The Empty Chair (Lincoln Rhyme 3)

He was real!

Mary Beth grabbed one of Garrett's jars, which held a dinosaur-like beetle, and slammed it against the window. The jar crashed through the glass and shattered on the iron bars outside.

"Help me!" she screamed in a voice barely audible because of her sand-dry throat. "Help!"

A hundred yards away the man paused. Looked around.

"Please! Help me!" A long wail.

He looked behind him. Then into the woods.

She took a deep breath and tried to call again but her throat seized. She started choking, spit some blood.

And across the field the Missionary kept on walking into the woods. He disappeared from view a moment later.

Mary Beth sat heavily in the musty couch and leaned her head hopelessly against the wall. She glanced up suddenly; some motion had caught her eye again. It was nearby--in the cabin. The beetle in the jar--the miniature triceratops--had survived the trauma of losing his home. Mary Beth watched him troop doggedly up a summit of broken glass, open one set of wings, then spread a second set, which fluttered invisibly and lifted him off the windowsill to freedom.

... chapter seventeen

"We've caught him," Rhyme said to Jim Bell and his brother-in-law, Deputy Steve Farr. "Amelia and me. That was the bargain. Now we have to get back to Avery."

"Well, Lincoln," Bell began delicately, "it's just that Garrett's not talking. He's not telling us anything about where Mary Beth is."

Ben Kerr stood nearby uncertainly, beside the glowing mountain range on the computer screen connected to the chromatograph. His initial hesitancy had vanished and he now seemed to regret the end of his assignment. Amelia Sachs was in the lab too. Mason Germain wasn't, which was just as well--Rhyme was furious that he'd endangered Sachs's life with the sniping at the mill. Bell had angrily ordered the deputy to stay out of the case for the time being.

"I appreciate that," Rhyme said dismissively, responding to Bell's implicit request for more help. "But it's not that she's in immediate danger." Lydia had reported that Mary Beth was alive and had told them the general location where she was being held. A concentrated search of the Outer Banks would probably find her within several days. And Rhyme was now ready for the operation. He clung, of all things, to a bizarre good-luck charm--the memory of Henry Davett's gruff 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."