The Empty Chair

understand. You are going to prison.”
    He pulled away from her, whispered viciously, “No, you don’t understand, Officer. You’re way out of your depth here. I’m very, very good at what I do. I do not make mistakes.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go now.”
    Davett walked back to the SUV, patting his thinning hair. The sweat had darkened it and stuck the strands into place.
    He climbed in and slammed the door.
    Lucy walked up to the driver’s side as he started the engine. “Wait,” she said.
    Davett glanced at her. But the deputy ignored him. She was looking at his passengers. “I’d like you to see what Henry did.” Her strong hands ripped her own shirt open. The women in the car gaped at the pink scars where her breasts had been.
    “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Davett muttered, looking away.
    “Dad . . .” the girl whispered in shock. Her mother stared, speechless.
    Lucy said, “You said that you don’t make mistakes, Davett? . . . Wrong. You made this one.”
    The man put the car in gear, clicked on his turn signal, checked his blind spot and eased slowly onto the highway.
    Lucy stood for a long moment, watching the Lexus disappear. She fished in her pocket and pinned her shirt closed with several safety pins. She leaned against her car for a long moment, fighting tears, then she happened to look down and notice a small, ruddy flower by the roadside. She squinted. It was a pink moccasin flower, a type of orchid. Its blossoms resemble tiny slip-on shoes. The plant was rare in Paquenoke County and she’d never seen one as lovely as this. In five minutes, using her windshield ice scraper, she’d uprooted the plant and had it packed safely in a tall 7-Eleven cup, the root beer sacrificed for the beauty of Lucy Kerr’s garden.

. . . chapter forty-four
    A plaque on the courthouse wall explained that the name of the state came from the Latin Carolus, for Charles. It was King Charles I who granted a land patent to settle the colony.
    Carolina . . .
    Amelia Sachs had assumed the state was named for Caroline, some queen or princess. Brooklyn born and raised, she had little interest in, or knowledge of, royalty.
    She now sat, handcuffed still, between two guards on a bench in the courthouse. The redbrick building was an old place, filled with dark mahogany and marble floors. Stern men in black suits, judges or governors, she assumed, looked down on her from oil paintings as if they knew she was guilty. There didn’t seem to be air-conditioning but breezes and the darkness cooled the place thanks to efficient eighteenth-century engineering.
    Fred Dellray ambled up to her. “Hey there—you want some coffee or something?”
    The left-field guard got as far as “No speaking to the—” before the Justice Department ID card crimped off the recitation.
    “No, Fred. Where’s Lincoln?”
    It was nearly nine-thirty.
    “Dunno. You know that man—sometimes he just appears. For a man who doesn’t walk he gets around more’n anybody I know.”
    Lucy and Garrett weren’t here either.
    Sol Geberth, in a rich-looking gray suit, walked up to her. The guard on her right scooted over and let the lawyer sit down. “Hello, Fred,” the lawyer said to the agent.
    Dellray nodded, but coolly, and Sachs deduced that, as with Rhyme, the defense lawyer must’ve gotten acquittals for suspects that the agent had collared.
    “It’s a deal,” Geberth said to Sachs. “The prosecutor’s agreed to involuntary manslaughter—no other counts. Five years. No parole.”
    Five years . . .
    The lawyer continued. “There’s one aspect to this I didn’t think about yesterday.”
    “What is it?” she asked, trying to gauge from the look on his face how deep this new trouble ran.
    “The problem is you’re a cop.”
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    Before he could say anything Dellray said, “You being a law en- forcement officer. Inside.”
    When she still didn’t get it the agent explained, “Inside prison. You’ll have to be segregated. Or you wouldn’t last a week. That’ll be tough, Amelia. That’ll be nasty tough.”
    “But nobody knows I’m a cop.”
    Dellray laughed faintly. “They’ll know ever-single-thing there is to know ’bout you by the time you get yourself issued your jumpsuit and linen.”
    “I haven’t collared anybody down here. Why would they care that I’m a cop?”
    “Don’t make a splinter of difference where you’re from,” Dellray said,