The Empty Chair (48 page)

Despite the sign outside the door to the cells: PLACE ALL WEAPONS IN THE LOCKBOX BEFORE ENTERING THE CELL AREA.

"How you doing?" Farr asked.

She looked at him, gave no reaction.

"Being the silent type today, huh? Well, miss, I got good news for you. You're free to go." He flicked at one of his prominent ears.

"Free? To go?"

He fished for his keys."Yep. They've decided the shooting was accidental. You can just leave."

She studied his face closely. He wasn't looking her way."What about the disposition report?"

"What's that?" Farr asked.

"Nobody charged with a crime can be released from custody without a disposition report waiving charges, signed by the prosecutor."

Farr unlocked the cell door and stood back. Hand hovering near the pistol butt. "Oh, maybe that's how you do things in the big city. But down here we're a ton more casual. You know, they say we move slower in the South. But that ain't right. No, ma'am. We're really more efficient."

Sachs remained seated. "Can I ask why you're wearing your weapon in the lockup?"

"Oh, this?" He tapped the gun. "We don't have any hard-and-fast rules about that sort of thing. Now, come on. You're free to leave. Most people'd be jumping up and down at that news." He nodded toward the back of the lockup.

"Out the back door?" she asked.

"Sure."

"You can't shoot a fleeing prisoner in the back. That's murder."

He nodded slowly.

How was it set up? she wondered. Was there someone else outside the door to do the actual shooting? Probably. Farr bangs himself on the head and calls for help. Fires a shot into the ceiling. Outside, somebody – maybe a "concerned" citizen – claims he heard the gun and assumes Sachs is armed, shoots her.

She didn't move.

"Now stand up and git your ass outside." Farr pulled the pistol from his holster.

Slowly she stood.

You and me, Rhyme . . .

• • •

"You were pretty close, Lincoln," Jim Bell said.

After a moment he added, "Ninety percent right. My experience in law-enforcement is that's a good percentage. Too bad for you
I'm
the ten percent you missed."

Bell shut off the air-conditioner. With the window closed the room heated up immediately. Rhyme felt sweat on his forehead. His breathing grew labored.

The sheriff continued, "Two families along Blackwater Canal wouldn't grant Mr. Davett easements to run his barges."

A respectful
Mister
Davett, Rhyme noted.

"So his security chief hired a few of us to take care of the problem. We had a long talk with the Conklins and they decided to grant the easement. But Garrett's father never would agree. We were going to make it look like a car crash and we got a can of that shit" – he nodded to the jar on the table – "to knock them out. We knew the family went out to dinner every Wednesday. We poured the poison into the car's vent and hid in the woods. They got in and Garrett's father turned on the air-conditioner. The stuff sprayed out all over them. But we used too much –"

He glanced again at the jar. "That there's enough to kill a man twice over." He continued, frowning at the memory. "The family started twitching and convulsing . . . Was a hard thing to see. Garrett wasn't in the car but he ran up and saw what was going on. He tried to get inside but couldn't. He got a good whiff of the stuff, though, and it was like he became this zombie. He just stumbled off into the woods 'fore we could catch him. And by the time he surfaced – a week or two later – he didn't remember what'd happened. That MCS thing you were mentioning, I guess. So we just let him be for the time being – too suspicious if he was to die right after his family did. Then we did just what you figured. Set fire to the bodies and buried them at Blackwater Landing. Pushed the car into the inlet by Canal Road. Paid the coroner a hundred thousand for some ginned-up reports. Whenever we heard that somebody else'd got a funny kind of cancer and was asking questions why, Culbeau and the others took care of them."

"That funeral we saw on the way into town. You killed that boy, didn't you?"

"Todd Wilkes?" Bell said. "No. He did kill himself."

"But because he was sick from the toxaphene, right? What'd he have, cancer? Liver damage? Brain damage?"

"Maybe. I don't know." But the sheriff's face said that he knew only too well.

"But Garrett didn't have anything to do with it, did he?"

"No."

"What about those men at the moonshiners' cabin? The ones who assaulted Mary Beth?"

Bell nodded again, grimly. "Tom Boston and Lott Cooper. They were part of it too – they handled testing a lot of Davett's toxins out in the mountains where it's less populated. They knew we were looking for Mary Beth but when Lott found her I guess he decided they'd hold off letting me know until they'd had some fun with her. And, yeah, we hired Billy Stail to kill her but Garrett got her away 'fore he could."

"And you needed me to help you find her. Not to save her – but so you could kill her and destroy any other evidence she might've found."

"After you found Garrett and we brought him back from the mill, I left the door to the lockup open so Culbeau and his buddies could, let's say,
talk
Garrett into telling us where Mary Beth was. But your friend went and busted him out before they could snatch him."

Rhyme said, "And when I found the cabin you called Culbeau and the others. Sent them there to kill us all."

"I'm sorry . . . it's all become a nightmare. Didn't want it to but . . . there you have it."

"A hornets' nest . . ."

"Oh, yeah, this town's got itself a few hornets."

Rhyme shook his head. "Tell me, are the fancy cars and the big houses and all the money worth destroying the entire town? Look around you, Bell. It was a child's funeral the other day but there were no children at the cemetery. Amelia said there are hardly any kids in town anymore. You know why? People're sterile."

"It's risky when you bargain with the devil," Bell said shortly. "But, far as I'm concerned, life's just one big trade-off." He looked at Rhyme for a long moment, walked to the table. He pulled on latex gloves, picked up the toxaphene jar. He stepped toward Rhyme and slowly began to unscrew the lid.

• • •

Steve Farr roughly led Amelia Sachs to the back door of the lockup, the pistol firmly in the square of her back.

He was making the classic mistake of holding the muzzle of his weapon against the body of his victim. It gave her leverage – when she stepped outside she'd know exactly where the gun was and could sweep her elbow into it. With some luck Farr would drop the weapon and she'd sprint as fast as she could. If she could make it to Main Street there'd be witnesses and he might hesitate to shoot.

He opened the back door.

A stream of hot sunlight flooded into the dusty lockup. She blinked. A fly buzzed around her head.

As long as Farr stayed right up against her, pressing the gun into her skin, she'd have a chance . . .

"What now?" she asked.

"Free to go," he said cheerfully, shrugging. She tensed, about to swing into him, planning every move. But then he stepped back fast, shoving her outside into the scruffy lot behind the jail. Farr remained inside, well out of reach.

From nearby, behind a tall bush in the field, she heard another sound. The cocking of a pistol, she thought.

"Go ahead," Farr said. "Git on outa here."

She thought of
Romeo and Juliet
again.

And of the beautiful cemetery on the hill overlooking Tanner's Corner they'd driven past what now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Oh, Rhyme . . .

The fly zipped past her face. Instinctively she brushed it away and began to walk forward into the low grass.

• • •

Rhyme said to Bell, "Don't you think somebody might wonder if I die this way? I can hardly open a jar by myself."

The sheriff responded, "You bumped the table. The lid wasn't on tight. It splashed on you. I went for help but we couldn't save you in time."

"Amelia's not going to let it go. Lucy won't either."

"Your girlfriend's not going to be a problem for very much longer. And Lucy? She might just get sick again . . . and this time there might not be anything to cut off to save her."

Bell hesitated only a moment then he stepped close and poured the liquid over Rhyme's mouth and nose. The rest he splashed onto the front of his shirt.

The sheriff dropped the jar onto Rhyme's lap, stepped back fast and covered his own mouth with a handkerchief.

Rhyme's head jerked back, his lips parted involuntarily and some of the liquid slipped into his mouth. He began to choke.

Bell pulled off the gloves and stuffed them into his slacks. He waited a moment, calmly studying Rhyme, then walked toward the door slowly, unlocked it, swung it open. He called. "There's been an accident! Somebody, I need help!" He stepped into the corridor. "I need –"

He walked right into Lucy Kerr's line of fire, her pistol aimed steadily at his chest.

"Jesus, Lucy!"

"That's enough, Jim. Just hold it right there."

The sheriff stepped back. Nathan, the snapshooting deputy, walked into the room, behind Bell, and snagged the sheriff's pistol from its holster. Another man entered – a large man in a tan suit and white shirt.

Ben too ran inside, ignored everyone else and hurried to Rhyme, wiping the criminalist's face with a paper towel.

The sheriff stared at Lucy and the others. "No, you don't understand! There was an accident! That poison stuff spilled. You've got to –"

Rhyme spit on the floor and wheezed from the astringent liquid and the fumes. He said to Ben, "Could you wipe higher on my cheek? I'm afraid it'll get into my eyes. Thank you."

"Sure, Lincoln."

Bell said, "I was going for help! That stuff spilled! I –"

The man in the suit pulled handcuffs off his belt and ratcheted the loops around the sheriff's wrists. He said, "James Bell, I'm Detective Hugo Branch with the North Carolina State Police. You're under arrest here." Branch looked at Rhyme sourly. "I
told
you he'd pour it on your shirt. We should've put the unit someplace else."

"But you got enough on tape?"

"Oh, plenty. That's not the point. The point is those transmitters cost
money
."

"Bill me," Rhyme said acerbically as Branch opened Rhyme's shirt and untaped the microphone and transmitter.

"It was a setup," Bell whispered.

You got that right.

"But the poison . . ."

"Oh, it's not toxaphene," Rhyme said. "Just a little moonshine. From that jar we tested. By the way, Ben, if there's any left, I could use a sip just now. And, Christ, could somebody get that AC going?"

• • •

Tense, cut to the left and run like hell. I'll get hit but if I'm lucky it won't stop me.

When you move they can't getcha . . .

Amelia Sachs took three steps into the grass.

Ready . . .

Set . . .

Then a man's voice from behind them, inside the lockup area, called, "Hold it, Steve! Put the weapon on the ground. Now! I'm not telling you again!"

Sachs spun around and saw Mason Germain, his gun pointed at the shocked young man's crew-cut head, his round ears crimson. Farr crouched and set the gun on the floor. Mason hurried forward and cuffed him.

Footsteps sounded from outside, leaves rustled. Dizzy from the heat and the adrenaline, Sachs turned back to the field and saw a lean black man climbing out of the bushes, bolstering a big Browning automatic pistol.

"Fred!" she cried.

FBI agent Fred Dellray, sweating furiously in his black suit, walked up to her, brushing petulantly at his sleeve. "Hey,
A
-melia. My, it is too too too hot down here. I don't like this town one tiny bit. And look at this suit. It's all, I don't know, dusty or something. What is this shit, pollen? We don't have this stuff in Man-hattan. Look at this sleeve!"

"What're you doing here?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"Whatcha think? Lincoln wasn't sure who he could trust and who he couldn't so he had me fly down and hooked me up with Deputy Germain here to keep an eye on you. Figured he needed some help, seeing as how he couldn't trust Jim Bell or his kin."

"
Bell?
" she whispered.

"Lincoln thinks he put this whole thing together. He's finding out for sure right now. But looks like he was right, that being his brother-in-law." Dellray nodded at Steve Farr.

"He almost got me," Sachs said.

The lean agent chuckled. "You weren't in a single, solitary lick of danger, no way. I had a bead on that fellow right 'tween his big ears from the second the back door opened. He'd so much as squinted out a target at you he'da been way, way gone."

Dellray noticed Mason studying him suspiciously. The agent laughed, said to Sachs, "Our friend in the constabulary here don't like my kind much. He told me so."

"Wait," Mason protested. "I only meant –"

"You meant federal agents, I'm betting," Dellray said.

The deputy shook his head, said gruffly, "I meant Northerners."

"True, he doesn't," Sachs confirmed.

Sachs and Dellray laughed. But Mason remained solemn. But it wasn't cultural differences that made him somber. He said to Sachs, "Sorry, but I'll have to take you back to the cell. You're still under arrest."

Her smile faded, and Sachs looked once more at the sun dancing over the scruffy yellow grass. She inhaled the scorching air of the out-of-doors once, then again. Finally she turned and walked back into the dim lockup.

43

"You killed Billy, didn't you?" Rhyme asked Jim Bell.

But the sheriff said nothing.

The criminalist continued, "The crime scene was unprotected for an hour and a half. And, sure, Mason was the first officer. But
you
got there before he arrived. You never got a call from Billy saying that Mary Beth was dead and you started to worry so you drove over to Blackwater Landing and found her gone and Billy hurt. Billy told you about Garrett getting away with the girl. Then you put the latex gloves on, picked up the shovel and killed him."