The Empty Chair

by Jeffery Deaver

  "There were a dozen more," she said. "This is one of the biggest finds in U.S. archaeological history. They're very valuable. I have to find them."

  Rhyme stared at the radius--one of the two forearm bones. After a moment he looked up.

  "Could you go up the hallway there to the Sheriff's Department? Ask for Lucy Kerr and have her come down here for a minute."

  "Is this about the bones?" she asked.

  "It might be."

  It had been an expression of Amelia Sachs's father's: "When you move they can't getcha."

  The expression meant many things. But most of all it was a statement of their shared philosophy, father and daughter. Both of them were admirers of fast cars, lovers of police work on the street, fearful of closed spaces and lives that were going nowhere.

  But now they had got her.

  Got her for good.

  And her precious cars, her precious life as a policewoman, her life with Lincoln Rhyme, her future with children... all that was destroyed.

  Sachs, in her cell in the lockup, had been ostracized. The deputies who brought her food and coffee said nothing to her, just stared coldly. Rhyme was having a lawyer flown down from New York but, like most police officers, Sachs knew as much about criminal law as most attorneys. She knew that, whatever horse-trading went on between the hired gun from Manhattan and the Paquenoke County D.A., her life as she'd lived it was over with. Her heart was as numb as Lincoln Rhyme's body.

  On the floor an insect of some kind made a diligent trek from one wall to the other. What was its mission? To eat, to mate, to find shelter?

  If all the people on earth disappeared tomorrow the world'd keep going just fine. But if the insects all went away then life'd he over with way fast--like, one generation. The plants'd die then the animals and the earth'd turn into this big rock again.

  The door to the main office swung open. A deputy she didn't recognize stood there. "You've got a call." He opened the cell door, shackled her and led her to a small metal table on which sat a phone. It would be her mother, she supposed. Rhyme was going to call the woman and give her the news. Or maybe it was her best friend in New York, Amy.

  But when she picked up the receiver, the thick chains clinking, she heard Lincoln Rhyme's voice. "How is it in there, Sachs? Cool?"

  "It's all right," she muttered.

  "That lawyer'll be here tonight. He's good. He's been doing criminal law for twenty years. He got off a suspect in a burglary I made a case against. Anybody does that, you know they have to be good."

  "Rhyme, come on. Why even bother? I'm an outsider who broke a murderer out of jail and killed one of the local cops. It doesn't get any more hopeless than that."

  "We'll talk about your case later. I've got to ask you something else. You spent a couple of days with Garrett. Did you talk about anything?"

  "Sure we did."

  "What?"

  "I don't know Insects. The woods, the swamp." Why was he asking her these things? "I don't remember."

  "I need you to remember. I need you to tell me everything he said."

  "Why bother, Rhyme?" she repeated.

  "Come on, Sachs. Humor an old crip, will you?"

  ... chapter forty

  Lincoln Rhyme was alone in the impromptu lab, at the evidence charts.

  FOUND AT PRIMARY CRIME SCENE--BLACKWATER LANDING

  Kleenex with Blood

  Limestone Dust

  Nitrates

  Phosphate

  Ammonia

  Detergent

  Camphene

  FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE-GARRETT'S ROOM

  Skunk Musk

  Cut Pine Needles

  Drawings of Insects

  Pictures of Mary Beth and Family

  Insect Books

  Fishing Line

  Money

  Unknown Key

  Kerosene

  Ammonia

  Nitrates

  Camphene

  FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE--QUARRY

  Old Burlap Bag--Unreadable Name on It

  Corn--Feed and Grain?

  Scorch Marks on Bag

  Deer Park Water

  Planters Cheese Crackers

  FOUND AT THE SECONDARY CRIME SCENE--MILL

  Brown Paint on Pants

  Sundew Plant

  Clay

  Peat Moss

  Fruit Juice

  Paper Fibers

  Stinkball Bait

  Sugar

  Camphene

  Alcohol

  Kerosene

  Yeast

  Then he studied the map, eyes tracing the course of the Paquenoke River as it made its way from the Great Dismal Swamp through Blackwater Landing and meandered west.

  There was a peak in the stiff paper of the map--a wrinkle that made you itch to smooth it.

  That's been my life for the past few years, Lincoln Rhyme thought: itches that can't be scratched.

  Maybe, soon, I'll be able to do that. After Dr. Weaver cuts and stitches and fills me up with her magic potions and youthful shark ... maybe then I'll be able to run my hand over maps like this, flatten out a little crinkle.

  An unnecessary gesture, pointless, really. But what a victory it would be.

  Footsteps sounded. Boots, Rhyme deduced from the sound. With hard leather heels. From the interval between the steps it had to be a tall man. He hoped it would be Jim Bell and it was.

  Breathing carefully into the sip-and-puff controller, Rhyme turned away from the wall.

  "Lincoln," the sheriff asked. "What's up? Nathan said it was urgent."

  "Come on in. Close the door. But first--is anybody in the hall?"

  Bell gave a faint smile at this intrigue and looked. "Empty."

  Rhyme reflected that the man's cousin, Roland, would have tacked on a Southernism of some sort. "Quiet as a church on payday" was one that he'd heard the northern Bell use from time to time.

  The sheriff swung the door shut then walked to the table, leaned against it, crossed his arms. Rhyme turned slightly and continued to study the map of the area. "Our map doesn't go far enough north and east to show the Dismal Swamp Canal, does it?"

  "The canal? No, it doesn't."

  Rhyme asked, "You know much about it?"

  "Not really," Bell said deferentially. He'd known Rhyme for only a short while but must've sensed when to play straight man.

  "I've been doing a little research," Rhyme said, nodding at the phone. "The Dismal Swamp Canal's part of the Intracoastal Waterway. You know you can take a boat all the way from Norfolk, Virginia, down to Miami and not have to sail on open sea?"

  "Sure. Everybody in Carolina knows about the Intracoastal. I've never been on it. I'm not much of a boater. I got seasick watching Titanic."

  "Took twelve years to dig the canal. It's twenty-two miles long. Dug completely by hand. Amazing, don't you think? ... Relax, Jim. This's going someplace. I promise you. Look at that line up there, the one between Tanner's Corner and the Paquenoke River. G-11 to G-10 on the map."

  "You mean, our canal. The Blackwater Canal?"

  "Right. Now, a boat could sail up that to the Paquo then to the Great Dismal and--"

  The approaching footsteps weren't half as loud as Bell's had been, with the door being shut, and there was little warning before it swung open. Rhyme stopped speaking.

  Mason Germain stood in the doorway. He glanced at Rhyme then at his boss and said, "Wondered where you'd got to, Jim. We got to make a call to Elizabeth City. Captain Dexter has some questions 'bout what happened at the 'shiners' cabin."

  "Just having a chat with Lincoln. We were talking about--"

  But Rhyme interrupted him quickly. "Say, Mason, I wonder if you could give us a few minutes alone here."

  Mason glanced from one to the other. He nodded slowly. "They're in a mind to talk to you pretty soon, Jim." He left before Bell could respond.

  "Is he gone?" Rhyme asked.

  Once again Bell glanced down the corridor then nodded. "What'
s this all about, Lincoln?"

  "Could you check out the window? Make sure Mason's left? Oh, and I'd close that door again."

  Bell did. Then he walked to the window and looked out. "Yeah. He's headed up the street. Why all this ...?" He lifted his hands to complete the thought.

  "How well do you know Mason?"

  "As good as I know mosta my deputies. Why?"

  "Because he murdered Garrett Hanlon's family."

  "What?" Bell started to smile but the expression faded fast. "Mason?"

  "Mason," Rhyme said.

  "But why on earth?"

  "Because Henry Davett paid him to."

  "Hold up," Bell said. "You're a couple steps past me."

  "I can't prove it yet. But I'm sure."

  "Henry? What's his involvement?"

  Rhyme said, "It all has to do with the Blackwater Canal." He fell into his lecturing mode, eyes on the map. "Now, the point of digging the canals in the eighteenth century was having dependable transport because the roads were so bad. But as the roads and railroads got better, shippers stopped using the waterways."

  "Where'd you find all this out?"

  "Historical Society in Raleigh. Talked to a charming lady, Julie DeVere. According to her, Blackwater Canal was closed just after the Civil War. Wasn't used for a hundred thirty years. Until Henry Davett started running barges on it again."

  Bell nodded. "That was about five years ago."

  Rhyme continued, "Let me ask--you ever wonder why Davett started using it?"

  The sheriff shook his head. "I remember some of us were a little worried kids'd try to swim out to a barge and get hurt and drown but none of 'em ever did and we never thought any more about it. But now you mention it I don't know why he'd use the canal. He's got trucks coming and going all the time. Norfolk's nothing to get to by truck."

  Rhyme nodded up at the evidence chart. "The answer's right up there. That one bit of trace I never did find a source for: camphene."

  "The stuff in the lanterns?"

  Rhyme shook his head, grimaced. "No. I made a mistake there. True, camphene was used in lanterns. But it's also used in something else. It can be processed to make toxaphene."

  "What's that?"

  "One of the most dangerous pesticides there is. It was used mostly in the South--until it was banned in the eighties by the EPA for most uses." Rhyme shook his head angrily. "I assumed that because toxaphene was illegal there was no point in considering pesticides as the source for the camphene and that it had to be from old lanterns. Except we never found any old lanterns. My mind got into a rut and it wouldn't get out. No old lamps? Then I should have gone down the list and started looking for insecticide. And when I did--this morning--I found the source of the camphene."

  Bell nodded, fascinated. "Which was where?"

  "Everywhere," Rhyme said. "I had Lucy take samples of dirt and water from around Tanner's Corner. There's toxaphene all over the place--the water, the land. I should've listened to what Sachs told me the other day when she was searching for Garrett. She saw huge patches of barren land. She thought it was acid rain but it wasn't. Toxaphene did that. The highest concentrations are for a couple of miles around Davett's factory--Blackwater Landing and the canal. He's been manufacturing asphalt and tar paper as a cover for making toxaphene."

  "But it's banned, I thought you said."

  "I called an FBI agent friend of mine and he called the EPA. It's not completely banned--farmers can use it in emergencies. But that's not how Davett's making his millions. This agent at the EPA explained something called the 'circle of poison.'"

  "Don't like the sound of that."

  "You shouldn't. Toxaphene is banned here but the ban in the U.S. is only on use. It can be made here and sold to foreign countries."

  "And they can use it?"

  "It's legal in most Third World and Latin American countries. That's the circle: Those countries spray food with pesticides and send it back into the U.S. The FDA only inspects a small percentage of imported fruits and vegetables so there are plenty of people in the U.S. still poisoned, even though it's banned."

  Bell gave a cynical laugh. "And Davett can't ship it on the roads because of all the counties and towns that won't let any toxic shipments go through 'em. And the ICC logs on his trucks'd show what the cargo is. Not to mention the public relations problem if word got out what he was doing."

  "Exactly," Rhyme said, nodding. "So he reopened the canal to send the toxaphene through the Intracoastal Waterway to Norfolk, where it's loaded onto foreign ships. Only there was a problem--when the canal closed in the eighteen hundreds the property around it was sold privately. People whose houses butted up against the canal had the right to control who used it."

  Bell said, "So Davett paid them to lease their portion of the canal." He nodded with sudden understanding. "And he must've paid a lot of money--look at how big those houses are in Blackwater Landing. And think about those nice trucks and Mercedeses and Lexuses people're driving around here. But what's this about Mason and Garrett's family?"

  "Garrett's father's land was on the canal. But he wouldn't sell his usage rights. So Davett or somebody in his company hired Mason to convince Garrett's father to sell and, when he wouldn't, Mason picked up some local trash to help him kill the family--Culbeau, Tomel and O'Sarian. Then I'd guess that Davett bribed the executor of the will to sell the property to him."

  "But Garrett's folks died in an accident. A car accident. I saw the report myself."

  "Was Mason the officer who handled the report?"

  "I don't remember but he could've been," Bell admitted. He looked at Rhyme with an admiring smile. "How on earth d'you figure this out?"

  "Oh, it was easy--because there's no frost in July. Not in North Carolina anyway."

  "Frost?"

  "I talked to Amelia. Garrett told her that the night his family was killed the car was frosty and his parents and sister were shivering. But the accident happened in July. I remembered seeing the article in the file--the picture of Garrett and his family. He was in a T-shirt and the picture was of them at a Fourth of July party. The story said the photo was taken a week before his parents were killed."

  "Then what was the boy talking about? Frost, shivering?"

  "Mason and Culbeau used some of Davett's toxaphene to kill the family. I talked to my doctor over at the medical center. She said that in extreme cases of neurotoxic poisoning the body spasms. That's the shivering Garrett saw. The frost was probably fumes or residue of the chemical in the car."

  "If he saw it why didn't he tell anybody?"

  "I described the boy to the doctor. And she said it sounds like he got poisoned too that night. Just enough to give him MCS--multiple chemical sensitivity. Memory loss, brain damage, severe reaction to other chemicals in the air and water. Remember the welts on his skin?"

  "Sure."

  "Garrett thinks it's poison oak but it isn't. The doctor told me that skin eruptions are a classic symptom of MCS. Breaking out when you're exposed to trace amounts of substances that wouldn't affect anybody else. Even soap or perfume'll make your skin erupt."

  "It's making sense," Bell said. Then, frowning, he added, "But if you don't have any hard evidence then all we've got is speculation."

  "Oh, I should mention"--Rhyme couldn't resist a faint smile; modesty was never a quality that he wore well--"I've got some hard evidence. I found the bodies of Garrett's family."

  ... chapter forty-one

  At the Albemarle Manor Hotel, a block away from the Paquenoke County lockup, Mason Germain didn't wait for the elevator but climbed the stairs, covered with threadbare tan carpet.

  He found Room 201 and knocked.

  "S'open," came the voice.

  Mason pushed the door open slowly, revealing a pink room bathed in orange, afternoon sunlight. It was painfully hot inside. He couldn't imagine that the occupant of the room liked it this way so he assumed that the man sitting at the table was either too lazy to turn on the air conditioner o
r too stupid to figure out how it worked. Which made Mason all the more suspicious of him.

  The African American, lean and with particularly dark skin, wore a wrinkled black suit, which looked completely out of place in Tanner's Corner. Draw attention to yourself, why don't you? Mason thought contemptuously. Malcolm Goddamn X.

  "You'd be Germain?" the man asked.

  "Yeah."

  The man's feet were on the chair across from him and when he withdrew his hand from under a copy of the Charlotte Observer his long fingers were holding a long automatic pistol.

  "That answers one of my questions," Mason said. "Whether you got a gun or not."

  "What's the other?" the man in the suit asked.

  "Whether you know how to use it."

  The man said nothing but carefully marked his place in a newspaper story with a stubby pencil. He looked like a third-grader struggling with the alphabet.

  Mason studied him again, not saying a word, then felt an infuriating trickle of sweat running down his face. Without asking the man if it was all right Mason walked to the bathroom, snagged a towel and wiped his face with it, dropped it on the bathroom floor.

  The man gave a laugh, as irritating as the bead of sweat had been, and said, "I'm gettin' the distinct impression you don't much like my kind."

  "No, I guess I don't," Mason answered. "But if you know what you're doing, what I like and what I don't aren't important."

  "That's completely right," the black man said coolly. "So, talk to me. I don't want to be here any longer than I have to."

  Mason said, "Here's the way it's shaking out. Rhyme's talking to Jim Bell right now over in the County Building. And that Amelia Sachs, she's in the lockup up the street."

  "Where should we go first?"

  Without hesitating Mason said, "The woman."

  "Then that's what we'll do," the man said as if it were his idea. He slipped the gun away, placed the newspaper on the dresser and, with a politeness that Mason believed was more mockery than anything else, said, "After yourself." And gestured toward the door.

  "The bodies of the Hanlons?" Jim Bell asked Rhyme. "Where are they?"

  "Over there," Rhyme said. Nodding to a pile of the bones that had been in Mary Beth's backpack. "Those're what Mary Beth found at Blackwater Landing," the criminalist said. "She thought they were the bones of the survivors of the Lost Colony. But I had to break the news to her that they're not that old. They looked decayed but that's just because they were partially burned. I've done a lot of work in forensic anthropology and I knew right away they've been in the ground only about five years--which is just how long ago Garrett's folks were killed. They're the bones of a man in his late thirties, a woman about the same age who'd borne children and a girl about ten. That describes Garrett's family perfectly."