The Empty Chair

She’ll end up with somebody who’s handsome and smart. But maybe we could be friends, her and me. But even if not, all I really care about is she’s okay. She’ll stay with me till it’s safe. Or you and your friend, that man in the wheelchair everybody was talking about, you can help her go someplace where she’d be safe.” He looked out the window and fell silent.
    “Safe from the man in the overalls?” she asked.
    He didn’t answer for a moment then nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”
    “I’m going to get some of that water,” Sachs said.
    “Wait,” he said. He tore some dry leaves off a small branch resting on the kitchen counter, told her to rub her bare arms and neck and cheeks with it. It gave off a strong herbal smell. “Citronella plant,” he explained. “Keeps the mosquitoes away. You won’t have to swat ’em anymore.”
    Sachs picked up the cup. She went outside, looked atthe rainwater barrel. It was covered with a fine screen. Lifted it, filled the cup and drank. The water seemed sweet. She listened to the creaks and zips of the insects.
    Or you and your friend, that man in the wheelchair everybody was talking about, you can help her go someplace where she’d be safe.
    The phrase echoed in her head: The man in the wheelchair, the man in the wheelchair.
    She returned to the trailer. Set down the cup. Looked around the tiny living room. “Garrett, would you do me a favor?”
    “I guess.”
    “You trust me?”
    “I guess.”
    “Go sit over there.”
    He looked at her for a moment then stood and walked to the old armchair she was nodding at. Sachs walked across the tiny room and picked up one of the rattan chairs in the corner. She carried it to where the boy sat and placed it on the floor, facing him.
    “Garrett, you remember what Dr. Penny was telling you to do in jail? About the empty chair?”
    “Talk to the chair?” he asked, eyeing it uncertainly. He nodded. “That game.”
    “That’s right. I want you to do it again. Will you?”
    He hesitated, wiped his hands on the legs of his pants. Stared at the chair for a moment. Finally he said, “I guess.”

. . . chapter thirty-one
    Amelia Sachs was thinking back to the interrogation room and the session with the psychologist.
    From her vantage point Sachs had watched the boy closely through the one-way mirror. She remembered how the doctor had tried to get him to imagine that Mary Beth was in the chair but that, while Garrett hadn’t wanted to say anything to her, he did want to talk to somebody. She’d seen a look in his face, a longing, disappointment—and anger too, she believed—when the doctor turned him away from where he wanted to go.
    Oh, Rhyme, I understand that you like hard, cold evidence. That we can’t depend on those “soft” things—on words and expressions and tears and the look in someone’s eyes as we sit across from them and listen to their stories. . . . But that doesn’t mean those stories are always false. I believe there’s more to Garrett Hanlon than the evidence tells us.
    “Look at the chair,” she said. “Who do you want to imagine sitting there?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    She pushed the chair closer. Smiled to encourage him. “Tell me. It’s okay. A girl? Somebody at school?”
    He shook his head once more.
    “Tell me.”
    “Well, I don’t know. Maybe . . .” After a pause he blurted: “Maybe my father.”
    Sachs remembered, with irritation, the cold eyes and crude manners of Hal Babbage. She supposed that Garrett would have a lot to say to him.
    “Just your father? Or both him and Mrs. Babbage?”
    “No, no, not him. I mean, my real father.”
    “Your real father?”
    Garrett nodded. He was agitated, nervous. Clicking his nails frequently.
    Insects’ antennas show their moods . . .
    Looking at his troubled face, Sachs realized with concern that she had no idea what she was doing. There were surely all sorts of things psychologists did to draw patients out, to guide them, to protect them when they practiced any type of therapy. Was there a chance that she would make Garrett worse? Push him over a line so that he actually would do something violent and hurt himself or someone else? Nonetheless, she was going to try it. Sachs’s nickname in the New York City Police Department was P.D.—for “the portable’s daughter,” the child of a beat patrolman—and she definitely took after her old man: his love of cars, love of police work,