Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

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The Barnes Noble Review
May 2000
The Empty Chair is the third – or, if you count a guest appearance in the millennial thriller The Devil's Teardrop, the fourth – novel to feature Lincoln Rhyme, the irascible forensic genius who became a quadriplegic when a cave-in at a crime scene damaged his spinal cord beyond repair. The series began in 1997 with The Bone Collector, which was recently made into a so-so film starring Denzel Washington. Every Rhyme novel to date has been characterized by authentic forensic detail and wild, even extravagant plotting, and the latest entry is no exception. The Empty Chair may, in fact, be the single trickiest suspense novel published so far this year.
Unlike earlier volumes, The Empty Chair takes place outside of New York City in the bucolic but sinister environs of Paquenoke County, North Carolina. Rhyme – accompanied by his long-suffering physical therapist, Thom, and his beloved forensic assistant, Amelia Sachs – has just been accepted as a patient at the Medical Center of the University of North Carolina, where he is scheduled to undergo an experimental procedure that might increase the range of his mobility but might, on the other hand, result in his death. Shortly after his arrival, Lincoln 's plans are disrupted by an unforeseen emergency. Jim Bell, Paquenoke County sheriff, has trouble on his hands and needs Lincoln 's expertise.
According to Bell, a disturbed teenager – known, for reasons that become graphically clear, as the Insect Boy – has murdered a local football hero and abductedtwoyoung women. Convinced that the women have only hours to live, Bell asks Lincoln to examine the trace evidence found at the abduction site in the faint hope of pinpointing the kidnapper's location. Though he knows nothing about the physical composition of the surrounding area – he and Sachs, as he repeatedly comments, are "fish out of water" in the American South – Rhyme agrees to help. Once again using Amelia Sachs as his eyes and legs, he sets up an ad hoc forensic lab in a borrowed corner of the local Sheriff's office and goes to work.
This sort of scenario – a crazed killer, a race against time, a scattered handful of clues – offers more than enough drama to fuel any number of traditional suspense novels. In The Empty Chair, however, this same scenario is merely the first level of a complex, multitiered mystery that constantly confounds our most fundamental expectations. The first indication that The Empty Chair contains unexpected depths comes when Lincoln, flawlessly interpreting his disparate bits of evidence, locates both the Insect Boy (Garrett Hanlon) and his most recent victim (an oncology nurse named Lydia Johannsen) within the first 150 pages. At that point, Deaver throws away the rulebook.
After talking with Garrett Hanlon in the Paquenoke County jail, Amelia develops the instinctive sense that Garrett might, as he continually claims, be a victim, and that another unidentified killer might still be at large. In a moment of intuitive – and reckless – empathy, Amelia abandons her professional principles and escapes with Garrett, determined both to prove the boy's innocence and rescue the remaining victim, a local history student named Mary Beth McConnell. From this point forward, almost nothing that happens in The Empty Chair is even remotely predictable.
It would spoil too many of the carefully constructed surprises to reveal the plot in any more detail. Suffice it to say that the narrative – which seems, at first, a simple but effective chase story – broadens and deepens to become something stranger and infinitely more complex. Throwing a varied assortment of people and elements into the mix – a trio of Deliverance-style rednecks, an emotionally scarred cancer survivor, a revisionist account of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, an apparently deranged deputy sheriff, a pair of incipient rapists, the hidden motivations of a wealthy industrialist, and the tragic history of Tanner's Corner, a "town without children" – Deaver constructs an artful, entertaining melodrama that has much to say about the destructive consequences of uncontrolled greed.
If The Empty Chair has a besetting weakness, it is Deaver's relentless determination to dazzle the reader with his narrative sleight of hand, piling on an endless, constantly escalating series of shocks, surprises, and unexpected twists that might, in a lesser writer's hands, have become just a bit too much. But Deaver, as usual, is a consummate professional, and he holds it all together with the ease and assurance of a natural storyteller. Readers familiar with the earlier adventures of Lincoln Rhyme will be lining up for this one, which seems likely to attract a substantial number of new readers, as well. The Empty Chair is Jeffery Deaver at his best and most devious and is recommended, without reservation, to anyone in search of intelligent, high-adrenaline entertainment.
– Bill Sheehan

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All the faster to unlock the door and get the hell out of here , Rhyme thought cynically. He asked Bell, "Where's Lydia?"

"In the hospital."

"She all right?"

"Nothing serious. They're keeping her in for observation for a day."

"What'd she say – exactly? " Rhyme demanded.

Sachs said, "That Garrett told her he's got Mary Beth east of here, near the ocean. On the Outer Banks. He also said that he didn't really kidnap her. She went along willingly. He was just looking out for her and she was happy to be where she was. She also told me that we caught Garrett completely off guard. He never thought we'd get to the mill so fast. When he smelled the ammonia he panicked, changed his clothes, gagged her and ran out the door."

"Okay… Ben, we've got some things to look at."

The zoologist nodded, pulled on his latex gloves once more – without Rhyme's having to instruct him to do so, the criminalist observed.

Rhyme asked about the food and water found at the mill. Ben held them up. The criminalist observed, "No individual store labels. Like the others. Won't do us any good. See if there's anything adhering to the sticky sides of the duct tape."

Sachs and Ben bent over the roll and spent ten minutes examining it with a hand glass. She pulled fragments of wood from the side and Ben once again held the instrument so Rhyme could peer into the eyepieces. But under the microscope it was clear that they matched the wood in the mill. "Nothing," she said.

Ben then picked up the map that showed Paquenoke County. It was marked with Xs and arrows, indicating Garrett's path to the mill from Blackwater Landing. There was no price sticker on this either. And it gave no indication of where the boy had been headed once he'd left the mill.

Rhyme said to Bell, "You have an ESDA?"

"A what?"

"Electrostatic Detection Apparatus."

"Don't even know what that is."

"Picks up indented writing on paper. If Garrett had written something on top of the map, a town or address, we could see it."

"Well, we don't have one. Should I call the state police?"

"No. Ben, just shine a flashlight on the map at a low angle. See if there're any indentations."

Ben did this and though they searched every inch of the map they could see no evidence of writing or other marking.

Rhyme ordered Ben to examine the second map, the one Lucy had found in the gristmill. "Let's see if there's any trace in the folds. It's too big for magazine subscription cards. Open it over a newspaper."

More sand poured out. Rhyme noticed immediately that it was in fact ocean sand, the sort that would be found on the Outer Banks – the grains were clear, not opaque, as would have been the case with inland sand.

"Run a sample through the chromatograph. Let's see if there's any other trace that'll be helpful."

Ben started the noisy machine.

As they waited for the results he spread the map out on the table. Bell, Ben and Rhyme examined it carefully. It depicted the eastern shore of the U.S. from Norfolk, Virginia, and the Hampton Roads shipping lanes all the way down to South Carolina. They looked over every inch but Garrett hadn't circled or marked any location.

Of course not , Rhyme thought; it's never that easy. They used the flashlight on this map too. But found no indented writing.

The chromatograph results flashed up onto the screen. Rhyme glanced at it quickly. "Not much help. Sodium chloride – salt – along with iodine, organic material… All consistent with seawater. But there's hardly any other trace. Doesn't do us much good for tying the sand to a specific location." Rhyme nodded at the shoes that had been in the box with the map. He asked Ben, "Any other trace in those?"

The young man examined them carefully, even unlacing them – just as Rhyme was about to ask him to do. This boy has good criminalist potential , Rhyme thought. He shouldn't be wasting his talent on neurotic fish.

The shoes were old Nikes – so common that tracing them to a particular store where Garrett might have bought them was impossible.

"Flecks of dried leaves, looks like. Maple and oak. If I had to guess."

Rhyme nodded. "Nothing else in the box?"

"Nothing."

Rhyme looked up at the other evidence charts. His eye paused at the references to camphene.

"Sachs, in the mill, were there old-fashioned lamps on the walls? Or lanterns?"

"No," Sachs answered. "None."

"Are you sure," he persisted gruffly, "or did you just not notice?"

She crossed her arms and said evenly, "The floors were ten-inch-wide chestnut, the walls plaster and lath. There was graffiti on one of the walls in blue spray paint. It said, 'Josh and Brittany, luv always,' love spelled L-U-V. There was one Shaker-style table, cracked down the middle and painted black, three bottles of Deer Park water, a pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, five bags of Doritos, two bags of Cape Cod potato chips, six cans of Pepsi, four cans of Coke, eight packets of Planters peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers. There were two windows in the room. One was boarded over. In the unboarded window there was only one pane that was unbroken – the others had been smashed – and every doorknob and window latch in the place were stolen. There were old-fashioned raised electric switches on the walls. And, yes, I'm sure there were no old-fashioned lamps."

"Whoa, she got you there, Lincoln," Ben said, laughing.

Now being one of the gang, the young man was rewarded with a glower from Rhyme. The criminalist stared once more at the evidence then shook his head, said to Bell, "I'm sorry, Jim, the best I can tell you is that she's probably being held in a house not far from the ocean but – if the deciduous leaves are near the place – not on the water. Because oak and maple wouldn't grow in sand. And it's old – because of the camphene lamps. Nineteenth century. That's the best I can do, I'm afraid."

Bell was looking at the map of the Eastern shore, shaking his head. "Well, I'm going to talk to Garrett again, see if he'll cooperate. If not I'm gonna give the D.A. a call and think about trading a plea for information. Worse comes to worst I'll fix up a search of the Outer Banks. I tell you, Lincoln, you're a lifesaver. I can't thank you enough. You'll be here for a spell?"

"Only long enough to show Ben how to pack up the equipment."

Rhyme spontaneously thought again of his mascot, Henry Davett. But he found to his surprise that his elation that his job was now finished was tainted by his frustration that the ultimate answer to the puzzle of finding Mary Beth McConnell still eluded him. But, as his ex-wife used to say to him as he walked out the door of their apartment at one or two A.M. to run a crime scene, you can't save the entire world. "I wish you luck, Jim."

Sachs said to Bell, "You mind if I come with you? To see Garrett?"

"Feel free," the sheriff said. He seemed to want to add something – maybe about female charm helping them get some information out of the boy. But he then apparently – and wisely, Rhyme reflected – thought better of it.

"Let's get to work, Ben," Rhyme said. He wheeled to the table that held the density gradient tubes. "Now listen carefully. A criminalist's tools are like a tactical officer's weapons. They have to be packed and stored just right. You treat them as if somebody's life will depend on them because, believe me, it will. Are you listening, Ben?"

"I'm listening."

18

The Tanner's Corner lockup was a structure two long blocks away from the Sheriff's Department. Sachs and Bell walked along the blistering sidewalk toward the place. Again she was struck by the ghost-town quality of Tanner's Corner. The sickly drunks they'd noticed when they first arrived were still downtown, sitting on a bench, silent. A skinny, coiffed woman parked her Mercedes in an empty row of parking spaces, climbed out and walked into the nail salon. The glitzy car seemed completely out of place in the small town. There was no one else on the street. Sachs noticed a half-dozen businesses had gone under. One of them had been a toy store. A mannequin of a baby wearing a sun-bleached jumper lay in the window. Where, she thought again, were all the children?

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