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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Impressed, Ben asked, "How d'you know all this?"

"I just do." Rhyme didn't have time to go into a discussion of how a criminalist must know as much about the physical world as he does about crime. He asked, "What else was in the cuffs? What's that ?" Nodding toward something resting on the subscription card. "That little whitish-green thing?"

"It's from a plant," Ben said. "But that's not my expertise. I studied marine botany but it wasn't my favorite subject. I'm more into life forms that've got a chance to get away when you're collecting them. Seems more sporting."

Rhyme ordered, "Describe it."

Ben looked it over with a magnifying glass. "A reddish stalk and a dot of liquid on the end. It looks viscous. There's a white, bell-shaped flower attached to it… If I had to guess -"

"You do," Rhyme snapped. "And quickly."

"I'm pretty sure it's from a sundew."

"What the hell's that? Sounds like dish soap."

Ben said, "It's like a Venus flytrap. They eat insects. They're fascinating. When I was a kid we'd sit and watch 'em for hours. The way they eat is -"

" Fascinating ," Rhyme repeated sarcastically. "I'm not interested in their dining habits. Where're they found? That's what would be fascinating to me."

"Oh, all over the place here."

Rhyme scowled. "Useless. Shit. All right, run a sample of that dirt through the chromatograph after the cloth sample's done." He then looked at Garrett's T-shirt, which was lying, spread open, on a table. "What're those stains?"

There were several reddish blotches on the shirt. Ben studied them closely and shrugged, shook his head.

The criminalist's thin lips curved into a wry smile. "You game to taste it?"

Without hesitation Ben lifted the shirt and licked a small portion of the stain.

Rhyme called, "Good man."

Ben lifted an eyebrow. "I assumed that was standard procedure."

"No way in hell would I have done that," Rhyme responded.

"I don't believe that for a minute," Ben said. He licked it again. "Fruit juice, I'd guess. Can't tell what flavor."

"Okay, add that to the list, Thom." Rhyme nodded at the chromatograph. "Let's get the results from the scraps of pants cloth and then run the dirt from the cuffs."

Soon the machine had told them what trace substances were embedded in Garrett's clothes and what had been found in the dirt in his cuffs: sugar, more camphene, alcohol, kerosene and yeast. The kerosene was in significant amounts. Thom had added these to the list and the men examined the chart.

FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

MILL

Brown Paint on Pants

Sundew Plant

Clay

Peat Moss

Fruit Juice

Paper Fibers

Stinkball Bait

Sugar

Camphene

Alcohol

Kerosene

Yeast

What did all this mean? Rhyme wondered. There were too many clues. He couldn't see any relationships among them. Was the sugar from the fruit juice or from a separate location the boy had been to? Had he bought the kerosene or had he just happened to hide in a gas station or barn where the owner stored it? Alcohol was found in more than three thousand common household and industrial products – from solvents to aftershave. The yeast had undoubtedly been picked up in the gristmill, where grain had been ground into flour.

After a few minutes Lincoln Rhyme's eyes flicked to another chart.

FOUND AT SECONDARY CRIME SCENE -

GARETT'S ROOM

Skunk Musk

Cut Pine Needles

Drawings of Insects

Pictures of Mary Beth and Family

Insect Books

Fishing Line

Money

Unknown Key

Kerosene

Ammonia

Nitrates

Camphene

Something that Sachs had mentioned when she was searching the boy's room came back to him.

"Ben, could you open that notebook there, Garrett's notebook? I want to look at it again."

"You want me to put it in the turning frame?"

"No, just thumb through it," Rhyme told him.

The boy's stilted drawings of the insects flipped past: a water boatman, a diving bell spider, a water strider.

He remembered that Sachs had told him that, except for the wasp jar – Garrett's safe – the insects in his collection were in jars containing water. "They're all aquatic."

Ben nodded. "Seem to be."

"He's attracted to water," Rhyme mused. He looked at Ben. "And that bait? You said it's for bottom feeders."

"Stinkballs? Right."

"Saltwater or fresh?"

"Well, fresh. Of course."

"And the kerosene – boats run on that, right?"

"White gas," Ben said. "Small outboards do."

Rhyme said, "How's this for a thought? He's going west by boat on the Paquenoke River?"

Ben said, "Makes sense, Lincoln. And I'll bet there's so much kerosene because he's been refueling a lot – making runs back and forth between Tanner's Corner and the place he's got Mary Beth. Getting it ready for her."

"Good thinking. Call Jim Bell in here, would you?"

A few minutes later Bell returned and Rhyme explained his theory.

Bell said, "Water bugs gave you that idea, huh?"

Rhyme nodded. "If we know insects, we'll know Garrett Hanlon."

"It's no crazier than anything else I've heard today," Jim Bell said.

Rhyme asked, "Have you got a police boat?"

"No. But it wouldn't do us any good anyway. You don't know the Paquo. From the map it looks like any other river – with banks and all. But it's got a thousand inlets and branches flowing into and out of marshes. If Garrett's on it he's not staying to the main channel. I guarantee you that. It'd be impossible to find him."

Rhyme's eyes followed the Paquenoke west. "If he was moving supplies to the place where he's got Mary Beth that means it's probably not too far off the river. How far west would he have to go to be in an area that was habitable?"

"Have to be a ways. See up there?" Bell touched a spot around Location G-7. "That's north of the Paquo; nobody'd live there. South of the river it gets pretty residential. He'd be seen for sure."

"So at least ten miles or so west?"

"You got that right," Bell said.

"That bridge?" Rhyme nodded toward the map. Looking at spot E-8.

"The Hobeth Bridge?"

"What're the approaches to it like? The highway?"

"Just landfill. But there's a lot of it. The bridge's about forty feet high so the ramps leading up to it are long. Oh, wait… You're thinking Garrett'd have to sail back to the main channel to get under the bridge."

"Right. Because the engineers would've filled in the smaller channels on either side when they built the approaches."

Bell was nodding. "Yep. Makes sense to me."

"Get Lucy and the others there now. To the bridge. And, Ben, call that fellow – Henry Davett. Tell him we're sorry but we need his help again."

WWJD…

Thinking once again of Davett, Rhyme now offered a prayer – though not to any deities. It was directed to Amelia Sachs: Oh, Sachs, be careful. It's only a matter of time until Garrett comes up with an excuse for you to take the cuffs off him. Then to lead you to someplace deserted. Then he'll manage to get a hold of your gun… Don't let the passing hours lull you into trusting him, Sachs. Don't let your guard down. He's got the patience of a mantis.

28

Garrett knew the waterways like an expert river pilot and steered the boat up what seemed to be dead ends yet he always managed to find creeks, thin as spiderweb strands, that led them steadily west through the maze.

He pointed out river otter, muskrat and beaver to Sachs – sightings that might have excited amateur naturalists but left her cold. Her wildlife was the rats and pigeons and squirrels of the city – and only to the extent they were useful in helping her and Rhyme in their forensic work.

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