The Empty Chair

say?” Rhyme asked. “Something he’d seen on that map?”
    “She said it sounded like ‘important.’ Then ‘olive.’ ” Bell walked to the map. Touched a location to the southeast of Tanner’s Corner. “There’s a development here. They named the roads after plants and fruits and things. One of them’s Olive Street. But that’s way south of StoneCreek. Should I tell Lucy and Amelia to check it out? I think we ought to.”
    Ah, the eternal conflict, Rhyme reflected: trust evidence or trust witnesses? If he picked wrong, Lydia or Mary Beth might die. “They should stay where they are, north of the river.”
    “You sure?” Bell asked doubtfully.
    “Yes.”
    “Okay,” Bell said.
    The phone rang and with a firm press of his left ring finger Rhyme answered it.
    Sachs’s voice clattered into his headset. “We’re at a dead end, Rhyme. There’re four or five paths here, going in different directions, and we don’t have a clue which way Garrett went.”
    “I don’t have anything more for you, Sachs. We’re trying to identify more of the evidence.”
    “Nothing more in the books?”
    “Nothing specific. But it’s fascinating—they’re pretty serious reading for a sixteen-year-old. He’s smarter than I would have figured. Where are you exactly, Sachs?” Rhyme looked up. “Ben! Go to the map, please.”
    He aimed his massive frame at the wall and took up a position beside it.
    Sachs consulted someone else in the search party. Then said, “About four miles northeast of where we forded Stone Creek, pretty much in a straight line.”
    Rhyme repeated this to Ben, who put his hand on a part of the map. Location J-7.
    Near Ben’s massive forefinger was an unidentified L-shaped formation. “Ben, you have any idea what that square is?”
    “Think that’s the old quarry.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” Rhyme muttered, shaking his head in frustration.
    “What?” Ben asked, alarmed that he’d done something wrong.
    “Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me there was a quarry near there?”
    Ben’s round face looked even more puffed up than it had been; he was taking the accusation personally. “I didn’t really . . .”
    But Rhyme wasn’t even listening. There was no one to blame but himself for this lapse. Someone had told him about the quarry—Henry Davett, when he’d said that limestone was big business in the area at one time. How else do companies produce commercial limestone? Rhyme should’ve asked about a quarry as soon as he’d heard that. And the nitrates weren’t from pipe bombs at all but from blasting out rock—that kind of residue would last for decades.
    He said into the phone, “There’s an abandoned quarry not far from you. To the southwest.”
    A pause. Faint words. She said, “Jesse knows about it.”
    “Garrett was there. I don’t know if he still is. So be careful. And remember he may not be leaving bombs but he’s rigging traps. Call me when you find something.”

    Now that Lydia was away from the Outside and wasn’t as sick from heat and exhaustion, she realized that she had the Inside to contend with. And that was proving to be just as frightening.
    Her captor would pace for a while, look out the window, then squat on his haunches, clicking his fingernails and muttering to himself, looking over her body, then go back to pacing. Once, Garrett glanced down at the floor of the mill and picked up something. He slipped it into his mouth, chewed hungrily. She wondered if it was an insect and the thought of this nearly made her vomit.
    They were in what seemed to have been the office of the mill. From here she could look down a corridor, partly burnt in the fire, to another series of rooms—probablythe grain storage and the grinding rooms. Brilliant afternoon light flowed through the burnt-out walls and ceiling of the hallway.
    Something orange caught her eye. She squinted and saw bags of Doritos. Also Cape Cod potato chips. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. And more of those Planters peanut butter and cheese cracker packages he’d had at the quarry. Sodas and Deer Park water. She hadn’t seen them when they first entered the mill.
    Why all this food? How long would they be staying here? Garrett had said just for the night but there were enough provisions for a month’s stay. Was he going to keep her here longer than he’d originally told her?
    Lydia asked, “Is Mary Beth all right? Have you hurt her?”
    “Oh, yeah, like I’m going to hurt her,” he said