Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

"A millipede." He smiled. The creature was long and yellow-green and the sight of it sickened her.

"They feel neat. I like them." He let it climb over his hand and wrist. "They're not insects," he lectured. "They're like cousins. They're dangerous if you try to hurt them. Their bite is really bad. The Indians around here used to grind them up and put the poison on arrowheads. When a millipede is scared it shits poison and then escapes. A predator crawls through the gas and dies. That's pretty wild, huh?"

Garrett grew silent and studied the millipede intently, the way Lydia herself would look at her niece and nephew – with affection, amusement, almost love.

Lydia felt the horror rising in her. She knew she should stay calm, knew she shouldn't antagonize Garrett, should just play along with him. But seeing that disgusting bug slither over his arm, hearing his fingernails click, watching his blotched skin and wet, red eyes, the flecks of food on his chin, she convulsed in panic.

As the disgust and the fear boiled up in her Lydia imagined she heard a faint voice, urging, "Yes, yes, yes!" A voice that could only belong to a guardian angel.

Yes, yes, yes!

She rolled onto her back. Garrett looked up, smiling from the sensation of the animal on his skin, curious about what she was doing. And Lydia lashed out as hard as she could with both feet. She had strong legs, used to carrying her big frame for eight-hour shifts at the hospital, and the kick sent him tumbling backward. He hit his head against the wall with a dull thud and rolled to the floor, stunned. Then he cried out, a raw scream, and grabbed his arm; the millipede must have bit him.

Yes! Lydia thought triumphantly as she rolled upright. She struggled to her feet and ran blindly toward the grinding room at the end of the corridor.

According to Jesse Corn's reckoning they were almost to the quarry.

"About five minutes ahead," he told Sachs. Then he glanced at her twice and after some tacit debate said, "You know, I was going to ask you… When you drew your weapon, when that turkey came outa the brush. Well, and at Blackwater Landing too when Rich Culbeau surprised us… That was… well, that was something. You know how to drive a nail, looks like."

She knew, from Roland Bell, the Southern expression meant "to shoot."

"One of my hobbies," she said.

"Nofoolin'."

"Easier than running," she said. "Cheaper than joining a health club."

"You in competition?"

Sachs nodded. " North Shore Pistol Club on Long Island."

"How 'bout that," he said with a daunting enthusiasm. "NRA Bullseye matches?"

"Right."

"That's my sport too! Well, skeet and trap, course. But sidearms're my specialty."

Hers too but she thought it best not to find too much in common with adoring Jesse Corn.

"You reload your own ammo?" he asked.

"Uh-huh. Well, the.38s and.45s. Not the rimfire, of course. Getting the bubbles out of slugs – that's the big problem."

"Whoa, you're not telling me you cast your own bullets?"

"I do," she admitted, recalling that when everyone else's apartment in her building smelled of waffles and bacon on Sunday morning hers often was redolent of the unique aroma of molten lead.

"I don't do that," he said apologetically. "I buy match rounds."

They walked for another few minutes in silence, all eyes on the ground, looking for more deadfall traps.

"So," Jesse Corn said, offering a coy grin, swiping his blond hair off his damp forehead. "I'll show you mine…" Sachs looked at him quizzically and he continued. "I mean, what's your best score? On the Bull's-eye circuit?" When she hesitated he encouraged: "Come on, you can tell me. It's only a sport… And, hey, I've been competing for ten years. I got a little edge on you."

"Twenty-seven hundred," Sachs said.

Jesse nodded. "Right, that's the match I mean – the three-pistol rotation, nine hundred points max for each gun. What's your best?"

"No, that's my score," she said, wincing as a jolt of arthritic pain coursed through her stiff legs. "Twenty-seven hundred."

Jesse turned to her, looking for signs of a joke. When she didn't grin or guffaw, he exhaled a fast laugh. "But that's a perfect score."

"Oh, I don't shoot that every match. But you asked what my best was."

"But…" His eyes were wide. "I've never even met anybody shot a twenty-seven hundred."

"You have now," Ned said, laughing hard. "And don't feel bad, Jess – it's only a sport."

"Twenty-seven…" The young deputy shook his head.

Sachs decided she should have lied. With this information about her ballistic prowess it seemed that Jesse Corn's love for her was sealed.

"Say, after this is over," he said shyly, "you have some free time, maybe you and me could go out to the range, waste us some ammo."

And Sachs thought: Better a box of Winchester.38 specials than a cup of Starbucks accompanied by talk of how hard it is to meet women in Tanner's Corner.

"Let's see how things go."

"It's a date," he said, using the word she'd hoped wouldn't surface.

"There," Lucy said. "Look." They stopped at the edge of the forest and saw the quarry in front of them.

Sachs motioned them into a crouch. Damn, that hurts. She popped condroitin and glucosamine daily but this Carolina humidity and heat – it was hell on her poor joints. She gazed at the huge pit – two hundred yards across and easily a hundred feet deep. The walls were yellow, like old bone, and they dropped straight down into green, brackish water that smelled sour. The vegetation for twenty yards around the perimeter had died bad deaths.

"Keep clear of the water," Lucy warned in a whisper. "It's bad. Kids used to swim here. Not long after they shut it down. My nephew did once – Ben's younger brother. But I just showed him the coroner's picture from when they fished Kevin Dobbs out after he'd drowned and been in the water for a week. Never went back."

"I think Dr. Spock recommends that approach," Sachs said. Lucy laughed.

Sachs, thinking about children again.

Not now, not now…

Her phone vibrated. As they'd gotten closer to their prey she'd turned off the ringer. She answered. Rhyme's voice crackled, "Sachs. Where are you?"

"The rim of the quarry," she whispered.

"Any sign of him?"

"We just got here. Nothing yet. We're about to start searching. All the buildings've been torn down and I don't see anywhere he could be hiding. But there're a dozen places he could've left a trap."

"Sachs…"

"What is it, Rhyme?" His solemn tone chilled her.

"There's something I have to tell you. I just got the DNA and serologic results from the medical center. On that Kleenex you found at the scene this morning."

"And?"

"It was Garrett's semen all right. And the blood – it was Mary Beth's."

"He raped her," Sachs whispered.

"Be careful, Sachs, but move fast. I don't think Lydia has much time left."

She was hiding in a dark, filthy bin that had been used to store grain long ago.

Hands behind her, still dizzy from the heat and dehydration, Lydia Johansson had stumbled down the bright corridor away from where Garrett lay writhing and had found this hiding space on the floor below the grinding room. When she slipped inside and closed the door a dozen mice had skittered over her feet and it took every ounce of willpower within her to keep from screaming.

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

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