The Empty Chair

to Garrett and slapped him hard on the face. He blinked in surprise and staggered backward. “You prick!” she screamed. “They could’ve killed me.”
    The boy was flustered. “I’m sorry!” His voice cracked. “I didn’t know about them. I thought there was nobody around here. I didn’t mean to leave you this long. I got arrested.”
    He shoved splinters under the door to wedge it shut.
    “Arrested?” Mary Beth asked. “Then what’re you doing here?”
    Finally the redhead spoke. In a mumbling voice she said, “I got him out of jail. So we could find you and bring you back. And you could back up his story about the man in the overalls.”
    “What man?” Mary Beth asked, confused.
    “At Blackwater Landing. The man in the tan overalls, the one who killed Billy Stail.”
    “But . . .” She shook her head. “ Garrett killed Billy. He hit him with a shovel. I saw him. It happened right in front of me. Then he kidnapped me.”
    Mary Beth had never seen such an expression on another human being. Complete shock and dismay. The redhead started to turn toward Garrett but then something caught her eye: the rows of Farmer John canned fruits and vegetables. She walked slowly toward the table, as if she were sleepwalking, and picked one up. Stared at the picture on the label—a cheerful blond farmer wearing tan overalls and a white shirt.
    “You made it up?” she whispered to Garrett, holding the can up. “There was no man. You lied to me.”
    Garrett stepped forward, fast as a grasshopper, and pulled a pair of handcuffs off the redhead’s belt. He ratcheted them onto her wrists.
    “I’m sorry, Amelia,” he said. “But if I’d told you the truth you never would’ve got me out. It was the only way. I had to get back here. I had to get back to Mary Beth.”

. . . chapter thirty-six
    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
    Obsessively Lincoln Rhyme’s eyes scanned the evidence chart. Top to bottom, bottom to top.
    Then again.
    Why the hell was the damn chromatograph taking so long? he wondered.
    Jim Bell and Mason Germain sat nearby, both silent. Lucy had called in a few minutes before to say that they’d lost the trail and were waiting north of the trailer—at Location C-5.
    The chromatograph rumbled and everyone in the room remained still, waiting for the results.
    Silence for long minutes, finally broken by Ben Kerr’s voice. He spoke to Rhyme in a soft voice. “They used to call me it, you know. What you’re probably thinking.”
    Rhyme looked over at him.
    “ ‘Big Ben.’ Like the clock in England. You were probably wondering.”
    “I wasn’t. In school, you mean?”
    A nod. “High school. I hit six-three and two-fifty when I was sixteen. I got made fun of a lot. ‘Big Ben.’ Other names too. So I never felt real comfortable with the way I looked. Think maybe that was why I acted kinda funny seeing you at first.”
    “Kids gave you a tough time, did they?” Rhyme asked, both acknowledging and deflecting the apology.
    “They sure did. Until I took up junior varsity wrestling and pinned Darryl Tennison in three-point-two seconds and it took him a lot longer than that to get his wind back.”
    “I skipped P.E. class a lot,” Rhyme told him. “I forged excuses from my doctor, my parents—pretty good ones, I will say—and snuck into the science lab.”
    “You did that?”
    “Twice a week at least.”
    “And you did experiments?”
    “Read a lot, played around with the equipment. . . . A few times, I played around with Sonja Metzger.”
    Thom and Ben laughed.
    But Sonja, his first girlfriend, put him in mind of Amelia Sachs and he didn’t like where those thoughts were headed.
    “Okay,” Ben said. “Here we go.” The computer screenhad burst to life with the results of the control sample Rhyme had asked Jim Bell to procure. The big man nodded. “Here’s what we’ve got: Solution of fifty-five percent alcohol. Water, lot of minerals.”
    “Well water,” Rhyme said.
    “Most likely.” The zoologist continued, “Then there’re traces of formaldehyde, phenol, fructose, dextrose, cellulose.”
    “That’s good enough for me,” Rhyme announced. Thinking: The fish may still be out of water but it’s just grown lungs. He announced to Bell and Mason, “I made a mistake. A big one. I saw the yeast and I assumed