

  "What?" Thom asked.

  "What about her?" Rhyme couldn't, of course, feel his heart pounding in his chest but he could sense the blood surge through his chin and temples. "What? Tell me!"

  "Rich Culbeau and those buddies of his went by the lockup. I don't know what they had in mind exactly--probably no good--but anyway, what they found was my deputy, Nathan, cuffed, in the front office. And the cell was empty."