The Empty Chair (Lincoln Rhyme 3)

She listened carefully but heard no more shots. Heard nothing other than the wind. And the cicadas, of course.

They live this totally weird life.... The nymphs dig into the ground and stay there for, like, twenty years before they hatch. ... All those years in the ground, just hiding, before they come out and become adults.

But soon her mind was occupied once again with what she'd been considering before the gunshots interrupted her thoughts.

Amelia Sachs had been thinking of an empty chair.

Not Dr. Penny's therapy technique. Or what Garrett had told her about his father and that terrible night five years ago. No, she was thinking of a different chair--Lincoln Rhyme's red Storm Arrow wheelchair.

That's what they were doing down here in North Carolina, after all. Rhyme was risking everything, his life, what was left of his health, his and Sachs's life together, so that he could move closer to climbing out of that chair. Leaving it behind him, empty.

And, lying here in this foul trailer, a felon, alone in her own knuckle time, Amelia Sachs finally admitted to herself what had troubled her so about Rhyme's insistence on the operation. Of course, she was worried that he'd die on the table. Or that the operation would make him worse. Or that it wouldn't work at all and he'd be plunged into depression.

But those weren't her main fears. That wasn't why she'd done everything she could to stop him from having the operation. No, no--what scared her the most was that the operation would succeed.

Oh, Rhyme, don't you understand? I don't want you to change. I love you the way you are. If you were like everyone else what would happen to us?

You say, "It'll always be you and me, Sachs." But the you and me is based on who we are now. Me and my bloody nails and my itchy need to move, move, move... You and your damaged body and elegant mind that roams faster and further than I ever could in my stripped and rigged Camaro.

That mind of yours that holds me tighter than the most passionate lover ever could.

And if you become normal again? When you're your own arms and legs, Rhyme, then why would you want me? Why would you need me? I'd become just another portable, a beat cop with some talent for forensics. You'll meet another one of the treacherous women who've derailed your life in the past--another selfish wife, another married lover--and you'll fade away from me the way Lucy Kerr's husband left after her surgery.

I want you the way you are...

She actually shuddered at how appallingly selfish this thought was. Yet she couldn't deny it.

Stay in your chair, Rhyme! I don't want it empty.... I want a life with you, a life the way it's always been. I want children with you, children who'll grow up to know you exactly the way you are.

Amelia Sachs found she was staring at the black ceiling. She closed her eyes. But it was an hour later before the sound of the wind and the cicadas, their thoracic plates singing like monotonous violins, finally seduced her to sleep.

... chapter thirty-three

Sachs woke just after dawn to the droning noise--which in her dream had been placid locusts but turned out to be her Casio wristwatch's alarm. She clicked it off.

Her body was in agony, an arthritic's response to sleeping on a thin pad over a riveted, metal floor.

But she felt oddly buoyant. Low sunlight streamed through the windows

of the trailer and she took this as a good omen. Today they were going to find Mary Beth McConnell and return to Tanner's Corner with her. She'd confirm Garrett's story and Jim Bell and Lucy Kerr could start the search for the real killer--the man in the tan overalls.

She watched Garrett awaken in the bedroom and roll upright on the saggy mattress. With his lengthy fingers he combed his mussed hair into place. He looks just like any other teenager in the morning, she thought. Gangly and cute and sleepy. About to get dressed, about to take the bus to school and see his friends, to learn things in class, to flirt with girls, toss footballs. Watching him look around groggily for his shirt, she noticed his skinny frame and worried about getting him some good food--cereal, milk, fruit--and washing his clothes, making sure he took a shower. This, she thought, is what it would be like to have children of your own. Not to borrow youngsters from friends for a few hours--like her goddaughter, Amy's girl. But to be there every day when they wake up, with their messy rooms and difficult adolescent attitudes, to fix them meals, to buy them clothes, to argue with them, to take care of them. To be the hub of their lives.

"Morning." She smiled.

He smiled back. "We gotta go," he said. "Gotta get to Mary Beth. Been away from her for too long. She's got to be totally scared and thirsty."

Sachs climbed unsteadily to her feet.

He glanced at his chest, at the poison oak splotches, and seemed embarrassed. He pulled his shin on quickly. "I'm going outside. Have to, you know, take care of business. And I'm gonna leave a couple of empty hornets' nests around. Might slow 'em up--if they come this way." Garrett stepped outside but returned just a moment later. He left a cup of water on the table beside her. Said shyly: "This's for you." He stepped out again.

She drank it down. Longing for a toothbrush and time for a shower. Maybe when they got to--

"It's him!" a man's voice called in a whisper.

Sachs froze, looked out the window. She saw nothing. But from a tall stand of bushes near the trailer the forced whisper continued, "I've got him in my sights. I've got a clear shot."

The voice was familiar and she decided it sounded like Culbeau's friend, Sean O'Sarian. The skinny one. The redneck trio had found them--they were going to kill the boy or torture him into telling where Mary Beth was so they could get the reward.