The Empty Chair

to the needle. She had very skillful hands.
    “You ready to take a nap?” she asked with a faint, lilting accent.
    “As I’ll ever be,” he mumbled.
    “When I inject this I’m going to ask you to count down from one hundred. You’ll be out before you know it.”
    “What’s the record?” Rhyme joked.
    “Counting down? One man, he was much bigger than you, got to seventy-nine before he went under.”
    “I’ll go for seventy-five.”
    “You’ll get this operating suite named after you if you do that,” she replied, deadpan.
    He watched her slip a tube of clear liquid into the IV. She turned away to look at a monitor. Rhyme began counting. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven . . .”
    The other nurse, the one who’d mentioned him by name, crouched down. In a low voice she said, “Hi, there.”
    An odd tone in the voice.
    He glanced at her.
    She continued, “I’m Lydia Johansson. Remember me?” Before he could say of course he did, she added in a dark whisper, “Jim Bell asked me to say good-bye.”
    “No!” he muttered.
    The anesthesiologist, eyes on a monitor, said, “It’s okay. Just relax. Everything’s fine.”
    Her mouth inches from his ear, Lydia whispered, “Didn’t you wonder how Jim and Steve Farr found out about the cancer patients?”
    “No! Stop!”
    “I gave Jim their names so Culbeau could make sure they had accidents. Jim Bell’s my boyfriend. We’ve been having an affair for years. He’s the one sent me to Blackwater Landing after Mary Beth’d been kidnapped. That morning I went to put flowers down and just hang out in case Garrett showed up. I was going to talk to him and give Jesse and Ed Schaeffer a chance to get him—Ed was with us too. Then they were going to force him to tell us where Mary Beth was. But nobody thought he’d kidnap me. ”
    Oh, yeah, this town’s got itself a few hornets. . . .
    “Stop!” Rhyme cried. But his voice came out as a mumble.
    The anesthesiologist said, “Been fifteen seconds. Maybe you’re going to break that record after all. Are you counting? I don’t hear you counting.”
    “I’ll be right here,” Lydia said, stroking Rhyme’s forehead. “A lot can go wrong during surgery, you know. Kinks in the oxygen tube, administering the wrong drugs. Who knows? Might kill you, might put you in a coma. But you sure aren’t going to be doing any testifying.”
    “Wait,” Rhyme gasped, “wait!”
    “Ha,” the anesthesiologist said, laughing, her eyes still on the monitor. “Twenty seconds. I think you’re going to win, Mr. Rhyme.”
    “No, I don’t think you are,” Lydia whispered and slowly stood as Rhyme saw the operating room go gray and then black.

. . . chapter forty-six
    This really was one of the prettiest places in the world, Amelia Sachs thought.
    For a cemetery.
    Tanner’s Corner Memorial Gardens, on a crest of a rolling hill, overlooked the Paquenoke River, some miles away. It was even nicer here, in the graveyard itself, than viewed from the road where she’d first seen it on the drive from Avery.
    Squinting against the sun, she noticed the glistening strip of Blackwater Canal joining the river. From here, even the dark, tainted water, which had brought so much sorrow to so many, looked benign and picturesque.
    She was in a small cluster of people standing over an open grave. A crematory urn was being lowered by one of the men from the mortuary. Amelia Sachs was next to Lucy Kerr. Garrett Hanlon stood by them. On the other side of the grave were Mason Germain and Thom, with a cane, dressed in his immaculate slacks and shirt. He wore a bold tie with a wild red pattern, which seemed appropriate despite this somber moment.
    Black-suited Fred Dellray was here too, standing by himself, off to the side, thoughtful—as if recalling a passage in one of the philosophy books he enjoyed reading. He would have resembled a Nation of Islam reverend if he’d been wearing a white shirt instead of the lime-green one with yellow polka dots on it.
    There was no minister to officiate, even though this was Bible-waving country and there’d probably be a dozen clerics on call for funerals. The mortuary director now glanced at the people assembled and asked if anybody wanted to say something to the assembly. And as everyone looked around, wondering if there’d be any volunteers, Garrett dug into his baggy slacks and produced his battered book, The Miniature World.
    In a halting voice the boy read,