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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"He was dropping lit matches on anthills. That's shitty and mean and I told him to stop it."

"What about Lydia?" Bell said. "Why'd you kidnap her? "

"I was worried about her too."

"Because she was in Blackwater Landing?"

"Right."

"You were going to rape her, weren't you?"

"No!" Garrett started to cry. "I wasn't going to hurt her. Or anybody! And I didn't kill Billy! Everybody's trying to get me to say I did something that I didn't!"

Bell dug up a Kleenex and handed it to the boy. The door swung open fast and Mason Germain walked in. He'd probably been the one watching through the one-way mirror and from the look on his face it was clear he'd lost patience. Sachs smelled his raw cologne; she'd come to detest the cloying scent.

"Mason -" Bell began.

"Listen to me, boy, you tell us where that girl is and you tell us now! 'Cause if you don't you're going to Lancaster and you're going to stay there till they put your ass on trial… You heard about Lancaster, haven't you? Case you haven't, let me tell -"

"All right, that's enough," a high-pitched voice commanded.

A bantam strode into the room – a man even shorter than Mason, with razor-trimmed hair perfectly sprayed into place. A gray suit, all buttons snug, a baby-blue shirt and striped tie. He wore shoes with three-inch heels.

"Don't say another word," he said to Garrett.

"Hello, Cal," Bell said, not pleased the visitor was here. The sheriff introduced Sachs to Calvin Fredericks, Garrett's lawyer.

"What the hell're you doing interrogating my client without me being here?" He nodded at Mason. "And what the hell was that Lancaster stuff about? I should have you put away for talking to him like that."

"He knows where the girl is, Cal," Mason muttered. "He's not telling us. He had his rights read to him. He -"

"A sixteen-year-old boy? Well, I'm inclined to get this case thrown out right now and get on to an early supper." He turned to Garrett. "Hey, young man, how you doing?"

"My face itches."

"They Mace you?"

"Nosir, just happens."

"We'll get it taken care of. Get some cream or something. Now, I'm going to be your lawyer. The state appointed me. You don't have to pay. They read you your rights? Told you you didn't have to say anything?"

"Yessir. But Sheriff Bell wanted to ask me some questions."

He said to Bell, "Oh, this's cute, Jim. What were you thinking of? Four deputies in here?"

Mason said, "We were thinking of Mary Beth McConnell. Who he kidnapped."

"Allegedly."

"And raped," Mason muttered.

"I didn't!" Garrett shouted.

"We got a bloody tissue with his come all over it," Mason snapped.

"No, no!" the boy said, his face growing alarmingly red. "Mary Beth hurt herself. That's what happened. She hit her head and I, like, wiped off the blood with a Kleenex I had in my pocket. And about the other… sometimes I just, you know, touch myself… I know I shouldn't. I know it's wrong. But I can't help it."

"Shhhh, Garrett," Fredericks said, "you don't have to explain a single thing to anybody." To Bell he said, "Now, this interrogation is over with. Take him back to the cell."

As Jesse Corn was leading him out the door Garrett stopped suddenly and turned to Sachs. "Please, you have to do something for me. Please! My room at home – it's got some jars."

"Go on, Jesse," Bell commanded. "Take him out."

But Sachs found herself saying, "Wait." To Garrett: "The jars? With your insects?"

The boy nodded. "Will you put water in them? Or at least let them go – outside – so they have a chance. Mr. and Mrs. Babbage, they won't do anything to keep them alive. Please…"

She hesitated, sensing everyone's eyes upon her. Then nodded. "I'll do it. I promise."

Garrett gave her a faint smile.

Bell looked at Sachs with a cryptic gaze then nodded toward the door and Jesse led the boy out.

The lawyer started after him but Bell stuck a finger in his chest. "You're not going anywhere, Cal. We're sitting here till McGuire shows up."

"Don't touch me, Bell," he muttered. But he sat as ordered. "Jesus Lord, what's all this folderol here, you talking to a sixteen-year-old without -"

"Shut the hell up, Cal. I wasn't fishing for a confession, which he didn't give us and I wouldn't use if he did. We got more evidence than we need to put him away forever. All I care about is finding Mary Beth. She's on the Outer Banks somewhere and that's a hell of a big haystack to find somebody in without some help."

"No way. He's not saying another word."

"She could die of thirst, Cal, she could starve to death. Heatstroke, get sick…"

When the lawyer gave no response, the sheriff said, "Cal, that boy's a menace. He's got a slew of incident reports against him -"

"Which my secretary read to me on the way over here. Hell, they're mostly for truancy. Oh, and for peeping – when he, funnily enough, wasn't even on the property of the complaining party, just hanging out on the sidewalk."

"The hornets' nest a few years ago," Mason said angrily. "Meg Blanchard."

"You released him," the lawyer pointed out happily. "Not even indicted."

Bell said, "This one's different, Cal. We got eyewitnesses, we got hard evidence and now Ed Schaeffer's dead. We can do to this boy pretty much what we feel like."

A slim man in a wrinkled blue seersucker suit walked into the interrogation room. Thinning gray hair, a lined fifty-five-year-old face. He glanced at Amelia with a vacant nod and at Fredericks with a darker expression. "I heard enough of that to make me think this's one of the easiest cases of murder one, kidnapping and sexual assault I've had in years."

Bell introduced Sachs to Bryan McGuire, the Paquenoke County prosecutor.

"He's sixteen," Fredericks said.

In an unflappable voice the D.A. said, "Isn't a venue in this state wouldn't try him as an adult and put him away for two hundred years."

"So, giddyap, McGuire," Fredericks said impatiently. "You're fishing for a bargain. I know that tone."

McGuire nodded to Bell and Sachs deduced that a conversation between the sheriff and the district attorney had occurred earlier about this very subject.

"Of course we're bargaining," Bell continued. "There's a good chance that girl's alive and we want to find her 'fore she's not alive anymore."

McGuire said, "We got so many charges on this one, Cal, you'd be amazed at how flexible we can be."

"Amaze me," the cocky defense lawyer said.

"I could go with two counts unlawful detention and assault and two counts first-degree manslaughter – one for Billy Stail, one for the deputy who died. Yessir, I'm willing to do that. All conditioned on finding the girl alive."

"Ed Schaeffer," the lawyer countered. "That was accidental."

Mason raged, "It was a fucking trap the boy set."

"I'll give you first manslaughter for Billy," McGuire offered, "and negligent homicide for the deputy."

Fredericks chewed on this for a moment. "Lemme see what I can do." His heels tapping noisily, the lawyer vanished in the direction of the cells to consult with his client. He returned five minutes later and he wasn't happy.

"Whatsa story?" Bell asked, discouraged as he read the lawyer's expression.

"No luck."

"Stonewalling?"

"Completely."

Bell muttered, "If you know something and you're not telling us, Cal, I don't give a shit about attorney-client privilege -"

"No, no, Jim, for real. He says he's protecting the girl. He says she's happy where she is and you oughta go looking for this guy in tan overalls and a white shirt."

Bell said, "He doesn't even have a good description and if he gave us one it'd change tomorrow because he's making it up."

McGuire slicked back his already-slicked-back hair. The defense used Aqua Net, Sachs could smell. The prosecution, Brylcreem. "Listen, Cal, this's your problem. I'm offering you what I'm offering. You get us the girl's whereabouts and she's alive, I'll go with reduced counts. You don't, I'll take it to trial and go for the moon. That boy'll never see the outside of a prison again. We both know it."

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