Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

Oh, yeah, this town's got itself a few hornets…

"Stop!" Rhyme cried. But his voice came out as a mumble.

The anesthesiologist said, "Been fifteen seconds. Maybe you're going to break that record after all. Are you counting? I don't hear you counting."

"I'll be right here," Lydia said, stroking Rhyme's forehead. "A lot can go wrong during surgery, you know. Kinks in the oxygen tube, administering the wrong drugs. Who knows? Might kill you, might put you in a coma. But you sure aren't going to be doing any testifying."

"Wait," Rhyme gasped, "wait!"

"Ha," the anesthesiologist said, laughing, her eyes still on the monitor. "Twenty seconds. I think you're going to win, Mr. Rhyme."

"No, I don't think you are," Lydia whispered and slowly stood as Rhyme saw the operating room go gray and then black.

This really was one of the prettiest places in the world, Amelia Sachs thought.

For a cemetery.

Tanner's Corner Memorial Gardens, on a crest of a rolling hill, overlooked the Paquenoke River, some miles away. It was even nicer here, in the graveyard itself, than viewed from the road where she'd first seen it on the drive from Avery.

Squinting against the sun, she noticed the glistening strip of Blackwater Canal joining the river. From here, even the dark, tainted water, which had brought so much sorrow to so many, looked benign and picturesque.

She was in a small cluster of people standing over an open grave. A crematory urn was being lowered by one of the men from the mortuary. Amelia Sachs was next to Lucy Kerr. Garrett Hanlon stood by them. On the other side of the grave were Mason Germain and Thom, with a cane, dressed in his immaculate slacks and shirt. He wore a bold tie with a wild red pattern, which seemed appropriate despite this somber moment.

Black-suited Fred Dellray was here too, standing by himself, off to the side, thoughtful – as if recalling a passage in one of the philosophy books he enjoyed reading. He would have resembled a Nation of Islam reverend if he'd been wearing a white shirt instead of the lime-green one with yellow polka dots on it.

There was no minister to officiate, even though this was Bible-waving country and there'd probably be a dozen clerics on call for funerals. The mortuary director now glanced at the people assembled and asked if anybody wanted to say something to the assembly. And as everyone looked around, wondering if there'd be any volunteers, Garrett dug into his baggy slacks and produced his battered book, The Miniature World .

In a halting voice the boy read, "'There are those who suggest that a divine force doesn't exist, but one's cynicism is truly put to the test when we look at the world of insects, which have been graced with so many amazing characteristics: wings so thin they seem hardly to be made of any living material, bodies without a single milligram of excess weight, wind-speed detectors accurate to a fraction of a mile per hour, a stride so efficient that mechanical engineers model robots after it, and, most important, insects' astonishing ability to survive in the face of overwhelming opposition by man, predators and the elements. In moments of despair, we can look to the ingenuity and persistence of these miraculous creatures and find solace and a restoration of lost faith.'"

Garrett looked up, closed the book. Clicked his fingernails nervously. He looked at Sachs and asked, "Do you, like, want to say anything?"

But she merely shook her head.

No one else spoke and after a few minutes everyone around the grave turned away and meandered back up the hill along a winding path. Before they crested the ridge that led to a small picnic area the cemetery crews had already begun filling in the grave with a backhoe. Sachs was breathing hard as they walked to the crest of the tree-covered hill near the parking lot.

She recalled Lincoln Rhyme's voice: That's not a bad cemetery. Wouldn't mind being buried in a place like that…

She paused to wipe the sweat from her face and catch her breath; the North Carolina heat was still relentless. Garrett, though, didn't seem to notice the temperature. He ran past her and began pulling grocery bags from the back of Lucy's Bronco.

This wasn't exactly the time or place for a picnic but, Sachs supposed, chicken salad and watermelon were as good a way as any to remember the dead.

Scotch too, of course. Sachs dug through several shopping bags and finally found the bottle of Macallan, eighteen years old. She pulled the cork stopper out with a faint pop.

"Ah, my favorite sound," Lincoln Rhyme said.

He was wheeling up beside her, driving carefully along the uneven grass. The hill down to the grave was too steep for the Storm Arrow and he'd had to wait up here in the lot. He'd watched from the hilltop as they buried the ashes of the bones that Mary Beth had found at Blackwater Landing – the remains of Garrett's family.

Sachs poured scotch into Rhyme's glass, equipped with a long straw, and some into hers. Everyone else was drinking beer.

He said, "Moonshine is truly vile, Sachs. Avoid it at all costs. This is much better."

Sachs looked around. "Where's the woman from the hospital? The caregiver?"

"Mrs. Ruiz?" Rhyme muttered. "Hopeless. She quit. Left me in the lurch."

"Quit?" Thom said. "You drove her nuts. You might as well have fired her."

"I was a saint," the criminalist snapped.

"How's your temperature?" Thom asked him.

"It's fine," he grumbled. "How's yours? "

"Probably a little high but I don't have a blood pressure problem."

"No, you've a bullet hole in you."

The aide persisted, "You should -"

"I said I'm fine."

"- move into the shade a little farther."

Rhyme groused and complained about the unsteady ground but he finally maneuvered himself into the shade a little farther.

Garrett was carefully setting out food and drink and napkins on a bench under the tree.

"How're you doing?" Sachs asked Rhyme in a whisper. "And before you grumble at me too – I'm not talking about the heat."

He shrugged – this, a silent grumble by which he meant: I'm fine.

But he wasn't fine. A phrenic-nerve stimulator pumped current into his body to help his lungs inhale and exhale. He hated the device – had weaned himself off it some years ago – but there was no question that he needed it now. Two days ago, on the operating table, Lydia Johansson had come very close to stopping his breathing forever.

In the waiting room at the hospital, after Lydia had said good-bye to Sachs and Lucy, Sachs had noticed that the nurse vanished through the doorway marked NEUROSURGERY. Sachs had asked, "Didn't you say that she works in oncology?"

"She does."

"Then what's she doing going in there?"

"Maybe saying hello to Lincoln," Lucy suggested.

But Sachs didn't think that nurses paid social calls to patients about to be operated on.

Then she thought: Lydia would know about new cancer diagnoses among residents from Tanner's Corner. She then recalled that somebody had given information to Bell about cancer patients – the three people in Blackwater Landing that Culbeau and his friends had killed. Who better than a nurse on the onco ward? This was far-fetched but Sachs mentioned it to Lucy, who pulled out her cell phone and made an emergency call to the phone company, whose security department did a down-and-dirty pen-register search of Jim Bell's phone calls. There were hundreds to and from Lydia.

"She's going to kill him!" Sachs had cried. And the two women, one with a weapon drawn, had burst into the operating room – a scene right out of a melodramatic episode of ER – just as Dr. Weaver was about to make the opening incision.