Scotch too, of course. Sachs dug through several shopping bags and finally found the bottle of Macallan, eighteen years old. She pulled the cork stopper out with a faint pop.
"Ah, my favorite sound," Lincoln Rhyme said.
He was wheeling up beside her, driving carefully along the uneven grass. The hill down to the grave was too steep for the Storm Arrow and he'd had to wait up here in the lot. He'd watched from the hilltop as they buried the ashes of the bones that Mary Beth had found at Blackwater Landing--the remains of Garrett's family.
Sachs poured scotch into Rhyme's glass, equipped with a long straw, and some into hers. Everyone else was drinking beer.
He said, "Moonshine is truly vile, Sachs. Avoid it at all costs. This is much better."
Sachs looked around. "Where's the woman from the hospital? The caregiver?"
"Mrs. Ruiz?" Rhyme muttered. "Hopeless. She quit. Left me in the lurch."
"Quit?" Thom said. "You drove her nuts. You might as well have fired her."
"I was a saint," the criminalist snapped.
"How's your temperature?" Thom asked him.
"It's fine," he grumbled. "How's yours?"
"Probably a little high but I don't have a blood pressure problem."
"No, you've a bullet hole in you."
The aide persisted, "You should--"
"I said I'm fine."
"--move into the shade a little farther."
Rhyme groused and complained about the unsteady ground but he finally maneuvered himself into the shade a little farther.
Garrett was carefully setting out food and drink and napkins on a bench under the tree.
"How're you doing?" Sachs asked Rhyme in a whisper. "And before you grumble at me too--I'm not talking about the heat."
He shrugged--this, a silent grumble by which he meant: I'm fine.
But he wasn't fine. A phrenic-nerve stimulator pumped current into his body to help his lungs inhale and exhale. He hated the device--had weaned himself off it some years ago--but there was no question that he needed it now. Two days ago, on the operating table, Lydia Johansson had come very close to stopping his breathing forever.
In the waiting room at the hospital, after Lydia had said good-bye to Sachs and Lucy, Sachs had noticed that the nurse vanished through the doorway marked NEUROSURGERY. Sachs had asked, "Didn't you say that she works in oncology?"
"She does."
"Then what's she doing going in there?"
"Maybe saying hello to Lincoln," Lucy suggested.
But Sachs didn't think that nurses paid social calls to patients about to be operated on.
Then she thought: Lydia would know about new cancer diagnoses among residents from Tanrfer's Corner. She then recalled that somebody had given information to Bell about cancer patients--the three people in Blackwater Landing that Culbeau and his friends had killed. Who better than a nurse on the onco ward? This was far-fetched but Sachs mentioned it to Lucy, who pulled out her cell phone and made an emergency call to the phone company, whose security department did a down-and-dirty pen-register search of Jim Bell's phone calls. There were hundreds to and from Lydia.
"She's going to kill him!" Sachs had cried. And the two women, one with a weapon drawn, had burst into the operating room--a scene right out of a melodramatic episode of ER--just as Dr. Weaver was about to make the opening incision.
Lydia had panicked and, trying to escape, or trying to do what Bell had sent her for, ripped the oxygen tube from Rhyme's throat before the two women subdued her. From that trauma and because of the anesthetic Rhyme's lungs had failed. Dr. Weaver had revived him but, afterward, his breathing hadn't been up to par and he'd had to go back on the stimulator.
Which was bad enough. But worse, to Rhyme's anger and disgust, Dr. Weaver refused to perform the operation for at least another six months--until his breathing functions were completely normalized. He'd tried to insist but the surgeon proved to be as mulely as he was.
Sachs sipped more scotch.
"You told Roland Bell about his cousin?" Rhyme asked.
She nodded. "He took it hard. Said Jim was the black sheep but never guessed he'd do anything like this. He's pretty shaken up by the news." She looked northeast. "Look," she said, "out there. Know what that is?"
Trying to follow her eyes, Rhyme asked, "What're you looking at? The horizon? A cloud? An airplane? Enlighten me, Sachs."
"The Great Dismal Swamp. That's where Lake Drummond is."
"Fascinating," he said sarcastically.
"It's full of ghosts," she added, like a tour guide.
Lucy came up and poured some scotch into a paper cup. Sipped it. Then made a face. "It's awful. Tastes like soap." She opened a Heineken.
Rhyme said, "It costs eighty dollars a bottle."
"Expensive soap, then."
Sachs watched Garrett as he shoveled corn chips into his mouth then ran into the grass. She asked Lucy, "Any word from the county?"
"On being his foster mom?" Lucy asked. Then shook her head. "Got rejected. The being single part isn't an issue. They have a problem with my job. Cop. Long hours."
"What do they know?" Rhyme scowled.
"Doesn't matter what they know," she said. "What they do is the thing that's important. Garrett's being set up with a family up in Hobeth. Good people. I checked them out pretty good."
Sachs didn't doubt that she had.
"But we're going on a hike next weekend."
Nearby Garrett eased through the grass, stalking a specimen.
When Sachs turned back she saw Rhyme had been watching her as she gazed at the boy.
"What?" she asked, frowning at his coy expression.
"If you were going to say something to an empty chair, Sachs, what would it be?"
She hesitated for a moment. "I think I'll keep that to myself for the time being, Rhyme."
Suddenly Garrett gave a loud laugh and started running through the grass. He was chasing an insect, which was oblivious to its pursuer, through the dusty air. The boy caught up with it and, with outstretched arms, made a grab for his prey then tumbled to the ground. A moment later he was up, staring into his cupped hands and walking slowly back to the picnic benches.
"Guess what I found," he called.
"Come show us," Amelia Sachs said. "I want to see."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I trust North Carolinians will forgive me for rearranging the geography and educational system of the Tar Heel State a bit to suit my nefarious means. If it's any consolation, they can rest assured that I did this with the utmost respect for the state with the best basketball teams in the country.
JEFFERY DEAVER is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two suspense novels, and the originator of the acclaimed detective hero Lincoln Rhyme, featured in the bestsellers The Cold Moon, The Twelfth Card, The Vanished Man, The Stone Monkey, The Empty Chair, The Coffin Dancer, and The Bone Collector. His new thriller, The Sleeping Doll, is available in hardcover from Simon & Schuster. As William Jefferies, he is the author of Shallow Graves, Bloody River Blues, and Hell's Kitchen. His short fiction is anthologized in two acclaimed collections from Pocket Books: Twisted and More Twisted. He is a five-time Edgar Award nominee, an Anthony Award nominee, a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He has also won a Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year for Garden of Beasts and a Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. His novel The Bone Collector became a Universal Pictures feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. A former attorney, Deaver has been hailed as "the best psychological thriller writer around" (The Times, London).
Visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.
Jeffery Deaver, The Empty Chair
(Series: Lincoln Rhyme # 3)
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