The Empty Chair

me!”
    “That’s not true!”
    “Isn’t it? I think it is. . . . How come I scare the hell out of you?”
    “You don’t!” Ben snarled. “No way!”
    Rhyme raged, “Oh, yes, I do. You’re terrified to be in the same room with me. You’re a fucking coward.”
    The big man leaned forward, spittle flying from his lips, jaw trembling, as he shouted back, “Well, fuck you, Rhyme!” He was speechless with rage for a moment. Then continued, “I come over here as a favor to my aunt. It messes up all my plans and I’m not getting paid a penny! I listen to you boss people around like you’re some kind of fucking prima donna. I mean, I don’t know where the hell you get off, mister. . . .” His voice faded and he squinted at Rhyme, who was laughing hard.
    “What?” Ben snapped. “What the hell’re you laughing at?”
    “See how easy it is?” Rhyme asked, chuckling now. Thom too was having trouble suppressing a smile.
    Breathing heavily, straightening up, Ben wiped his mouth. Angry, wary. He shook his head. “What do you mean? What’s easy?”
    “Looking me in the eye and telling me I’m a prick.” Rhyme continued in a placid voice, “Ben, I’m just like anybody else. I don’t like it when people treat me like a china doll. And I know they sure as hell don’t like to worry that they’re going to break me.”
    “You suckered me. You said those things just to get my goat.”
    “Let’s say: just to get through to you.” Rhyme wasn’t sure that Ben would ever become a Henry Davett—a man who cared only about the core, the spirit, of a human being and ignored the packaging. But Rhyme had at least managed to push the zoologist a few steps in the direction of enlightenment.
    “I oughta walk out that door and not come back.”
    “A lot of people would, Ben. But I need you. You’regood. You’ve got a flair for forensics. Now, come on. We broke the ice. Let’s get back to work.”
    Ben began to mount The Miniature World in the turning frame. As he did he glanced at Rhyme and asked, “So there’s really a lot of people who look you in the eye and call you a son of a bitch?”
    Rhyme, staring at the cover of the book, deferred to Thom, who said, “Oh, sure. Of course that’s only after they get to know him.”

    Lydia was still only a hundred feet from the mill.
    She was moving as quickly as she could toward the path that would take her to freedom but her ankle throbbed in pain and hampered her progress significantly. Also, she had to move slowly—truly silent travel through brush requires the use of your hands. But, like some of the brain-lesion victims she’d worked with at the hospital, she had limited equilibrium and could only stumble from clearing to clearing, making far more noise than she wanted to.
    She circled wide around the front of the mill. Pausing. No sign of Garrett. No sound at all except for the flushing of the diverted stream water into the ruddy swamp.
    Five more feet, ten.
    Come on, angel, she thought. Stay with me a little longer. Help me get through this. Please . . . Just a few minutes and we’ll be home-free.
    Oh, man alive, that hurts. She wondered if a bone was broken. Her ankle was swollen and she knew that, if it was a fracture, walking unsupported like this could make it ten times worse. The color of the skin was darkening too—which meant broken vessels. Blood poisoning was a possibility. She thought of gangrene. Amputation. If that happened what would her boyfriend say? He’d leave her, she supposed. Their relationship was casual at best—atleast on his part. Besides, she knew, from her job in oncology, how people disappeared from patients’ lives once they started losing body parts.
    She paused and listened, looked around her. Had Garrett fled? Had he given up on her and gone to the Outer Banks to be with Mary Beth?
    Lydia kept moving toward the path that led back to the quarry. Once she found it she’d have to move even more carefully—because of the ammonia trap. She didn’t remember exactly where he’d rigged it.
    Another thirty feet . . . and there it was—the path that led back home.
    She paused again, listening. Nothing. She noticed a dark-skinned, placid snake sunning itself on the stump of an old cedar. So long, she thought to it. I’m going home.
    Lydia started forward.
    And then the Insect Boy’s hand lashed out from underneath a lush bay tree and snagged her good ankle. Unstable anyway, hands useless, Lydia could do