The Empty Chair (15 page)

"We'll save her," Amelia said, and she said it with a tone that Lucy sometimes – not often, but sometimes – heard in her own voice. A tone that didn't leave any doubt.

They walked more slowly now. The trap had spooked them all. And the heat was truly excruciating.

Lucy asked Amelia, "That surgery your friend's going to have? It's for his . . . situation?"

"Yep."

"What's that look?" Lucy asked, noticing a darkness cross the woman's face.

"It probably won't do anything."

"Then why's he doing it?"

Amelia explained, "There's a chance it might help. Small chance. It's experimental. Nobody with the kind of injury he has – as serious as that – has ever improved."

"And you don't want him to go through with it?"

"I don't, no."

"Why not?"

Amelia hesitated. "Because it could kill him. Or make him even worse."

"You talked to him about it?"

"Yes."

"But it didn't do any good," Lucy said.

"Not a bit."

Lucy nodded. "I figured he's a man who's a bit muley."

Amelia said, "That's putting it mildly."

A crash sounded near them, in the brush, and by the time Lucy's hand found her pistol Amelia had drawn a careful bead on a wild turkey's chest. The four members of the search party smiled but the amusement lasted for only a moment, replaced by edginess as adrenaline eased through their hearts.

Guns replaced in holsters, eyes scanning the path, they continued forward, conversation on hold for the time being.

• • •

There were several categories people fell into when it came to Rhyme's injury.

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' 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?"

Ben's round face looked even more puffed up than it had been; he was taking the accusation personally. "I didn't really . . ."

But Rhyme wasn't even listening. There was no one to blame but himself for this lapse. Someone
had
told him about the quarry – Henry Davett, when he'd said that limestone was big business in the area at one time. How else do companies produce commercial limestone? Rhyme should've asked about a quarry as soon as he'd heard that. And the nitrates weren't from pipe bombs at all but from blasting out rock – that kind of residue would last for decades.

He said into the phone, "There's an abandoned quarry not far from you. To the southwest."

A pause. Faint words. She said, "Jesse knows about it."

"Garrett
was
there. I don't know if he still is. So be careful. And remember he may not be leaving bombs but he's rigging traps. Call me when you find something."

• • •

Now that Lydia was away from the Outside and wasn't as sick from heat and exhaustion, she realized that she had the Inside to contend with. And that was proving to be just as frightening.

Her captor would pace for a while, look out the window, then squat on his haunches, clicking his fingernails and muttering to himself, looking over her body, then go back to pacing. Once, Garrett glanced down at the floor of the mill and picked up something. He slipped it into his mouth, chewed hungrily. She wondered if it was an insect and the thought of this nearly made her vomit.

They were in what seemed to have been the office of the mill. From here she could look down a corridor, partly burnt in the fire, to another series of rooms – probably the grain storage and the grinding rooms. Brilliant afternoon light flowed through the burnt-out walls and ceiling of the hallway.

Something orange caught her eye. She squinted and saw bags of Doritos. Also Cape Cod potato chips. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. And more of those Planters peanut-butter-and-cheese cracker packages he'd had at the quarry. Sodas and Deer Park water. She hadn't seen them when they first entered the mill.

Why all this food? How long would they be staying here? Garrett had said just for the night but there were enough provisions for a month's stay. Was he going to keep her here longer than he'd originally told her?

Lydia asked, "Is Mary Beth all right? Have you hurt her?"

"Oh, yeah, like I'm going to hurt her," he said sarcastically. "I don't think so." Lydia turned away and studied the shafts of light piercing the remains of the corridor. From beyond it came a squeaking sound – the revolving millstone, she guessed.

Garrett continued, offering: "The only reason I took her away is to make sure she's okay. She wanted to get out of Tanner's Corner. She likes it at the beach. I mean, fuck, who wouldn't? Better than shitty Tanner's Corner." Snapping his nails faster now, louder. He was agitated and nervous. With his huge hands he ripped open one of the bags of chips. He ate several handfuls, chewing them sloppily, bits falling from his mouth. He drank down an entire can of Coke at once. Ate more chips.

"This place burned down two years ago," he said. "I don't know who did it. You like that sound? The waterwheel? It's pretty cool. The wheel going round and round. Like, reminds me of this song my father used to sing around the house all the time. '
Big wheel keep on turning
. . .'" He shoveled more food into his mouth and started speaking. She couldn't understand him for a moment. He swallowed. " – here a lot. You sit here at night, listen to the cicada and the bloodnouns – you know, the bullfrogs. If I'm going all the way to the ocean – like now – I spend the night here. You'll like it at night." He stopped talking and leaned toward her suddenly. Too scared to look directly at him, she kept her eyes downcast but sensed he was studying her closely. Then, in an instant, he leapt up and crouched close beside her.

Lydia winced as she smelled his body odor. She waited for his hands to crawl over her chest, between her legs.

But he wasn't interested in her, it seemed. Garrett moved aside a rock and lifted something out from underneath.

"A millipede." He smiled. The creature was long and yellow-green and the sight of it sickened her.

"They feel neat. I like them." He let it climb over his hand and wrist. "They're not insects," he lectured. "They're like cousins. They're dangerous if you try to hurt them. Their bite is really bad. The Indians around here used to grind them up and put the poison on arrowheads. When a millipede is scared it shits poison and then escapes. A predator crawls through the gas and dies. That's pretty wild, huh?"

Garrett grew silent and studied the millipede intently, the way Lydia herself would look at her niece and nephew – with affection, amusement, almost love.

Lydia felt the horror rising in her. She knew she should stay calm, knew she shouldn't antagonize Garrett, should just play along with him. But seeing that disgusting bug slither over his arm, hearing his fingernails click, watching his blotched skin and wet, red eyes, the flecks of food on his chin, she convulsed in panic.

As the disgust and the fear boiled up in her Lydia imagined she heard a faint voice, urging, "Yes, yes, yes!" A voice that could only belong to a guardian angel.

Yes, yes, yes!

She rolled onto her back. Garrett looked up, smiling from the sensation of the animal on his skin, curious about what she was doing. And Lydia lashed out as hard as she could with both feet. She had strong legs, used to carrying her big frame for eight-hour shifts at the hospital, and the kick sent him tumbling backward. He hit his head against the wall with a dull thud and rolled to the floor, stunned. Then he cried out, a raw scream, and grabbed his arm; the millipede must have bit him.

Yes!
Lydia thought triumphantly as she rolled upright. She struggled to her feet and ran blindly toward the grinding room at the end of the corridor.

12

According to Jesse Corn's reckoning they were almost to the quarry.

"About five minutes ahead," he told Sachs. Then he glanced at her twice and after some tacit debate said, "You know, I was going to ask you . . . When you drew your weapon, when that turkey came outa the brush. Well, and at Blackwater Landing too when Rich Culbeau surprised us . . . That was . . . well, that was something. You know how to drive a nail, looks like."

She knew, from Roland Bell, the Southern expression meant "to shoot."

"One of my hobbies," she said.

"Nofoolin'."

"Easier than running," she said. "Cheaper than joining a health club."

"You in competition?"

Sachs nodded. "North Shore Pistol Club on Long Island."

"How 'bout that," he said with a daunting enthusiasm. "NRA Bullseye matches?"

"Right."

"That's my sport too! Well, skeet and trap, course. But sidearms're my specialty."

Hers too but she thought it best not to find too much in common with adoring Jesse Corn.

"You reload your own ammo?" he asked.

"Uh-huh. Well, the .38s and .45s. Not the rimfire, of course. Getting the bubbles out of slugs – that's the big problem."

"Whoa, you're not telling me you cast your own bullets?"

"I do," she admitted, recalling that when everyone else's apartment in her building smelled of waffles and bacon on Sunday morning hers often was redolent of the unique aroma of molten lead.

"I don't do that," he said apologetically. "I buy match rounds."

They walked for another few minutes in silence, all eyes on the ground, looking for more deadfall traps.

"So," Jesse Corn said, offering a coy grin, swiping his blond hair off his damp forehead. "I'll show you mine . . ." Sachs looked at him quizzically and he continued. "I mean, what's your best score? On the Bull's-eye circuit?" When she hesitated he encouraged: "Come on, you can tell me. It's only a sport. . . . And, hey, I've been competing for ten years. I got a little edge on you."

"Twenty-seven hundred," Sachs said.

Jesse nodded. "Right, that's the match I mean – the three-pistol rotation, nine hundred points max for each gun. What's your best?"

"No, that's my score," she said, wincing as a jolt of arthritic pain coursed through her stiff legs. "Twenty-seven hundred."

Jesse turned to her, looking for signs of a joke. When she didn't grin or guffaw, he exhaled a fast laugh. "But that's a perfect score."

"Oh, I don't shoot that
every
match. But you asked what my best was."

"But . . ." His eyes were wide. "I've never even
met
anybody shot a twenty-seven hundred."

"You have now," Ned said, laughing hard. "And don't feel bad, Jess – it's only a sport."

"Twenty-seven . . ." The young deputy shook his head.

Sachs decided she should have lied. With this information about her ballistic prowess it seemed that Jesse Corn's love for her was sealed.

"Say, after this is over," he said shyly, "you have some free time, maybe you and me could go out to the range, waste us some ammo."

And Sachs thought:
Better a box of Winchester .38 specials than a cup of Starbucks accompanied by talk of how hard it is to meet women in Tanner's Corner.

"Let's see how things go."

"It's a date," he said, using the word she'd hoped wouldn't surface.

"There," Lucy said. "Look." They stopped at the edge of the forest and saw the quarry in front of them.

Sachs motioned them into a crouch.
Damn, that hurts.
She popped condroitin and glucosamine daily but this Carolina humidity and heat – it was hell on her poor joints. She gazed at the huge pit – two hundred yards across and easily a hundred feet deep. The walls were yellow, like old bone, and they dropped straight down into green, brackish water that smelled sour. The vegetation for twenty yards around the perimeter had died bad deaths.