Jeffery Deaver - Lincoln Rhyme 03 Empty Chair

The Empty Chair

Lincoln Rhyme Book 3

By Jeffery Deaver

Foreword

Fromthe brain and the brain alone, arise our pleasures,

joys, laughter and jests,as well as our sorrow, pain, grief, and tears...

The brain is also theseat of madness and delirium,

of the fears and terrorswhich assail by night or day...

Hippocrates

NORTH OF THE PAQUO

Jeffery Deaver

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ISBN-10: 0671026011

ISBN-13: 9780671026011

Publisher: Pocket (April 3, 2001)

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She came here to lay flowers at the placewhere the boy died and the girl was kidnapped.

She came here because she was a heavy girland had a pocked face and not many friends.

She came because she was expected to.

She came because she wanted to.

Ungainly and sweating, twenty-six-year-oldLydia Johansson walked along the dirt shoulder of Route 112, where she'd parkedher Honda Accord, then stepped carefully down the hill to the muddy bank whereBlackwater Canal met the opaque Paquenoke River.

She came here because she thought it wasthe right thing to do.

She came even though she was afraid.

It wasn't long after dawn but this Augusthad been the hottest in years in North Carolina and Lydia was already sweatingthrough her nurse's whites by the time she started toward the clearing on theriverbank, surrounded by willows and tupelo gum and broad-leafed bay trees. Sheeasily found the place she was looking for; the yellow police tape was veryevident through the haze.

Early morning sounds. Loons, an animalforaging in the thick brush nearby, hot wind through sedge and swamp grass.

Lord, I'm scared , she thought. Flashing back vividly onthe most gruesome scenes from the Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels she readlate at night with her companion, a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

More noises in the brush. She hesitated,looked around. Then continued on.

"Hey," a man's voice said. Verynear.

Lydia gasped and spun around. Nearly droppedthe flowers. "Jesse, you scared me."

"Sorry." Jesse Corn stood on theother side of a weeping willow, near the clearing that was roped off. Lydianoticed that their eyes were fixed on the same thing: a glistening whiteoutline on the ground where the boy's body'd been found. Surrounding the lineindicating Billy's head was a dark stain that, as a nurse, she recognizedimmediately as old blood.

"So that's where it happened,"she whispered.

"It is, yep." Jesse wiped hisforehead and rearranged the floppy hook of blond hair. His uniform the beigeoutfit of the Paquenoke County Sheriff's Department was wrinkled and dusty.Dark stains of sweat blossomed under his arms. He was thirty and boyishly cute."How long you been here?" she asked.

"I don't know. Since fivemaybe."

"I saw another car," she said."Up the road. Is that Jim?"

"Nope. Ed Schaeffer. He's on theother side of the river." Jesse nodded at the flowers. "Those'repretty."

After a moment Lydia looked down at thedaisies in her hand. "Two forty-nine. At Food Lion. Got 'em last night. Iknew nothing'd be open this early. Well, Dell's is but they don't sellflowers." She wondered why she was rambling. She looked around again."No idea where Mary Beth is?"

Jesse shook his head. "Not hide norhair."

"Him neither, I guess thatmeans."

"Him neither." Jesse looked athis watch. Then out over the dark water, dense reeds and concealing grass, therotting pier.

Lydia didn't like it that a county deputy,sporting a large pistol, seemed as nervous as she was. Jesse started up thegrassy hill to the highway. He paused, glanced at the flowers. "Only twoninety-nine?"

"Forty-nine. Food Lion."

"That's a bargain," the youngcop said, squinting toward a thick sea of grass. He turned back to the hill."I'll be up by the patrol car."

Lydia Johansson walked closer to the crimescene. She pictured Jesus, she pictured angels and she prayed for a fewminutes. She prayed for the soul of Billy Stail, which had been released fromhis bloody body on this very spot just yesterday morning. She prayed that thesorrow visiting Tanner's Corner would soon be over.

She prayed for herself too.

More noise in the brush. Snapping,rustling.

The day was lighter now but the sun didn'tdo much to brighten up Blackwater Landing. The river was deep here and fringedwith messy black willows and thick trunks of cedar and cypress some living,some not, and all choked with moss and viny kudzu. To the northeast, not far,was the Great Dismal Swamp, and Lydia Johansson, like every Girl Scout past andpresent in Paquenoke County, knew all the legends about that place: the Lady ofthe Lake, the Headless Trainman... But it wasn't those apparitions thatbothered her; Blackwater Landing had its own ghost the boy who'd kidnappedMary Beth McConnell.

Lydia opened her purse and lit a cigarettewith shaking hands. Felt a bit calmer. She strolled along the shore. Stoppedbeside a stand of tall grass and cattails, which bent in the scorching breeze.

On top of the hill she heard a car enginestart. Jesse wasn't leaving, was he? Lydia looked toward it, alarmed. But shesaw the car hadn't moved. Just getting the air-conditioning going, shesupposed. When she looked back toward the water she noticed the sedge andcattails and wild rice plants were still bending, waving, rustling.

As if someone was there, moving closer tothe yellow tape, staying low to the ground.

But no, no, of course that wasn't thecase. It's just the wind, she told herself. And she reverently set theflowers in the crook of a gnarly black willow not far from the eerie outline ofthe sprawled body, spattered with blood dark as the river water. She beganpraying once more.

Across the Paquenoke River from the crimescene, Deputy Ed Schaeffer leaned against an oak tree and ignored the early-morningmosquitoes fluttering near his arms in his short-sleeved uniform shirt. Heshrank down to a crouch and scanned the floor of the woods again for signs ofthe boy.

He had to steady himself against a branch;he was dizzy from exhaustion. Like most of the deputies in the county sheriff'sdepartment he'd been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, searching for MaryBeth McConnell and the boy who'd kidnapped her. But while, one by one, theothers had gone home to shower and eat and get a few hours' sleep Ed had stayedwith the search. He was the oldest deputy on the force and the biggest(fifty-one years old and two hundred sixty-four pounds of mostly unusefulweight) but fatigue, hunger and stiff joints weren't going to stop him fromcontinuing to look for the girl.

The deputy examined the ground again.

He pushed the transmit button of hisradio. "Jesse, it's me. You there?"

"Go ahead."

He whispered, "I got footprints here.They're fresh. An hour old, tops."

"Him, you think?"

"Who else'd it be? This time ofmorning, this side of the Paquo?"

"You were right, looks like,"Jesse Corn said. "I didn't believe it at first but you hit this one on thehead."

It had been Ed's theory that the boy wouldcome back here. Not because of the clich about returning to the scene of thecrime but because Blackwater Landing had always been his stalking ground andwhatever kind of trouble he'd gotten himself into over the years he always cameback here.

Ed looked around, fear now replacingexhaustion and discomfort as he gazed at the infinite tangle of leaves andbranches surrounding him. Jesus, the deputy thought, the boy's heresomeplace. He said into his radio, "The tracks look to be movingtoward you but I can't tell for sure. He was walking mostly on leaves. You keepan eye out. I'm going to see where he was coming from."