The Empty Chair

don’t have anything to do with Rich Culbeau.”
    “No, it doesn’t. Not exactly.”
    “What’s that mean? ‘Not exactly’?”
    “Culbeau’s out here someplace. With Sean O’Sarian—”
    “ That boy’s scarier than two Culbeaus.”
    “No argument there,” Mason said. “And Harris Tomel too. But that’s not what we’re doing.”
    Nathan looked back at the deputies and the redhead. “Guess not. Why’re you sighting down on Lucy Kerr with my gun?”
    After a moment Mason handed back the Ruger M77 and said, “ ’Cause I didn’t bring my fucking binoculars. And it wasn’t Lucy I was looking at.”
    They started along the ridge. Mason was thinking about the redhead. Thinking about pretty Mary Beth McConnell. And Lydia. Thinking too how sometimes life just doesn’t go the way you want it to. Mason Germain knew, for instance, that he should’ve advanced further than senior deputy by now. He knew he should’ve handled his request for promotion different. Just like he should’ve handled things different when Kelley left him for that trucker five years ago and, for that matter, handled his whole marriage different before she left him.
    And should’ve handled the first Garrett Hanlon case a lot different too. The case where Meg Blanchard woke from her nap and found the hornets clustered on her chest and face and arms. . . . One hundred thirty-seven stings and a terrible slow death.
    Now he was paying for those bad choices. His life was just a series of still days, worrying, sitting on his porch and drinking too much, not even finding the energy to put his boat in the Paquo and go after bass. Trying desperatelyto figure out how to fix what maybe couldn’t be fixed. He—
    “So you gonna tell me what we’re doing?” Nathan asked.
    “We’re looking for Culbeau.”
    “But you just said . . .” Nathan’s voice faded. When Mason said nothing else the deputy sighed loudly. “Culbeau’s house, where we’re s’posed to be, is six or seven miles away and here we are north of the Paquo, me with my deer gun and you with that zipped mouth of yours.”
    “I’m saying if Jim asks, we were out here looking for Culbeau,” Mason said.
    “And what we’re really doing is . . . ?”
    Nathan Groomer could prune trees at five hundred yards with this Ruger of his. He could charm a point-five-oh DUI out of his car in three minutes. He could carve decoys that’d sell for five hundred bucks each to collectors if he ever bothered to try to sell any. But his talents and smarts didn’t go much beyond that.
    “We’re going to get that boy,” Mason said.
    “Garrett.”
    “Yeah, Garrett. Who else? They’re going to flush him for us.” Nodding toward the redhead and the deputies. “And we’re going to get him.”
    “Whatta you mean by ‘get’?”
    “You’re going to shoot him, Nathan. And kill him dead as a stick.”
    “Shoot him?”
    “Yessir,” Mason said.
    “Hold on there. You’re not ramshagging my career ’cause you’re hot to get that boy.”
    “You don’t have a career,” Mason snapped. “You got a job. And if you want to keep it you’ll do what I’m telling you. Listen here—I’ve talked to him. Garrett. During those other investigations, when he killed those people.”
    “Yeah. Did you? I guess you would, sure.”
    “And know what he told me?”
    “No. What?”
    Mason was trying to think if this was credible. Then recalling Nathan’s dog-eyed concentration as he spent hour after hour sanding the back of a pinewood duck, lost in happy oblivion, the senior deputy continued, “Garrett said if he was standing in need to he’d kill any law tried to stop him.”
    “He said that? That boy?”
    “Yep. Looked me right in the eye and said so. And said he was looking forward to it too. Hoped I was in the lead but he’d take any anybody happened to be handy.”
    “That son of a bitch. You tell Jim?”
    “Course I did. You think I wouldn’t? But he didn’t pay it a lick of mind. I like Jim Bell. You know I do. But the truth is he’s more concerned about keeping his cushy job than he is with doing it.”
    The deputy was nodding and a portion of Mason was astonished that Nathan had bought this so easily and never even guessed that there might be another reason he was so hot to get that boy.
    The sharpshooter thought for a moment. “Has Garrett got a gun?”
    “I don’t know, Nathan. But tell me: ’Bout how hard is it to get a firearm in North Carolina? The phrase