The Empty Chair

list.”
    She glanced at Garrett’s and Lydia’s footprints. “We’re going after them again,” she told Rhyme.
    “I’ll call when I have some more answers.”
    Sachs announced to the search party, “Back up to the top.” Feeling the shooting pains in her knees she gazed up to the lip of the quarry, muttering, “Didn’t seem that high when we got here.”
    “Oh, hey, that’s a rule—hills’re always twice as tall going up as coming down,” said Jesse Corn, the resident storehouse of aphorisms, as he politely let her precede him up the narrow path.

. . . chapter fourteen
    Lincoln Rhyme, ignoring a glistening black-and-green fly that strafed nearby, was gazing at the latest evidence chart.
    F OUND AT S ECONDARY C RIME S CENE —Q UARRY
    Old Burlap Bag—Unreadable Name on It
    Corn—Feed and Grain?
    Scorch Marks on Bag
    Deer Park Water
    Planters Cheese Crackers
    The most unusual evidence is the best evidence. Rhyme was never happier at a crime scene than when he found something completely unidentifiable. Because it meant that if he could identify it there’d be limited sources he could trace it back to.
    But these items—the evidence Sachs had found at the quarry—were common. If the printing on the bag had been legible then he might have traced that to a singlesource. But it wasn’t. If the water and crackers had price stickers they might have been traced to the stores that sold them and to a clerk who recalled Garrett and might have some information about where to find him. But they didn’t. And scorched wood? That led to every barbecue in Paquenoke County. Useless.
    The corn might be helpful—Jim Bell and Steve Farr were on phones right now, calling feed-and-grain outlets—but Rhyme doubted the clerks would have anything more to say than “Yeah. We sell corn. In old burlap bags. Like everybody does.”
    Damn! He had no sense of this place at all. He needed weeks—months—to get a feel for the area.
    But, of course, they didn’t have weeks or months.
    Eyes moving from chart to chart, fast as the fly.
    F OUND AT P RIMARY C RIME S CENE —B LACKWATER L ANDING
    Kleenex with Blood
    Limestone Dust
    Nitrates
    Phosphate
    Ammonia
    Detergent
    Camphene
    Nothing more to be deduced from that one.
    Back to the insect books, he decided.
    “Ben, that book there— The Miniature World. I want to look at it.”
    “Yessir,” the young man said absently, eyes on the evidence chart. He picked it up and held it out to Rhyme.
    A moment passed as the book hovered in the air over the criminalist’s chest. Rhyme cast a wry gaze at Ben, who glanced at him and, after a beat, gave a sudden jerkand reared back, realizing that he was offering something to a man who’d need divine intervention to take it.
    “Oh, my, Mr. Rhyme . . . look,” Ben blurted, his round face red. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking, sir. Man, that was stupid. I really—”
    “Ben,” Rhyme said evenly, “shut the fuck up.”
    The huge man blinked in shock. Swallowed. The book, tiny in his massive hand, lowered. “It was an accident, sir. I said I was—”
    “Shut. Up.”
    Ben did. His mouth closed. He looked around the room for help but there was no help on the horizon. Thom was standing against the wall, silent, arms crossed, not about to become a U.N. peacekeeper.
    Rhyme continued in a low growl, “You’re walking on eggshells and I’m sick of it. Quit your goddamn cringing.”
    “Cringing? I was just trying to be decent to somebody who’s . . . I mean—”
    “No, you weren’t. You’ve been trying to figure out how to get the hell out of here without looking at me any more than you have to and without upsetting your own delicate little psyche.”
    The massive shoulders stiffened. “Well, now, sir, I don’t think that’s completely fair.”
    “Bullshit. It’s about time I took the gloves off. . . .” Rhyme laughed viciously. “How do you like that metaphor? Me, taking off gloves? Something I’m not going to be able to do very fast, am I now? . . . How’s that for a crip joke?”
    Ben was desperate to escape—to flee out the door—but his massive legs were rooted like oak trunks.
    “What I’ve got isn’t contagious,” Rhyme snapped. “You think it’s going to rub off? Doesn’t work that way. You’re walking around here like you breathe the air and they’re going to have to cart you off in a wheelchair. Hell, you’re even afraid if you look my way you’re going to end up like