The Empty Chair

could do was offer, “It’s a mix-up. It has to be. Amelia wouldn’t do that.”
    “She wouldn’t, ” Rhyme muttered. This time offering the denial to Ben. “There’s no way. Not even to scare them off.” He told himself that she’d never shoot at a fellow officer, even just to scare them. Yet he was also thinking about what desperate people did. The crazy risks they took. (Oh, Sachs, why do you have to be so impulsive and stubborn? Why do you have to be so much like me?)
    Bell was in the office across the hall. Rhyme could hear him as he spoke endearments over the phone. He supposedthat the sheriff’s wife and family weren’t used to late night absences; law enforcement in a town like Tanner’s Corner probably didn’t require as many hours as the Garrett Hanlon case had taken.
    Ben Kerr sat beside one of the microscopes, his huge arms crossed over his chest. He was gazing at the map. Unlike the sheriff he hadn’t made any calls home and Rhyme wondered if he had a wife or girlfriend or if the shy man’s life was wholly consumed with science and the mysteries of the ocean.
    The sheriff hung up. He walked back into the lab. “You have any more ideas, Lincoln?”
    Rhyme nodded at the evidence chart.
    F OUND AT THE S ECONDARY C RIME S CENE —M ILL
    Brown Paint on Pants
    Sundew Plant
    Clay
    Peat Moss
    Fruit Juice
    Paper Fibers
    Stinkball Bait
    Sugar
    Camphene
    Alcohol
    Kerosene
    Yeast
    He reiterated what they knew about the house where Mary Beth was being kept. “There’s a Carolina bay on the way to or near the place. Half the marked passages in his insect books are about camouflage and the brown paint on his pants’s the color of tree bark so the place is probably in or next to a forest. The camphene lamps are from the 1800s so the place is old, probably Victorian era.But the rest of the trace isn’t much help. The yeast would be from the mill. The paper fibers could be from anywhere. The fruit juice and sugar? From food or drinks Garrett had with him. I just can’t—”
    The phone rang.
    Rhyme’s left ring finger twitched on the ECU and he answered the call.
    “Hello?” he said into the speakerphone.
    “Lincoln.”
    He recognized the soft, exhausted voice of Mel Cooper.
    “What do you have, Mel? I need some good news.”
    “I hope it’s good. That key you found? We’ve been looking through sourcebooks and databases all night. Finally tracked it down.”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s to a trailer made by the McPherson Deluxe Mobile Home Company. The trailers were manufactured from 1946 through the early ’70s. Company’s out of business but according to the guide, the serial number on the key you’ve got fits a trailer that was made in ’69.”
    “Any description?”
    “No pictures in the guide.”
    “Hell. Tell me, does one live in these things in a trailer park? Or drive ’em around like a Winnebago?”
    “Live in them, I’d guess. They measure eight by twenty. Not the sort of thing you’d cruise around in. Anyway, they’re not motorized. You have to tow it.”
    “Thanks, Mel. Get some sleep.”
    Rhyme shut the phone off. “What do you think, Jim? Any trailer parks around here?”
    The sheriff seemed doubtful. “There’re a couple along Route 17 and 158. But they aren’t even close to where Garrett and Amelia were headed. And they’re crowded. Hard to hide out in a place like that. Should I send somebody to check them out?”
    “How far?”
    “Seventy, eighty miles.”
    “No. Garrett probably found a trailer abandoned someplace in the woods and took it over.” Rhyme glanced at the map. Thinking: And it’s parked somewhere in a hundred square miles of wilderness.
    Wondering too: Had the boy gotten out of the handcuffs? Did he have Sachs’s gun? Was she falling asleep just now, her guard down, Garrett waiting for the moment when she slipped into unconsciousness. He’d rise, crawl closer to her with a rock or a hornets’ nest. . . .
    The anxiety racing through him, he stretched his head back, heard a bone pop. He froze, worried about the excruciating contractures that occasionally racked the muscles that were still connected to extant nerves. It seemed completely unfair that the same trauma that made most of your body numb also subjected the sensate part to agonizing tremors.
    There was no pain this time but Thom noticed the alarm on his boss’s face.
    The aide said, “Lincoln, that’s it . . . I’m taking your blood pressure and you’re going to bed.