The Empty Chair

juice on the shirt. Taste it again. Is it a little sour? Tart?”
    Ben did. “Maybe a little. Hard to tell.”
    Rhyme’s eyes strayed to the map, imagining that Lucy and the others were closing in on Sachs somewhere in that green wilderness, eager to shoot. Or that Garrett had Sachs’s gun and might be turning it on her.
    Or that she was holding her gun to her own scalp, squeezing the trigger.
    “Jim,” he said, “I need you to get something for me. For a control sample.”
    “Okay. Where?” He fished his keys from his pocket.
    “Oh, you won’t need your car.”

    Many images revolved in Lucy Kerr’s thoughts: Jesse Corn, on his first day in the Sheriff’s Department, standard-issueshoes polished perfectly but his socks mismatched; he’d gotten dressed before light to make sure he wasn’t late.
    Jesse Corn, hunkered down behind a cruiser, shoulder touching hers, while Barton Snell—his mind on fire from PCP—took potshots at the deputies. It was Jesse’s easygoing banter that got the big man to put down his Winchester.
    Jesse Corn, proudly driving his new cherry-red Ford pickup over to the County Building on his day off and giving some kids a ride in the bed, up and down the parking lot. They shouted, “Wheeee,” in unison as he rolled over the speed bumps.
    These thoughts—and a dozen others—stayed with her now as she, Ned and Trey pushed through a large oak forest. Jim Bell had told them to wait at the trailer and he’d send Steve Farr, Frank and Mason to take over the pursuit. He wanted her and the other two deputies to return to the office. But they hadn’t even bothered to vote on the matter. As reverently as possible they’d moved Jesse’s body into the trailer, covered it with a sheet. Then she’d told Jim that they were going after the fugitives and that nothing on God’s earth was going to stop them.
    Garrett and Amelia were fleeing fast and were making no effort to cover their tracks. They moved along a path that bordered marshland. The ground was soft and their footprints were clearly visible. Lucy remembered something that Amelia had told Lincoln Rhyme about the crime scene at Blackwater Landing as the redhead had gazed at the footprints there: Billy Stail’s weight had been on the toes, which meant that he’d been running toward Garrett to rescue Mary Beth. Lucy now noticed this same thing about the prints of the two people they pursued. They were sprinting.
    And so Lucy said to her two fellow deputies, “Let’s jog.” And despite the heat and their exhaustion they trotted forward together.
    They continued this way for a mile until the ground grew drier and they could no longer see the footprints. Then the trail ended in a large grassy clearing and they had no idea where their prey had gone.
    “Damn,” Lucy muttered, gasping for breath and furious that they’d lost the trail. “Goddamn!”
    They ringed the clearing, studying every foot of the ground, but could find no path or any other clue as to which way Garrett and Amelia Sachs had gone.
    “What do we do?” Ned asked.
    “Call in and wait,” she muttered. She leaned against a tree, caught the bottled water that Trey tossed to her and drank it down.
    Recalling:
    Jesse Corn, shyly showing off a glistening silver pistol he was planning on using in his NRA competition matches. Jesse Corn, accompanying his parents to First Baptist Church on Locust Street.
    The images kept looping through her mind. They were painful for her to picture and stoked her anger. But Lucy made no effort to force them away; when she found Amelia Sachs she wanted her fury to be unrelenting.

    With a squeak, the door to the cabin eased open a few inches.
    “Mary Beth,” Tom sang. “You come on out now, come out and play.”
    He and the Missionary whispered to each other. Then Tom spoke again. “Come on, come on, honey. Make it easy on yourself. We won’t hurt you. We were just pulling your leg yesterday.”
    She stood upright, against the wall, behind the front door. Didn’t say a word. Gripped the coup stick in both hands.
    The door eased open farther, the hinges giving anothersqueal. A shadow fell onto the floor. Tom stepped inside, cautious.
    “Where is she?” the Missionary whispered from the porch.
    “There’s a cellar,” Tom said. “She’s down there, I’ll bet.”
    “Well, get her and let’s go. I don’t like it here.”
    Tom took another step inside. He was holding a long skinning knife.
    Mary Beth knew about the