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Sachs spun around and saw Mason Germain, his gun pointed at the shocked young man's crew-cut head, his round ears crimson. Farr crouched and set the gun on the floor. Mason hurried forward and cuffed him.
Footsteps sounded from outside, leaves rustled. Dizzy from the heat and the adrenaline, Sachs turned back to the field and saw a lean black man climbing out of the bushes, holstering a big Browning automatic pistol.
"Fred!" she cried.
FBI agent Fred Dellray, sweating furiously in his black suit, walked up to her, brushing petulantly at his sleeve. "Hey, A-melia. My, it is too too too hot down here. I don't like this town one tiny bit. And look at this suit. It's all, I don't know, dusty or something. What is this shit, pollen? We don't have this stuff in Manhattan. Look at this sleeve!"
"What're you doing here?" she asked, dumbfounded.
"Whatcha think? Lincoln wasn't sure who he could trust and who he couldn't so he had me fly down and hooked me up with Deputy Germain here to keep an eye on you. Figured he needed some help, seeing as how he couldn't trust Jim Bell or his kin."
"Bell?" she whispered.
"Lincoln thinks he put this whole thing together. He's finding out for sure right now. But looks like he was right, that being his brother-in-law." Dellray nodded at Steve Farr.
"He almost got me," Sachs said.
The lean agent chuckled. "You weren't in a single, solitary lick of danger, no way. I had a bead on that fellow right 'tween his big ears from the second the back door opened. He'd so much as squinted out a target at you he'da been way, way gone."
Dellray noticed Mason studying him suspiciously. The agent laughed, said to Sachs, "Our friend in the con-stabulary here don't like my kind much, He told me so."
"Wait," Mason protested. "I only meant--"
"You meant federal agents, I'm betting," Dellray said.
The deputy shook his head, said gruffly, "I meant Northerners."
"True, he doesn't," Sachs confirmed.
Sachs and Dellray laughed. But Mason remained solemn. But it wasn't cultural differences that made him somber. He said to Sachs, "Sorry, but I'll have to take you back to the cell. You're still under arrest."
Her smile faded, and Sachs looked once more at the sun dancing over the scruffy yellow grass. She inhaled the scorching air of the out-of-doors once, then again. Finally she turned and walked back into the dim lockup.
... chapter forty-three
"You killed Billy, didn't you?" Rhyme asked Jim Bell.
But the sheriff said nothing.
The criminalist continued, "The crime scene was unprotected for an hour and a half. And, sure, Mason was the first officer. But you got there before he arrived. You never got a call from Billy saying that Mary Beth was dead and you started to worry so you drove over to Blackwater Landing and found her gone and Billy hurt. Billy told you about Garrett getting away with the girl. Then you put the latex gloves on, picked up the shovel and killed him."
Finally the sheriff's anger broke through his facade. "Why did you suspect me?"
"Originally I did think it was Mason--only the three of us and Ben knew about the moonshiners' cabin. I assumed he called Culbeau and sent him there. But I asked Lucy and it turned out that Mason called her and sent her to the cabin--just to make sure Amelia and Garrett didn't get away again. Then I got to thinking and I realized that at the mill Mason tried to shoot Garrett. Anybody in on the conspiracy would want to keep him alive--like you did--so he could lead you to Mary Beth. I checked into Mason's finances and found out he's got a cheap house and is in serious hock to MasterCard and Visa. Nobody was paying him off. Unlike you and your brother-in-law, Bell. You've got a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house and plenty of cash in the bank. And Steve Farr's got a house worth three ninety and a boat that cost a hundred eighty thousand. We're getting court orders to take a peek in your safe-deposit boxes. Wonder how much we'll find there."
Rhyme continued. "I was a little curious why Mason was so eager to nail Garrett but he had a good reason for that. He told me he was pretty upset when you got the job of sheriff--couldn't quite figure out why since he had a better record and more seniority. He thought that if he could collar the Insect Boy the Board of Supervisors'd be sure to appoint him sheriff when your term expired."
"All your fucking playacting...." Bell muttered. "I thought you only believed in evidence."
Rhyme rarely sparred verbally with his quarry. Banter was useless except as a balm for the soul and Lincoln Rhyme had yet to uncover any hard evidence on the whereabouts and nature of the soul. Still, he told Bell, "I would've preferred evidence. But sometimes you have to improvise. I'm really not the prima donna everybody thinks I am."
The Storm Arrow wheelchair wouldn't fit into Amelia Sachs's cell.
"Not crip accessible?" Rhyme groused. "That's an A.D.A. violation."
She thought his bluster was for her benefit, letting her see his famil
iar moods. But she said nothing.
