The Empty Chair

chair!”
    “What?”
    “Garrett’s chair . . . it’s on rollers. It’s facing the insect jars. All he does is roll back and forth and stare at them and draw them. Hell, he probably talks to them too. His whole life is these bugs.” But the tracks in the wood stopped before they got to the jar on the end of the row—the largest of them and one set slightly apart from the others. It contained yellow jackets. The tiny yellow-and-black crescents zipped about angrily as if they were aware of her intrusion.
    She walked to the jar, looked down at it carefully. She said to Rhyme, “There’s a jar full of wasps. I think it’s his safe.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s nowhere near the other jars. He never looks at it—I can tell by the tracks of the chair. And all the other jars have water in them—they’re aquatic bugs. This’s the only one with flying insects. It’s a great idea, Rhyme—who’d reach inside something like that? And there’s about a foot of shredded paper on the bottom. I’d think he’s buried something in there.”
    “Look inside and see.”
    She opened the door and asked Mrs. Babbage for a pair of leather gloves. When she brought them she found Sachs looking into the wasp jar.
    “You’re not going to touch that, are you?” she asked in a desperate whisper.
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, Garrett’ll have a fit. He yells at anyone who ever touches his wasp jar.”
    “Mrs. Babbage, Garrett’s a fleeing felon. Him yelling at anybody isn’t really a concern here.”
    “But if he sneaks back and sees you bothered it . . . I mean . . . It could push him over the edge.” Again, tears threatened.
    “We’ll find him before he comes back,” Sachs said in a reassuring tone. “Don’t worry.”
    Sachs put on the gloves, and she wrapped a pillowcase around her bare arm. Slowly she eased the mesh lid off and reached inside. Two wasps landed on the glove but flew off a moment later. The rest just ignored the intrusion. She was careful not to disturb the nest.
    Stung 137 times . . .
    She dug only a few inches before she found the plastic bag.
    “Gotcha.” She pulled it out. One wasp escaped and disappeared into the house before she got the mesh lid back on.
    Pulling off the leather gloves and putting on the latex. She opened the bag and spilled the contents out on the bed. A spool of thin fishing line. Some money—about a hundred dollars in cash and four Eisenhower silver dollars. Another picture frame; this one held the photo from the newspaper of Garrett and his family, a week before the car accident that killed his parents and sister. On a short chain was an old, battered key—like a car key, though there was no logo on the head; only a short serial number. She told Rhyme about this.
    “Good, Sachs. Excellent. I don’t know what it means yet but it’s a start. Now get over to the primary scene. Blackwater Landing.”
    Sachs paused and looked around the room. The wasp that had escaped had returned and was trying to get back into the jar. She wondered what kind of message it was sending to its fellow insects.

    “I can’t keep up,” Lydia told Garrett. “I can’t go this fast,” she gasped. Sweat streaming down her face. Her uniform was drenched.
    “Quiet,” he scolded angrily. “I need to listen. Can’t do it with you bitching all the time.”
    Listen for what? she wondered.
    He consulted the map again and led her along another path. They were still deep in the pine woods but, even though they were out of the sun, she was dizzy and recognized the early symptoms of heatstroke.
    He glanced at her, eyes on her breasts again.
    The fingernails snapping.
    The immense heat.
    “Please,” she whispered, crying. “I can’t do this! Please!”
    “Quiet! I’m not going to tell you again.”
    A cloud of gnats swarmed around her face. She inhaled one or two and spit in disgust to clear her mouth. God, how she hated it here—in the woods. Lydia Johansson hated to be out of doors. Most people loved the woods and swimming pools and backyards. But her happiness was a fragile contentment that occurred mostly inside: her job, chatting with her other single girlfriends over margaritas at T.G.I. Friday’s, horror books and TV, trips to the outlet malls for a shopping spree, those occasional nights with her boyfriend.
    Indoor joys, all of them.
    Outside reminded her of the cookouts her married friends gave, reminded her of families sitting around pools while their children played with