The Empty Chair

  But Rhyme didn't understand. A criminalist's job is to analyze evidence to help investigators identify a suspect and then to testify at his trial. "You know who the perp is, you know where he lives. Your D.A.'ll have an airtight case." Even if they'd screwed up the crime scene search--the way small-town law enforcers have vast potential to do--there'd be plenty of evidence left for a felony conviction.

  "No, no--it's not the trial we're worried about, Mr. Rhyme. It's finding them 'fore he kills those girls. Or at least Lydia. We think Mary Beth may already be dead. See, when this happened I thumbed through a state police manual on felony investigations. It was saying that in a sexual abduction case you usually have twenty-four hours to find the victim; after that they become dehumanized in the kidnapper's eyes and he doesn't think anything about killing them."

  Sachs asked, "You called him a boy, the perp. How old is he?"

  "Sixteen."

  "Juvenile."

  "Technically," Bell said. "But his history's worse than most of our adult troublemakers."

  "You've checked with his family?" she asked, as if it were a foregone conclusion that she and Rhyme were on the case.

  "Parents're dead. He's got foster parents. We looked through his room at their place. Didn't find any secret trapdoors or diaries or anything."

  One never does, thought Lincoln Rhyme, wishing devoutly this man would hightail it back to his unpronounceable county and take his problems with him.

  "I think we should, Rhyme," Sachs said.

  "Sachs, the surgery ..."

  She said, "Two victims in two days? He could be a progressive." Progressive felons are like addicts. To satisfy their increasing psychological hunger for violence, the frequency and severity of their acts escalate.

  Bell nodded. "You got that right. And there's stuff I didn't mention. There've been three other deaths in Paquenoke County over the past couple of years and a questionable suicide just a few days ago. We think the boy might've been involved in all of them. We just didn't find enough evidence to hold him."

  But then I wasn't working the cases, now, was I? Rhyme thought before reflecting that pride was probably the sin that would do him in.

  He reluctantly felt his mental gears turning, intrigued by the puzzles that the case presented. What had kept Lincoln Rhyme sane since his accident--what had stopped him from finding some Jack Kevorkian to help with assisted suicide--were mental challenges like this.

  "Your surgery's not till day after tomorrow, Rhyme," Sachs pushed. "And all you have are those tests before then."

  Ah, your ulterior motives are showing, Sachs ...

  But she'd made a good point. He was looking at a lot of downtime before the operation itself. And it would be pre-surgery downtime--which meant without eighteen-year-old scotch. What was a quad going to do in a small North Carolina town anyway? Lincoln Rhyme's greatest enemy wasn't the spasms, phantom pain or dysreflexia that plague spinal cord patients; it was boredom.

  "I'll give you one day," Rhyme finally said. "As long as it doesn't delay the operation. I've been on a waiting list for fourteen months to have this procedure."

  "Deal, sir," Bell said. His weary face brightened.

  But Thom shook his head. "Listen, Lincoln, we're not here to work. We're here for your procedure and then we're leaving. I don't have half the equipment I need to take care of you if you're working."

  "We're in a hospital, Thom. I wouldn't be surprised to find most of what you need here. We'll talk to Dr. Weaver. I'm sure she'll be happy to help us out."

  The aide, resplendent in white shirt, pressed tan slacks and tie, said, "For the record, I don't think it's a good idea."

  But like hunters everywhere--mobile or not--once Lincoln Rhyme had made the decision to pursue his prey nothing else mattered. He now ignored Thom and began to interrogate Jim Bell. "How long has he been on the run?"

  "Just a couple hours," Bell said. "What I'll do is have a deputy bring over the evidence we found and maybe a map of the area. I was thinking..."

  But Bell's voice faded as Rhyme shook his head and frowned. Sachs suppressed a smile; she'd know what was coming.

  "No," Rhyme said firmly. "We'll come to you. You'll have to set us up someplace in--what's the county seat again?"

  "Uhm, Tanner's Corner."

  "Set us up someplace we can work. I'll need a forensics assistant.... You have a lab in your office?"

  "Us?" asked the bewildered sheriff. "Not hardly."

  "Okay, we'll get you a list of equipment we'll need. You can borrow it from the state police." Rhyme looked at the clock. "We can be there in a half hour. Right, Thom?"

  "Lincoln..."

  "Right?"

  "A half hour," the resigned aide muttered.

  Now who was in a bad mood?

  "Get the forms from Dr. Weaver. Bring them with us. You can fill them out while Sachs and I're working."

  "Okay, okay."

  Sachs was writing a list of the basic forensics lab equipment. She held it up for Rhyme to read. He nodded then said, "Add a density gradient unit. Otherwise, it looks good."

  She wrote this item on the list and handed it to Bell. He read it, nodding his head uncertainly. "I'll work this out, sure. But I really don't want you to go to too much trouble--"

  "Jim, hope I can speak freely."

  "Sure."

  The criminalist said in a low voice, "Just looking over a little evidence isn't going to do any good. If this is going to work, Amelia and I are going to be in charge of the pursuit. One hundred percent in charge. Now, you tell me up front--is that going to be a problem for anybody?"

  "I'll make sure it isn't," Bell said.

  "Good. Now you better get going on that equipment. We need to move."

  And Sheriff Bell stood for a moment, nodding, hat in one hand, Sachs's list in the other, before he headed for the door. Rhyme believed that Cousin Roland, a man of many Southernisms, had an expression that fit the look on the sheriff's face. Rhyme wasn't exactly sure how the phrase went but it had something to do with catching a bear by the tail.

  "Oh, one thing?" Sachs asked, stopping Bell as he passed through the doorway. He paused and turned. "The perp? What's his name?"

  "Garrett Hanlon. But in Tanner's Corner they call him the Insect Boy."

  Paquenoke is a small county in northeastern North Carolina. Tanner's Corner, roughly in the center of the county, is the biggest town and is surrounded by smaller unincorporated clusters of residential or commercial pockets, such as Blackwater Landing, which huddles against the Paquenoke River--called the Paquo by most locals--a few miles to the north of the county seat.

  South of the river is where most of the county's residential and shopping areas are located. The land there is dotted with gentle marshes, forests, fields and ponds. Nearly all of the residents live in this half. North of the Paquo, on the other hand, the land is treacherous. The Great Dismal Swamp has encroached and swallowed up trailer parks and houses and the few mills and factories on that side of the river. Snaky bogs have replaced the ponds and fields, and the forests, largely old-growth, are impenetrable unless you're lucky enough to find a path. No one lives on that side of the river except 'shiners and drug cookers and a few crazy swamp people. Even hunters tend to avoid the area after that incident two years ago when wild boars came after Tal Harper and even shooting half of them didn't stop the rest from devouring him before help arrived.

  Like most people in the county Lydia Johansson rarely went north of the Paquo, and never very far from civilization when she did. She now realized, with an overwhelming sense of despair, that by crossing the river she'd stepped over some boundary into a place from which she might never return--a boundary that was not merely geographic but was spiritual too.

  She was terrified being dragged along behind this creature, of course--terrified at the way he looked over her body, terrified of his touch, terrified that she'd die from heat-or sunstroke or snakebite--but what scared her the most was realizing what she'd left behind on
the south side of the river: her fragile, comfortable life, small though it was: her few friends and fellow nurses on the hospital ward, the doctors she flirted futilely with, the pizza parties, the Seinfeld reruns, her horror books, ice cream, her sister's children. She even looked back longingly at the troubled parts of her life--the struggle with her weight, the fight to quit smoking, the nights alone, the long absence of phone calls from the man she occasionally saw (she called him her "boyfriend," though she knew that was merely wishful thinking) ... even these now seemed fiercely poignant simply because of their familiarity.

  But there wasn't a sliver of comfort where she was now.

  She remembered the terrible sight at the hunter's blind--deputy Ed Schaeffer lying unconscious on the ground, arms and face swollen grotesquely from the wasp stings. Garrett had muttered, "He shouldn't've hurt 'em. Yellow jackets only attack when their nest's in danger. It was his fault." He'd walked inside slowly, the insects ignoring him, to collect some things. He'd taped her hands in front of her and then led her into the woods through which they'd been traveling now for several miles.

  The boy moved in an awkward way, jerking her in one direction, then another. He talked to himself. He scratched at the red blotches on his face. Once, he stopped at a pool of water and stared at it. He waited until some bug or spider danced away over the surface then pressed his face into the water, soaking the troubled skin. He looked down at his feet then took off his remaining shoe and flung it away. They pushed on through the hot morning.

  She glanced at the map sticking out of his pocket. "Where're we going?" she asked.

  "Shut up. Okay?"

  Ten minutes later he made her take her shoes off and they forded a shallow, polluted stream. When they'd crossed he eased her into a sitting position. Garrett sat in front of her and, as he watched her legs and cleavage, he slowly dried her feet with a wad of Kleenex he had pulled from his pocket. She felt the same repulsion at his touch that had flooded through her the first time she had to take a tissue sample from a corpse in the morgue at the hospital. He put her white shoes back on, laced them tight, holding her calf for longer than he needed to. Then he consulted the map and led her back into the woods.

  Clicking his nails, scratching his cheek ...

  Little by little the marshes grew more tangled and the water darker and deeper. She supposed they were headed toward the Great Dismal Swamp though she couldn't imagine why. Just when it seemed they could go no farther because of the choked bogs, Garrett steered them into a large pine forest, which, to Lydia's relief, was far cooler than the exposed swampland.

  He found another path. He led her along it until they came to a steep hill. A series of rocks led to the top.

  "I can't climb that," she said, struggling to sound defiant. "Not with my hands taped. I'll slip."

  "Bullshit," he muttered angrily, as if she were an idiot. "You got those nurse shoes on. They'll hold you fine. Look at me. I'm, like, barefoot and I can climb it. Lookit my feet, look!" He held up the bottoms. They were callused and yellow. "Now get your ass up there. Only, when you get to the top don't go any farther. You hear me? Hey, you listening?" Another hiss; a fleck of spittle touched her cheek and seemed to burn her skin like battery acid.

  God, I hate you, she thought.

  Lydia started to climb. She paused halfway, looked back. Garrett was watching her closely, snapping his fingernails. Staring at her legs, encased in white stockings, his tongue teasing his front teeth. Then looking up higher, under her skirt.

  Lydia continued to climb. Heard his hissing breath as he started up behind her.

  At the top of the hill was a clearing and from it a single path led into a thick grove of pine trees. She started along the path, into the shade.

  "Hey!" Garrett shouted. "Didn't you hear me? I told you not to move!"

  "I'm not trying to get away!" she cried. "It's hot. I'm trying to get out of the sun."

  He pointed to the ground, twenty feet away. There was a thick blanket of pine boughs in the middle of the path. "You could've fallen in," his voice rasped. "You could've ruined it."

  Lydia looked closely. The pine needles covered a wide pit.

  "What's under there?"

  "It's a deadfall trap."

  "What's inside?"

  "You know--a surprise for anybody coming after us." He said this proudly, smirking, as if he'd been very clever to think of it.

  "But anybody could fall in there!"

  "Shit," he muttered. "This is north of the Paquo. Only ones who'd come this way'd be the people after us. And they deserve whatever happens to them. Let's get going." Hissing again. He took her by the wrist and led her around the pit.

  "You don't have to hold me so hard!" she protested.

  Garrett glanced at her then relaxed his grip somewhat--though his gentler touch proved to be a lot more troubling; he took to stroking her wrist with his middle finger, which reminded her of a fat blood tick looking for a spot to burrow into her skin.

  ... chapter four

  The Rollx van passed a cemetery, Tanner's Corner Memorial Gardens. A funeral was in progress and Rhyme, Sachs and Thom glanced at the somber procession.

  "Look at the casket," Sachs said.

  It was small, a child's. The mourners, all adults, were few. Twenty or so people. Rhyme wondered why attendance was so sparse. His eyes rose above the ceremony and examined the graveyard's rolling hills and, beyond, the miles of hazy forest and marshland that vanished in the blue distance. He said, "That's not a bad cemetery. Wouldn't mind being buried in a place like that."

  Sachs, who'd been gazing at the funeral with a troubled expression, shifted cool eyes toward him--apparently because with surgery on the agenda she didn't like any talk about mortality.

  Then Thom eased the van around a sharp curve and, following Jim Bell's Paquenoke County Sheriff's Department cruiser, accelerated down a straightaway; the cemetery disappeared behind them.

  As Bell had promised, Tanner's Corner was twenty miles from the medical center at Avery. The WELCOME TO sign assured visitors that the town was the home of 3,018 souls, which may have been true but only a tiny percentage of them were evident along Main Street on this hot August morning. The dusty place seemed to be a ghost town. One elderly couple sat on a bench, looking out over the empty street. Rhyme spotted two men who must've been the resident drunks--sickly looking and skinny. One sat on the curb, his scabby head in his hands, probably working off a hangover. The other sat against a tree, staring at the glossy van with sunken eyes that even from the distance seemed jaundiced. A scrawny woman lazily washed the drugstore window. Rhyme saw no one else.

  "Peaceful," Thom observed.

  "That's one way to put it," said Sachs, who obviously shared Rhyme's sense of unease at the emptiness.

  Main Street was a tired stretch of old buildings and two small strip malls. Rhyme noticed one supermarket, two drugstores, two bars, one diner, a women's clothing boutique, an insurance company and a combination video shop/candy store/nail salon. The A-OK Car Dealership was sandwiched between a bank and a marine supplies operation. Everybody sold bait. One billboard was for McDonald's, seven miles away along Route 17. Another showed a sun-bleached painting of the Monitor and Merrimack Civil War ships. "Visit the Ironclad Museum." You had to drive twenty-two miles to see that attraction.

  As Rhyme took in all these details of small-town life he realized with dismay how out of his depth as a criminalist he was here. He could successfully analyze evidence in New York because he'd lived there for so many years--had pulled the city apart, walked its streets, studied its history and flora and fauna. But here, in Tanner's Corner and environs, he knew nothing of the soil, the air, the water, nothing of the habits of the residents, the cars they liked, the houses they lived in, the industries that employed them, the lusts that drove them.

  Rhyme recalled working for a senior detective at the NYPD when he was a new recruit. The man had lectured his underlings, "Somebody tell me: what's the expression 'Fish out
of water' mean?"

  Young officer Rhyme had said, "It means: out of one's element. Confused."

  "Yeah, well, what happens when fish're out of water?" the grizzled old cop had snapped at Rhyme. "They don't get confused. They get fucking dead. The greatest single threat to an investigator is unfamiliarity with his environment. Remember that."

  Thom parked the van and went through the ritual of lowering the wheelchair. Rhyme blew into the sip-and-puff controller of the Storm Arrow and rolled toward the County Building's steep ramp, undoubtedly added to the building grudgingly after the Americans with Disabilities Act went into effect.

  Three men--in work clothes and with folding knife scabbards on their belts--pushed out of the side door of the sheriff's office beside the ramp. They walked toward a burgundy Chevy Suburban.

  The skinniest of the three poked the biggest one, a huge man with a braided ponytail and a beard, and nodded toward Rhyme. Then their eyes--almost in unison--perused Sachs's body. The big one took in Thom's trim hair, slight build, impeccable clothes and golden earring. Expressionless, he whispered something to the third of the trio, a man who looked like a conservative Southern businessman. He shrugged. They lost interest in the visitors and climbed into the Chevy.

  Fish out of water...

  Bell, walking beside Rhyme's chair, noticed his gaze.

  "That's Rich Culbeau, the big one. And his buddies. Sean O'Sarian--the skinny feller--and Harris Tomel. Culbeau's not half as much trouble as he looks. He likes playing redneck but he's usually no bother."

  O'Sarian glanced back at them from the passenger seat--though whether he was glancing at Thom or Sachs or himself, Rhyme didn't know.

  The sheriff jogged ahead to the building. He had to fiddle with the door at the top of the handicapped ramp; it had been painted shut.

  "Not many crips here," Thom observed. Then he asked Rhyme, "How're you feeling?"