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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"Well, then, what if he does?"

"We'll get the bag over him fast. Here." Culbeau handed O' Sarian a red-and-white canister of pepper spray. "Aim low 'cause people duck."

"Does it?… I mean, will it get on us? The spray?"

"Not if you don't shoot yourself in the fucking face. It's a stream. Not like a cloud."

"Which of ' em should I take?"

"The boy."

"What if the girl's closer to me?"

Culbeau muttered, "She's mine."

"But – "

"She's mine."

"Okay," O'Sarian agreed.

They dipped their heads as they went past a filthy window in the back of the lockup and paused at the metal door. Culbeau noticed that it was open a half-inch. "See, it's unlocked," he whispered. Feeling he'd scored some kind of point against O'Sarian. Then wondering why he felt he needed to. "Now, I'll nod. Then we go in fast, spray 'em both – and be generous with that shit." He handed O'Sarian a thick bag. "Then throw that over his head."

O'Sarian gripped the canister firmly, nodded at the second bag, which had appeared in Culbeau's hand. "So we're taking the girl too."

Culbeau sighed, said an exasperated, "Yeah, Sean. We are."

"Oh. Okay. Just wondered."

"When they're down just drag 'em out fast. Don't stop for nothing."

"Okay… Oh, I was meaning to say. I got my Colt."

"What?"

"I got my.38. I brought it." He nodded toward his pocket.

Culbeau paused for a moment. Then he said, "Good." He closed his big hand around the door handle.

22

Would this be his last view? he wondered. From his hospital bed Lincoln Rhyme could see a park on the grounds of the University Medical Center in Avery. Lush trees, a sidewalk meandering through a rich, green lawn, a stone fountain that a nurse had told him was a replica of some famous well on the UNC campus at Chapel Hill.

From the bedroom in his townhouse on Central Park West in Manhattan, Rhyme could see sky and some of the buildings along Fifth Avenue. But the windows there were high off the floor and he couldn't see Central Park itself unless his bed was shoved right against the pane, which let him look down onto the grass and trees.

Here, perhaps because the facility had been built with SCI and neuro patients in mind, the windows were lower; even the views here were accessible, he thought wryly to himself.

Then wondered again whether or not the operation would have any success. Whether he'd even survive it.

Lincoln Rhyme knew that it was the inability to do the simple things that was the most frustrating.

Traveling from New York to North Carolina, for instance, had been such a project, so long anticipated, so carefully planned, that the difficulty of the journey had not troubled Rhyme at all. But the overwhelming burden of his injury was the heaviest when it came to the small tasks that a healthy person does without thinking. Scratching an itch on your temple, brushing your teeth, wiping your lips, opening a soda, sitting up in a chair to look out the window and watch sparrows bathe in the dirt of a garden…

He wondered again how foolish he was being.

He'd had the best neurologists in the country and was a scientist himself. He'd read, and understood, the literature about the near impossibility of neuro improvement in a patient with a C4 spinal cord injury. Yet he was determined to go ahead with Cheryl Weaver's operation – despite the chance that this bucolic setting outside his window in a strange hospital in a strange town might be the very last image of nature he ever saw in this life.

Of course there are risks.

So why was he doing it?

Oh, there was a very good reason.

Yet it was a reason that the cold criminalist in him had trouble accepting and one that he'd never dare utter out loud. Because it had nothing to do with being able to prowl over a crime scene searching for evidence. Nothing to do with brushing his teeth or sitting up in bed. No, no, it was exclusively because of Amelia Sachs.

Finally he'd admitted the truth: that he'd grown terrified of losing her. He'd brooded that sooner or later she'd meet another Nick – the handsome undercover agent who'd been her lover a few years ago. This was inevitable, he figured, as long as he remained as immobile as he was. She wanted children. She wanted a normal life. And so Rhyme was willing to risk death, to risk making his condition worse, in the hope that he could improve.

He knew of course that the operation wouldn't allow him to stroll down Fifth Avenue with Sachs on his arm. He was simply hoping for a minuscule improvement – to move slightly closer to a normal life. Slightly closer to her. But summoning up his astonishing imagination, Rhyme could picture himself closing his hand on hers, squeezing it and feeling the faint pressure of her skin.

A small thing to everyone else in the world, but to Rhyme, a miracle.

Thom walked into the room. After a pause he said, "An observation."

"I don't want one. Where's Amelia?"

"I'm going to tell you anyway. You haven't had a drink in five days."

"I know. It pisses me off."

"You're getting in shape for the operation."

"Doctor's orders," Rhyme said testily.

"When have those ever meant anything to you?"

A shrug. "They're going to be pumping me full of who knows what kind of crap. I didn't think it would be smart to add to the cocktail in my bloodstream."

"It wouldn't've been. You're right. But you paid attention to your doctor. I'm proud of you."

"Oh, pride – now there's a helpful emotion."

But Thom was a waterfall to Rhyme's rain. He continued, "But I want to say something."

"You're going to anyway whether I want you to or not."

"I've read a lot about this, Lincoln. The procedure."

"Oh, have you? On your time, I hope."

"I just want to say that if it doesn't work this time, we'll come back. Next year. Two years. Five years. It'll work then."

The sentiment within Lincoln Rhyme was as dead as his spinal cord but he managed: "Thank you, Thom. Now, where the hell is that doctor? I've been hard at work catching psychotic kidnappers for these people. I think they'd be treating me a little better than this."

Thom said, "She's only ten minutes late, Lincoln. And we did change the appointment twice today."

"It's closer to twenty minutes. Ah, here we go."

The door to the hospital room swung open. And Rhyme looked up, expecting to see Dr. Weaver.

But it wasn't the surgeon.

Sheriff Jim Bell, his face dotted with sweat, walked inside. In the corridor behind him was his brother-in-law, Steve Farr. Both men were clearly upset.

The criminalist's first thought was that they'd found Mary Beth's body. That the boy had in fact killed her.

And his next thought was how badly Sachs would react to this news, having had her faith in the boy shattered.

But Bell had different news. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Lincoln." And Rhyme knew the message was something closer to him personally than just Garrett Hanlon and Mary Beth McConnell. "I was going to call," the sheriff said. "But then I figured you should hear it from somebody in person. So I came."

"What, Jim?" he asked.

"It's Amelia."

"What?" Thom asked.

"What about her?" Rhyme couldn't, of course, feel his heart pounding in his chest but he could sense the blood surge through his chin and temples. "What? Tell me!"

"Rich Culbeau and those buddies of his went by the lockup. I don't know what they had in mind exactly – probably no good – but anyway, what they found was my deputy, Nathan, cuffed, in the front office. And the cell was empty."

"Cell?"

"Garrett's cell," Bell continued, as if this explained everything.

Rhyme still didn't understand the significance. "What -"

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