The Empty Chair

of law enforcement philosophy that, Sachs knew, was hardly limited to the South.
    They landed again on the south shore of the river, beside the crime scenes, and Sachs climbed out before Jesse could offer his hand, which he did anyway.
    Suddenly a huge, dark shape came into view. A black motorized barge, forty feet long, eased down the canal, then passed them and headed into the river. She read on the side: DAVETT INDUSTRIES.
    Sachs asked, “What’s that?”
    Lucy answered, “A company outside of town. They move shipments up the Intracoastal through the Dismal Swamp Canal and into Norfolk. Asphalt, tar paper, stuff like that.”
    Rhyme had heard this through the radio and said, “Let’s ask if there was a shipment around the time of the killing. Get the name of the crew.”
    Sachs mentioned this to Lucy but she said, “I already did that. One of the first things Jim and I did.” Her answer was clipped. “It was a negative. If you’re interestedwe also canvassed everybody in town normally makes the commute along Canal Road and Route 112 here. Wasn’t any help.”
    “That was a good idea,” Sachs said.
    “Just standard procedure,” Lucy said coolly and strode back to her car like a homely girl in high school who’d finally managed to fling a searing put-down at the head cheerleader.

. . . chapter seven
    “I’m not letting him do anything until you get an air conditioner in here.”
    “Thom, we don’t have time for this,” Rhyme spat out. Then told the workmen where to unload the instruments that had arrived from the state police.
    Bell said, “Steve’s out trying to dig one up. Isn’t quite as easy as I thought.”
    “I don’t need one.”
    Thom explained patiently, “I’m worried about dysreflexia.”
    “I don’t remember hearing that temperature was bad for blood pressure, Thom,” Rhyme said. “Did you read that somewhere? I didn’t read it. Maybe you could show me where you read it.”
    “I don’t need your sarcasm, Lincoln.”
    “Oh, I’m sarcastic, am I?”
    The aide patiently said to Bell, “Heat causes tissue swelling. Swelling causes increased pressure and irritation. And that can lead to dysreflexia. Which can kill him. We need an air conditioner. Simple as that.”
    Thom was the only one of Rhyme’s caregiving aides who’d survived more than a few months in the service of the criminalist. The others had either quit or been peremptorily fired.
    “Plug that in,” Rhyme ordered a deputy who was wheeling a battered gas chromatograph into the corner.
    “No.” Thom crossed his arms and stood in front of the extension cord. The deputy saw the look on the aide’s face and paused uneasily, not prepared for a confrontation with the persistent young man. “When we get the air conditioner up and running . . . then we’ll plug it in.”
    “Jesus Christ.” Rhyme grimaced. One of the most frustrating aspects of being a quad is the inability to bleed off anger. After his accident Rhyme quickly came to realize how a simple act like walking or clenching our fists—not to mention flinging a heavy object or two (a favorite pastime of Rhyme’s ex-wife, Blaine)—dissipates fury. “If I get angry I could start spasming or get contractures,” Rhyme pointed out testily.
    “Neither of which will kill you—the way dysreflexia will.” Thom said this with a tactical cheerfulness that infuriated Rhyme all the more.
    Bell gingerly said, “Gimme five minutes.” He disappeared and the troopers continued to wheel in the equipment. The chromatograph went unelectrified for the moment.
    Lincoln Rhyme surveyed the machinery. Wondered what it would be like to actually close his fingers around an object again. With his left ring finger he could touch and had a faint sense of pressure. But actually gripping something, feeling its texture, weight, temperature . . . those were unimaginable.
    Terry Dobyns, the NYPD therapist, the man who’d been sitting at Rhyme’s bedside when he’d awakened after the accident at a crime scene left him a quadriplegic, had explained to the criminalist all the clichéd stages of grief. Rhyme had been assured that he’d experience—andsurvive—all of them. But what the doctor hadn’t told him was that certain stages sneak back. That you carried them around with you like sleeping viruses and that they might erupt at any time.
    Over the past several years he’d reexperienced despair and denial.
    Now, he was consumed with fury. Why, here were two