Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

Jesse Corn was sprinting through the brush up the hill, waving his arms and calling, "Mason, stop shooting! Stop shooting!"

Garrett continued to examine Sachs closely. Then he tossed the knife aside and started compulsively clicking his fingernails over and over.

As Lucy ran forward and cuffed Garrett, Sachs turned to the hill where Mason had been shooting from. She saw him stand, speaking on his phone. He glanced directly at her, it seemed, then shoved the phone into his pocket and started down the hill.

"What the hell were you thinking of?" Sachs raged at Mason. She walked straight up to him. They stood only a foot apart and she was an inch taller than he was.

"Saving your ass, lady," Mason replied harshly. "Didn't you happen to notice he had a weapon?"

"Mason" – Jesse Corn tried to diffuse the situation – "she was trying to calm things down is all. She got him to give up."

But Amelia Sachs didn't need any big brothers. She said, "I've been doing takedowns for years. He wasn't going to move on me. The only threat was from you. You could've hit one of us ."

"Oh, bullshit." Mason leaned close to her and she could smell the musky aftershave he seemed to have poured on.

She eased away from the cloud of scent and said, "And if you'd killed Garrett, Mary Beth probably would've starved or suffocated to death."

"She's dead," Mason snapped. "That girl is lying in a grave somewhere and we'll never find her body."

" Lincoln got a report on her blood," Sachs responded. "She was alive as of last night."

This gave him a moment's pause. He muttered, "Last night ain't now."

"Come on, Mason," Jesse said. "It worked out okay."

But he wasn't calming. He lifted his arms and slapped his thighs. He looked into Sachs's eyes, said, "I don't know what the fuck we need you down here for anyway."

"Mason," Lucy Kerr cut in, "it's over with. We wouldn't've found Lydia, it hadn't been for Mr. Rhyme and Amelia here. We have them to thank. Let it go."

" She's the one not letting it go."

"When somebody puts me in the line of fire there better be a pretty good reason," Sachs said evenly. "And it's no reason at all that you're gunning for that boy because you haven't been able to make a case against him."

"You got no business talking about how I do my job. I -"

"Okay, we got to wrap this up here," Lucy said, "and get back to the office. We're still working on the assumption that Mary Beth isn't dead and we've got to find her."

"Hey," Jesse Corn called. "There's the chopper."

A helicopter from the medical center landed in a clearing near the mill and the medics brought Lydia out on a stretcher; she was suffering from minor heatstroke and had a badly sprained ankle. The woman had been hysterical at first – Garrett had come at her with a knife and even though it turned out he had used it just to cut a piece of duct tape to gag her she was still very shaken. She managed to calm down enough to tell them that Mary Beth wasn't anywhere near the mill. Garrett had her hidden near the ocean somewhere, on the Outer Banks. She didn't know where exactly. Lucy and Mason had tried to get Garrett to say but he'd remained mute and sat, hands cuffed behind him, staring morosely at the ground.

Lucy said to Mason, "You, Nathan and Jesse walk Garrett over to Easedale Road. I'll have Jim send a car there. The Possum Creek turnoff. Amelia wants to search the mill. I'll help her. Send another car over to Easedale in a half hour or so for us."

Sachs was happy to hold Mason's eyes for as long as he wanted to have a pissing contest. But he turned his attention to Garrett, looking the scared boy up and down like a guard studying a death-row prisoner. Mason nodded to Nathan. "Lessgo. Those cuffs on tight, Jesse?"

"They're tight, sure," Jesse said.

Sachs was glad Jesse would be with them to keep Mason on his good behavior. She'd heard stories about "escaping" prisoners being beaten by their transporting officers. Occasionally they ended up dead.

Mason gripped Garrett roughly by the arm and pulled him to his feet. The boy cast a hopeless look at Sachs. Then Mason led him down the path.

Sachs said to Jesse Corn, "Keep an eye on Mason. You may need all of Garrett's cooperation to find Mary Beth. And if he's too scared or mad you won't get anything out of him."

"I'll make sure of it, Amelia." A glance her way. "That was gutsy, what you did. Stepping in front of him. I wouldn't've done that."

"Well," she said, not in the mood for any more adoration. "Sometimes you just act and don't think."

He nodded brightly as if adding that expression to his repertoire. "Oh, hey, I was gonna ask – you have a nickname you go by?"

"Not really."

"Good. I like 'Amelia' just the way it is."

For a ridiculous moment she thought he was going to kiss her to celebrate the capture. Then he started off after Mason, Nathan and Garrett.

Brother , thought exasperated Amelia Sachs, watching Jesse turn to give her a cheerful wave: One of the deputies wants to shoot me and one of them's just about got the church reserved and the caterer lined up.

• • •

Sachs walked the grid carefully inside the mill – concentrating on the room where Garrett had kept Lydia. Walking back and forth, one step at a time.

She knew there were some clues here as to where Mary Beth McConnell was being held. Yet sometimes the connection between a perp and a location was so tenuous that it existed only microscopically and as Sachs traversed the room she found nothing helpful – only dirt, bits of hardware and burnt wood from the walls that had collapsed during the mill fire, food, water, empty wrappers and the duct tape that Garrett had brought (all without store labels). She found the map that poor Ed Schaeffer had gotten a look at. It showed Garrett's route to the mill but no destinations beyond that were marked.

Still, she searched twice. Then once more. Part of this was Rhyme's teaching, part of it was her own nature. (And was part of it, she wondered, a delaying tactic? To postpone as long as possible Rhyme's appointment with Dr. Weaver?)

Then Lucy's voice called, "I've got something."

Sachs had suggested that the deputy search the grinding room. That was where Lydia had told them she'd tried to escape from Garrett and Sachs had reasoned that if there'd been a struggle something might have fallen from Garrett's pockets. She'd given the deputy a fast course in walking the grid, told her what to look for and how to properly handle evidence.

"Look," Lucy said enthusiastically as she carried a cardboard box over to Sachs. "Found this hidden behind the millstone."

Inside was a pair of old shoes, a waterproof jacket, a compass and a map of the North Carolina coastline. Sachs also noticed a dusting of white sand in the shoes and in the folds of the map.

Lucy started to open up the map.

"No," Sachs said. "There could be some trace inside. Wait till we're back with Lincoln."

"But he could've marked the place where he's got her."

"He might've. But it'll still be marked when we get back to the lab. We lose trace now, we lose it forever." Then she said, "You keep searching inside. I want to check out the path he was going down when we stopped him. It led to the water. Maybe he had a boat hidden there. There might be another map or something."

Sachs left the mill and hiked down toward the stream. As she passed the rise where Mason had been shooting from she turned the corner and found two men staring at her. They carried rifles.

Oh, no. Not them.

"Well," Rich Culbeau said. Brushed away a fly that landed on his sun-burnt forehead. He tossed his head and his thick, shiny braid swung like a horse's tail.