Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

Her body was in agony, an arthritic's response to sleeping on a thin pad over a riveted, metal floor.

But she felt oddly buoyant. Low sunlight streamed through the windows of the trailer and she took this as a good omen. Today they were going to find Mary Beth McConnell and return to Tanner's Corner with her. She'd confirm Garrett's story and Jim Bell and Lucy Kerr could start the search for the real killer – the man in the tan overalls.

She watched Garrett awaken in the bedroom and roll upright on the saggy mattress. With his lengthy fingers he combed his mussed hair into place. He looks just like any other teenager in the morning , she thought. Gangly and cute and sleepy. About to get dressed, about to take the bus to school and see his friends, to learn things in class, to flirt with girls, toss footballs. Watching him look around groggily for his shirt, she noticed his skinny frame and worried about getting him some good food – cereal, milk, fruit – and washing his clothes, making sure he took a shower. This, she thought, is what it would be like to have children of your own. Not to borrow youngsters from friends for a few hours – like her goddaughter, Amy's girl. But to be there every day when they wake up, with their messy rooms and difficult adolescent attitudes, to fix them meals, to buy them clothes, to argue with them, to take care of them. To be the hub of their lives.

"Morning." She smiled.

He smiled back. "We gotta go," he said. "Gotta get to Mary Beth. Been away from her for too long. She's got to be totally scared and thirsty."

Sachs climbed unsteadily to her feet.

He glanced at his chest, at the poison oak splotches, and seemed embarrassed. He pulled his shirt on quickly. "I'm going outside. Have to, you know, take care of business. And I'm gonna leave a couple of empty hornets' nests around. Might slow 'em up – if they come this way." Garrett stepped outside but returned just a moment later. He left a cup of water on the table beside her. Said shyly: "This's for you." He stepped out again.

She drank it down. Longing for a toothbrush and time for a shower. Maybe when they got to -

"It's him! " a man's voice called in a whisper.

Sachs froze, looked out the window. She saw nothing.

But from a tall stand of bushes near the trailer the forced whisper continued, "I've got him in my sights. I've got a clear shot."

The voice was familiar and she decided it sounded like Culbeau's friend, Sean O'Sarian. The skinny one. The redneck trio had found them – they were going to kill the boy or torture him into telling where Mary Beth was so they could get the reward.

Garrett hadn't heard the voice. Sachs could see him – he was about thirty feet away, setting an empty hornets' nest on the trail. She heard footsteps in the bushes pushing forward toward the clearing where the boy was.

She grabbed the Smith & Wesson and stepped quietly outside. She crouched, motioning desperately to Garrett. He didn't see her.

The footsteps in the bushes grew closer.

"Garrett," she whispered.

He turned, saw Sachs motioning for him to join her. He frowned, seeing the urgency in her eyes. Then he glanced to his left, into the bushes, and she saw terror blossom in his face. He held his hands out, a defensive gesture. He cried, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me!"

Sachs dropped into a crouch, curled her finger around the trigger, cocked the pistol and aimed toward the bushes.

It happened so quickly…

Garrett falling to his belly in fear, crying out, "Don't, don't!"

Amelia lifting her pistol, two-handed combat stance, pressure on the trigger, waiting for a target to present…

The man bursting from the bushes into the clearing, gun raised toward Garrett…

Just as Deputy Ned Spoto turned the corner of the trailer right beside Sachs, blinked in surprise and leapt toward her, arms outstretched. Startled, Sachs stumbled away from him. Her weapon fired, bucking hard in her hand.

And thirty feet away – beyond the faint cloud of smoke from the muzzle – she saw the bullet from her gun strike the forehead of the man who'd been in the bushes – not Sean O'Sarian at all but Jesse Corn. A black dot appeared above the young deputy's eye and, as his head jerked back, a horrible pink cloud puffed out behind him. Without a sound he dropped straight to the ground.

Sachs gasped, staring at the body, which twitched once and then lay completely still. She was breathless. She dropped to her knees, the gun tumbling from her hand.

"Oh, Jesus," Ned muttered, also staring in shock at the body. Before the deputy could recover and draw his gun, Garrett rushed him. The boy snagged Sachs' pistol from the ground and pointed it at Ned's head, then took the deputy's weapon and flung it into the bushes.

"Lie down!" Garrett raged at him. "On your face!"

"You killed him, you killed him," Ned muttered.

"Now!"

Ned did as he was told, tears running down his tanned cheeks.

"Jesse!" Lucy Kerr's voice called from nearby. "Where are you? Who's shooting?"

"No, no, no…" Sachs moaned. Watching an astonishing amount of blood pour from the dead deputy's shattered skull.

Garrett Hanlon glanced at Jesse's body. Then past it – toward the sound of approaching feet. He put his arm around Sachs. "We have to go."

When she didn't answer, when she simply stared, completely numb, at the scene in front of her – the end of the deputy's life, and the end of her own – Garrett helped her to her feet then took her hand and pulled her after him. They vanished into the woods.

What was happening now? a frantic Lincoln Rhyme wondered.

An hour ago, at five-thirty A.M., he'd finally gotten a call from a very putout drone in the Real Estate Division of the North Carolina Department of Taxation. The man had been awakened at one-thirty and given the assignment of tracking down delinquent taxes on any land on which a claimed residence was a McPherson trailer. Rhyme had first checked to see if Garrett's parents had owned one and – when he learned they hadn't – reasoned that if the boy was using the place as a hideout it was abandoned. And if it was abandoned the owner had defaulted on the taxes.

The assistant director told him there'd been two such properties in the state. In one case, near the Blue Ridge, to the west, the land and trailer had been sold at a tax lien foreclosure to a couple who currently lived there.

The other, on an acre in Paquenoke County, wasn't worth the time or money to foreclose on. He'd given Rhyme the address, an RFD route about a half-mile from the Paquenoke River. Location C-6 on the map.

Rhyme had called Lucy and the others and sent them there. They were going to approach at first light and, if Garrett and Amelia were inside, surround them and talk them into surrendering.

The last Rhyme had heard they'd spotted the trailer and were moving in slowly.

Unhappy that his boss had gotten virtually no sleep, Thom sent Ben out of the room and went through the morning ritual carefully. The four Bs : bladder, bowel, brushing teeth and blood pressure.

"It's high, Lincoln," Thom muttered, putting away the sphygmomanometer. Excessive blood pressure in a quad could lead to an attack of dysreflexia, which in turn could result in a stroke. But Rhyme didn't pay any attention. He was riding on pure energy. He wanted desperately to find Amelia. He wanted -

Rhyme looked up. Jim Bell, an alarmed expression on his face, walked through the doorway. Ben Kerr, equally upset, entered behind him.

"What happened?" Rhyme asked. "Is she all right? Is Amelia -"

"She killed Jesse," Bell said in a whisper. "Shot him in the head."