The Empty Chair (29 page)

Several cars drove by leisurely, their drivers oblivious to the felony they were passing.

Sachs watched them enviously. On the lam for only twenty minutes, she reflected, and already she felt a heart-wrenching tug at the normalcy of everyone else's life – and at the dark turn hers had taken.

This is way past stupid, lady.

• • •

"Hey there!"

Mary Beth McConnell jerked awake.

With the heat and oppressive atmosphere in the cabin she'd fallen asleep on the smelly couch.

The voice, nearby, called again. "Miss, are you all right? Hello? Mary Beth?"

She leapt from the bed and walked quickly toward the broken window. She felt dizzy, had to lower her head for a minute, steady herself against the wall. The pain in her temple throbbed ferociously. She thought:
Fuck you, Garrett.

The pain subsided, her vision cleared. And she continued to the window.

It was the Missionary. He had his friend with him, a tall, balding man in gray slacks and a work shirt. The Missionary carried an ax.

"Thank you, thank you!" she whispered.

"Miss, you all right?"

"I'm fine. He hasn't come back." Her voice was still painfully raw. He handed her another canteen of water and she drank the whole container down.

"I called the town police," he told her. "They're on their way. They'll be here in fifteen, twenty minutes. But we aren't gonna wait for them. We're gonna get you out now, the two of us."

"I can't thank you enough."

"Stand back a little. I been chopping wood all my life and that door's gonna be a stack of firewood in one minute. This's Tom. He's working for the county too."

"Hi, Tom."

"Hi. Your head okay there?" he asked, frowning.

"Looks worse than it is," she said, touching the scab.

Thunk, thunk.

The ax drove into the door. From the window she could see the blade as it lifted high into the air and caught the sunlight. The cutting edge of the tool glistened, meaning it was very sharp. Mary Beth used to help her father chop wood for their fireplace. She remembered how much she loved watching him edge the ax with a grinding stone on the end of his drill – the orange sparks would fly into the air like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

"Who's this boy who kidnapped you?" Tom asked. "Some kind of pervert?"

Thunk . . . thunk.

"He's a high school kid from Tanner's Corner. He's scary. Look at all this." She waved at the insects in the jars.

"Gosh," Tom said, leaning close to the window, looking in.

Thunk.

A crack as the Missionary worked a large splinter out of the door.

Thud.

Mary Beth glanced at the door. Garrett must have reinforced it, maybe nailing two doors together. She said to Tom, "I feel like I'm one of his damn bugs myself. He – " Mary Beth saw a blur as Tom's left arm shot through the window and gripped the collar of her shirt. His right hand socketed onto her breast. He yanked her forward against the bars and planted his wet, beery-tobacco mouth on her lips. His tongue darted out and ran hard into her teeth.

He probed her chest, pinching, trying to find her nipple through her shirt as she twisted her head away from him, spitting and screaming.

"What the hell're you doing?" the Missionary cried, dropping the ax. He ran to the window.

But before he could pull Tom off, Mary Beth gripped the hand that spidered across her chest and pulled downward, hard. She ran Tom's wrist into a stalagmite of glass rising from the window frame. He cried out in pain and shock and let go of her, stumbling backward.

Wiping her mouth, Mary Beth ran from the window to the middle of the room.

The Missionary shouted at Tom, "What the fuck'd you do that for?"

Hit him!
Mary Beth was thinking.
Nail him with the ax. He's crazy. Turn
him
over to the police too.

Tom wasn't listening. He was squeezing his bloody arm, examining the slash. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus . . ."

The Missionary muttered, "I
told
you to be patient. We woulda had her out in five minutes and spread-eagle at your place in a half hour. Now we got a mess."

Spread-eagle . . .

His comment registered in Mary Beth's thoughts an instant before its corollary arrived: that there'd been no call to the police; there was no one coming to rescue her.

"Man, look at this. Look!" Tom held up his split wrist, blood cascading down his arm.

"Fuck," the Missionary muttered. "We gotta get that stitched up. You dumb shit. Why couldn't you wait? Come on, let's get it taken care of."

Mary Beth watched Tom stagger into the field. He stopped ten feet away from the window. "You fucking bitch! You get yourself ready. We'll be back." He glanced down and crouched out of view for a moment. He stood up again, holding a rock the size of a large orange in his good hand. He flung it through the bars. Mary Beth stumbled backward as it sailed into the room, missing her by a scant foot. She sank onto the couch, sobbing.

As they walked toward the woods she heard Tom call again, "Get yourself ready!"

• • •

They were at Harris Tomel's house, a nice five-bedroom colonial on a good-sized cut of grass the man'd never done a lick of work to. Tomel's idea of lawn decorations was parking his F-250 in the front yard and his Suburban in the back.

He did this because, being the sort-of college boy of the trio and owning more sweaters than plaid shirts, Tomel had to try a little harder to seem like a shit-kicker. Oh, sure, he'd done fed time but it was for some crappy scam in Raleigh where he sold stocks and bonds in companies whose only problem was that they didn't exist. He could shoot good as a sniper but Culbeau'd never known him to whale on anybody by himself, skin on skin, at least nobody who wasn't tied up. Tomel also
thought
about things too much, spent too much time on his clothes, asked for call liquor, even at Eddie's.

So unlike Culbeau, who worked hard on his own split-level, and unlike O'Sarian, who worked hard picking up waitresses who'd keep his trailer nice, Harris Tomel just let the house and yard go. Hoping, Culbeau assumed, that it'd goose the impression that he was a mean fuck.

But that was Tomel's business and the three men weren't at the house with its scruffy yard and Detroit lawn ornaments to discuss landscaping; they were here for one reason only. Because Tomel had inherited the gun collection to end all gun collections when his father went into Spivy Pond ice fishing on New Year's Eve a few years ago and didn't surface till the next tax day.

They stood in the man's paneled den, looking over the gun cases the same way Culbeau and O'Sarian had stood at the penny candy rack in Peterson's Drugs on Maple Street twenty years ago, deciding what to steal.

O'Sarian picked the black Colt AR-15, the civvy version of the M-16, because he was always yammering on and on about Vietnam and watched every war movie he could find.

Tomel took the beautiful Browning shotgun with the inlay, which Culbeau coveted as much as he coveted any woman in the county, even though he himself was a rifle man and would rather drill a hole in a deer's heart from three hundred yards than blow a duck into a dust of feathers. For himself, today, he chose Tomel's nifty Winchester .30-06 with a 'scope the size of Texas.

They packed plenty of ammo, water, Culbeau's cell phone and food. 'Shine of course.

Sleeping bags, too. Though none of them expected the hunt to last very long.

24

A grim Lincoln Rhyme wheeled into the dismantled forensic lab in the Paquenoke County Building.

Lucy Kerr and Mason Germain stood beside the fiberboard table that had held the microscopes. Their arms were crossed and, as Thom and Rhyme entered, both deputies regarded the criminalist and his aide with a blend of contempt and suspicion.

"How the hell could she do it?" Mason asked. "What was she thinking of?"

But these were two of many questions about Amelia Sachs and what she'd done that couldn't be answered, not yet, and so Rhyme asked merely, "Was anybody hurt?"

"No," Lucy said. "But Nathan was pretty shook up, looking down the barrel of that Smith and Wesson. Which
we
were crazy enough to give her."

Rhyme struggled to remain outwardly calm, yet his heart was pierced with fear for Sachs. Lincoln Rhyme trusted evidence before all else and the evidence showed clearly that Garrett Hanlon was a kidnapper and killer. Sachs, tricked by his calculated facade, was as much at risk as Mary Beth or Lydia.

Jim Bell entered the room.

"Did she take a car?" Rhyme continued.

"I don't think so," Bell said. "I asked around. No vehicles missing yet."

Bell looked at the map, still taped to the wall. "This isn't an easy area to get out of and not get seen. Lot of marshland, not many roads. I've –"

Lucy said, "Get some dogs, Jim. Irv Wanner runs a couple hounds for the state police. Call Captain Dexter in Elizabeth City and get Irv's number. He'll track 'em down."

"Good idea," Bell said. "We'll –"

"I want to propose something," Rhyme interrupted.

Mason gave a cold laugh.

"What?" Bell asked.

"I'll make a deal with you."

"No deals," Bell said. "She's a fleeing felon. And armed, to boot."

"She's not going to shoot anybody," Thom said.

Rhyme continued, "Amelia's convinced there's no other way to find Mary Beth. That's why she did it. They're going to where she's being held."

"Doesn't matter," Bell said. "You can't go breaking murderers out of jail."

"Give me twenty-four hours before you call the state police. I'll find them for you. We can work something out with the charges. But if troopers and dogs get involved we all know they'll play it by the book and that means there's a good chance of people getting hurt."

"That's a hell of a deal, Lincoln," Bell said. "Your friend busts out our prisoner –"

"He wouldn't
be
your prisoner if it weren't for me. You never would've found him on your own."

"No damn way," Mason said. "We're wasting time and they're getting farther away every minute we've wasted talking. I'm of a mind to get every man in town out looking for 'em now. Deputize the lot. Do what Henry Davett suggested. Pass out rifles and –"

Bell interrupted him and asked Rhyme, "If we give you your twenty-four hours then what's in it for us?"

"I'll stay and help you find Mary Beth. However long it takes."

Thom said, "The operation, Lincoln . . ."

"Forget the operation," he muttered, feeling the despair as he said this. He knew that Dr. Weaver's schedule was so tight that if he missed his appointed date on the table he'd have to go back on the waiting list. Then it crossed his mind that one reason Sachs had done this was to keep Rhyme from having the surgery. To buy a few more days and give him a chance to change his mind. But he pushed this thought aside, raging to himself:
Find her, save her. Before Garrett adds her to the list of his victims.

Stung 137 times.

Lucy said, "We're looking at a bit of, what would you say, divided loyalty here, aren't we?"

Mason: "Yeah, how do we know you aren't gonna send us 'round Robin Hood's barn and let her get away?"

"Because," Rhyme said patiently, "Amelia's wrong. Garrett
is
a murderer and he just used her to break out of jail. Once he doesn't need her he'll kill her."

Bell paced for a moment, gazing up at the map. "Okay, we'll do it, Lincoln. You've got twenty-four hours."

Mason sighed. "And how the hell're you going to find her in that wilderness?" He motioned toward the map. "You just going to call her up and ask where she is?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do. Thom, let's get the equipment set up again. And somebody get Ben Kerr back here!"

• • •

Lucy Kerr stood in the office adjacent to the war room, on the phone.

"North Carolina State Police, Elizabeth City," the woman's crisp voice answered. "How can I help you?"

"Detective Gregg."

"Hold, please."

"'Lo?" asked a man's voice after a moment.

"Pete, s'Lucy Kerr over in Tanner's Corner."

"Hey, Lucy, how's it going? What's with those missing girls?"

"Got that under control," she said, her voice calm, though she was enraged that Bell had insisted she recite the words Lincoln Rhyme had dictated to her. "But we do have another little problem."

Little problem . . .

"Whatcha need? A couple troopers?"

"No, just a cell phone trace."

"Got a warrant?"

"Magistrate's clerk's faxing it to you right now."

"Gimme the phone and serial numbers."

She gave him the information.

"What's that area code, two one two?"

"It's a New York number. Party's roaming now."

"Not a problem," Gregg said. "You want a tape of the conversation?"

"Just location."

And a clear line of sight to the target . . .

"When . . . wait. Here's the fax . . ." A pause as he read. "Oh, just a missing person?"

"That's all," she said reluctantly.

"You know it's expensive. We'll have to bill you."

"I understand."

"Okay, hold the line, I'll call my tech people." There was a faint click.

Lucy sat on the desk, shoulders slumped, flexing her left hand, staring at fingers ruddy from years of gardening, an old scar from the metal strap on a pallet of mulch, the indentation in her ring finger from five years of wedding band.

Flex, straighten.

Watching the veins and muscles beneath the skin, Lucy Kerr realized something. That Amelia Sachs' crime had tapped into an anger within her that was more intense than anything she'd ever felt.

When they took part of her body away she'd felt ashamed and then forlorn. When her husband left she'd felt guilty and resigned. And when she finally grew mad at those events she was angry in a way that suggested embers – an anger that radiates immense heat but never bursts into flames.