The Empty Chair (39 page)

Because, she told herself, it was fake. Because it wasn't real.

And, so, why bother?

But then, Lucy thought, look at that Lincoln Rhyme. He was only a partial man. His legs and arms were fake – a wheelchair and an aide. But thinking about him reminded her of Amelia Sachs and anger seared her again. She pushed those thoughts aside, dried herself and pulled on a T-shirt, thinking absently about the drawer of bras in the dresser in the guest room of her house – and recalled that she'd been meaning to throw them out for two years. But, for some reason, never had. Then she put on her uniform blouse and slacks. She stepped out of the bathroom. Jesse was hanging up the phone.

"Anything?"

"No," he said. "They're still working on the evidence, Jim and Mr. Rhyme."

Lucy shook her head at the food Jesse offered her then sat down at the table, pulled her service revolver out of its holster. "Steve?" she asked Farr.

The crew-cut young man looked up from the newspaper he was reading, lifted an eyebrow.

"You bring what I asked for?"

"Oh, yeah." He dug in the glove compartment and handed her a yellow-and-green box of Remington bullets. She ejected the round-point cartridges from her pistol and Speedloaders and replaced them with the new bullets – hollow points, which have more stopping power and cause much more damage to soft tissue when they hit a human being.

Jesse Corn watched her closely but it was a moment before he spoke, as she knew he'd do. "Amelia's not dangerous," he said, in a low voice, the words meant for her only.

Lucy set the gun down and looked into his eyes. "Jesse, everybody said Mary Beth was at the ocean but turns out she's in the opposite direction. Everybody said Garrett was just a stupid kid but he's smart as a snake and's conned us a half-dozen times. We don't know
anything
anymore. Maybe Garrett's got a store of weapons someplace and has some plan or another to take us out when we walk into his trap."

"But Amelia's with him. She wouldn't let that happen."

"Amelia's a damn traitor and we can't trust her an inch. Listen, Jesse, I saw that look on your face when you saw she wasn't under the boat. You were relieved. I know you think you like her and you're hoping she likes you . . . No, no, let me finish. But she busted a killer outa jail. And if you'd been the one out there in the river instead of Ned, Amelia'd have shot at you just as fast."

He began to protest but the chill look in her eyes kept him quiet.

"It's easy to get infatuated with somebody like that," Lucy continued. "She's pretty and she's from someplace else, someplace exotic . . . But she doesn't understand life down here. And she doesn't understand Garrett. You know him – that's one sick boy and it's just a fluke that he's not doing life right now."

"I
know
Garrett's dangerous. I'm not arguing there. It's Amelia I'm thinking of."

"Well, it's us that
I'm
thinking of and everybody else in Blackwater Landing that boy could be planning on killing tomorrow or next week or next year if he gets away from us. Which he might just do, thanks to her. Now, I need to know if I can count on you. If not, you can go on home and we'll have Jim send somebody else in your place."

Jesse glanced at the box of shells. Then back to her. "You can, Lucy. You can count on me."

"Good. You better mean that. 'Cause at first light I'm tracking them down and bringing 'em both back. I hope alive but, I tell you, that's become optional."

• • •

Mary Beth McConnell sat alone in the cabin, exhausted but afraid to sleep.

Hearing noises everywhere.

She'd given up on the couch. She was afraid that if she remained there she'd stretch out and fall asleep then wake to find the Missionary and Tom gazing at her through the window, about to break in. So she was perched at a dining-room chair, which was about as comfortable as brick.

Noises . . .

On the roof, on the porch, in the woods.

She didn't know what time it was. She was afraid to even push the light button on her wristwatch to glimpse the face – out of the crazy fear that the flash would somehow beckon to her attackers.

Exhausted. Too tired even to wonder again why this had happened to her, what she might have done to prevent it.

No good deed goes unpunished . . .

She stared out at the field in front of the cabin, now completely black. The window was like a frame around her fate: Whom would it show approaching through the field? Her killers or her rescuers?

She listened.

What was
that
noise: A branch on bark? Or the rasp of a match?

What was that dot of light in the woods: A firefly, or a campfire?

That motion: A deer goaded to run by the scent of bobcat or the Missionary and his friend settling in around the fire to drink beer and eat food then prowl through the woods to come for her and satisfy their bodies in other ways?

Mary Beth McConnell couldn't tell. Tonight, as in so much of life, she sensed only ambiguity.

You find relics of long-dead settlers but you wonder if maybe your theory is completely wrong.

Your father dies of cancer – a long, wasting death that the doctors say is inevitable but you think: Maybe it wasn't.

Two men are out there in the woods, planning to rape and kill you.

But maybe not.

Maybe they've given up. Maybe they're passed out on moonshine. Or were scared off at the thought of the consequences, deciding that their fat wives or callused hands are safer, or easier, than what they had planned with her.

Spread-eagle at your place . . .

A sharp crack filled the night. She jumped at the sound. A gunshot. It seemed to come from where she'd seen the firelight. A moment later there was a second shot. Closer.

Breathing heavily in fear, gripping the coup stick. Unable to look out the black window, unable not to. Terrified that she'd see Tom's pasty face appearing slowly in the frame, grinning.
We'll be back.

The wind was up, bending the trees, the brush, the grass.

She thought she heard a man laughing, the sound soon lost in the hollow wind like the call of one of the Manitou spirits of the Weapemeocs.

She thought she heard a man calling, "Get yourself ready, get yourself ready . . ."

But maybe not.

• • •

"You hear shots?" Rich Culbeau asked Harris Tomel.

They sat around a dying campfire. They were uneasy and not nearly as drunk as if this'd been a normal hunting trip, not nearly as drunk as they
wanted
to be. The 'shine just wasn't taking.

"Pistol," Tomel said. "Large caliber. Ten millimeter or a .44, .45. Automatic."

"Bullshit," Culbeau said. "You can't tell it's an automatic or not."

"Can," Tomel lectured. "A revolver's louder – because of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. Logical."

"Bullshit," Culbeau repeated. Then asked, "How far?"

"Humid air. It's night . . . I make it four, five miles." Tomel sighed. "I want this thing to be over with. I'm sick of it."

"I hear that," Culbeau said. "Was easier in Tanner's Corner. Getting complicated now."

"Damn bugs," Tomel said, swatting a mosquito.

"Whatta you think somebody's shooting for this time of night? It's almost one."

"Raccoon in the garbage, black bear in a tent, man humping somebody else's wife."

Culbeau nodded. "Look – Sean's asleep. That man sleeps anytime, anyplace." He kicked through the embers to cool them.

"He's on fucking medication."

"He is? I didn't know that."

"That's
why
he sleeps anytime, anyplace. He's acting funny, don'tcha think?" Tomel asked, glancing at the skinny man as if he were a snoozing snake.

"Liked him better when you couldn't figure him out. Now he's all serious, it scares the shit outa me. Holding that gun like it's his dick and all."

"You're right 'bout that," Tomel muttered then stared into the murky forest for several minutes. He sighed then said, "Hey, you got the Six-Twelve? I'm getting eaten alive here. And hand me that bottle of 'shine while you're at it."

• • •

Amelia Sachs opened her eyes at the sound of the pistol shot.

She looked into the bedroom of the trailer, where Garrett was asleep on the mattress. He hadn't heard the noise.

Another shot.

Why was somebody shooting this late? she wondered.

The shots reminded her of the incident on the river – Lucy and the others firing at the boat they thought Sachs and Garrett were under. She pictured the geysers of water flying into the air from the stunning shotgun blasts.

She listened carefully but heard no more shots. Heard nothing other than the wind. And the cicadas, of course.

They live this totally weird life . . . The nymphs dig into the ground and stay there for, like, twenty years before they hatch . . . All those years in the ground, just hiding, before they come out and become adults.

But soon her mind was occupied once again with what she'd been considering before the gunshots interrupted her thoughts.

Amelia Sachs had been thinking of an empty chair.

Not Dr. Penny's therapy technique. Or what Garrett had told her about his father and that terrible night five years ago. No, she was thinking of a different chair – Lincoln Rhyme's red Storm Arrow wheelchair.

That's what they were doing down here in North Carolina, after all. Rhyme was risking everything, his life, what was left of his health, his and Sachs' life together, so that he could move closer to climbing out of that chair. Leaving it behind him, empty.

And, lying here in this foul trailer, a felon, alone in her own knuckle time, Amelia Sachs finally admitted to herself what had troubled her so about Rhyme's insistence on the operation. Of course, she was worried that he'd die on the table. Or that the operation would make him worse. Or that it wouldn't work at all and he'd be plunged into depression.

But those weren't her main fears. That wasn't why she'd done everything she could to stop him from having the operation. No, no – what scared her the most was that the operation
would
succeed.

Oh, Rhyme, don't you understand? I don't
want
you to change. I love you the way you are. If you were like everyone else what would happen to us?

You say, "It'll always be you and me, Sachs." But the you and me is based on who we are
now
. Me and my bloody nails and my itchy need to move, move, move . . . You and your damaged body and elegant mind that roams faster and further than I ever could in my stripped and rigged Camaro.

That mind of yours that holds me tighter than the most passionate lover ever could.

And if you become normal again? When you're your own arms and legs, Rhyme, then why would you want me? Why would you need me? I'd become just another portable, a beat cop with some talent for forensics. You'll meet another one of the treacherous women who've derailed your life in the past – another selfish wife, another married lover – and you'll fade away from me the way Lucy Kerr's husband left after her surgery.

I want you the way you are . . .

She actually shuddered at how appallingly selfish this thought was. Yet she couldn't deny it.

Stay
in your chair, Rhyme! I don't want it empty . . . I want a life with you, a life the way it's always been. I want children with you, children who'll grow up to know you exactly the way you are.

Amelia Sachs found she was staring at the black ceiling. She closed her eyes. But it was an hour later before the sound of the wind and the cicadas, their thoracic plates singing like monotonous violins, finally seduced her to sleep.

33

Sachs woke just after dawn to the droning noise – which in her dream had been placid locusts but turned out to be her Casio wristwatch's alarm. She clicked it off.

Her body was in agony, an arthritic's response to sleeping on a thin pad over a riveted, metal floor.

But she felt oddly buoyant. Low sunlight streamed through the windows of the trailer and she took this as a good omen. Today they were going to find Mary Beth McConnell and return to Tanner's Corner with her. She'd confirm Garrett's story and Jim Bell and Lucy Kerr could start the search for the real killer – the man in the tan overalls.

She watched Garrett awaken in the bedroom and roll upright on the saggy mattress. With his lengthy fingers he combed his mussed hair into place.
He looks just like any other teenager in the morning
, she thought.
Gangly and cute and sleepy. About to get dressed, about to take the bus to school and see his friends, to learn things in class, to flirt with girls, toss footballs.
Watching him look around groggily for his shirt, she noticed his skinny frame and worried about getting him some good food – cereal, milk, fruit – and washing his clothes, making sure he took a shower. This, she thought, is what it would be like to have children of your own. Not to borrow youngsters from friends for a few hours – like her goddaughter, Amy's girl. But to be there every day when they wake up, with their messy rooms and difficult adolescent attitudes, to fix them meals, to buy them clothes, to argue with them, to take care of them. To be the hub of their lives.

"Morning." She smiled.

He smiled back. "We gotta go," he said. "Gotta get to Mary Beth. Been away from her for too long. She's got to be totally scared and thirsty."

Sachs climbed unsteadily to her feet.

He glanced at his chest, at the poison oak splotches, and seemed embarrassed. He pulled his shirt on quickly. "I'm going outside. Have to, you know, take care of business. And I'm gonna leave a couple of empty hornets' nests around. Might slow 'em up – if they come this way." Garrett stepped outside but returned just a moment later. He left a cup of water on the table beside her. Said shyly: "This's for you." He stepped out again.

She drank it down. Longing for a toothbrush and time for a shower. Maybe when they got to –