The Empty Chair

to Rhyme, wiping the criminalist’s face with a paper towel.
    The sheriff stared at Lucy and the others. “No, you don’t understand! There was an accident! That poison stuff spilled. You’ve got to—”
    Rhyme spit on the floor and wheezed from the astringent liquid and the fumes. He said to Ben, “Could you wipe higher on my cheek? I’m afraid it’ll get into my eyes. Thank you.”
    “Sure, Lincoln.”
    Bell said, “I was going for help! That stuff spilled! I—”
    The man in the suit pulled handcuffs off his belt and ratcheted the loops around the sheriff’s wrists. He said, “James Bell, I’m Detective Hugo Branch with the North Carolina State Police. You’re under arrest here.” Branch looked at Rhyme sourly. “I told you he’d pour it on your shirt. We should’ve put the unit someplace else.”
    “But you got enough on tape?”
    “Oh, plenty. That’s not the point. The point is those transmitters cost money. ”
    “Bill me,” Rhyme said acerbically as Branch opened Rhyme’s shirt and untaped the microphone and transmitter.
    “It was a setup,” Bell whispered.
    You got that right.
    “But the poison . . .”
    “Oh, it’s not toxaphene,” Rhyme said. “Just a little moonshine. From that jar we tested. By the way, Ben, if there’s any left, I could use a sip just now. And, Christ, could somebody get that AC going?”

    Tense, cut to the left and run like hell. I’ll get hit but if I’m lucky it won’t stop me.
    When you move they can’t getcha . . .
    Amelia Sachs took three steps into the grass.
    Ready . . .
    Set . . .
    Then a man’s voice from behind them, inside the lockup area, called, “Hold it, Steve! Put the weapon on the ground. Now! I’m not telling you again!”
    Sachs spun around and saw Mason Germain, his gun pointed at the shocked young man’s crew-cut head, his round ears crimson. Farr crouched and set the gun on the floor. Mason hurried forward and cuffed him.
    Footsteps sounded from outside, leaves rustled. Dizzy from the heat and the adrenaline, Sachs turned back to the field and saw a lean black man climbing out of the bushes, holstering a big Browning automatic pistol.
    “Fred!” she cried.
    FBI agent Fred Dellray, sweating furiously in his black suit, walked up to her, brushing petulantly at his sleeve. “Hey, A-melia. My, it is too too too hot down here. I don’t like this town one tiny bit. And look at this suit. It’s all, I don’t know, dusty or something. What is this shit, pollen? We don’t have this stuff in Man-hattan. Look at this sleeve!”
    “What’re you doing here?” she asked, dumbfounded.
    “Whatcha think? Lincoln wasn’t sure who he could trust and who he couldn’t so he had me fly down and hooked me up with Deputy Germain here to keep an eye on you. Figured he needed some help, seeing as how he couldn’t trust Jim Bell or his kin.”
    “Bell?” she whispered.
    “Lincoln thinks he put this whole thing together. He’s finding out for sure right now. But looks like he was right, that being his brother-in-law.” Dellray nodded at Steve Farr.
    “He almost got me,” Sachs said.
    The lean agent chuckled. “You weren’t in a single, solitary lick of danger, no way. I had a bead on that fellow right ’tween his big ears from the second the back dooropened. He’d so much as squinted out a target at you he’da been way, way gone.”
    Dellray noticed Mason studying him suspiciously. The agent laughed, said to Sachs, “Our friend in the con-stabulary here don’t like my kind much. He told me so.”
    “Wait,” Mason protested. “I only meant—”
    “You meant federal agents, I’m betting,” Dellray said.
    The deputy shook his head, said gruffly, “I meant Northerners.”
    “True, he doesn’t,” Sachs confirmed.
    Sachs and Dellray laughed. But Mason remained solemn. But it wasn’t cultural differences that made him somber. He said to Sachs, “Sorry, but I’ll have to take you back to the cell. You’re still under arrest.”
    Her smile faded, and Sachs looked once more at the sun dancing over the scruffy yellow grass. She inhaled the scorching air of the out-of-doors once, then again. Finally she turned and walked back into the dim lockup.

. . . chapter forty-three
    “ You killed Billy, didn’t you?” Rhyme asked Jim Bell.
    But the sheriff said nothing.
    The criminalist continued, “The crime scene was unprotected for an hour and a half. And, sure, Mason was the first officer. But you got there