Jeffery Deaver: The Empty Chair

But there wasn't a sliver of comfort where she was now.

She remembered the terrible sight at the hunter's blind – deputy Ed Schaeffer lying unconscious on the ground, arms and face swollen grotesquely from the wasp stings. Garrett had muttered, "He shouldn't've hurt 'em. Yellow jackets only attack when their nest's in danger. It was his fault." He'd walked inside slowly, the insects ignoring him, to collect some things. He'd taped her hands in front of her and then led her into the woods through which they'd been traveling now for several miles.

The boy moved in an awkward way, jerking her in one direction, then another. He talked to himself. He scratched at the red blotches on his face. Once, he stopped at a pool of water and stared at it. He waited until some bug or spider danced away over the surface then pressed his face into the water, soaking the troubled skin. He looked down at his feet then took off his remaining shoe and flung it away. They pushed on through the hot morning.

She glanced at the map sticking out of his pocket. "Where're we going?" she asked.

"Shut up. Okay?"

Ten minutes later he made her take her shoes off and they forded a shallow, polluted stream. When they'd crossed he eased her into a sitting position. Garrett sat in front of her and, as he watched her legs and cleavage, he slowly dried her feet with a wad of Kleenex he had pulled from his pocket. She felt the same repulsion at his touch that had flooded through her the first time she had to take a tissue sample from a corpse in the morgue at the hospital. He put her white shoes back on, laced them tight, holding her calf for longer than he needed to. Then he consulted the map and led her back into the woods.

Clicking his nails, scratching his cheek…

Little by little the marshes grew more tangled and the water darker and deeper. She supposed they were headed toward the Great Dismal Swamp though she couldn't imagine why. Just when it seemed they could go no farther because of the choked bogs, Garrett steered them into a large pine forest, which, to Lydia 's relief, was far cooler than the exposed swampland.

He found another path. He led her along it until they came to a steep hill. A series of rocks led to the top.

"I can't climb that," she said, struggling to sound defiant. "Not with my hands taped. I'll slip."

"Bullshit," he muttered angrily, as if she were an idiot. "You got those nurse shoes on. They'll hold you fine. Look at me. I'm, like, barefoot and I can climb it. Lookit my feet, look!" He held up the bottoms. They were callused and yellow. "Now get your ass up there. Only, when you get to the top don't go any farther. You hear me? Hey, you listening?" Another hiss; a fleck of spittle touched her cheek and seemed to burn her skin like battery acid.

God, I hate you , she thought.

Lydia started to climb. She paused halfway, looked back. Garrett was watching her closely, snapping his fingernails. Staring at her legs, encased in white stockings, his tongue teasing his front teeth. Then looking up higher, under her skirt.

Lydia continued to climb. Heard his hissing breath as he started up behind her.

At the top of the hill was a clearing and from it a single path led into a thick grove of pine trees. She started along the path, into the shade.

"Hey!" Garrett shouted. "Didn't you hear me? I told you not to move!"

"I'm not trying to get away!" she cried. "It's hot. I'm trying to get out of the sun."

He pointed to the ground, twenty feet away. There was a thick blanket of pine boughs in the middle of the path. "You could've fallen in," his voice rasped. "You could've ruined it."

Lydia looked closely. The pine needles covered a wide pit.

"What's under there?"

"It's a deadfall trap."

"What's inside?"

"You know – a surprise for anybody coming after us." He said this proudly, smirking, as if he'd been very clever to think of it.

"But anybody could fall in there!"

"Shit," he muttered. "This is north of the Paquo. Only ones who'd come this way'd be the people after us. And they deserve whatever happens to them. Let's get going." Hissing again. He took her by the wrist and led her around the pit.

"You don't have to hold me so hard!" she protested.

Garrett glanced at her then relaxed his grip somewhat – though his gentler touch proved to be a lot more troubling; he took to stroking her wrist with his middle finger, which reminded her of a fat blood tick looking for a spot to burrow into her skin.

The Rollx van passed a cemetery, Tanner's Corner Memorial Gardens. A funeral was in progress and Rhyme, Sachs and Thom glanced at the somber procession.

"Look at the casket," Sachs said.

It was small, a child's. The mourners, all adults, were few. Twenty or so people. Rhyme wondered why attendance was so sparse. His eyes rose above the ceremony and examined the graveyard's rolling hills and, beyond, the miles of hazy forest and marshland that vanished in the blue distance. He said, "That's not a bad cemetery. Wouldn't mind being buried in a place like that."

Sachs, who'd been gazing at the funeral with a troubled expression, shifted cool eyes toward him – apparently because with surgery on the agenda she didn't like any talk about mortality.

Then Thom eased the van around a sharp curve and, following Jim Bell's Paquenoke County Sheriff's Department cruiser, accelerated down a straightaway; the cemetery disappeared behind them.

As Bell had promised, Tanner's Corner was twenty miles from the medical center at Avery. The WELCOME TO sign assured visitors that the town was the home of 3,018 souls, which may have been true but only a tiny percentage of them were evident along Main Street on this hot August morning. The dusty place seemed to be a ghost town. One elderly couple sat on a bench, looking out over the empty street. Rhyme spotted two men who must've been the resident drunks – sickly-looking and skinny. One sat on the curb, his scabby head in his hands, probably working off a hangover. The other sat against a tree, staring at the glossy van with sunken eyes that even from the distance seemed jaundiced. A scrawny woman lazily washed the drugstore window. Rhyme saw no one else.

"Peaceful," Thom observed.

"That's one way to put it," said Sachs, who obviously shared Rhyme's sense of unease at the emptiness.

Main Street was a tired stretch of old buildings and two small strip malls. Rhyme noticed one supermarket, two drugstores, two bars, one diner, a women's clothing boutique, an insurance company and a combination video shop/candy store/nail salon. The A-OK Car Dealership was sandwiched between a bank and a marine supplies operation. Everybody sold bait. One billboard was for McDonald's, seven miles away along Route 17. Another showed a sun-bleached painting of the Monitor and Merrimack Civil War ships. "Visit the Ironclad Museum." You had to drive twenty-two miles to see that attraction.

As Rhyme took in all these details of small-town life he realized with dismay how out of his depth as a criminalist he was here. He could successfully analyze evidence in New York because he'd lived there for so many years – had pulled the city apart, walked its streets, studied its history and flora and fauna. But here, in Tanner's Corner and environs, he knew nothing of the soil, the air, the water, nothing of the habits of the residents, the cars they liked, the houses they lived in, the industries that employed them, the lusts that drove them.

Rhyme recalled working for a senior detective at the NYPD when he was a new recruit. The man had lectured his underlings, "Somebody tell me: what's the expression 'Fish out of water' mean?"

Young officer Rhyme had said, "It means: out of one's element. Confused."