The Empty Chair

Rhyme, whose eyes were now gazing out his window as thoughts of Amelia Sachs slipped back into his mind, turned slowly to Mary Beth.

"What bones?" he asked.

"At Blackwater Landing? Where Garrett kidnapped me?"

Rhyme shook his head. "What do you mean?"

Mary Beth's face furrowed with concern. "The bones – those were the relics I found. I was digging up the rest of them when Garrett kidnapped me. They're very important… You don't mean they're missing?"

"Nobody recovered any bones at the crime scene," Rhyme said. "They weren't in the evidence report."

She shook her head. "No, no… They can't be gone!"

"What kind of bones?"

"I found the remains of some of the Lost Colonists of Roanoke. From the late fifteen hundreds."

Rhyme's knowledge of history was pretty much limited to New York City. "I'm not too familiar with that."

Though when she explained about the settlers on Roanoke Island and their disappearance he nodded. "I do remember something from school. Why do you think it was their remains?"

"The bones were really old and decayed and they weren't in an Algonquin burial site or a colonial graveyard. They were just dumped in the ground without any markings. That was typical of what the warriors did with the bodies of their enemies. Here…" She opened her backpack. "I'd already packed up a few of them before Garrett took me off." She lifted several of them out, wrapped in Saran Wrap, blackened and decomposed. Rhyme recognized a radius, a portion of a scapula, a hipbone and several inches of femur.

"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' 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 be 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?"

40

Lincoln Rhyme was alone in the impromptu lab, gazing 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 -

GARETT'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 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 u

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?"