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The Empty Chair Excerpt
She came here to lay flowers at the place where the boy died and the girl was kidnapped.
She came here because she was a heavy girl and 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-old Lydia Johansson walked
along the dirt shoulder of Route 112, where she'd parked her Honda Accord, then stepped carefully down the hill to the muddy bank where Blackwater Canal met the opaque Paquenoke River.
She came because she thought it was the right thing to do.
She came even though she was afraid.
It wasn't long after dawn but this
August had been the hottest in years in North Carolina and Lydia was already sweating through her nurse's whites by the time she started toward the clearing on the riverbank, surrounded by willows and
tupelo gum and broad-leafed bay trees. She easily found the place she was looking for; the yellow police tape was very evident through the haze.
Early morning sounds. Loons, an
animal foraging in the copious brush nearby, hot wind through sedge and swamp grass.
Lord, I'm scared, she thought. Flashing back vividly on the most gruesome scenes from the
Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels she had read late at night with her companion, a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Those sorts of books made her boyfriend laugh but they spooked Lydia every time she read
them, even when she'd read them before and knew the ending.
More noises in the brush. She hesitated, looked around. Then continued on.
"Hey," a man's voice said. Very near.
Lydia gasped and spun around. Nearly dropped the flowers. "Jesse, you scared me."
"Sorry." Jesse
Corn stood on the other side of a weeping willow, near the clearing that was roped off. Lydia noticed that their eyes were fixed on the same thing: a glistening white outline on the ground where the
boy's body'd been found. She could see a dark stain that, as a nurse, she recognized immediately as old blood.
"So that's where it happened," she whispered.
"It is, yep." Jesse wiped his forehead and rearranged the floppy comma of blond hair. His uniform the beige outfit 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 and, though he wasn't the lanky, unsmiling cowboy type that appealed to her, she thought now, as she often did, that you could do
worse in the husband department. "How long you been here?" she asked.
"I don't know. Since five maybe."
"I saw another car. Up the road." Lydia asked, "Is that Jim?"
"Nope. Ed Schaeffer. He's on the other side of the river." Jesse nodded at the flowers.
"Those're pretty."
After a moment Lydia looked down at the daisies in her hand. "Two forty-nine. At Food Lion. Got 'em last night. I knew nothing'd be open this early. Well, Dell's is but they don't sell flowers." She wondered why she was rambling. She looked around again. "No where Mary Beth is?"
Jesse shook his head. "Not hide nor hair."
"Him neither, I guess that means."
"Him neither." Jesse looked at his watch. Then out over
the dark water, dense reeds and concealing grass, the rotting pier.
Lydia didn't like it that a county deputy, sporting a large pistol, seemed as nervous as she was. Jesse started
up the grassy hill to the highway. He paused. "Only two ninety-nine?"
"Forty-nine. Food Lion."
"That's a bargain," the young cop said, squinting toward a
thick sea of grass. He started up the hill again. "I'll be up by the patrol car."
Lydia Johansson walked closer to the crime scene. She prayed for a few minutes. She prayed for the
soul of Billy Stail, which had been released from his bloody body on this very spot just yesterday morning.
For the soul of Mary Beth McConnell, wherever it might be.
For herself too.
More noise in the brush. Snapping, rustling.
The day was lighter now but the sun didn't do much to brighten up
Blackwater Landing. The river was deep here and fringed with messy black willows and thick trunks of cedar and cypress some living, some not, and all choked with moss and viney kudzu. To the northeast,
not far, was the Great Dismal Swamp, and Lydia Johansson, like every Girl Scout past and present in Paquenoke County, knew all the legends about that place: the Lady of the Lake, the Headless Trainman. .
. . But it wasn't those apparitions that bothered her; Blackwater Landing had its own ghost the boy who'd kidnapped Mary Beth McConnell.
Lydia couldn't stop thinking about all
the stories she'd heard about him. How he'd roam silently through the marshes and woods here, pale and skinny as a reed. How he'd sneak up on lovers lying on blankets or parked along the river. How he'd
slip into the side yard of some house along Canal Road and ease up to a girl's window after she'd gone to sleep. Peer in at her, rubbing his hands like a white-faced Carolina mantis, stare until he
couldn't stand it anymore then reach through a hole he'd cut in the screen to snake a hand up inside her pajamas. Or just crouch on the shoulder of the road in front of a house in Blackwater Landing and
look through the windows, hoping to catch of glimpse of a girl he'd been stalking after school.
Lydia opened her purse, found a package of Merits and lit a cigarette with shaking
hands. Felt a bit calmer. She strolled along the shore. Stopped beside a stand of tall grass and cattails, which bent in the scorching breeze.
On top of the hill she heard a car
engine. Jesse wasn't leaving, was he? Lydia looked toward it, alarmed. But saw the car hadn't moved. Just getting the air conditioning going, she supposed. When she looked back toward the water she
noticed the sedge and cattails and wild rice plants were still bending, waving, rustling.
As if someone was there, moving closer to the yellow tape, staying low to the ground.
But no, no, of course that wasn't the case. It's just the wind, she told herself. And she reverently set the flowers in the crook of a gnarly black willow not far from the eerie
outline of the sprawled body, spattered with blood dark as the river water.
* * *
Deputy Ed Schaeffer leaned against an oak tree and ignored the early morning mosquitos fluttering near his arms in his short-sleeved uniform shirt. He shrank down to a crouch and scanned the floor of the
woods again.
He had to steady himself against a branch; he was dizzy from exhaustion. Like most of the deputies in the department he'd been awake for nearly twenty-four hours,
searching for Mary Beth McConnell and the boy who'd her kidnapper her. But while, while by one, the others had gone home to shower and eat and get a few hours' sleep, Ed had stayed with 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 unuseful weight) but fatigue, hunger and stiff joints weren't going to stop him from
continuing to look for the girl.
The deputy examined the ground again.
He pushed the transmit button of his radio. "Jesse, it's me. You there?"
"Go ahead."
He whispered, "I got footprints here. They're fresh."
"Do you? Him, you think?"
"Who else'd it be? This time of morning, this side of the Paquo?"
"You were right, looks like," Jesse Corn said. "I didn't believe you at first but you hit this
one on the head."
It had been Ed's theory that the boy would come back here. Not because of the clichι about returning to the scene of the crime but because Blackwater Landing
had always been his stalking ground and whatever kind of trouble he'd gotten himself into over the years he always came back here.
He said. "The trail looks to be moving toward
you but I can't tell for sure. He was walking mostly on leaves. You keep an eye out. I'm going to see where he was coming from."
Knees creaking from his bulk, Ed rose to his feet
and, as quietly as he could, followed the footsteps back in the direction they'd come further into the woods, away from the river.
He followed the boy's trail about a hundred
feet and saw they led to an old hunting blind a gray shack big enough for three or four hunters. The gun slots were dark and the place seemed to be deserted. Okay, he thought. He's probably not in
there. But still...
Breathing hard, Ed Schaeffer did something he hadn't done in nearly a year and half: unholstered his weapon. He gripped the revolver in a sweaty hand and
started forward, eyes flipping back and forth dizzily between the blind and where best to step to keep his approach silent.
Did the boy have a gun? he wondered as he realized
that he was as exposed as a soldier landing on a bald beachhead. Imagining a rifle barrel appearing fast in one of the slots, aiming down on him, Ed felt an ill flush of panic and he sprinted, in a
crouch, the last ten feet to the side of the shack. He pressed against the weathered wood as he caught his breath and listened carefully. He heard nothing inside but the faint buzzing of insects.
Okay, he told himself. Take a look. Fast.
Before his courage broke Ed rose and looked through a gun slot.
No one.
Then he squinted and looked at the floor. His face broke into a smile at what he saw. "Jesse," he called into his microphone excitedly.
"Go ahead."
"I'm at a blind maybe a quarter mile north of the river. I think the kid spent the night. There's some empty food wrappers and water bottles. A roll of duct tape too. And guess what? I see a map."
"A map?"
"Yeah. Looks to be of the area. Bet it show us where he's got Mary Beth. What do you think about that?"
But Ed Schaeffer never
found out his fellow deputy's reaction to this good piece of police work; the woman's screaming filled the woods and Jesse Corn's radio went silent.
* * *
Lydia Johansson stumbled backward and screamed again as the boy leapt from the tall sedge and grabbed her arms with his pinching fingers.
"Oh, Jesus Lord, please don't hurt me!" she begged.
"Shut up," he raged in a whisper, looking around, jerking movements, malice in his eyes. He was tall and
skinny, like most sixteen-year-olds in small Carolina towns, and very strong. His skin was red and welty from a run-in with poison oak, it looked like and he had a sloppy crewcut that looked like
he'd done it himself.
"I just brought flowers . . . that's all! I didn't"
"Shhhh," he muttered.
But his long, dirty nails dug into
her skin painfully and Lydia gave another scream. He clamped a hand over her mouth. She felt him press against her body, smelled his sour, unwashed odor.
She twisted her head away.
"Don't hurt me!" she said in a wail. "Please . . ."
"Just shut up!" His voice snapped like ice-coated branches tapping, and flecks of spit dotted her round face. He shook her
furiously as if she were a disobedient dog. Instinctively she tried to jerk herself free. He wrestled her into the hot grass and she smelled methane and rotten vegetation. He lost a shoe in the struggle
but he paid no attention to his one bare foot and pressed his hand over her mouth again until she stopped fighting.
From the top of the hill Jesse Corn called, "Lydia? Where are you?"
"Shhhhh," the boy warned again, eyes wide and crazy. "Come on, we're getting outa here. You
scream and you'll get hurt bad. You understand? Do you understand?" He reached into his pocket and showed her a knife.
She nodded.
He pulled her toward the river.
Oh, not there. Please, no, she thought to her guardian angel. Don't let him take me there.
North of the Paquo . . . .
Lydia glanced back and saw Jesse Corn standing by the roadside, hand shading his eyes from the low sun, surveying the landscape. "Lydia?" he called.
The boy pulled her faster. "Jesus Christ, come on!"
"Hey!" Jesse cried, seeing them at last. He started down the hill.
But they were
already at the riverbank, where the boy'd hidden a small skiff under some reeds and grass. He shoved Lydia into the boat and pushed off, rowing hard to the far side of the river. He beached the boat and
yanked her out. Then dragged her into the woods, where he found a path in the underbrush.
"Where're we going?" she whispered.
"To see Mary Beth. You're going to be with her."
"Why? What did I do?" Lydia whispered, sobbing now.
But he said nothing more, just
clicked his nails together absently and pulled her after him into the woods.
* * *
"Ed," came Jesse Corn's urgent transmission. "Oh, it's a mess. He's got Lydia. I lost him."
"He's what?" Ed Schaeffer stopped. He'd started jogging back toward the river when
he'd heard the scream.
"Lydia Johansson. He's got her too."
"Shit," muttered the heavy deputy, who cursed about as frequently as he drew his sidearm. "Why'd
he do that?"
"He's crazy," Jesse said. "That's why. He's over the river and'll be headed your way."
"Okay." Ed thought for a moment. "He'll probably be
coming back here to get the stuff in the blind. I'll hide inside, get him when he comes in. He have a gun?"
"I couldn't see."
He sighed. "Okay, well . . . .
Get over here as soon as you can. Call Jim too."
"I'll do it."
Ed released the red transmit button and looked through the brush toward the river. There was
no sign of the boy and his new victim. Panting, he ran back to the blind and found the door. He kicked it open. It swung inward with a crash and Ed stepped inside fast.
He was so
high on fear and excitement, concentrating so hard on what he was going to do when the boy got here, that he didn't at first pay any attention to the little black-and-yellow dots that zipped in front of
his face. Or to the tickle that began at his neck and worked down his spine.
But then the tickling became detonations of fiery pain on his shoulders then along his arms and under
them.
"Oh, God," he cried, gasping, leaping up and staring in shock at the dozens of yellow jackets clustering on his skin. He brushed at them in a panic but the gesture infuriated
the insects even more. They stung his wrist, his palm, his fingertips. He screamed. The pain was worse than any he'd felt, worse than the broken leg, worst than the time he'd picked up the cast-iron
skillet not knowing Jean had left the burner on for a half hour under it.
Then the inside of the blind grew dim as the cloud of hornets swarmed from the huge, gray nest in the
corner which had been crushed by the swinging door when he kicked it in. Easily hundreds of the creatures were attacking him. They zipped into his hair, seated themselves on his arms, in his ears,
crawled into his shirt and up his pants leg, as if they knew that stinging on cloth was futile and sought his skin. He raced for the door, ripping his shirt off, and saw with horror masses of the glossy
crescents clinging to his huge belly and chest. He gave up trying to brush them off and simply ran mindlessly.
"Jesse, Jesse, Jesse!" he cried but realized his voice was a whisper;
the stinging on his neck had closed up his throat. Run! he told himself. Run for the river.
And he did. Speeding faster than he'd ever run in his life, crashing through the
forest. His legs pumping furiously. Go... Keep going, he ordered himself. Don't stop. Outrun the little bastards. Think about your wife, think about the twins. Go, go, go... There were fewer wasps now
though he could still see thirty or forty of the black dots clinging to his skin, the obscene hindquarters bending forward to sting him again.
I'll be at the river in three
minutes. Fall into the water, escape from the pain, escape from the fire. They'll drown. You'll be all right.
He ran like a race horse, ran like a deer, speeding through the
underbrush that was just a hazy blur.
He'd
Wait, wait. What was wrong? Ed Schaeffer looked down and realized almost with amusement that he wasn't
running at all. He wasn't even standing up. He was lying on the ground only about thirty feet from the blind, his legs not sprinting but twitching uncontrollably.
His hand groped
for his radio and even though it was swollen double he managed to push the transmit button. But then the convulsions moved from his legs into his torso and neck and arms and he dropped the mike. For a
moment he listened to Jesse Corn's voice in the speaker, and when that stopped he listened to the pulsing drone of the wasps, which finally became a tiny thread of sound and then silence.
* * *
Only God could cure him. And God wasn't so inclined.
Not that it mattered, for Lincoln Rhyme was a man of science rather than theology and so he'd traveled not to Lourdes or Turin
or to some Baptist tent outfitted with a manic faith healer but here, to this hospital in North Carolina, in hopes of becoming if not a whole man at least less of a partial one.
Rhyme now steered his motorized Storm Arrow wheelchair, red as a Corvette, off the ramp of the van in which he, his aide and Amelia Sachs had just driven five hundred miles from Manhattan. His perfect
lips around the controller straw, he turned the chair expertly and accelerated up the sidewalk toward the front door of the Neurologic Research Institute at the Medical Center of the University of North
Carolina in Avery.
Thom retracted the ramp of the glossy black Chrysler Grand Rollx, a wheelchair-accessible van.
"Put it in a handicapped space," Rhyme called. He gave a chuckle.
Amelia Sachs lifted an eyebrow to Thom, who said, "Good mood. Take advantage.
It won't last."
"I heard that," Rhyme shouted.
The aide drove off and Sachs caught up with Rhyme. She was on her cell phone, on hold with a
local car rental company. Thom would be spending much of the next week in Rhyme's hospital room and Sachs wanted the freedom to keep her own hours, maybe do some exploring in the region. Besides, she was
a sports-car person, not a van person, and on principle shunned vehicles whose top speed was two digits.
Sachs had been on hold for five minutes and finally she hung up in
frustration. "I wouldn't mind waiting but the Muzak is terrible. I'll try later." She looked at her watch. "Only ten-thirty. But this heat is too much. I mean, way too much."
Manhattan is not necessarily the most temperate of locales in August but it's much farther north than the Tar Heel State, and when they'd left the city yesterday, southbound via the Holland Tunnel, the
temperature was in the low seventies and the air was dry as salt.
Rhyme wasn't paying any attention to the heat. His mind was solely on his mission here. Ahead of them the
automated door swung open obediently (this would be, he assumed, the Tiffany's of handicapped -accessible facilities) and they moved into the cool corridor. While Sachs asked directions Rhyme looked
around the main floor. He noticed a half-dozen unoccupied wheelchairs clustered together, dusty. He wondered what had become of the occupants. Maybe the treatment here had been so successful that they'd
discarded the chairs and graduated to walkers and crutches. Maybe some had grown worse and were confined to beds or motorized chairs.
Maybe some had died.
"This way," Sachs said, nodding up the hall. Thom joined them at the elevator (doublewide door, handrails, buttons three feet off the floor) and a few minutes later they found the suite they
sought. Rhyme wheeled up to the door, noticed the handsfree intercom. He said a boisterous "Open, sesame" and the door swung wide.
"We get that a lot," drawled
the pert secretary when they'd entered. "You must be Mr. Rhyme. I'll tell the doctor you're here."
Dr. Cheryl Weaver was a trim, stylish woman in her mid-forties. Rhyme
noticed immediately that her eyes were quick and her hands, as befitted a surgeon, seemed strong. Her nails were polish-free and short. She rose from her desk, smiled and shook Sachs's and Thom's hands,
nodded to her patient. "Lincoln."
"Doctor." Rhyme's eyes took in the titles of the many books on her shelves. Then the myriad certificates and diplomas all
from good schools and renowned institutions, though her credentials were no surprise to him. Months of research had convinced Rhyme that the University Medical Center in Avery was one of the best
hospitals in the world. Its oncology and immunology departments were among the busiest in the country and Dr. Weaver's neuro institute set the standard for spinal cord injury research and treatment.
"It's good to meet you at last," the doctor said. Under her hand was a three-inch-thick manila folder. Rhyme's own, the criminalist assumed. (Wondering what the keeper of
the file had entered under the prognosis heading: "Encouraging"? "Poor"? "Hopeless"?) "Lincoln, you and I've had some conversations on the phone. But I want to go
through the preliminaries again. For both our sakes."
Rhyme nodded curtly. He was prepared to tolerate some formality though he had little patience for ass-covering. Which is
what this was starting to sound like.
"You've read the literature about the Institute. And you know we're starting some trials of a new spinal cord regeneration and
reconstruction technique. But I have to stress again that this is experimental."
"I understand that."
"Most of the quads I've
treated know more neurology than a general practitioner. And I'll bet you're no exception."
"Know something about science," Rhyme said dismissively. "Know
something about medicine." And he offered her an example of his trademark shrug, a gesture Dr. Weaver seemed to notice and file away.
She continued, "Well, forgive me if
I repeat what you already know but it's important for you to understand what this technique can do and what it can't do."
"Please," Rhyme said. "Go on."
"Our approach at the Institute here is an all-out assault on the site of the injury. We use traditional decompression surgery to reconstruct the bony structure of the
vertebrae themselves and to protect the site where your injury occurred. Then we graft two things into the site of the injury: One is some of the patient's own peripheral nervous system tissue. And the
other substance we graft is some embryonic central nervous system cells, which "
"Ah, the shark," Rhyme said.
"That's right. Blue shark, yes."
"Lincoln was telling us that," Sachs said. "Why shark?"
"Immunologic reasons, compatibility with humans. Also," the doctor added, laughing, "it's a damn big fish so we can get a lot of embryo material from one."
"Why embryo?" Sachs asked.
"It's the adult central nervous system that doesn't naturally regenerate," Rhyme grumbled, impatient with the interruption. "Obviously, a baby's nervous system has to grow."
"Exactly. Then, in addition to the decompression surgery and micrografting, we do one more thing which is what we're so excited about: We've developed some new drugs that
we think might have a significant effect on improving regeneration."
Sachs asked, "Are there risks?"
Rhyme glanced at her, hoping to catch her eye. He knew the risks. He'd made his decision. He didn't want her interrogating his doctor. But Sachs's attention was wholly on Dr. Weaver. Rhyme recognized her expression; it was how she examined a crime scene photo.
"Of course there are risks. The drugs themselves aren't particularly dangerous. But any C4 quad is going to have lung impairment. You're off a ventilator but with the
anesthetic there's a chance of respiratory failure. Then the stress of the procedure could lead to autonomic dysreflexia and resulting severe blood pressure elevation I'm sure you're familiar with that
which in turn could lead to a stroke or a cerebral event. There's also a risk of surgical trauma to the site of your initial injury you don't have any cysts now and no shunts but the operation and
resulting fluid buildup could increase that pressure and cause additional damage."
"Meaning he could get worse," Sachs said.
Dr. Weaver
nodded and looked down at the file, apparently to refresh her memory, though she didn't open the folder. She looked up. "You have movement of one lumbrical the ring finger of your left hand and
good shoulder and neck muscle control. You could lose some or all of that. And lose your ability to breathe spontaneously."
Sachs remained perfectly still. "I see,"
she said finally, the words coming out as a taut sigh.
The doctor's eyes were locked on Rhyme's. "And you have to weigh these risks in light of what you hope to gain you
aren't going to be able to walk again, if that's what you were hoping for. Procedures of this sort have had some limited success with spinal cord injuries at the lumbar and thoracic level much lower
and much less severe than your injury. It's had only marginal success with cervical injuries and none at all with a C4-level trauma."
"I'm a gambling man," he said
quickly. Sachs gave him a troubled glance. Because she'd know that Lincoln Rhyme wasn't a gambling man at all. He was a scientist who lived his life according to quantifiable, documented principles. He
added simply, "I want the surgery."
Dr. Weaver nodded and seemed neither pleased nor displeased about his decision. "You'll need to have several tests that should
take several hours. The procedure's scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I have about a thousand forms and questionnaires for you. I'll be right back with the paperwork."
Sachs rose and followed the doctor out of the room. Rhyme heard her asking, "Doctor, I have a..." The door clicked shut.
"Conspiracy," Rhyme muttered to Thom. "Mutiny in the ranks."
"She's worried about you."
"Worried?
That woman drives a hundred fifty miles an hour and plays gunslinger in the South Bronx. I'm getting baby fish cells injected into me."
"You know what I'm saying."
Rhyme tossed his head impatiently. His eyes strayed to a corner of Dr. Weaver's office, where a spinal cord presumably real rested on a metal stand. It seemed far too fragile
to support the complicated human life that had once hung upon it.
The door opened. Sachs stepped into the office. Someone entered behind her but it wasn't Dr. Weaver. The man was
tall, trim except for a slight paunch, and wearing a county sheriff's tan uniform. Unsmiling, Sachs said, "You've got a visitor."
Seeing Rhyme, the man took off his
Smokey the Bear hat and nodded. His eyes darted not to Rhyme's body, as did most people's upon meeting him, but went immediately to the spine on the stand behind the doctor's desk. Back to the
criminalist. "Mr. Rhyme. I'm Jim Bell. Roland Bell's cousin? He told me you were going to be in town and I drove over from Tanner's Corner."
Roland was on the NYPD and
had worked with Rhyme on several cases. He was currently a partner of Lon Sellitto, a detective Rhyme had known for years. Roland had given Rhyme the names of some of his relatives to call when he was
down in North Carolina for the operation in case he wanted some visitors. Jim Bell was one of them, Rhyme recalled. Looking past the sheriff toward the doorway through which his angel of mercy, Dr.
Weaver, had yet to return, the criminalist said absently, "Nice to meet you."
Bell gave a grim smile. He said, "Matter of fact, sir, I don't know you're going to be
feeling that way for too long."
Copyright © 2000 by Jeffery Deaver
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