The Empty Chair (Lincoln Rhyme 3)

Mason pushed the door open slowly, revealing a pink room bathed in orange, afternoon sunlight. It was painfully hot inside. He couldn't imagine that the occupant of the room liked it this way so he assumed that the man sitting at the table was either too lazy to turn on the air conditioner o

r too stupid to figure out how it worked. Which made Mason all the more suspicious of him.

The African American, lean and with particularly dark skin, wore a wrinkled black suit, which looked completely out of place in Tanner's Corner. Draw attention to yourself, why don't you? Mason thought contemptuously. Malcolm Goddamn X.

"You'd be Germain?" the man asked.

"Yeah."

The man's feet were on the chair across from him and when he withdrew his hand from under a copy of the Charlotte Observer his long fingers were holding a long automatic pistol.

"That answers one of my questions," Mason said. "Whether you got a gun or not."

"What's the other?" the man in the suit asked.

"Whether you know how to use it."

The man said nothing but carefully marked his place in a newspaper story with a stubby pencil. He looked like a third-grader struggling with the alphabet.

Mason studied him again, not saying a word, then felt an infuriating trickle of sweat running down his face. Without asking the man if it was all right Mason walked to the bathroom, snagged a towel and wiped his face with it, dropped it on the bathroom floor.

The man gave a laugh, as irritating as the bead of sweat had been, and said, "I'm gettin' the distinct impression you don't much like my kind."

"No, I guess I don't," Mason answered. "But if you know what you're doing, what I like and what I don't aren't important."

"That's completely right," the black man said coolly. "So, talk to me. I don't want to be here any longer than I have to."

Mason said, "Here's the way it's shaking out. Rhyme's talking to Jim Bell right now over in the County Building. And that Amelia Sachs, she's in the lockup up the street."

"Where should we go first?"

Without hesitating Mason said, "The woman."

"Then that's what we'll do," the man said as if it were his idea. He slipped the gun away, placed the newspaper on the dresser and, with a politeness that Mason believed was more mockery than anything else, said, "After yourself." And gestured toward the door.

"The bodies of the Hanlons?" Jim Bell asked Rhyme. "Where are they?"

"Over there," Rhyme said. Nodding to a pile of the bones that had been in Mary Beth's backpack. "Those're what Mary Beth found at Blackwater Landing," the criminalist said. "She thought they were the bones of the survivors of the Lost Colony. But I had to break the news to her that they're not that old. They looked decayed but that's just because they were partially burned. I've done a lot of work in forensic anthropology and I knew right away they've been in the ground only about five years--which is just how long ago Garrett's folks were killed. They're the bones of a man in his late thirties, a woman about the same age who'd borne children and a girl about ten. That describes Garrett's family perfectly."

Bell looked at them. "I don't get it."

"Garrett's family's property was right across Route 112 from the river in Blackwater Landing. Mason and Culbeau poisoned the family then burned and buried the bodies and pushed their car into the water. Davett bribed the coroner to fake the death report and paid off somebody at the funeral home to pretend to cremate the remains. The graves're empty, I guarantee. Mary Beth must've mentioned finding the bones to somebody and word got back to Mason. He paid Billy Stail to go to Blackwater Landing to kill her and steal the evidence--the bones."

"What? Billy?"

"Except that Garrett happened to be there, keeping an eye on Mary Beth. He was right, you know: Blackwater Landing is a dangerous place. People did die there--those other cases in the last few years. Only it wasn't Garrett who killed them. It was Mason and Culbeau. They were murdered because they'd gotten sick from the toxaphene and started asking questions about why. Everybody in town knew about the Insect Boy so Mason or Culbeau killed that one girl--Meg Blanchard--with the hornets' nest to make it look like he was the killer. The others they hit over the head and pitched into the canal to drown. People who didn't question getting sick--like Mary Beth's father and Lucy Kerr--they didn't bother with."

"But Garrett's fingerprints were on the shovel ... the murder weapon."

"Ah, the shovel," Rhyme mused. "Something very interesting about that shovel. I stumbled again.... There were only two sets of fingerprints on it."

"Right, Billy's and Garrett's."

"But where were Mary Beth's?" Rhyme asked.

Bell's eyes narrowed. He nodded. "Right. There were none of hers."

"Because it wasn't her shovel. Mason gave it to Billy to take to Blackwater Landing--after wiping his own prints off it, of course. I asked Mary Beth about it. She said that Billy came out of the bushes carrying it. Mason figured it would be the perfect murder weapon--because as an archaeologist Mary Beth'd probably have a shovel with her. Well, Billy gets to Blackwater Landing and sees Garrett with her. He figures he'll kill the Insect Boy too. But Garrett got the shovel away and hit Billy. He thought he killed him. But he didn't."