The Empty Chair

42

Mason Germain and the sullen black man moved slowly through the alley next to the Tanner's County lockup.

The man was sweating and he slapped in irritation at a mosquito. He muttered something and wiped a long hand over his short kinky hair.

Mason felt an urge to needle him but resisted.

The man was tall and by stretching up on his toes he could look into the lockup window. Mason saw that he wore short black boots – shiny patent leather – which for some reason added to the deputy's contempt for the out-of-towner. He wondered how many men he'd shot.

"She's in there," the man said. "She's alone."

"We're keeping Garrett on the other side."

"You go in the front. Can somebody get out through the back?"

"I'm a deputy, remember? I got a key. I can unlock it." He said this in a snide tone, wondering again if this fellow was halfway bright.

He got snide in return. "I was only asking if there's a door in the back. Which I don't know, never having been in this swamp of a town before."

"Oh. Yeah, there's a door."

"Well, let's go then."

Mason noticed that the man's gun was in his hand and that he hadn't seen him draw it.

Sachs sat on the bench in her cell, hypnotized by the motion of a fly.

What kind was it? she wondered. Garrett would know in an instant. He was a warehouse of knowledge. A thought occurred to her: There'd be that moment when a child's knowledge of a subject surpasses his parents'. It must be a miraculous thing, exhilarating, to know that you'd produced this creation who'd outsoared you. Humbling too.

An experience that she now would never know.

She thought once again about her father. The man had diffused crime. Never fired his gun in all his years on duty. Proud as he was of his daughter, he'd worried about her fascination with firearms. "Shoot last," he'd often remind her.

Oh, Jesse… What can I say to you?

Nothing, of course. I can't say a word. You're gone.

She thought she saw a shadow outside the lockup window. But she ignored it, and her thoughts slipped to Rhyme.

You and me, she was thinking. You and me. Recalling the time a few months ago, lying together in his opulent Clinitron bed in his Manhattan townhouse, as they watched Baz Luhrmann's stylish Romeo and Juliet, an updated version set in Miami. With Rhyme, death always hovered close and, watching the final scenes of the movie, Amelia Sachs had realized that, like Shakespeare's characters, she and Rhyme were in a way star-crossed lovers too. And another thought had then flashed through her mind: that the two of them would also die together.

She hadn't dared share this thought with rationalist Lincoln Rhyme, who didn't have a sentimental cell in his brain. But once this notion had occurred to her it seated itself permanently in her psyche and for some reason gave her great comfort.

Yet now she couldn't even find solace in this odd thought. No, now – thanks to her – they'd live separately and die separately. They'd -

The door to the lockup swung open and a young deputy walked inside. She recognized him. It was Steve Farr, Jim Bell's brother-in-law.

"Hey there," he called.

Sachs nodded. Then she noticed two things about him. One was that he wore a Rolex watch, which must've cost half the annual salary of a typical cop in North Carolina.

The other was that he wore a sidearm and that the holster thong was unsnapped.

Despite the sign outside the door to the cells: PLACE ALL WEAPONS IN THE LOCKBOX BEFORE ENTERING THE CELL AREA.

"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 dinner every Wednesday. We poured the poison into the car's vent and hid in the woods. They got in and Garrett's father turned on the air-conditioner. The stuff sprayed out all over them. But we used too much -"

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 ginned-up reports. Whenever we heard that somebody else'd got a funny kind of cancer and was asking questions why, Culbeau and the others took care of them."

"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, planning every move. But then he stepped back fast, shoving her outside into the scruffy lot behind the jail. Farr remained inside, well out of reach.

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 Tanner's Corner they'd driven past what now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Oh, Rhyme…

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

Rhyme said to Bell, "Don't you think somebody might wonder if I die this way? I can hardly open a jar by myself."

The sheriff responded, "You bumped the table. The lid wasn't on tight. It splashed on you. I went for help but we couldn't save you in time."

"Amelia's not going to let it go. Lucy won't either."

"Your girlfriend's not going to be a problem for very much longer. And Lucy? She might just get sick again… and this time there might not be anything to cut off to save her."

Bell hesitated only a moment then he stepped close and poured the liquid over Rhyme's mouth and nose. The rest he splashed onto the front of his shirt.

The sheriff dropped the jar onto Rhyme's lap, stepped back fast and covered his own mouth with a handkerchief.

Rhyme's head jerked back, his lips parted involuntarily and some of the liquid slipped into his mouth. He began to choke.

Bell pulled off the gloves and stuffed them into his slacks. He waited a moment, calmly studying Rhyme, then walked toward the door slowly, unlocked it, swung it open. He called. "There's been an accident! Somebody, I need help!" He stepped into the corridor. "I need -"

He walked right into Lucy Kerr's line of fire, her pistol aimed steadily at his chest.

"Jesus, Lucy!"

"That's enough, Jim. Just hold it right there."

The sheriff stepped back. Nathan, the snapshooting deputy, walked into the room, behind Bell, and snagged the sheriff's pistol from its holster. Another man entered – a large man in a tan suit and white shirt.

Ben too ran inside, ignored everyone else and hurried to Rhyme, wiping the criminalist's face with a paper towel.

The sheriff stared at Lucy and the others. "No, you don't understand! There was an accident! That poison stuff spilled. You've got to -"

Rhyme spit on the floor and wheezed from the astringent liquid and the fumes. He said to Ben, "Could you wipe higher on my cheek? I'm afraid it'll get into my eyes. Thank you."

"Sure, Lincoln."

Bell said, "I was going for help! That stuff spilled! I -"

The man in the suit pulled handcuffs off his belt and ratcheted the loops around the sheriff's wrists. He said, "James Bell, I'm Detective Hugo Branch with the North Carolina State Police. You're under arrest here." Branch looked at Rhyme sourly. "I told you he'd pour it on your shirt. We should've put the unit someplace else."

"But you got enough on tape?"

"Oh, plenty. That's not the point. The point is those transmitters cost money."

"Bill me," Rhyme said acerbically as Branch opened Rhyme's shirt and untaped the microphone and transmitter.

"It was a setup," Bell whispered.

You got that right.

"But the poison…"

"Oh, it's not toxaphene," Rhyme said. "Just a little moonshine. From that jar we tested. By the way, Ben, if there's any left, I could use a sip just now. And, Christ, could somebody get that AC going?"

Tense, cut to the left and run like hell. I'll get hit but if I'm lucky it won't stop me.

When you move they can't getcha…

Amelia Sachs took three steps into the grass.

Ready…

Set…

Then a man's voice from behind them, inside the lockup area, called, "Hold it, Steve! Put the weapon on the ground. Now! I'm not telling you again!"

Sachs spun around and saw Mason Germain, his gun pointed at the shocked young man's crew-cut head, his round ears crimson. Farr crouched and set the gun on the floor. Mason hurried forward and cuffed him.

Footsteps sounded from outside, leaves rustled. Dizzy from the heat and the adrenaline, Sachs turned back to the field and saw a lean black man climbing out of the bushes, bolstering a big Browning automatic pistol.

"Fred!" she cried.

FBI agent Fred Dellray, sweating furiously in his black suit, walked up to her, brushing petulantly at his sleeve. "Hey, A-melia. My, it is too too too hot down here. I don't like this town one tiny bit. And look at this suit. It's all, I don't know, dusty or something. What is this shit, pollen? We don't have this stuff in Man-hattan. Look at this sleeve!"

"What're you doing here?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"Whatcha think? Lincoln wasn't sure who he could trust and who he couldn't so he had me fly down and hooked me up with Deputy Germain here to keep an eye on you. Figured he needed some help, seeing as how he couldn't trust Jim Bell or his kin."

" Bell ?" she whispered.

" Lincoln thinks he put this whole thing together. He's finding out for sure right now. But looks like he was right, that being his brother-in-law." Dellray nodded at Steve Farr.

"He almost got me," Sachs said.

The lean agent chuckled. "You weren't in a single, solitary lick of danger, no way. I had a bead on that fellow right 'tween his big ears from the second the back door opened. He'd so much as squinted out a target at you he'da been way, way gone."

Dellray noticed Mason studying him suspiciously. The agent laughed, said to Sachs, "Our friend in the constabulary here don't like my kind much. He told me so."

"Wait," Mason protested. "I only meant -"

"You meant federal agents, I'm betting," Dellray said.

The deputy shook his head, said gruffly, "I meant Northerners."

"True, he doesn't," Sachs confirmed.

Sachs and Dellray laughed. But Mason remained solemn. But it wasn't cultural differences that made him somber. He said to Sachs, "Sorry, but I'll have to take you back to the cell. You're still under arrest."

Her smile faded, and Sachs looked once more at the sun dancing over the scruffy yellow grass. She inhaled the scorching air of the out-of-doors once, then again. Finally she turned and walked back into the dim lockup.

43

"You killed Billy, didn't you?" Rhyme asked Jim Bell.

But the sheriff said nothing.

The criminalist continued, "The crime scene was unprotected for an hour and a half. And, sure, Mason was the first officer. But you got there before he arrived. You never got a call from Billy saying that Mary Beth was dead and you started to worry so you drove over to Blackwater Landing and found her gone and Billy hurt. Billy told you about Garrett getting away with the girl. Then you put the latex gloves on, picked up the shovel and killed him."

Finally the sheriff's anger broke through his facade. "Why did you suspect me?"

"Originally I did think it was Mason – only the three of us and Ben knew about the moonshiners' cabin. I assumed he called Culbeau and sent him there. But I asked Lucy and it turned out that Mason called her and sent her to the cabin – just to make sure Amelia and Garrett didn't get away again. Then I got to thinking and I realized that at the mill Mason tried to shoot Garrett. Anybody in on the conspiracy would want to keep him alive – like you did – so he could lead you to Mary Beth. I checked into Mason's finances and found out he's got a cheap house and is in serious hock to MasterCard and Visa. Nobody was paying him off. Unlike you and your brother-in-law, Bell. You've got a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house and plenty of cash in the bank. And Steve Farr's got a house worth three ninety and a boat that cost a hundred eighty thousand. We're getting court orders to take a peek in your safe-deposit boxes. Wonder how much we'll find there."

Rhyme continued. "I was a little curious why Mason was so eager to nail Garrett but he had a good reason for that. He told me he was pretty upset when you got the job of sheriff – couldn't quite figure out why since he had a better record and more seniority. He thought that if he could collar the Insect Boy the Board of Supervisors'd be sure to appoint him sheriff when your term expired."

"All your fucking playacting…" Bell muttered. "I thought you only believed in evidence."

Rhyme rarely sparred verbally with his quarry. Banter was useless except as a balm for the soul and Lincoln Rhyme had yet to uncover any hard evidence on the whereabouts and nature of the soul. Still, he told Bell, "I would've preferred evidence. But sometimes you have to improvise. I'm really not the prima donna everybody thinks I am."

The Storm Arrow wheelchair wouldn't fit into Amelia Sachs' cell.

"Not crip-accessible?" Rhyme groused. "That's an A.D.A. violation."

She thought his bluster was for her benefit, letting her see his familiar moods. But she said nothing.

Because of the wheelchair problem Mason Germain suggested they try the interrogation room. Sachs shuffled in, wearing the hand and ankle shackles that the deputy insisted on (she had, after all, already managed one escape from the place).

The lawyer from New York had arrived. He was gray-haired Solomon Geberth. A member of the New York, Massachusetts and D.C. bars, he had been admitted to the jurisdiction of North Carolina pro hoc vice – for the single case of People v. Sachs. Curiously, with his smooth, handsome face and mannerisms even smoother he seemed far more a genteel Southern lawyer out of a John Grisham novel than a bulldog of a Manhattan litigator. The man's trim hair glistened with spray and his Italian suit successfully resisted wrinkles even in Tanner's Corner's astonishing humidity.

Lincoln Rhyme sat between Sachs and her lawyer. She rested her hand on the armrest of his injured wheelchair.

"They brought in a special prosecutor from Raleigh," Geberth was explaining. "With the sheriff and the coroner on the take I don't think they quite trust McGuire. Anyway he's looked over the evidence and decided to dismiss the charges against Garrett."

Sachs stirred at this. "He did?"

Geberth said, "Garrett admitted hitting the boy, Billy, and thought he killed him. But Lincoln was right. It was Bell who killed the boy. And even if they brought him up on assault charges Garrett was clearly acting in self-defense. That other deputy, Ed Schaeffer? His death's been ruled accidental."

"What about kidnapping Lydia Johansson?" Rhyme asked.

"When she realized that Garrett had never intended to hurt her she decided to drop the charges. Mary Beth did the same. Her mother wanted to go ahead with the complaint but you should've heard that girl talk to the woman. Some fur flew during that conversation, I'll tell you."

"So he's free? Garrett?" Sachs asked, eyes on the floor.

"They're letting him out in a few minutes," Geberth told her. Then: "Okay, here's the laundry, Amelia: the prosecutor's position is that even if Garrett turned out not to be a felon, you aided in the escape of a prisoner who'd been arrested on the basis of probable cause and you killed an officer during the commission of that crime. The prosecutor's going for first-degree murder and throwing in the standard lesser-included offenses: both manslaughter counts – voluntary and involuntary – and reckless homicide and criminally negligent homicide."

"First degree?" Rhyme snapped. "It wasn't premeditated; it was an accident! For Christ's sake."

"Which is what I' m going to try to show at trial," Geberth said. "That the other deputy, the one who grabbed you, was a partial proximate cause of the shooting. But I guarantee they'll get the reckless homicide conviction. On the facts there's no doubt about that."

"What's the chance of acquittal?" Rhyme asked.

"Bad. Ten, fifteen percent at best. I'm sorry, but I have to recommend you take a plea."

She felt this like a blow to her chest. Her eyes closed and when she exhaled it was as if her soul had fled from her body.

"Jesus," Rhyme muttered.

Sachs was thinking about Nick, her former boyfriend. How, when he was arrested for hijacking and taking kickbacks, he refused a plea and took the risk of a jury trial. He said to her, "It's like what your old man said, Aimee – when you move they can't get you. It's all or nothing."

It took the jury eighteen minutes to convict him. He was still in a New York prison.

She looked at the smooth-cheeked Geberth. She asked, "What's the prosecutor offering for the plea?"

"Nothing yet. But he'll probably accept voluntary manslaughter – if you do hard time. I'd guess eight, ten years. I have to tell you, though, that in North Carolina it'll be hard time. No country clubs here."

Rhyme grumbled, "Versus a fifteen percent chance of acquittal."

Geberth said, "That's right." Then the lawyer added, "You have to understand that there aren't going to be any miracles here, Amelia. If we go to trial the prosecutor's going to prove that you're a professional law-enforcer and a champion marksman and the jury's going to have trouble buying that the shooting was accidental."

Normal rules don't apply to anybody north of the Paquo. Us or them. You can see yourself shooting before you read anybody their rights and that'd be perfectly all right.

The lawyer said, "If that happens they could convict you of murder one and you'll get twenty-five years."

"Or the death penalty," she muttered.

"Yes, that's a possibility. I can't tell you it isn't."

For some reason the image that came into her mind at this moment was of the peregrine falcons that nested outside of Lincoln Rhyme's window in his Manhattan townhouse: the male and the female and the young hawk. She said, "If I plead to involuntary how much time will I do?"

"Probably six, seven years. No parole."

You and me, Rhyme.

She inhaled deeply. "I'll plead."

"Sachs -" Rhyme began.

But she repeated to Geberth, "I'll plead."

The lawyer rose. He nodded. "I'll call the prosecutor right now, see if he'll accept it. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything." With a nod at Rhyme the lawyer left the room.

Mason glanced at Sachs' face. He stood and walked to the door, his boots tapping loudly. "I'll leave you two for a few minutes. I don't have to search you, do I, Lincoln?"

Rhyme smiled wanly. "I'm weapon-free, Mason."

The door swung shut.

"What a mess, Lincoln," she said.

"Uh-uh, Sachs. No first names."

"Why not?" she asked cynically, nearly a whisper. "Bad luck?"

"Maybe."

"You're not superstitious. Or so you're always telling me."

"Not usually. But this is a spooky place."

Tanner's Corner… The town with no children.

"I should've listened to you," he said. "You were right about Garrett. I was wrong. I looked at the evidence and got it dead-wrong."

"But I didn't know I was right. I didn't know anything. I just had a hunch and I acted."

Rhyme said, "Whatever happens, Sachs, I'm not going anywhere." He nodded down at the Storm Arrow and laughed. "I couldn't get very far even if I wanted to. You do some time, I'll be there when you get out."

"Words, Rhyme," she said. "Only words… My father said he wasn't going anywhere either. That was a week before the cancer shut him down."

"I'm too ornery to die."

But you're not too ornery to get better, she thought, to meet someone else. To move on and leave me behind.

The door to the interrogation room opened. Garrett stood in the doorway, Mason behind him. The boy's hands, no longer in shackles, were cupped in front of him.

"Hey," Garrett said in greeting. "Check out what I found. It was in my cell." He opened his fist and a small insect flew out. "It's a sphinx moth. They like to forage in valerian flowers. You don't see 'em much inside. Pretty cool."

She smiled faintly, taking pleasure in his enthusiastic eyes. "Garrett, there's one thing I want you to know."

He walked closer, looked down at her.

"You remember what you said in the trailer? When you were talking to your father in the empty chair?"

He nodded uncertainly.

"You were saying how bad you felt that he didn't want you in the car that night."

"I remember."

"But you know why he didn't want you… He was trying to save your life. He knew there was poison in the car and that they were going to die. If you got in the car with them you'd die too. And he didn't want that to happen."

"I guess I know that," he said. His voice was uncertain and Amelia Sachs supposed that rewriting one's history was a daunting task.

"You keep remembering it."

"I will."

Sachs looked at the tiny, beige moth, flying around the interrogation room. "You leave anybody in the cell for me? For company?"

"Yeah, I did. There's a couple of ladybugs – their real name is ladybird beetles. And a leafhopper and syrphus fly. It's cool the way they fly. You can watch 'em for hours." He paused. "Like, I'm sorry I lied to you. The thing is, if I hadn't I never would've got out and I couldn't've saved Mary Beth."

"That's all right, Garrett."

He looked at Mason. "I can go now?"

"You can go."

He walked to the door, turned and said to Sachs, "I'll come and, like, hang out. If that's okay."

"I'd like that."

He stepped outside, and through the open door Sachs could see him walk up to a four-by-four. It was Lucy Kerr's. Sachs saw her get out and hold the door open for him – like a mom picking up her son after soccer practice. The jail door closed and shut off this domestic scene.

"Sachs," Rhyme began. But she shook her head and started shuffling back toward the lockup. She wanted to be away from the criminalist, away from the Insect Boy, away from the town without children. She wanted to be in the darkness of solitude. And soon she was.

Outside of Tanner's Corner, on Route 112, where it's still two-lane, there's a bend in the road, near the Paquenoke River. Just off the shoulder is a thick growth of plume grass, sedge, indigo and tall columbines showing off their distinctive red flowers like flags.

The vegetation creates a nook that's a popular parking space for Paquenoke County deputies, who sip iced tea and listen to the radio as they wait for the display on their radar guns to register 54 mph or higher. Then they accelerate onto the highway in pursuit of the surprised speeder to add another hundred dollars or so to the county treasury.

Today, Sunday, as a black Lexus SUV passed this jog in the road the radar gun on Lucy Kerr's dashboard registered a legal 44. But she put the squad car in gear, flipped the switch starting the gumball machine atop the car and sped after the four-by-four.

She eased close to the Lexus and studied the vehicle carefully. She'd learned long ago to check the rearview mirror of cars she was stopping. You look at the drivers' eyes and you can pretty much get a feel for what other kinds of crimes they might be committing, if any, beyond speeding or a broken taillight. Drugs, stolen weapons, drinking. You get a feel for how dangerous the pull-over will be. Now, she saw the man's eyes flick into the mirror and glance at her without a hint of guilt or concern.

Invulnerable eyes…

Which made the anger in her all the hotter and she breathed hard to control it.

The big car eased onto the dusty shoulder and Lucy pulled in behind it. Rules dictated that she call in for a tag, tax and warrants check but Lucy didn't bother with this. There was nothing that DMV could report that would be of any interest to her. With trembling hands she opened the door and climbed out.

The driver's eyes now shifted to the side-view mirror and continued to examine her clinically. They registered some surprise, noticing, she supposed, that she wasn't in her uniform – just jeans and a work shirt – though she was wearing her weapon on her hip. What would an off-duty cop be doing pulling over a driver who hadn't been speeding?

Henry Davett rolled down his window.

Lucy Kerr looked inside, past Davett. In the front passenger seat was a woman in her early fifties, with a dryness to her sprayed blond hair that suggested frequent beauty parlor shampoos. She wore diamonds on wrist, ears and chest. A teenage girl sat in the back, flipping through boxes of CDs, mentally enjoying the music that her father wouldn't let her listen to on the Sabbath.

"Officer Kerr," Davett said, "what's the problem?"

But she could see in his eyes, now no longer in reflection, that he knew exactly what the problem was.

And still they remained as guilt-free and in control as when he'd noticed the gyrations of the flashing lights on her Crown Victoria.

Her anger tugged at its restraints and she snapped, "Get out of the car, Davett."

"Honey, what did you do?"

"Officer, what's the point of this?" Davett asked, sighing.

"Out. Now." Lucy reached inside and popped the door locks.

"Can she do that, honey? Can she -"

"Shut up, Edna."

"All right. I'm sorry."

Lucy swung the door open. Davett unsnapped his seat belt and stepped out onto the dusty shoulder.

A semi sped past and wrapped its wake around them. Davett looked distastefully at the gray Carolina clay settling on his blue blazer. "My family and I are late for church and I don't think -"

She took him by the arm and pulled him off the shoulder, into the shade of wild rice and cattails; a small stream, a feeder to the Paquenoke, ran beside the road.

He repeated with exasperation, "What is the point?"

"I know everything."

"Do you, Officer Kerr? Do you know everything! Which would be?"

"The poison, the murders, the canal…"

Davett said smoothly, "I never had a bit of direct contact with Jim Bell or anybody else in Tanner's Corner. If there were some damn crazy fools on my payroll who hired some other damn crazy fools to do things that were illegal that's not my fault. And if that happened I'll be cooperating with the authorities one hundred percent."

Unfazed by his suave response she growled, "You're going down with Bell and his brother-in-law."

"Of course I'm not. Nothing links me to a single crime. There're no witnesses. No accounts, no money transfers, no evidence of any wrongdoing. I'm a manufacturer of petrochemical-based products – certain cleaners, asphalt and some pesticides."

"Illegal pesticides."

"Wrong," he snapped. "The EPA still allows toxaphene to be used in some cases in the U.S. And it's not illegal at all in most Third World countries. Do some reading, Deputy, without pesticides malaria and encephalitis and famine'd kill hundreds of thousands of people every year and -"

"- and give the people who're exposed to it cancer and birth defects and liver damage and -"

Davett shrugged. "Show me the studies, Deputy Kerr. Show me the research that proves that."

"If it's so fucking harmless then why did you stop shipping it by truck? Why did you start using barges?"

"I couldn't get it to port any other way – because some knee-jerk counties and towns've banned transportation of some substances they don't know the facts about. And I didn't have the time to hire lobbyists to change the laws."

"Well, I'll bet the EPA'd be interested in what you're doing here."

"Oh, please," he scoffed. "The EPA? Send them out. I'll give you their phone number. If they ever get around to visiting the factory they'll find permissible levels of toxaphene everywhere around Tanner's Corner."

"Maybe what's in the water alone is at a permissible level, maybe what's in the air alone, maybe the local produce alone… But what about the combination of them? What about a child who drinks a glass of water from his parents' well then plays in the grass then eats an apple from a local orchard then -"

He shrugged. "The laws're clear, Deputy Kerr. If you don't like them write your congressman."

She grabbed him by the lapel. She raged, "You don't understand. You are going to prison."

He pulled away from her, whispered viciously, "No, you don't understand, Officer. You're way out of your depth here. I'm very, very good at what I do. I do not make mistakes." He glanced at his watch. "I have to go now."

Davett walked back to the SUV, patting his thinning hair. The sweat had darkened it and stuck the strands into place.

He climbed in and slammed the door.

Lucy walked up to the driver's side as he started the engine. "Wait," she said.

Davett glanced at her. But the deputy ignored him. She was looking at his passengers. "I'd like you to see what Henry did." Her strong hands ripped her own shirt open. The women in the car gaped at the pink scars where her breasts had been.

"Oh, for pity's sake," Davett muttered, looking away.

"Dad…" the girl whispered in shock. Her mother stared, speechless.

Lucy said, "You said that you don't make mistakes, Davett?… Wrong. You made this one."

The man put the car in gear, clicked on his turn signal, checked his blind spot and eased slowly onto the highway.

Lucy stood for a long moment, watching the Lexus disappear. She fished in her pocket and pinned her shirt closed with several safety pins. She leaned against her car for a long moment, fighting tears, then she happened to look down and notice a small, ruddy flower by the roadside. She squinted. It was a pink moccasin flower, a type of orchid. Its blossoms resemble tiny slip-on shoes. The plant was rare in Paquenoke County and she'd never seen one as lovely as this. In five minutes, using her windshield ice scraper, she'd uprooted the plant and had it packed safely in a tall 7-Eleven cup, the root beer sacrificed for the beauty of Lucy Kerr's garden.

44

A plaque on the courthouse wall explained that the name of the state came from the Latin Carolus, for Charles. It was King Charles I who granted a land patent to settle the colony.

Carolina …

Amelia Sachs had assumed the state was named for Caroline, some queen or princess. Brooklyn-born and -raised, she had little interest in, or knowledge of, royalty.

She now sat, handcuffed still, between two guards on a bench in the courthouse. The red-brick building was an old place, filled with dark mahogany and marble floors. Stern men in black suits, judges or governors, she assumed, looked down on her from oil paintings as if they knew she was guilty. There didn't seem to be air-conditioning but breezes and the darkness cooled the place thanks to efficient eighteenth-century engineering.

Fred Dellray ambled up to her. "Hey there – you want some coffee or something?"

The left-field guard got as far as "No speaking to the -" before the Justice Department ID card crimped off the recitation.

"No, Fred. Where's Lincoln?"

It was nearly nine-thirty.

"Dunno. You know that man – sometimes he just appears. For a man who doesn't walk he gets around more'n anybody I know."

Lucy and Garrett weren't here either.

Sol Geberth, in a rich-looking gray suit, walked up to her. The guard on her right scooted over and let the lawyer sit down. "Hello, Fred," the lawyer said to the agent.

Dellray nodded, but coolly, and Sachs deduced that, as with Rhyme, the defense lawyer must've gotten acquittals for suspects that the agent had collared.

"It's a deal," Geberth said to Sachs. "The prosecutor's agreed to involuntary manslaughter – no other counts. Five years. No parole."

Five years…

The lawyer continued. "There's one aspect to this I didn't think about yesterday."

"What is it?" she asked, trying to gauge from the look on his face how deep this new trouble ran.

"The problem is you're a cop."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Before he could say anything Dellray said, "You being a law enforcement officer. Inside."

When she still didn't get it the agent explained, "Inside prison. You'll have to be segregated. Or you wouldn't last a week. That'll be tough, Amelia. That'll be nasty tough."

"But nobody knows I'm a cop."

Dellray laughed faintly. "They'll know ever-single-thing there is to know 'bout you by the time you get yourself issued your jumpsuit and linen."

"I haven't collared anybody down here. Why would they care that I'm a cop?"

"Don't make a splinter of difference where you're from," Dellray said, eyeing Geberth, who nodded in confirmation. "They ab-so-lutely won't keepya in general population."

"So it's basically five years in solitary."

"I'm afraid so," Geberth said.

She closed her eyes and felt nausea course through her.

Five years of not moving, of claustrophobia, of nightmares…

And, as an ex-convict, how could she possibly think about becoming a mother? She choked on the despair.

"So?" the lawyer asked. "What's it going to be?"

Sachs opened her eyes. "I'll take the plea."

The room was crowded. Sachs saw Mason Germain, a few of the other deputies. A grim couple, eyes red, probably Jesse Corn's parents, sat in the front row. She wanted badly to say something to them but their contemptuous gaze kept her silent. She saw only two faces that looked at her kindly: Mary Beth McConnell and a heavy woman who was presumably her mother. There was no sign of Lucy Kerr. Or of Lincoln Rhyme. She supposed that he didn't have the heart to watch her being led off in chains. Well, that was all right; she didn't want to see him under these circumstances either.

The bailiff led her to the defense table. He left the shackles on. Sol Geberth sat beside her.

They rose when the judge entered and the wiry man in a bulky black robe sat down at the tall bench. He spent some minutes looking over documents and talking with his clerk. Finally he nodded and the clerk said, "The people of the state of North Carolina versus Amelia Sachs."

The judge nodded to the prosecutor from Raleigh, a tall, silver-haired man, who rose. "Your Honor, the defendant and the state have entered into a plea arrangement, whereby the defendant has agreed to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the death of Deputy Jesse Randolph Corn. The state waives all other charges and is recommending a sentence of five years, to be served without possibility of parole or reduction."

"Miss Sachs, you've discussed this arrangement with your attorney?"

"I have, Your Honor."

"And he's told you that you have the right to reject it and proceed to trial?"

"Yes."

"And you understand that by accepting this you will be pleading guilty to a felony homicide charge."

"Yes."

"You're making this decision willingly?"

She thought of her father, of Nick. And of Lincoln Rhyme. "I am, yes."

"Very well. How do you plead to the charge of second-degree manslaughter brought against you?"

"Guilty, Your Honor."

"In light of the state's recommendation the plea will be entered and I am hereby sentencing you -"

The red-leather doors leading to the corridor swung inward and with a high-pitched whine Lincoln Rhyme's wheelchair maneuvered inside. A bailiff had tried to open the doors for the Storm Arrow but Rhyme seemed to be in a hurry and just plowed through them. One slammed into the wall. Lucy Kerr was behind him.

The judge looked up, ready to reprimand the intruder. When he saw the chair he – like most people – deferred to the political correctness that Rhyme despised and said nothing. He turned back to Sachs. "I'm hereby sentencing you to five years -"

Rhyme said, "Forgive me, Your Honor. I need to speak with the defendant and her counsel for a minute."

"Well," the judge grumbled, "we're in the middle of a proceeding. You can speak to her at some future time."

"With all respect, Your Honor," Rhyme responded, "I need to speak to her now." His voice was a grumble too but it was much louder than the jurist's.

Just like the old days, being in a courtroom.

Most people think that a criminalist's only job is finding and analyzing evidence. But when Lincoln Rhyme was head of the NYPD' s forensics operation – the Investigation and Resources Division – he had spent nearly as much time testifying in court as he did in the lab. He was a good expert witness. (Elaine, his ex-wife, often observed that he preferred to perform in front of people – herself included – rather than interact with them.)

Rhyme carefully steered up to the railing that separated the counsel tables from the gallery in the Paquenoke County Courthouse. He glanced at Amelia Sachs and the sight nearly broke his heart. In the three days she'd been in jail she'd lost a lot of weight and her face was sallow. Her red hair was dirty and pulled up in a taut bun – the way she wore it at crime scenes to keep the strands from brushing against evidence; this made her otherwise beautiful face severe and drawn.

Geberth walked over to Rhyme, crouched down. The criminalist spoke to him for a few minutes. Finally, Geberth nodded and rose. "Your Honor, I realize this is a hearing regarding a plea bargain. But I have an unusual proposal. There's some new evidence that's come to light -"

"Which you can introduce at trial," the judge snapped, "if your client chooses to reject the plea arrangement."

"I'm not proposing to introduce anything to the court; I'd like to make the state aware of this evidence and see if my worthy colleague will agree to consider it."

"For what purpose?"

"Possibly to alter the charges against my client." Geberth added coyly, "Which may just make Your Honor's docket somewhat less burdensome."

The judge rolled his eyes, to show that Yankee slickness counted for zip around these parts. Still, he glanced at the prosecutor and asked, "Well?"

The D. A. asked Geberth, "What sort of evidence? A new witness?"

Rhyme couldn't control himself any longer. "No," he said. "Physical evidence."

"You're this Lincoln Rhyme I've been hearing about?" the judge asked.

As if there were two crip criminalists plying their trade in the Tar Heel State.

"I am, yes."

The prosecutor asked, "Where is this evidence?"

"In my custody at the Paquenoke County Sheriff's Department," Lucy Kerr said.

The judge asked Rhyme, "You'll agree to be deposed, under oath?"

"Certainly."

"This's all right with you, Counselor?" the judge asked the prosecutor.

"It is, Your Honor, but if this is just tactical or if the evidence turns out to be meaningless, I'll pursue interference charges against Mr. Rhyme."

The judge thought for a moment then said, "For the record, this is not part of any proceeding. The court is merely lending itself to the parties for a deposition prior to arraignment. The examination will be conducted pursuant to North Carolina Rules of Criminal Procedure. Swear the deponent."

Rhyme parked in front of the bench. As the Bible-clutching clerk approached uncertainly, Rhyme said, "No, I can't raise my right hand." Then recited, "I swear that the testimony I am about to give is the truth, upon my solemn oath." He tried to catch Sachs' eye but she was staring at the faded mosaic tile on the courtroom floor.

Geberth strolled to the front of the courtroom. "Mr. Rhyme, could you state your name, address and occupation."

" Lincoln Rhyme, 345 Central Park West, New York City. I'm a criminalist."

"That's a forensic scientist, is that right?"

"Somewhat more than that but forensic science is the bulk of what I do."

"And how do you know the defendant, Amelia Sachs?"

"She's been my assistant and partner on a number of criminal investigations."

"And how did you happen to come to Tanner's Corner?"

"We were assisting Sheriff James Bell and the Paquenoke County Sheriff's Department. Looking into the murder of Billy Stail and the abductions of Lydia Johansson and Mary Beth McConnell."

Geberth asked, "Now, Mr. Rhyme, you say you have new evidence that bears on this case?"

"Yes, I do."

"What is that evidence?"

"After we learned that Billy Stail had gone to Blackwater Landing to kill Mary Beth McConnell I began speculating why he'd done that. And I concluded that he'd been paid to kill her. He -"

"Why did you think he was paid?"

"It's obvious why," Rhyme grumbled. He had little patience for irrelevant questions and Geberth was deviating from his script.

"Share that with us, if you would."

"Billy had no romantic relationship with Mary Beth of any kind. He wasn't involved in the murder of Garrett Hanlon's family. He didn't even know her. So he'd have no motivation to kill her other than financial profit."

"Go on."

Rhyme continued, "Whoever hired him wasn't going to pay by check, of course, but in cash. Deputy Kerr went to the house of Billy Stail's parents and was given permission to search his room. She discovered ten thousand dollars hidden beneath his mattress."

"What was there about this -"

"Why don't I just finish the story?" Rhyme asked the lawyer.

The judge said, "Good idea, Mr. Rhyme. I think counsel's laid enough groundwork."

"With Officer Kerr's assistance I did a friction ridge analysis – that's a fingerprint check – of the top and bottom bills in the stacks of cash. I found a total of sixty-one latent fingerprints. Aside from Billy's prints, two of these prints proved to be from a person involved in this case. Deputy Kerr got another warrant to enter that individual's house."

"Did you search it too?" the judge asked.

He replied with forced patience, "No, I didn't. It wasn't accessible to me. But I directed the search, which was conducted by Deputy Kerr. Inside the house she found a receipt for the purchase of a shovel identical to the murder weapon, eighty-three thousand dollars in cash, secured with wrappers identical to the ones around the two stacks of money in Billy Stail's house."

Dramatic as ever, Rhyme had saved the best till the last. "Deputy Kerr also found bone fragments in the barbecue behind that premises. These fragments match the bones of Garrett Hanlon's family."

"Whose house was this?"

"Deputy Jesse Corn's."

This drew some loud murmurs from the courtroom pews. The prosecutor remained unfazed but sat up slightly, his shoes scuffling on the tile floor, and whispered to his colleagues as they considered the implications of the revelation. In the gallery Jesse's parents turned to each other, shock in their eyes; his mother shook her head and started to cry.

"Where exactly are you going, Mr. Rhyme?" the judge asked.

Rhyme resisted telling the judge that the destination was obvious. He said, "Your Honor, Jesse Corn was one of the individuals who had conspired with Jim Bell and Steve Farr – to kill Garrett Hanlon's family five years ago and then to kill Mary Beth McConnell the other day."

Oh, yeah. This town's got itself a few hornets.

The judge leaned back in his chair. "This has nothing to do with me. You two duke it out." Nodding from Geberth to the prosecutor. "You got five minutes then she accepts the plea bargain or I'll set bail and schedule trial."

The prosecutor said to Geberth, "Doesn't mean she didn't kill Jesse. Even if Corn was a co-conspirator he was still the victim of a homicide."

Now the Northerner got to roll his eyes. "Oh, come on," Geberth snapped, as if the D.A. were a slow student. "What it means is that Corn was operating outside his jurisdiction as a law-enforcer and that when he confronted Garrett he was a felon and armed and dangerous. Jim Bell admitted they were planning on torturing the boy to find Mary Beth's whereabouts. Once they found her, Corn would've been right there with Culbeau and the others to kill Lucy Kerr and the other deputies."

The judge's eyes swept from left to right slowly as he watched this unprecedented tennis match.

The prosecutor: "I can only focus on the crime at hand. Whether Jesse Corn was going to kill anybody or not doesn't matter."

Geberth shook his head slowly. The lawyer said to the court reporter, "We're suspending the deposition. This is off the record." Then, to the prosecutor: "What's the point of proceeding? Corn was a killer."

Rhyme joined in, speaking to the prosecutor. "You take this to trial and what do you think the jury's going to feel when we show the victim was a crooked cop planning to torture an innocent boy to find a young woman and then murder her?"

Geberth continued, "You don't want this notch on your grip. You've got Bell, you've got his brother-in-law, the coroner…"

Before the prosecutor could protest again Rhyme looked up at him and said in a soft voice, "I'll help you."

"What?" the prosecutor asked.

"You know who's behind all this, don't you? You know who's killing half the residents of Tanner's Corner?"

"Henry Davett," the prosecutor said. "I've read the filings and depos."

Rhyme asked, "And how's the case against him?"

"Not good. There's no evidence. There's no link between him and Bell or anybody else in town. He used middlemen and they're all stonewalling or out of the jurisdiction."

"But," Rhyme said, "don't you want to nail him – before any more people die of cancer? Before more children get sick and kill themselves? Before more babies are born with birth defects?"

"Of course I want to."

"Then you need me. You won't find a criminalist anywhere in the state who can bring Davett down. I can." Rhyme glanced at Sachs. He could see tears in her eyes. He knew that the only thought in her mind now was that, whether they sent her to jail or not, she hadn't killed an innocent man.

The prosecutor sighed deeply. Then nodded. Quickly, as if he might change his mind, he said, "Deal." He looked at the bench. "Your Honor, in the case of the People versus Sachs, the state is withdrawing all charges."

"So ordered," said the bored judge. "Defendant is free to go. Next case." He didn't even bother to bang down his gavel.

45

"I didn't know whether you'd show up," Lincoln Rhyme said.

He was, in fact, surprised.

"Wasn't sure I was going to either," Sachs replied.

They were in his hospital room at the medical center in Avery.

He said, "I just got back from visiting Thom on the fifth floor. That's pretty odd – I'm more mobile than he is."

"How is he?"

"He'll be fine. He should be out in a day or two. I told him he was about to see physical therapy from a whole new angle. He didn't laugh."

A pleasant Guatemalan woman – the temporary caregiver – sat in the corner, knitting a yellow-and-red shawl. She seemed to be weathering Rhyme's moods though he believed that this was because she didn't understand English well enough to appreciate his sarcasm and insults.

"You know, Sachs," Rhyme said, "when I heard you'd busted Garrett out of detention it half occurred to me you'd done it to give me a chance to rethink the operation."

A smile curved her Julia Roberts lips. "Maybe there was a bit of that."

"So you're here now to talk me out of it?"

She rose from the chair and walked to the window. "Pretty view."

"Peaceful, isn't it? Fountain and garden. Plants. Don't know what kind."

"Lucy could tell you. She knows plants the way Garrett knows bugs. Excuse me, insects. A bug is only one type of insect… No, Rhyme, I'm not here to talk you out of it. I'm here to be with you now and to be in the recovery room when you wake up."

"Change of heart?"

She turned to him. "When Garrett and I were on the run he was telling me about something he read in that book of his. The Miniature World."

"I have a new respect for dung beetles after reading it," Rhyme said.

"There was something he showed me, a passage. It was a list of the characteristics of living creatures. One of them was that healthy creatures strive to grow and to adapt to the environment. I realized that's something you have to do, Rhyme – have this surgery. I can't interfere with it."

After a moment he said, "I know it's not going to cure me, Sachs. But what's the nature of our business? It's little victories. We find a fiber here, a partial latent friction ridge there, a few grains of sand that might lead to the killer's house. That's all I'm after here – a little improvement. I'm not climbing out of this chair, I know that. But I need a little victory."

Maybe the chance to hold your hand for real.

She bent down, kissed him hard, then sat on the bed.

"What's that look, Sachs? You seem a bit coy."

"That passage in Garrett's book?"

"Right."

"There was another characteristic of living creatures I wanted to mention."

"Which is?" he asked.

"All living creatures strive to continue the species."

Rhyme grumbled, "Do I sense another plea bargain here? A deal of some kind?"

She said, "Maybe we can talk about some things when we get back to New York."

A nurse appeared in the doorway. "I need to take you to pre-op, Mr. Rhyme. You ready for a ride?"

"Oh, you bet I am…" He turned back to Sachs. "Sure, we'll talk."

She kissed him again and squeezed his left hand, where he could, just faintly, feel the pressure in his ring finger.

The two women sat side by side in a thick shaft of sunlight.

Two paper cups of very bad vending-machine coffee were in front of them, perched on an orange table covered with brown burn marks from the days when smoking had been permitted in hospitals.

Amelia Sachs glanced at Lucy Kerr, who sat forward, hands together, subdued.

"What's up?" Sachs asked her. "You all right?"

The deputy hesitated then finally said, "Oncology's on the next wing over. I spent months there. Before and after the operation." She shook her head. "I never told anybody this but the Thanksgiving Day after Buddy left me I came here. Just hung out. Had coffee and tuna sandwiches with the nurses. Isn't that a kick? I could've gone to see my parents and cousins in Raleigh for turkey and dressing. Or my sister in Martinsville and her husband – Ben's parents. But I wanted to be where I felt at home. Which sure wasn't in my house."

Sachs said, "When my father was dying my mom and I spent three holidays in the hospital. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. Pop made a joke. He said we had to make our Easter reservations early. He didn't live that long, though."

"Your mom's still alive?"

"Oh, yeah. She gets around better than I do. I got Pop's arthritis. Only in spades." Sachs nearly made a joke about that being why she was such a good shot – so she wouldn't have to run down the perps. But then she thought of Jesse Corn, flashed back to the dot of the bullet on his forehead, and she remained silent.

Lucy said, "He'll be all right, you know. Lincoln."

"No, I don't know," Sachs responded.

"I've got a feeling. When you've been through as much as I have – in hospitals, I mean – you get a feeling."

"Appreciate that," Sachs said.

"How long do you think it'll be?" Lucy asked.

Forever…

"Four hours, Dr. Weaver was saying."

In the distance they could just hear the tinny, forced dialogue of a soap opera. A distant page for a doctor. A chime. A laugh.

Someone walked past then paused.

"Hey, ladies."

" Lydia," Lucy said, smiling. "How you doing?"

Lydia Johansson. Sachs hadn't recognized her at first because she was wearing a green robe and cap. She recalled that the woman was a nurse here.

"You heard?" Lucy asked. "About Jim and Steve getting arrested? Who would've thought?"

"Never in a million years," Lydia said. "The whole town's talking." Then the nurse asked Lucy, "You have an onco appointment?"

"No. Mr. Rhyme's having his operation today. On his spine. We're his cheerleaders."

"Well, I wish him all the best," Lydia said to Sachs.

"Thank you."

The big girl continued down the corridor, waved, then pushed through a doorway.

"Sweet girl," Sachs said.

"You imagine that job, being an oncology nurse? When I was having my surgery she was on the ward every day. Being just as cheerful as could be. More guts than I have."

But Lydia was far from Sachs' thoughts. She looked at the clock. It was eleven A.M. The operation would start any minute now.

He tried to be on good behavior.

The prep nurse was explaining things to him and Lincoln Rhyme was nodding but they'd already given him a Valium and he wasn't paying attention.

He wanted to tell the woman to be quiet and just get on with it yet he supposed that you should be extremely civil to the people who're about to slice your neck open.

"Really?" he said when she paused. "That's interesting." Not having a clue what she'd just told him.

Then an orderly arrived and wheeled him from pre-op into the operating room itself.

Two nurses made the transfer from the gurney to the operating table. One went to the far end of the room and began removing instruments from the autoclave.

The operating room was more informal than he'd thought. The clichéd green tile, stainless-steel equipment, instruments, tubes. But also lots of cardboard boxes. And a boom box. He was going to ask what kind of music they'd be listening to but then he remembered he'd be out cold and wouldn't care about the sound track.

"It's pretty funny," he muttered drunkenly to a nurse who was standing next to him. She turned. He could see only her eyes over the face mask.

"What's that?" she asked.

"They're operating on the one place where I need anesthetic. If I had my appendix out they could cut without gas."

"That's pretty funny, Mr. Rhyme."

He laughed briefly, thinking: So, she knows me.

He stared at the ceiling, in a hazy, reflective mood.

Lincoln Rhyme divided people into two categories: traveling people and arrival people. Some enjoyed the journey more than the destination. He, by his nature, was an arrival person – finding the answers to forensic questions was his goal and he enjoyed getting the solutions more than the process of seeking them. Yet now, lying on his back, staring into the chromium hood of the surgical lamp, he felt just the opposite. He preferred to exist in this state of hope – enjoying the buoyant sensation of anticipation.

The anesthesiologist, an Indian woman, came in and ran a needle into his arm, prepared an injection, fitted it into the tube connected to the needle. She had very skillful hands.

"You ready to take a nap?" she asked with a faint, lilting accent.

"As I'll ever be," he mumbled.

"When I inject this I'm going to ask you to count down from one hundred. You'll be out before you know it."

"What's the record?" Rhyme joked.

"Counting down? One man, he was much bigger than you, got to seventy-nine before he went under."

"I'll go for seventy-five."

"You'll get this operating suite named after you if you do that," she replied, deadpan.

He watched her slip a tube of clear liquid into the IV. She turned away to look at a monitor. Rhyme began counting. "One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…"

The other nurse, the one who'd mentioned him by name, crouched down. In a low voice she said, "Hi, there."

An odd tone in the voice.

He glanced at her.

She continued, "I'm Lydia Johansson. Remember me?" Before he could say of course he did, she added in a dark whisper, "Jim Bell asked me to say good-bye."

"No!" he muttered.

The anesthesiologist, eyes on a monitor, said, "It' s okay. Just relax. Everything's fine."

Her mouth inches from his ear, Lydia whispered, "Didn't you wonder how Jim and Steve Farr found out about the cancer patients?"

"No! Stop!"

"I gave Jim their names so Culbeau could make sure they had accidents. Jim Bell's my boyfriend. We've been having an affair for years. He's the one sent me to Blackwater Landing after Mary Beth'd been kidnapped. That morning I went to put flowers down and just hang out in case Garrett showed up. I was going to talk to him and give Jesse and Ed Schaeffer a chance to get him – Ed was with us too. Then they were going to force him to tell us where Mary Beth was. But nobody thought he'd kidnap me."

Oh, yeah, this town's got itself a few hornets…

"Stop!" Rhyme cried. But his voice came out as a mumble.

The anesthesiologist said, "Been fifteen seconds. Maybe you're going to break that record after all. Are you counting? I don't hear you counting."

"I'll be right here," Lydia said, stroking Rhyme's forehead. "A lot can go wrong during surgery, you know. Kinks in the oxygen tube, administering the wrong drugs. Who knows? Might kill you, might put you in a coma. But you sure aren't going to be doing any testifying."

"Wait," Rhyme gasped, "wait!"

"Ha," the anesthesiologist said, laughing, her eyes still on the monitor. "Twenty seconds. I think you're going to win, Mr. Rhyme."

"No, I don't think you are," Lydia whispered and slowly stood as Rhyme saw the operating room go gray and then black.

46

This really was one of the prettiest places in the world, Amelia Sachs thought.

For a cemetery.

Tanner's Corner Memorial Gardens, on a crest of a rolling hill, overlooked the Paquenoke River, some miles away. It was even nicer here, in the graveyard itself, than viewed from the road where she'd first seen it on the drive from Avery.

Squinting against the sun, she noticed the glistening strip of Blackwater Canal joining the river. From here, even the dark, tainted water, which had brought so much sorrow to so many, looked benign and picturesque.

She was in a small cluster of people standing over an open grave. A crematory urn was being lowered by one of the men from the mortuary. Amelia Sachs was next to Lucy Kerr. Garrett Hanlon stood by them. On the other side of the grave were Mason Germain and Thom, with a cane, dressed in his immaculate slacks and shirt. He wore a bold tie with a wild red pattern, which seemed appropriate despite this somber moment.

Black-suited Fred Dellray was here too, standing by himself, off to the side, thoughtful – as if recalling a passage in one of the philosophy books he enjoyed reading. He would have resembled a Nation of Islam reverend if he'd been wearing a white shirt instead of the lime-green one with yellow polka dots on it.

There was no minister to officiate, even though this was Bible-waving country and there'd probably be a dozen clerics on call for funerals. The mortuary director now glanced at the people assembled and asked if anybody wanted to say something to the assembly. And as everyone looked around, wondering if there'd be any volunteers, Garrett dug into his baggy slacks and produced his battered book, The Miniature World.

In a halting voice the boy read, "'There are those who suggest that a divine force doesn't exist, but one's cynicism is truly put to the test when we look at the world of insects, which have been graced with so many amazing characteristics: wings so thin they seem hardly to be made of any living material, bodies without a single milligram of excess weight, wind-speed detectors accurate to a fraction of a mile per hour, a stride so efficient that mechanical engineers model robots after it, and, most important, insects' astonishing ability to survive in the face of overwhelming opposition by man, predators and the elements. In moments of despair, we can look to the ingenuity and persistence of these miraculous creatures and find solace and a restoration of lost faith.'"

Garrett looked up, closed the book. Clicked his fingernails nervously. He looked at Sachs and asked, "Do you, like, want to say anything?"

But she merely shook her head.

No one else spoke and after a few minutes everyone around the grave turned away and meandered back up the hill along a winding path. Before they crested the ridge that led to a small picnic area the cemetery crews had already begun filling in the grave with a backhoe. Sachs was breathing hard as they walked to the crest of the tree-covered hill near the parking lot.

She recalled Lincoln Rhyme's voice: That's not a bad cemetery. Wouldn't mind being buried in a place like that…

She paused to wipe the sweat from her face and catch her breath; the North Carolina heat was still relentless. Garrett, though, didn't seem to notice the temperature. He ran past her and began pulling grocery bags from the back of Lucy's Bronco.

This wasn't exactly the time or place for a picnic but, Sachs supposed, chicken salad and watermelon were as good a way as any to remember the dead.

Scotch too, of course. Sachs dug through several shopping bags and finally found the bottle of Macallan, eighteen years old. She pulled the cork stopper out with a faint pop.

"Ah, my favorite sound," Lincoln Rhyme said.

He was wheeling up beside her, driving carefully along the uneven grass. The hill down to the grave was too steep for the Storm Arrow and he'd had to wait up here in the lot. He'd watched from the hilltop as they buried the ashes of the bones that Mary Beth had found at Blackwater Landing – the remains of Garrett's family.

Sachs poured scotch into Rhyme's glass, equipped with a long straw, and some into hers. Everyone else was drinking beer.

He said, "Moonshine is truly vile, Sachs. Avoid it at all costs. This is much better."

Sachs looked around. "Where's the woman from the hospital? The caregiver?"

"Mrs. Ruiz?" Rhyme muttered. "Hopeless. She quit. Left me in the lurch."

"Quit?" Thom said. "You drove her nuts. You might as well have fired her."

"I was a saint," the criminalist snapped.

"How's your temperature?" Thom asked him.

"It's fine," he grumbled. "How's yours?"

"Probably a little high but I don't have a blood pressure problem."

"No, you've a bullet hole in you."

The aide persisted, "You should -"

"I said I'm fine."

"- move into the shade a little farther."

Rhyme groused and complained about the unsteady ground but he finally maneuvered himself into the shade a little farther.

Garrett was carefully setting out food and drink and napkins on a bench under the tree.

"How're you doing?" Sachs asked Rhyme in a whisper. "And before you grumble at me too – I'm not talking about the heat."

He shrugged – this, a silent grumble by which he meant: I'm fine.

But he wasn't fine. A phrenic-nerve stimulator pumped current into his body to help his lungs inhale and exhale. He hated the device – had weaned himself off it some years ago – but there was no question that he needed it now. Two days ago, on the operating table, Lydia Johansson had come very close to stopping his breathing forever.

In the waiting room at the hospital, after Lydia had said good-bye to Sachs and Lucy, Sachs had noticed that the nurse vanished through the doorway marked NEUROSURGERY. Sachs had asked, "Didn't you say that she works in oncology?"

"She does."

"Then what's she doing going in there?"

"Maybe saying hello to Lincoln," Lucy suggested.

But Sachs didn't think that nurses paid social calls to patients about to be operated on.

Then she thought: Lydia would know about new cancer diagnoses among residents from Tanner's Corner. She then recalled that somebody had given information to Bell about cancer patients – the three people in Blackwater Landing that Culbeau and his friends had killed. Who better than a nurse on the onco ward? This was far-fetched but Sachs mentioned it to Lucy, who pulled out her cell phone and made an emergency call to the phone company, whose security department did a down-and-dirty pen-register search of Jim Bell's phone calls. There were hundreds to and from Lydia.

"She's going to kill him!" Sachs had cried. And the two women, one with a weapon drawn, had burst into the operating room – a scene right out of a melodramatic episode of ER – just as Dr. Weaver was about to make the opening incision.

Lydia had panicked and, trying to escape, or trying to do what Bell had sent her for, ripped the oxygen tube from Rhyme's throat before the two women subdued her. From that trauma and because of the anesthetic Rhyme's lungs had failed. Dr. Weaver had revived him but, afterward, his breathing hadn't been up to par and he'd had to go back on the stimulator.

Which was bad enough. But worse, to Rhyme's anger and disgust, Dr. Weaver refused to perform the operation for at least another six months – until his breathing functions were completely normalized. He'd tried to insist but the surgeon proved to be as mulish as he was.

Sachs sipped more scotch.

"You told Roland Bell about his cousin?" Rhyme asked.

She nodded. "He took it hard. Said Jim was the black sheep but never guessed he'd do anything like this. He's pretty shaken up by the news." She looked northeast. "Look," she said, "out there. Know what that is?"

Trying to follow her eyes, Rhyme asked, "What're you looking at? The horizon? A cloud? An airplane? Enlighten me, Sachs."

"The Great Dismal Swamp. That's where Lake Drummond is."

"Fascinating," he said sarcastically.

"It's full of ghosts," she added, like a tour guide.

Lucy came up and poured some scotch into a paper cup. Sipped it. Then made a face. "It's awful. Tastes like soap." She opened a Heineken.

Rhyme said, "It costs eighty dollars a bottle."

"Expensive soap, then."

Sachs watched Garrett as he shoveled corn chips into his mouth then ran into the grass. She asked Lucy, "Any word from the county?"

"On being his foster mom?" Lucy asked. Then shook her head. "Got rejected. The being single part isn't an issue. They have a problem with my job. Cop. Long hours."

"What do they know?" Rhyme scowled.

"Doesn't matter what they know," she said. "What they do is the thing that's important. Garrett's being set up with a family up in Hobeth. Good people. I checked them out pretty good."

Sachs didn't doubt that she had.

"But we're going on a hike next weekend."

Nearby Garrett eased through the grass, stalking a specimen.

When Sachs turned back she saw Rhyme had been watching her as she gazed at the boy.

"What?" she asked, frowning at his coy expression.

"If you were going to say something to an empty chair, Sachs, what would it be?"

She hesitated for a moment. "I think I'll keep that to myself for the time being, Rhyme."

Suddenly Garrett gave a loud laugh and started running through the grass. He was chasing an insect, which was oblivious to its pursuer, through the dusty air. The boy caught up with it and, with outstretched arms, made a grab for his prey then tumbled to the ground. A moment later he was up, staring into his cupped hands and walking slowly back to the picnic benches.

"Guess what I found," he called.

"Come show us," Amelia Sachs said. "I want to see."