The Empty Chair

impatience with bullshit and especially his talent for street-cop psychology. Lincoln Rhyme disparaged her being a “people cop” and warned that it would be her downfall. He extolled her talent as a criminalist and, though she was a talented forensic scientist, in her heart she was just like her father; for Amelia Sachs the best type of evidence was that found in the human heart.
    Garrett’s eyes strayed to the window, where bugs thumped suicidally against the rusty screen.
    “What was your father’s name?” Sachs asked.
    “Stuart. Stu.”
    “What did you call him?”
    “ ‘Dad’ mostly. ‘Sir’ sometimes.” Garrett smiled sadly. “If I’d done something wrong and thought I better be, like, on good behavior.”
    “You two got along?”
    “Better’n most of my friends and their dads. They got whipped some and their dads were always yelling at them. You know: ‘Why’d you miss that goal?’ ‘Why’s your room so messy?’ ‘Why didn’t you get your homework done?’ But Dad was okay to me. Until . . .” His voice bled out.
    “Go on.”
    “I don’t know.” Another shrug.
    Sachs persisted. “Until what, Garrett?”
    Silence.
    “Say it.”
    “I don’t want to tell you. It’s stupid.”
    “Well, don’t tell me. Tell him, your dad.” She nodded toward the chair. “There’s your father right there in front of you. Imagine it.” The boy edged forward, staring at the chair, almost fearfully. “There’s Stu Hanlon sitting there. Talk to him.”
    For an instant there was such a look of longing in the boy’s eyes that Sachs wanted to cry. She knew they were close to something important and she was afraid he’d balk. “Tell me about him,” she said, changing tack slightly. “Tell me what he looked like. What he wore.”
    After a pause the boy said, “He was tall and pretty thin. He had dark hair and it stuck up right after he’d get his hair cut. He had to put this stuff on that smelled good to keep it down for a couple days afterward. He always wore pretty nice clothes. He didn’t even have a pair of jeans, I don’t think. He always wore shirts with, you know, collars on them. And pants with cuffs.” Sachs recalled noting when she searched his room that he had no jeans, only cuffed slacks. A faint smile bloomed onGarrett’s face. “He used to drop a quarter down the side of his pants and try and catch it in his cuff and if he did then my sister or me could have it. It was, like, this game we played. On Christmas he’d bring home silver dollars for us and he’d keep sliding them down his pants until we got them.”
    The silver dollars in the wasp jar, Sachs recalled.
    “Did he have any hobbies? Sports?”
    “He liked to read. He’d take us to bookstores a lot and he read to us. A lot of history and travel books. And stuff about nature. Oh, and he fished. Almost every weekend.”
    “Well, imagine that he’s sitting there in the empty chair and he’s wearing his nice slacks and a shirt with a collar. And he’s reading a book. Okay?”
    “I guess.”
    “He puts the book down—”
    “No, first he’d, like, mark the place he was reading. He had a ton of bookmarks. He sort of collected them. My sister and me got him one the Christmas before the accident.”
    “Okay, he marks his place and puts the book down. He’s looking at you. Now you’ve got a chance to say something to him. What would you say?”
    He shrugged, shook his head. Looked around the dim trailer nervously.
    But Sachs wasn’t going to let it go.
    Knuckle time . . .
    She said, “Let’s think about a specific thing you’d like to talk to him about. An incident. Something you’re unhappy about. Was there anything like that?”
    But Dad was okay to me. Until . . .
    The boy was gripping his hands, rubbing them together, clicking his nails.
    “Tell him, Garrett.”
    “Okay, I guess there was something.”
    “What?”
    “Well, that night . . . the night they died.”
    Sachs felt a faint shudder. Knew they were probably going very hard places with this. She thought for a moment about pulling back. But it wasn’t in Amelia Sachs’s nature to pull back and she didn’t now. “What about that night? You want to talk to your father about something that happened?”
    He nodded. “See, they were in the car going to dinner. It was Wednesday. Every Wednesday we went to Bennigan’s. I liked the chicken fingers. I’d have the chicken fingers and fries and a Coke. And Kaye, my sister’d get