The Empty Chair

Lucy said, "I'm thinking he'd head west. Or south, back across the river."

"That way he could get to Millerton," Jesse suggested.

Lucy nodded. "Couple of big factories around there closed when the companies took their business to Mexico. Banks foreclosed on a lot of property. There're dozens of abandoned houses he could hide in."

"Or southeast," Jesse suggested. "That's where I'd go – follow Route 112 or the rail line. There's a slew of old houses and barns that way too."

Amelia repeated this to Rhyme.

As Lucy Kerr thought: What a strange man he is, so terribly afflicted and yet so supremely confident.

The policewoman from New York listened then hung up. " Lincoln says to keep going. The evidence doesn't suggest he went in those directions."

"Not like there aren't any pine trees to the west and south," Lucy snapped.

But the redhead was shaking her head. "That might be logical but it's not what the evidence shows. We keep going."

Ned and Jesse were looking from one woman to the other. Lucy glanced at Jesse's face and saw the ridiculous crush; she obviously wasn't going to get any support from him. She dug in. "No. I think we should go back, see if we can find where they turned off the path."

Amelia lowered her head, stared right into Lucy's eyes. "I'll tell you what… We can call Jim Bell if you want."

A reminder that Jim had declared that that damn Lincoln Rhyme was ru

But Lucy Kerr knew that she'd signed on to do a job where, like the army, you followed the chain of command. "All right," she muttered angrily. "But for the record I'm against going that way. It doesn't make any sense." She turned and started along the path, leaving the others behind. Her footsteps growing silent suddenly as she walked over a thick blanket of pine needles that covered the path.

Amelia's phone rang and she slowed as she took the call. Lucy strode quickly ahead of her, over the thick bed of needles, trying to control her anger. There was no way Garrett Hanlon would come this way. It was a waste of time. They should have dogs. They should call Elizabeth City and get the state police choppers out. They should -

Then the world became a blur and she was tumbling forward, giving a short scream – her hands outstretched to catch her fall. "Jesus!"

Lucy fell hard onto the path, the breath knocked out of her, pine needles digging into her palms.

"Don't move," Amelia Sachs said, climbing to her feet after tackling the deputy.

"What the hell d'you do that for?" Lucy gasped, her hands stinging from the impact with the ground.

"Don't move! Ned and Jesse, you either."

Ned and Jesse froze, hands on their weapons, looking around, not sure what was going on.

Amelia, wincing as she stood, stepped cautiously off the pine needles and found a long stick in the woods, picked it up. She moved forward slowly, slipping the branch into the ground.

Two feet in front of Lucy, where she'd been about to step, the stick disappeared through a pile of pine boughs. "It's a trap."

"But there's no trip wire," Lucy said. "I was looking."

Carefully Amelia lifted away the boughs and the needles. They rested on a network of fishing line and covered a pit about two feet deep.

"The fish line wasn't a trip wire," Ned said. "It was to make that – a deadfall pit. Lucy, you nearly stepped right in it."

"And inside? There a bomb?" Jesse asked.

Amelia said to him, "Let me have your flashlight." He handed it to her. She shined the beam into the hole then backed up quickly.

"What is it?" Lucy asked.

"No bomb," Amelia responded. "Hornets' nest."

Ned looked. "Christ, what a bastard…"

Amelia carefully lifted off the rest of the boughs, exposing the hole and the nest, which was about the size of a football.

"Man," Ned muttered, closing his eyes, undoubtedly considering what it would have been like to find a hundred stinging wasps clustered around your thighs and waist.

Lucy rubbed her hands together – they smarted from the fall. She rose to her feet. "How'd you know?"

"I didn't. That was Lincoln on the phone. He was reading through Garrett's books. There was an underlined passage about some insect called an ant lion. It digs a pit and stings its enemy to death when it falls in. Garrett had circled it and the ink was just a few days old. Rhyme remembered the cut pine needles and the fishing line. He figured that the boy might dig a trap and told me to look for a bed of pine boughs on the path."

"Let's burn the nest out," Jesse said.

"No," Amelia said.

"But it's dangerous."

Lucy agreed with the policewoman. "A fire'd give away our position and Garrett'd know where we are. Just leave it uncovered so people can see it. We'll come back afterward and take care of it. Hardly anybody comes along here anyway."

Amelia nodded. She made a call on her phone. "We found it, Rhyme. Nobody got hurt. There was no bomb – he put a hornets' nest inside… Okay. We'll be careful… Keep reading that book. Let us know if you find anything else."

They started down the path once more and covered a good quarter mile before Lucy found it in her to say, "Thanks. Y'all were right about him coming this way. I was wrong." She hesitated for another long moment then added, "Jim made a good choice – bringing you down from New York for this. I wasn't real crazy about it at first but I won't argue with results."

Amelia frowned. "Bringing us down? What do you mean?"

"To help out."

"Jim didn't do that."

"What?" Lucy asked.

"No, no, we were over at the medical center in Avery. Lincoln 's having some surgery. Jim heard we were going to be here so he came by this morning to ask if we'd look at some evidence."

A long pause. Then Lucy gave a laugh as the relief flooded through her. "I thought he'd scrounged up county money to fly y'all down here after the kidnapping yesterday."

Amelia shook her head. "The surgery's not till day after tomorrow. We had some free time. That's all."

"That boy – Jim. He never said a word about it. He can be the quiet one sometimes."

"You were worried he didn't think you could handle the case?"

"I guess that's exactly what I thought."

"Jim's cousin works with us in New York. He told Jim we were coming down for a couple of weeks."

"Wait, you mean Roland?" Lucy asked. "Sure, I know him. Knew his wife too, before she passed. His boys're dears."

"Had them over for a barbecue not long ago," Amelia said.

Lucy laughed again. "I guess I was being paranoid here… So, you were over at Avery? The medical center?"

"That's right."

"That's where Lydia Johansson works. You know, she's a nurse there."

"I didn't."

A dozen memories flickered through Lucy Kerr's mind. Some she was warmly touched by, some she wanted to avoid like the swarm of wasps she'd nearly stirred up in Garrett's trap. She didn't know whether she wanted to tell any of this to Amelia Sachs or not. What she settled for was: "That's why I'm pretty eager to save her. I had some medical problems a few years ago and Lydia was one of my nurses. She's a good person. The best."

"We'll save her," Amelia said, and she said it with a tone that Lucy sometimes – not often, but sometimes – heard in her own voice. A tone that didn't leave any doubt.

They walked more slowly now. The trap had spooked them all. And the heat was truly excruciating.

Lucy asked Amelia, "That surgery your friend's going to have? It's for his… situation?"