Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

Bell arrived with the first of the employees and Rhyme explained what he was going to do. The sheriff grinned in admiration. "That's an idea and a half, Lincoln. Cousin Roland knew what he was doing when he sang your praises."

But the half hour spent on this exercise was futile. None of the samples submitted from the people in the building matched the dirt in the treads of Garrett's shoe. Rhyme scowled as the last sample of dirt from the employees settled into the tube.

"Damn."

"Was a good try though," Bell said.

A waste of precious time.

"Should I pitch out the samples?" Ben asked.

"No. Never throw out your exemplars without recording them," he said firmly. Then remembered not to be too abrasive in his instructions; the big man was here only by the grace of family ties. "Thom, help us out. Sachs asked for a Polaroid camera from the state. It's got to be here someplace. Find it and take close-ups of all the tubes. Mark down the name of each employee on the back of the pictures."

The aide found the camera and went to work.

"Now let's analyze what Sachs found at Garrett's foster parents' house. The pants in that bag – see if there's anything in the cuffs."

Ben carefully opened the plastic bag and examined the trousers. "Yessir, some pine needles."

"Good. Did they fall off the branches or are they cut?"

"Cut, looks like."

"Excellent. That means he did something to them. He cut them on purpose. And that purpose may have to do with the crime. We don't know what that is yet but I'd guess it's camouflage."

"I smell skunk," Ben said, sniffing the clothes.

Rhyme said, "That's what Amelia said. Doesn't do us any good, though. Not yet anyway."

"Why not?" the zoologist asked.

"Because there's no way to link a wild animal to a specific location. A stationary skunk would be helpful; a mobile one isn't. Let's look at the trace on the clothes. Cut a couple pieces of the pants and run them through the chromatograph."

While they waited for the results Rhyme examined the rest of the evidence from the boy's room. "Let me see that notebook, Thom." The aide flipped through the pages for Rhyme. They contained only bad drawings of insects. He shook his head. Nothing helpful there.

"Those other books?" Rhyme nodded toward the four hardbound books Sachs had found in his room. One – The Miniature World – had been read so often it was falling apart. Rhyme noticed passages were circled or underlined or marked with asterisks. But none of the passages gave any clue as to where the boy might have spent time. They seemed to be trivia about insects. He told Thom to put them aside.

Rhyme then looked over what Garrett had hidden in the wasp jar: money, pictures of Mary Beth and of the boy's family. The old key. The fishing line.

The cash was just a crumpled mass of fives and tens and silver dollars. There were, Rhyme noted, no helpful jottings in the margins of the bills (where many criminals write messages or plans – a fast way to get rid of incriminating instructions to co-conspirators is to buy something and send the note off into the black hole of circulation). Rhyme had Ben run the PoliLight – an alternative light source – over the money and found that both the paper and the silver dollars contained easily a hundred different partial fingerprints, too many to provide any helpful clues. There was no price sticker on the picture frame or fishing line and thus no way to trace them to stores Garrett might've frequented.

"Three-pound-test fishing line," Rhyme commented, looking at the spool. "That's light, isn't it, Ben?"

"Hardly catch a bluegill with that, sir."

The results of the trace on the boy's slacks flickered onto the computer screen. Rhyme read aloud: "Kerosene, more ammonia, more nitrates and that camphene again. Another chart, Thom, if you'd be so kind."

He dictated.

FOUND AT SECOND 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

Rhyme stared at the charts. Finally he said, "Thom, make a call. Mel Cooper."

The aide picked up the phone, dialed from memory.

Cooper, who worked with NYPD forensics, weighed in at probably half Ben's weight. He looked like a timid actuary and he was one of the top forensic lab men in the country.

"Can you speaker me, Thom?"

A button was pushed and a moment later the soft tenor of Cooper's voice said, "Hello, Lincoln. Something tells me you're not in the hospital."

"How'd you figure that one out, Mel?"

"Didn't take much deductive reasoning. Caller ID says Paquenoke County Government Building. Delaying your operation?"

"No. Just helping out on a case here. Listen, Mel, I don't have much time and I need some information about a substance called camphene. Ever hear of it?"

"No. But hold on. I'll go into the database."

Rhyme heard frantic clicking. Cooper was also the fastest keyboarder Rhyme had ever met.

"Okay, here we go… Interesting…"

"I don't need interesting , Mel. I need facts."

"It's a terpene – carbon and hydrogen. Derived from plants. It used to be an ingredient in pesticides but it was banned in the early eighties. Its main use was in the late 1800s. It was used for fuel in lamps. It was state-of-the-art at the time – replaced whale oil. Common as natural gas back then. You're trying to track down an unsub?"

"He's not an unknown subject, Mel. He's extremely known. We just can't find him. Old lamps? So trace camphene probably means that he's been hiding out someplace built in the nineteenth century."

"Likely. But there's another possibility. Says here that camphene's only present use is in fragrances."

"What sort?"

"Perfumes, aftershave and cosmetics mostly."

Rhyme considered this. "What percentage of a finished fragrance product is camphene?" he asked.

"Trace only. Parts per thousand."

Rhyme had always told his forensic teams never to be afraid to make bold deductions in analyzing the evidence. Still, he was painfully aware of the short time the two women might have to live and he felt they had only enough resources now to pursue one of these potential leads.

"We'll have to play the odds on this one," he announced. "We'll assume the camphene's from old lanterns, not fragrances, and act accordingly. Now, listen, Mel, I'm also going to be sending you a photocopy of a key. I need you to trace it."

"Easy. From a car?"

"I don't know."

"House?"

"Don't know."

"Recent?"

"No clue."

Cooper said dubiously, "May be less easy than I thought. But get it to me and I'll do what I can."

When they disconnected, Rhyme ordered Ben to photocopy both sides of the key and fax it to Cooper. Then he tried Sachs on the radio. It wasn't working. He called her on her cell phone.

"'Lo?"

"Sachs, it's me."

"What's wrong with the radio?" she asked.

"There's no reception."

"Which way should we go, Rhyme? We're across the river but we lost the trail. And, frankly" – her voice fell to a whisper – "the natives're restless. Lucy wants to boil me for dinner."

"I've got the basic analysis done but I don't know what to do with all the data – I'm waiting for that man from the factory in Blackwater Landing. Henry Davett. He should be here any minute. But listen, Sachs, there's something else I have to tell you. I found significant trace of ammonia and nitrates on Garrett's clothes and in the shoe he lost."

"A bomb?" she asked, her hollow voice revealing her dismay.

"Looks that way. And that fishing line you found's too light to do any serious fishing. I think he's using it for trip wires to set off the device. Go slow. Look for traps. If you see something that looks like a clue just remember that it might be rigged."