The Empty Chair

"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 di

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 gi

"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, pla

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 Ta

Oh, Rhyme…

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