The Empty Chair

argument with him, the man’s tempered-steel gaze. The image of the businessman prodded him to return to the hospital, to finish the tests and to go under the knife. He glanced at Ben and was about to instruct him on how to pack up the forensic equipment when Sachs took up Bell’s cause. “We found some evidence at the mill, Rhyme. Lucy did, actually. Good evidence.”
    Rhyme said sourly, “If it’s good evidence then somebody else’ll be able to figure out where it leads to.”
    “Look, Lincoln,” Bell began in his reasonable Carolinian accent, “I’m not going to push it but you’re the only one ’round here’s got experience at major crimes like this. We’d be at sea trying to figure out what that’s telling us, for instance.” He nodded at the chromatograph. “Or whether this bit of dirt or that footprint means anything.”
    Head rubbing against the Storm Arrow’s pillowy rest, Rhyme glanced at Sachs’s imploring face. Sighing, he finally asked, “Garrett’s not saying anything ?”
    “He’s talking,” Farr said, tugging at one of his flaglike ears. “But he’s denying killing Billy and he’s saying he got Mary Beth away from Blackwater Landing for her own good. That’s it. Won’t say a word about where she is.”
    Sachs said, “In this heat, Rhyme, she could die of thirst.”
    “Or starve to death,” Farr pointed out.
    Oh, for God’s sake . . .
    “Thom,” Rhyme snapped, “call Dr. Weaver. Tell her I’ll be here for a little longer. Emphasize ‘little.’ ”
    “That’s all we’re asking, Lincoln,” Bell said, relief in his lined face. “An hour or two. We sure appreciate it—we’ll make you an honorary resident of Tanner’s Corner,” the sheriff joked. “We’ll give you the key to the town.”
    All the faster to unlock the door and get the hell out of here, Rhyme thought cynically. He asked Bell, “Where’s Lydia?”
    “In the hospital.”
    “She all right?”
    “Nothing serious. They’re keeping her in for observation for a day.”
    “What’d she say— exactly? ” Rhyme demanded.
    Sachs said, “That Garrett told her he’s got Mary Beth east of here, near the ocean. On the Outer Banks. He also said that he didn’t really kidnap her. She went along willingly. He was just looking out for her and she was happy to be where she was. She also told me that we caught Garrett completely off guard. He never thought we’d get to the mill so fast. When he smelled the ammonia he panicked, changed his clothes, gagged her and ran out the door.”
    “Okay . . . Ben, we’ve got some things to look at.”
    The zoologist nodded, pulled on his latex gloves once more—without Rhyme’s having to instruct him to do so, the criminalist observed.
    Rhyme asked about the food and water found at the mill. Ben held them up. The criminalist observed, “No individual store labels. Like the others. Won’t do us any good. See if there’s anything adhering to the sticky sides of the duct tape.”
    Sachs and Ben bent over the roll and spent ten minutes examining it with a hand glass. She pulled fragments of wood from the side and Ben once again held the instrument so Rhyme could peer into the eyepieces. But under the microscope it was clear that they matched the wood in the mill. “Nothing,” she said.
    Ben then picked up the map that showed Paquenoke County. It was marked with X ’s and arrows, indicated Garrett’s path to the mill from Blackwater Landing. There was no price sticker on this either. And it gave no indication of where the boy had been headed once he’d left the mill.
    Rhyme said to Bell, “You have an ESDA?”
    “A what?”
    “Electrostatic Detection Apparatus.”
    “Don’t even know what that is.”
    “Picks up indented writing on paper. If Garrett had written something on top of the map, a town or address, we could see it.”
    “Well, we don’t have one. Should I call the state police?”
    “No. Ben, just shine a flashlight on the map at a low angle. See if there’re any indentations.”
    Ben did this and though they searched every inch of the map they could see no evidence of writing or other marking.
    Rhyme ordered Ben to examine the second map, the one Lucy had found in the gristmill. “Let’s see if there’s any trace in the folds. It’s too big for magazine subscription cards. Open it over a newspaper.”
    More sand poured out. Rhyme noticed immediately that it was in fact ocean sand, the sort that would be found on the Outer