The Empty Chair

all the counties and towns that won’t let any toxic shipments go through ’em. And the ICC logs on his trucks’d show what the cargo is. Not to mention the public relations problem if word got out what he was doing.”
    “Exactly,” Rhyme said, nodding. “So he reopened the canal to send the toxaphene through the Intracoastal Waterway to Norfolk, where it’s loaded onto foreign ships. Only there was a problem—when the canal closed in the eighteen hundreds the property around it was sold privately. People whose houses butted up against the canal had the right to control who used it.”
    Bell said, “So Davett paid them to lease their portion of the canal.” He nodded with sudden understanding. “And he must’ve paid a lot of money—look at how big those houses are in Blackwater Landing. And think about those nice trucks and Mercedeses and Lexuses people’re driving around here. But what’s this about Mason and Garrett’s family?”
    “Garrett’s father’s land was on the canal. But he wouldn’t sell his usage rights. So Davett or somebody in his company hired Mason to convince Garrett’s father to sell and, when he wouldn’t, Mason picked up some localtrash to help him kill the family—Culbeau, Tomel and O’Sarian. Then I’d guess that Davett bribed the executor of the will to sell the property to him.”
    “But Garrett’s folks died in an accident. A car accident. I saw the report myself.”
    “Was Mason the officer who handled the report?”
    “I don’t remember but he could’ve been,” Bell admitted. He looked at Rhyme with an admiring smile. “How on earth d’you figure this out?”
    “Oh, it was easy—because there’s no frost in July. Not in North Carolina anyway.”
    “Frost?”
    “I talked to Amelia. Garrett told her that the night his family was killed the car was frosty and his parents and sister were shivering. But the accident happened in July. I remembered seeing the article in the file—the picture of Garrett and his family. He was in a T-shirt and the picture was of them at a Fourth of July party. The story said the photo was taken a week before his parents were killed.”
    “Then what was the boy talking about? Frost, shivering?”
    “Mason and Culbeau used some of Davett’s toxaphene to kill the family. I talked to my doctor over at the medical center. She said that in extreme cases of neurotoxic poisoning the body spasms. That’s the shivering Garrett saw. The frost was probably fumes or residue of the chemical in the car.”
    “If he saw it why didn’t he tell anybody?”
    “I described the boy to the doctor. And she said it sounds like he got poisoned too that night. Just enough to give him MCS—multiple chemical sensitivity. Memory loss, brain damage, severe reaction to other chemicals in the air and water. Remember the welts on his skin?”
    “Sure.”
    “Garrett thinks it’s poison oak but it isn’t. The doctor told me that skin eruptions are a classic symptom of MCS. Breaking out when you’re exposed to traceamounts of substances that wouldn’t affect anybody else. Even soap or perfume’ll make your skin erupt.”
    “It’s making sense,” Bell said. Then, frowning, he added, “But if you don’t have any hard evidence then all we’ve got is speculation.”
    “Oh, I should mention”—Rhyme couldn’t resist a faint smile; modesty was never a quality that he wore well—“I’ve got some hard evidence. I found the bodies of Garrett’s family.”

. . . chapter forty-one
    At the Albemarle Manor Hotel, a block away from the Paquenoke County lockup, Mason Germain didn’t wait for the elevator but climbed the stairs, covered with threadbare tan carpet.
    He found Room 201 and knocked.
    “S’open,” came the voice.
    Mason pushed the door open slowly, revealing a pink room bathed in orange, afternoon sunlight. It was painfully hot inside. He couldn’t imagine that the occupant of the room liked it this way so he assumed that the man sitting at the table was either too lazy to turn on the air conditioner or too stupid to figure out how it worked. Which made Mason all the more suspicious of him.
    The African American, lean and with particularly dark skin, wore a wrinkled black suit, which looked completely out of place in Tanner’s Corner. Draw attention to yourself, why don’t you? Mason thought contemptuously. Malcolm Goddamn X.
    “You’d be Germain?” the man asked.
    “Yeah.”
    The man’s feet were on the chair across