The Empty Chair (49 page)

Finally the sheriff's anger broke through his facade. "Why did you suspect
me?
"

"Originally I
did
think it was Mason – only the three of us and Ben knew about the moonshiners' cabin. I assumed he called Culbeau and sent him there. But I asked Lucy and it turned out that Mason called
her
and sent her to the cabin – just to make sure Amelia and Garrett didn't get away again. Then I got to thinking and I realized that at the mill Mason tried to shoot Garrett. Anybody in on the conspiracy would want to keep him alive – like you did – so he could lead you to Mary Beth. I checked into Mason's finances and found out he's got a cheap house and is in serious hock to MasterCard and Visa. Nobody was paying
him
off. Unlike you and your brother-in-law, Bell. You've got a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house and plenty of cash in the bank. And Steve Farr's got a house worth three ninety and a boat that cost a hundred eighty thousand. We're getting court orders to take a peek in your safe-deposit boxes. Wonder how much we'll find there."

Rhyme continued. "I was a little curious why Mason was so eager to nail Garrett but he had a good reason for that. He told me he was pretty upset when you got the job of sheriff – couldn't quite figure out why since he had a better record and more seniority. He thought that if he could collar the Insect Boy the Board of Supervisors'd be sure to appoint him sheriff when your term expired."

"All your fucking playacting . . ." Bell muttered. "I thought you only believed in evidence."

Rhyme rarely sparred verbally with his quarry. Banter was useless except as a balm for the soul and Lincoln Rhyme had yet to uncover any hard evidence on the whereabouts and nature of the soul. Still, he told Bell, "I would've
preferred
evidence. But sometimes you have to improvise. I'm really
not
the prima donna everybody thinks I am."

• • •

The Storm Arrow wheelchair wouldn't fit into Amelia Sachs' cell.

"Not crip-accessible?" Rhyme groused. "That's an A.D.A. violation."

She thought his bluster was for her benefit, letting her see his familiar moods. But she said nothing.

Because of the wheelchair problem Mason Germain suggested they try the interrogation room. Sachs shuffled in, wearing the hand and ankle shackles that the deputy insisted on (she had, after all, already managed one escape from the place).

The lawyer from New York had arrived. He was gray-haired Solomon Geberth. A member of the New York, Massachusetts and D.C. bars, he had been admitted to the jurisdiction of North Carolina
pro hoc vice
– for the single case of
People v. Sachs.
Curiously, with his smooth, handsome face and mannerisms even smoother he seemed far more a genteel Southern lawyer out of a John Grisham novel than a bulldog of a Manhattan litigator. The man's trim hair glistened with spray and his Italian suit successfully resisted wrinkles even in Tanner's Corner's astonishing humidity.

Lincoln Rhyme sat between Sachs and her lawyer. She rested her hand on the armrest of his injured wheelchair.

"They brought in a special prosecutor from Raleigh," Geberth was explaining. "With the sheriff and the coroner on the take I don't think they quite trust McGuire. Anyway he's looked over the evidence and decided to dismiss the charges against Garrett."

Sachs stirred at this. "He did?"

Geberth said, "Garrett admitted hitting the boy, Billy, and
thought
he killed him. But Lincoln was right. It was Bell who killed the boy. And even if they brought him up on assault charges Garrett was clearly acting in self-defense. That other deputy, Ed Schaeffer? His death's been ruled accidental."

"What about kidnapping Lydia Johansson?" Rhyme asked.

"When she realized that Garrett had never intended to hurt her she decided to drop the charges. Mary Beth did the same. Her mother wanted to go ahead with the complaint but you should've heard that girl talk to the woman. Some fur flew during
that
conversation, I'll tell you."

"So he's free? Garrett?" Sachs asked, eyes on the floor.

"They're letting him out in a few minutes," Geberth told her. Then: "Okay, here's the laundry, Amelia: the prosecutor's position is that even if Garrett turned out not to be a felon, you aided in the escape of a prisoner who'd been arrested on the basis of probable cause and you killed an officer during the commission of that crime. The prosecutor's going for first-degree murder and throwing in the standard lesser-included offenses: both manslaughter counts – voluntary and involuntary – and reckless homicide and criminally negligent homicide."

"First degree?" Rhyme snapped. "It wasn't premeditated; it was an accident! For Christ's sake."

"Which is what I' m going to try to show at trial," Geberth said. "That the other deputy, the one who grabbed you, was a partial proximate cause of the shooting. But I guarantee they'll get the reckless homicide conviction. On the facts there's no doubt about that."

"What's the chance of acquittal?" Rhyme asked.

"Bad. Ten, fifteen percent at best. I'm sorry, but I have to recommend you take a plea."

She felt this like a blow to her chest. Her eyes closed and when she exhaled it was as if her soul had fled from her body.

"Jesus," Rhyme muttered.

Sachs was thinking about Nick, her former boyfriend. How, when he was arrested for hijacking and taking kickbacks, he refused a plea and took the risk of a jury trial. He said to her, "It's like what your old man said, Aimee – when you move they can't get you. It's all or nothing."

It took the jury eighteen minutes to convict him. He was still in a New York prison.

She looked at the smooth-cheeked Geberth. She asked, "What's the prosecutor offering for the plea?"

"Nothing yet. But he'll probably accept voluntary manslaughter – if you do hard time. I'd guess eight, ten years. I have to tell you, though, that in North Carolina it'll be
hard
time. No country clubs here."

Rhyme grumbled, "Versus a fifteen percent chance of acquittal."

Geberth said, "That's right." Then the lawyer added, "You have to understand that there aren't going to be any miracles here, Amelia. If we go to trial the prosecutor's going to prove that you're a professional law-enforcer and a champion marksman and the jury's going to have trouble buying that the shooting was accidental."

Normal rules don't apply to
anybody
north of the Paquo. Us or them. You can see yourself shooting before you read anybody their rights and that'd be perfectly all right.

The lawyer said, "If that happens they could convict you of murder one and you'll get twenty-five years."

"Or the death penalty," she muttered.

"Yes, that's a possibility. I can't tell you it isn't."

For some reason the image that came into her mind at this moment was of the peregrine falcons that nested outside of Lincoln Rhyme's window in his Manhattan townhouse: the male and the female and the young hawk. She said, "If I plead to involuntary how much time will I do?"

"Probably six, seven years. No parole."

You and me, Rhyme.

She inhaled deeply. "I'll plead."

"Sachs –" Rhyme began.

But she repeated to Geberth, "I'll plead."

The lawyer rose. He nodded. "I'll call the prosecutor right now, see if he'll accept it. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything." With a nod at Rhyme the lawyer left the room.

Mason glanced at Sachs' face. He stood and walked to the door, his boots tapping loudly. "I'll leave you two for a few minutes. I don't have to search you, do I, Lincoln?"

Rhyme smiled wanly. "I'm weapon-free, Mason."

The door swung shut.

"What a mess, Lincoln," she said.

"Uh-uh, Sachs. No first names."

"Why not?" she asked cynically, nearly a whisper. "Bad luck?"

"Maybe."

"You're not superstitious. Or so you're always telling me."

"Not usually. But this is a spooky place."

Tanner's Corner. . . The town with no children.

"I should've listened to you," he said. "You were right about Garrett. I was wrong. I looked at the evidence and got it dead-wrong."

"But I didn't
know
I was right. I didn't
know
anything. I just had a hunch and I acted."

Rhyme said, "Whatever happens, Sachs, I'm not going anywhere." He nodded down at the Storm Arrow and laughed. "I couldn't get very far even if I wanted to. You do some time, I'll be there when you get out."

"Words, Rhyme," she said. "Only words . . . My father said he wasn't going anywhere either. That was a week before the cancer shut him down."

"I'm too ornery to die."

But you're not too ornery to get
better, she thought,
to meet someone else. To move on and leave me behind.

The door to the interrogation room opened. Garrett stood in the doorway, Mason behind him. The boy's hands, no longer in shackles, were cupped in front of him.

"Hey," Garrett said in greeting. "Check out what I found. It was in my cell." He opened his fist and a small insect flew out. "It's a sphinx moth. They like to forage in valerian flowers. You don't see 'em much inside. Pretty cool."

She smiled faintly, taking pleasure in his enthusiastic eyes. "Garrett, there's one thing I want you to know."

He walked closer, looked down at her.

"You remember what you said in the trailer? When you were talking to your father in the empty chair?"

He nodded uncertainly.

"You were saying how bad you felt that he didn't want you in the car that night."

"I remember."

"But you know why he didn't want you . . . He was trying to save your life. He knew there was poison in the car and that they were going to die. If you got in the car with them you'd die too. And he didn't want that to happen."

"I guess I know that," he said. His voice was uncertain and Amelia Sachs supposed that rewriting one's history was a daunting task.

"You keep remembering it."

"I will."

Sachs looked at the tiny, beige moth, flying around the interrogation room. "You leave anybody in the cell for me? For company?"

"Yeah, I did. There's a couple of ladybugs – their real name is ladybird beetles. And a leafhopper and syrphus fly. It's cool the way they fly. You can watch 'em for hours." He paused. "Like, I'm sorry I lied to you. The thing is, if I hadn't I never would've got out and I couldn't've saved Mary Beth."

"That's all right, Garrett."

He looked at Mason. "I can go now?"

"You can go."

He walked to the door, turned and said to Sachs, "I'll come and, like, hang out. If that's okay."

"I'd like that."

He stepped outside, and through the open door Sachs could see him walk up to a four-by-four. It was Lucy Kerr's. Sachs saw her get out and hold the door open for him – like a mom picking up her son after soccer practice. The jail door closed and shut off this domestic scene.

"Sachs," Rhyme began. But she shook her head and started shuffling back toward the lockup. She wanted to be away from the criminalist, away from the Insect Boy, away from the town without children. She wanted to be in the darkness of solitude. And soon she was.

• • •

Outside of Tanner's Corner, on Route 112, where it's still two-lane, there's a bend in the road, near the Paquenoke River. Just off the shoulder is a thick growth of plume grass, sedge, indigo and tall columbines showing off their distinctive red flowers like flags.

The vegetation creates a nook that's a popular parking space for Paquenoke County deputies, who sip iced tea and listen to the radio as they wait for the display on their radar guns to register 54 mph or higher. Then they accelerate onto the highway in pursuit of the surprised speeder to add another hundred dollars or so to the county treasury.

Today, Sunday, as a black Lexus SUV passed this jog in the road the radar gun on Lucy Kerr's dashboard registered a legal 44. But she put the squad car in gear, flipped the switch starting the gumball machine atop the car and sped after the four-by-four.

She eased close to the Lexus and studied the vehicle carefully. She'd learned long ago to check the rearview mirror of cars she was stopping. You look at the drivers' eyes and you can pretty much get a feel for what other kinds of crimes they might be committing, if any, beyond speeding or a broken taillight. Drugs, stolen weapons, drinking. You get a feel for how dangerous the pull-over will be. Now, she saw the man's eyes flick into the mirror and glance at her without a hint of guilt or concern.

Invulnerable eyes . . .

Which made the anger in her all the hotter and she breathed hard to control it.

The big car eased onto the dusty shoulder and Lucy pulled in behind it. Rules dictated that she call in for a tag, tax and warrants check but Lucy didn't bother with this. There was nothing that DMV could report that would be of any interest to her. With trembling hands she opened the door and climbed out.

The driver's eyes now shifted to the side-view mirror and continued to examine her clinically. They registered some surprise, noticing, she supposed, that she wasn't in her uniform – just jeans and a work shirt – though she was wearing her weapon on her hip. What would an off-duty cop be doing pulling over a driver who hadn't been speeding?

Henry Davett rolled down his window.

Lucy Kerr looked inside, past Davett. In the front passenger seat was a woman in her early fifties, with a dryness to her sprayed blond hair that suggested frequent beauty parlor shampoos. She wore diamonds on wrist, ears and chest. A teenage girl sat in the back, flipping through boxes of CDs, mentally enjoying the music that her father wouldn't let her listen to on the Sabbath.

"Officer Kerr," Davett said, "what's the problem?"

But she could see in his eyes, now no longer in reflection, that he knew exactly what the problem was.

And still they remained as guilt-free and in control as when he'd noticed the gyrations of the flashing lights on her Crown Victoria.