The Empty Chair (36 page)

"And they're heading for the house," Tomel said.

They moved cautiously up a path.

O'Sarian still wasn't acting weird. Which for him actually
was
weird. And scary. He hadn't snuck any hits of 'shine, hadn't been pranking, hadn't even been talking – and Sean was the number-one motormouth in Tanner's Corner. The shooting at the river had really shaken him. Now, as they walked through the woods, he swung the muzzle of the black soldier rifle around fast at every sound from the brush. "Did you see that nigger shoot?" he said finally. "Must've put ten slugs in that boat in less than a minute."

"Was pellets," Harris Tomel corrected.

And instead of challenging him and trying to impress them with what he knew about guns (and acting like the all-purpose asshole he was), O'Sarian just said, "Oh, buckshot. Right. I should've thought of that." And nodded like a kid in school who'd just learned something new and interesting.

They moved closer to the house. It looked like a nice place, Culbeau thought. A vacation house probably – maybe some lawyer's or doctor's from Raleigh or Winston-Salem. A good hunting lodge, full bar, nice bedrooms, a freezer for venison.

"Hey, Harris," O'Sarian asked.

Culbeau'd never known the boy to use anybody's first name.

"What?"

"This thing shoot high or low?" Holding up the Colt.

Tomel glanced at Culbeau, probably also trying to figure out where the weird part of O'Sarian had gone.

"First one's right on the money but it'll kick higher than you're used to. Drop the muzzle for the next shots."

"Because the stock's plastic," O'Sarian asked, "so it's lighter than wood?"

"Yeah."

He nodded again, his face even more serious than earlier. "Thanks."

Thanks?

The woods ended and the men could see a large clearing around the house – easily fifty yards in all directions without even a sapling for cover. The approach'd be tough.

"Think they're inside?" Tomel asked, kneading his gorgeous shotgun.

"I don't – Wait, get down!"

The three men crouched fast.

"I saw something downstairs. Through that window to the left." Culbeau looked through the 'scope on the deer rifle. "Somebody's moving around. On the ground floor. I can't see too good, with the blinds. But there's definitely somebody there." He scanned the other windows. "Shit!" A panicked whisper. He dropped to the ground.

"What?" O'Sarian asked, alarmed, gripping his gun and spinning around.

"Get down! One of 'em's got a rifle with a 'scope. They're sighting right at us. Upstairs window. Damn."

"Gotta be the girl," Tomel said. "That boy's too much of a faggot to know which end the bullet comes out."

"Fuck that bitch," Culbeau muttered. O'Sarian was easing behind a tree, hugging his 'Nam gun close to his cheek.

"She's got the whole field covered from here," Culbeau said.

"We wait till it's dark?" Tomel asked.

"Oh, with little miss tit-less deputy coming up behind us? I don't think that'll work, now, Harris, will it?"

"Well, can you hit her from here?" Tomel nodded toward the window.

"Probably," Culbeau said, sighing. He was about to start ragging on Tomel when O'Sarian said in a weirdly normal voice, "But if Rich shoots, then Lucy and th'others'll hear. I think we oughta flank 'em. Go around the side and try and get inside. A shot'd be a lot quieter in there."

Which was just what Culbeau was about to say.

"That'll take a half hour," Tomel snapped, probably pissed at being outthought by O'Sarian.

Who remained at the top of his uncrazy form. The young man clicked the safety off his gun and squinted toward the house. "Well, I'd say we gotta make it take
less
than half an hour. Whatta
you
think, Rich?"

30

Steve Farr led Henry Davett into the lab once again. The businessman thanked Farr, who left, and nodded to Rhyme.

"Henry," Rhyme said, "thank you for coming."

As before, the businessman paid no attention to Rhyme's condition. This time, though, Rhyme took no comfort from his attitude. His concern for Sachs was consuming him. He kept hearing Jim Bell's voice.

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.

This rule, which had applied to Lydia and Mary Beth, now encompassed Amelia Sachs' fate too. The difference was, Rhyme believed, that Sachs might have far fewer than twenty-four hours.

"I thought you'd caught that boy. That's what I heard."

Ben said, "He got away from us."

"No!" Davett frowned.

"Sure did," Ben offered. "Old-fashioned jailbreak."

Rhyme: "I've got some more evidence but I don't know what to make of it. I was hoping you could help again."

The businessman sat down. "I'll do what I can."

A glance at his WWJD tie bar.

Rhyme nodded toward the chart, said, "Could you look that over? The list on the right."

"The mill – is
that
where he was? That old mill northeast of town?"

"Right."

"I
knew
about the place." Davett grimaced angrily. "I should've thought of it."

Criminalists can't let the verb "should have" creep into their vocabulary. Rhyme said, "It's impossible to think of everything in this business. But take a look at the chart. Does anything on it seem familiar to you?"

Davett read carefully.

FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE –

MILL

Brown Paint on Pants

Sundew Plant

Clay

Peat Moss

Fruit Juice

Paper Fibers

Stinkball Bait

Sugar

Camphene

Alcohol

Kerosene

Yeast

As he gazed at the list he said in a distracted voice, "It's like a puzzle."

"That's the nature of my job," Rhyme said.

"How much can I speculate?" the businessman asked.

"As much as you'd like," Rhyme said.

"All right," Davett said. He thought for a moment then said, "A Carolina bay."

Rhyme asked, "What's that? A horse?"

Davett glanced at Rhyme to see if he was joking. Then said, "No, it's a geologic structure you see on the Eastern Seaboard. Mostly, though, they're found in the Carolinas. North and South. They're basically oval ponds, about three or four feet deep, freshwater. They could be a half-acre big or a couple of hundred. The bottom of them is mostly clay and peat. Just what's on the chart there."

"But clay and peat – they're pretty common around here," Ben said.

"They are," Davett agreed. "And if you'd found just those two things I wouldn't have a clue where they came from. But you found something else. See, one of the most interesting characteristics about Carolina bays is that insect-killer plants grow around them. You see hundreds of Venus flytraps, sundews and pitcher plants around bays – probably because the ponds promote insects. If you found a sundew along with clay and peat moss then there's no doubt the boy's spent time around a Carolina bay."

"Good," Rhyme said. Then, gazing at the map, asked, "What does 'bay' mean? An inlet of water?"

"No, it refers to bay trees. They grow around the ponds. There're all sorts of myths about them. Settlers used to think they were carved out of the land by sea monsters or witches casting spells. Meteorites were a theory for a few years. But they're really just natural depressions caused by wind and currents of water."

"Are they unique to a particular area around here?" Rhyme asked, hoping that they'd help narrow down the search.

"To some extent." Davett rose and walked to the map. With his finger he circled a large area to the west of Tanner's Corner. Locations B-2 to E-2 and F-13 to B-12. "You'll find them mostly here, in this area, just before you get to the hills."

Rhyme was discouraged. What Davett had circled must have included seventy or eighty square miles.

Davett saw Rhyme's reaction. He said, "Wish I could be more helpful."

"No, no, I appreciate it. It
will
be helpful. We just need to narrow down more of the clues."

The businessman read, "Sugar, fruit juice, kerosene . . ." He shook his head, unsmiling. "You have a difficult job, Mr. Rhyme."

"These are the tough cases," Rhyme explained. "When you have no clues you're free to speculate. When you have a lot of them you can usually get the answer pretty quickly. But having a few clues, like this . . ." Rhyme's voice faded.

"We're hog-tied by the facts," Ben muttered.

Rhyme turned to him. "Exactly, Ben. Exactly."

"I should be getting home," Davett said. "My family's expecting me." He wrote a phone number on a business card. "You can call me anytime."

Rhyme thanked him again and turned his gaze back to the evidence chart.

Hog-tied by the facts . . .

• • •

Rich Culbeau sucked the blood off his arm from where the brambles had scratched it deeply. He spit against a tree.

It had taken them twenty minutes of hard slogging through the brush to get to the side porch of the A-frame vacation house without being seen by the bitch with the sniper gun. Even Harris Tomel, who normally looked like he'd just stepped off a country club patio, was bloody and dust-stained.

The new Sean O'Sarian, quiet and thoughtful and, well,
sane
, was waiting back on the path, lying on the ground with his black gun like an infantry grunt at Khe Sahn, ready to slow up Lucy and the other Vietcong with a few shots over their heads in case they came up the trail toward the house.

"You ready?" Culbeau asked Tomel, who nodded.

Culbeau eased open the knob of the mudroom door and pushed the door inside, his gun up and ready.

Tomel followed. They were skittish as cats, knowing that the redheaded cop with the deer rifle she surely knew how to use could be waiting for them anywhere in the house.

"You hear anything?" Culbeau whispered.

"Just music." It was soft rock – the sort Culbeau listened to because he hated country-western.

The two men moved slowly down the dim hallway, guns up and cocked. They slowed. Ahead of them was the kitchen, where Culbeau had seen somebody – probably the boy – moving when he'd sighted on the house through the rifle 'scope. He nodded toward the room.

"Don't think they heard us," Tomel said. The music was up pretty high.

"We go in together. Shoot for their legs or knees. Don't kill him – we still gotta get him to tell us where Mary Beth is."

"The woman too?"

Culbeau thought for a moment. "Yeah, why not? We might want to keep her alive for a while. You know what for."

Tomel nodded.

"One, two . . . three."

They pushed fast into the kitchen and found themselves about to shoot a weatherman on a big-screen TV. They crouched and spun around, looking for the boy and the woman. Didn't see them. Then Culbeau looked at the set. He realized it didn't belong here. Somebody'd rolled it in from the living room and set it up in front of the stove, facing the windows.

Culbeau peered out through the blinds. "Shit. They put the set here so we'd see it from across the field, from the path. And think there was somebody in the house." He took off up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Wait," Tomel called. "She's up there. With the gun."

But of course the redhead wasn't up there at all. Culbeau kicked into the bedroom where he'd seen the rifle barrel and the telescopic sight aiming at them and he now found pretty much what he expected to find: a piece of narrow pipe on top of which was taped the ass end of a Corona bottle.

In disgust he said, "
That's
the gun and 'scope. Jesus Christ. They rigged it to bluff us out. It cost us a half fucking hour. And the goddamn deputies're probably five minutes away. We gotta get outa here."

He stormed past Tomel, who started to say, "Pretty smart of her . . ." But, seeing the fire in Culbeau's eyes, he decided not to finish his sentence.

• • •

The battery ran down and the tiny electric trolling engine fell silent.

Their narrow skiff they'd stolen from the vacation house drifted on the current of the Paquenoke, through the oily mist covering the river. It was dusk. The water was no longer golden but moody gray.

Garrett Hanlon picked up a paddle in the bottom of the boat and headed toward shore. "We gotta land someplace," he said. "Before it's, like, totally dark."

Amelia Sachs noticed that the landscape had changed.

The trees had thinned and large pools of marsh met the river. The boy was right; a wrong turn would take them into a back alley of some impenetrable bog.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, seeing her troubled expression.

"I'm a hell of a long way from Brooklyn."

"That's in New York?"

"Right," she said.

He clicked his nails. "And it bothers you not being there?"

"You bet it does."

Steering toward the shore, he said, "That's what scares insects the most."

"What's that?"

"Like, it's weird. They don't mind working and they don't mind fighting. But they get all freaked out in an unfamiliar place. Even if it's safe. They hate it, don't know what to do."

Okay
, Sachs thought,
I guess I'm a card-carrying insect.
She preferred the way Lincoln phrased it: Fish out of water.

"You can always tell when an insect's really upset. They clean their antennas over and over again . . . Insects' antennas show their moods. Like our faces. Only the thing is," he added cryptically, "
they
don't fake it. Like we do." He laughed in an odd way – a sound she hadn't heard before.

He eased over the side of the boat into the water and pulled the boat onto the land. Sachs climbed out. He directed her through the woods and seemed to know exactly where he was going despite the darkness of dusk and the absence of any path that she could see. "How do you know where to go?" she asked.