The Empty Chair (3 page)

Bell gave a grim smile. He said, "Matter of fact, sir, I don't know you're going to be feeling that way for too long."

3

There was a resemblance, Rhyme could see, as he concentrated more acutely on the visitor.

The same lean physique, long hands and thinning hair, the same easygoing nature as his cousin Roland in New York. This Bell looked tanner and more rugged. Probably fished and hunted a lot. A Stetson would have suited him better than the trooper hat. Bell took a seat in a chair next to Thom.

"We have ourselves a problem, Mr. Rhyme."

"Call me Lincoln. Please."

"Go on," Sachs said to Bell. "Tell him what you told me."

Rhyme glanced coolly at Sachs. She'd met this man three minutes ago and already they were in cahoots together.

"I'm sheriff of Paquenoke County. That's about twenty miles east of here. We have this situation and I was thinking 'bout what my cousin told me – he can't speak highly enough of you, sir . . ."

Rhyme nodded impatiently for him to continue. Thinking:
Where the hell's my doctor? How many forms does she have to dig up? Is
she
in on the conspiracy too?

"Anyway, this situation . . . I thought I'd come over and ask if you could spare us a little time."

Rhyme laughed, a sound without a stitch of humor in it. "I'm about to have surgery."

"Oh, I understand that. I wouldn't interfere with it for the world. I'm just thinking of a few hours . . . We don't need much help, I'm hoping. See, Cousin Rol told me about some of the things you've done in investigations up north. We have basic crime lab stuff but most of the forensics work 'round here goes through Elizabeth City – the nearest state police HQ – or Raleigh. Takes weeks to get answers. And we don't have weeks. We got hours. At best."

"For what?"

"To find a couple girls got kidnapped."

"Kidnapping's federal," Rhyme pointed out. "Call the FBI."

"I can't recall the last time we even had a federal agent in the county, other than ATF on moonshine warrants. By the time the FBI gets down here and sets up, those girls'll be goners."

"Tell us about what happened," Sachs said. She was wearing her interested face, Rhyme noted cynically – and with displeasure.

Bell said, "Yesterday one of our local high school boys was murdered and a college girl was kidnapped. Then this morning the perp came back and kidnapped another girl." Rhyme noticed the man's face darken. "He set a trap and one of my deputies got hurt bad. He's here at the medical center now, in a coma."

Rhyme saw that Sachs had stopped digging a fingernail into her hair, scratching her scalp, and was paying rapt attention to Bell. Well, perhaps they weren't co-conspirators but Rhyme knew why she was so interested in a case they didn't have the time to participate in. And he didn't like the reason one bit. "Amelia," he began, casting a cool glance at the clock on Dr. Weaver's wall.

"Why not, Rhyme? What can it hurt?" She pulled her long red hair off her shoulders, where it rested like a still waterfall.

Bell glanced at the spinal cord in the corner once more. "We're a small office, sir. We did what we could – all of my deputies and some other folk too were out all night but, fact is, we just couldn't find him or Mary Beth. Ed – the deputy that's in the coma – we think he got a look at a map that shows where the boy might've gone. But the doctors don't know when, or if, he's going to wake up." He looked back into Rhyme's eyes imploringly. "We'd sure be appreciative if you could take a look at the evidence we found and give us any thoughts on where the boy might be headed. We're outa our depth here. I'm standing in need of some serious help."

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' 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.