The Empty Chair

Now listening for Garrett's footsteps over the low-gear sound of the grinding wheel nearby.

Panic was filling her and she was starting to regret her defiant escape. But there was no going back, she decided. She'd hurt Garrett and now he was going to hurt her back if he found her. Maybe do worse. There was nothing to do but try to escape.

No, she decided, that wasn't the right way to think. One of her angel books said there was no such thing as "trying to." You either did or you didn't. She wasn't going to try to get away. She was going to escape. She just had to have faith.

Lydia looked through a crack in the bin door, listened carefully. She heard him in one of the rooms nearby, muttering to himself and ripping open bins and closet doors. She'd hoped that he'd think she'd run outside through the collapsed wall in the burnt-out corridor but it was obvious from his methodical search that he knew she was still here. She couldn't stay in the storage closet any longer. He'd find her. She glanced out through a crack in the door and, not seeing him, she slipped out of the bin and ran into an adjoining room, moving silently on her white sneakers. The only exit from this room was a stairway leading up to the second floor. She staggered up it, gasping for breath and, not having her hands for balance, bounding off the walls and the wrought-iron railing.

She heard his voice echoing in the corridor. "You made him bite me!" he cried. "It hurts, it hurts."

Wish it had stung you in the eye or crotch, she thought and struggled up the stairs. Fuck you fuck you fuck you!

She heard him ripping open closet doors in the room below. Heard his guttural moaning. Imagined she could hear the snick, snick of his nails.

That shiver of panic again. Nausea swelling.

The room at the top of the stairs was large and had a number of windows facing the burnt portion of the mill. There was one door, which was unlocked, and she pushed it open, stepped into the grinding area itself – two large millstones sat in the center. The wooden mechanism was rotted; the sound she'd heard wasn't the stones but the waterwheel, powered by the diverted stream. It still turned slowly. Rust-colored water cascaded off it into a deep, narrow pit, like a well. Lydia couldn't see the bottom. The water must've drained back into the stream somewhere below the surface.

"Stop!" Garrett cried.

She jumped in shock at the angry sound. He stood in the doorway. His eyes were red and wide and he was cradling his arm, on which was a huge black-and-yellow bruise. "You made it sting me," he muttered, staring at her with hatred. "It's dead. You made me kill it! I didn't want to but you made me! Now get your ass downstairs. I've gotta tape your legs up now."

He started forward.

She looked at his bony face, brows knit together, his huge hands, his angry eyes. Into her thoughts came a burst of images: a cancer patient of hers, slowly wasting to death. Mary Beth McCo

It was all too much for her.

"Wait," Lydia said placidly.

He blinked. Stopped walking.

She smiled at him – the way she'd smile at a terminal patient – and, sending a good-bye prayer to her boyfriend, Lydia, hands still bound behind her, plunged headfirst into the narrow pit of dark water.

The crosshairs of the Hitech telescopic sight rested on the redheaded cop's shoulders.

That was some hair, Mason Germain thought.

He and Nathan Groomer were on a rise overlooking the old Anderson Rock Products quarry. About a hundred yards away from the search party.

Nathan finally stated the conclusion he must've come to a half hour ago. "This don't have anything to do with Rich Culbeau."

"No, it doesn't. Not exactly."

"What's that mean? 'Not exactly'?"

"Culbeau's out here someplace. With Sean O'Sarian -"

"That boy's scarier than two Culbeaus."

"No argument there," Mason said. "And Harris Tomel too. But that's not what we're doing."

Nathan looked back at the deputies and the redhead. "Guess not. Why're you sighting down on Lucy Kerr with my gun?"

After a moment Mason handed back the Ruger M77 and said, "'Cause I didn't bring my fucking binoculars. And it wasn't Lucy I was looking at."

They started along the ridge. Mason was thinking about the redhead. Thinking about pretty Mary Beth McCo

And should've handled the first Garrett Hanlon case a lot different too. The case where Meg Blanchard woke from her nap and found the hornets clustered on her chest and face and arms… One hundred thirty-seven stings and a terrible slow death.

Now he was paying for those bad choices. His life was just a series of still days, worrying, sitting on his porch and drinking too much, not even finding the energy to put his boat in the Paquo and go after bass. Trying desperately to figure out how to fix what maybe couldn't be fixed. He -

"So you go

"We're looking for Culbeau."

"But you just said…" Nathan's voice faded. When Mason said nothing else the deputy sighed loudly. "Culbeau's house, where we're s'posed to be, is six or seven miles away and here we are north of the Paquo, me with my deer gun and you with that zipped mouth of yours."

"I'm saying if Jim asks, we were out here looking for Culbeau," Mason said.

"And what we're really doing is…?"

Nathan Groomer could prune trees at five hundred yards with this Ruger of his. He could charm a point-five-oh DUI out of his car in three minutes. He could carve decoys that'd sell for five hundred bucks each to collectors if he ever bothered to try to sell any. But his talents and smarts didn't go much beyond that.

"We're going to get that boy," Mason said.

"Garrett."

"Yeah, Garrett. Who else? They're going to flush him for us." Nodding toward the redhead and the deputies. "And we're going to get him."

"Whatta you mean by 'get'?"

"You're going to shoot him, Nathan. And kill him dead as a stick."

"Shoot him?"

"Yessir," Mason said.

"Hold on there. You're not ramshagging my career 'cause you're hot to get that boy."

"You don't have a career," Mason snapped. "You got a job. And if you want to keep it you'll do what I'm telling you. Listen here – I've talked to him. Garrett. During those other investigations, when he killed those people."

"Yeah. Did you? I guess you would, sure."

"And know what he told me?"

"No. What?"

Mason was trying to think if this was credible. Then recalling Nathan's dog-eyed concentration as he spent hour after hour sanding the back of a pinewood duck, lost in happy oblivion, the senior deputy continued, "Garrett said if he was standing in need to he'd kill any law tried to stop him."

"He said that? That boy?"

"Yep. Looked me right in the eye and said so. And said he was looking forward to it too. Hoped I was in the lead but he'd take anybody that happened to be handy."