The Empty Chair

overall-clad farmers staring back with mocking smiles, Amelia Sachs’s mind was clogged with this inane jingle, the anthem for her foolishness.
    Which had cost Jesse Corn his life. And had ruined hers as well.
    She was only vaguely aware of the cabin where she now sat, a prisoner of the boy she’d risked her life tosave. And of the angry exchange now going on between Garrett and Mary Beth.
    No, all she could see was that tiny black dot appearing in Jesse’s forehead.
    All she could hear was the singsong jingle. Farmer John . . . Farmer John . . .
    Then suddenly Sachs understood something: Occasionally Lincoln Rhyme would, mentally, go away. He might converse but his words were superficial, he might smile but it was false, he might appear to listen but he wasn’t hearing a word. At moments like that, she knew, he was considering dying. He’d be thinking about finding someone from an assisted-suicide group like the Lethe Society to help him. Or even, as some severely disabled people had done, actually hiring a hit man. (Rhyme, who’d contributed to the jailing of a number of OC—organized crime—mobsters, obviously had some connections there. In fact, there were probably a few who’d gladly do the job for free.)
    But until this moment—with her own life now as shattered as Rhyme’s, no, more shattered—she’d always thought he was wrong in that thinking. Now, though, she understood how he felt.
    “No!” Garrett called, leaping up and cocking his ear toward the window.
    You have to listen all the time. Otherwise they can sneak up on you.
    Then Sachs heard it too. A car was slowly approaching.
    “They’ve found us!” the boy cried, gripping the pistol. He ran to the window, stared out. He seemed confused. “What’s that?” he whispered.
    A door slammed. Then there was a long pause.
    And she heard, “Sachs. It’s me.”
    A faint smile crossed her face. No one else in the universe could have found this place except Lincoln Rhyme.
    “Sachs, are you there?”
    “No!” Garrett whispered. “Don’t say anything!”
    Ignoring him, Sachs rose and walked to a broken window. There, in front of the cabin, resting unevenly on a dirt driveway, was the black Rollx van. Rhyme, in the Storm Arrow, had maneuvered close to the cabin—as far as he could get until a hillock of dirt near the porch stopped him. Thom stood beside him.
    “Hello, Rhyme,” she said.
    “Quiet!” the boy whispered harshly.
    “Can I talk to you?” the criminalist called.
    What was the point? she wondered. Still, she said, “Yes.”
    She walked to the door and said to Garrett, “Open it. I’m going outside.”
    “No, it’s a trick,” the boy said. “They’ll attack—”
    “Open the door, Garrett,” she said firmly, her eyes boring into his. He looked around the room. Then bent down and pulled the wedges out from the doorjamb. Sachs opened the door, the cuffs on her stiff wrists jingling like sleigh bells.

    “He did it, Rhyme,” she said, sitting down on the porch steps in front of him. “He killed Billy. . . . I got it wrong. Dead wrong.”
    The criminalist closed his eyes. What horror she must be feeling, he thought. He looked at her carefully, her pale face, her stony eyes. He asked, “Is Mary Beth okay?”
    “She’s fine. Scared but fine.”
    “She saw him do it?”
    Sachs nodded.
    “There wasn’t any man in overalls?” he asked.
    “No. Garrett made that up. So I’d break him out. He had it all planned from the beginning. Leading us off to the Outer Banks. He had a boat hidden, supplies. He’d planned what to do if the deputies got close. Even had asafe house—that trailer you found. The key, right? That I found in the wasp jar? That’s how you tracked us down.”
    “It was the key,” Rhyme confirmed.
    “I should’ve thought of that. We should’ve stayed someplace else.”
    He saw she was cuffed and noticed Garrett in the window, peering out angrily, holding a pistol. This was now a hostage situation; Garrett wasn’t going to come out willingly. It was time to call the FBI. Rhyme had a friend, Arthur Potter, now retired, but still the best hostage negotiator the bureau ever had. He lived in Washington, D.C., and could be here in a few hours.
    He turned back to Sachs. “And Jesse Corn?”
    She shook her head. “I didn’t know it was him, Rhyme. I thought it was one of Culbeau’s friends. A deputy jumped me and my weapon went off. But it was my fault—I acquired an unidentified target