The Empty Chair

Garrett grabs a shovel and kills Billy. Beats his head in. Then he takes Mary Beth and disappears.” Mason’s jaw was tight. “Billy was a good kid. Really good. Went to church regular. Last season he intercepted a pass in the last two minutes of a tied game with Albemarle High and ran it back—”
    “I’m sure he was a fine boy,” Rhyme said impatiently. “Garrett and Mary Beth, they’re on foot?”
    “That’s right,” Lucy answered. “Garrett wouldn’t drive. Doesn’t even have a license. Think it was because of his folks’ dying in a car crash.”
    “What physical evidence did you find?”
    “Oh, we got the murder weapon,” Mason said proudly. “The shovel. Were real buttoned up about handling it too. Wore gloves. And we did the chain of custody thing, like’s in the books.”
    Rhyme waited for more. Finally he asked, “What else did you find?”
    “Well, some footprints.” Mason looked at Jesse, who said, “Oh, right. I took pictures of ’em.”
    “That’s all ?” Sachs asked.
    Lucy nodded, tight-lipped at the Northerner’s implicit criticism.
    Rhyme: “Didn’t you search the scene?”
    Jesse said, “Sure we did. Just, there wasn’t anything else.”
    Wasn’t anything else? At a scene where a perp kills one victim and abducts another there’d be enough evidence to make a movie of who did what to whom and probably what each member of the cast had been doing for the last twenty-four hours. It seemed they were up against two perpetrators: the Insect Boy and law enforcement incompetence. Rhyme caught Sachs’s eye and saw she was thinking the same.
    “Who conducted the search?” Rhyme asked.
    “I did,” Mason said. “I got there first. I was nearby when the call came in.”
    “And when was that ?”
    “Nine-thirty. A truck driver saw Billy’s body from the highway and called nine-one-one.”
    And the boy was killed before eight. Rhyme wasn’t pleased. An hour and a half—at least—was a long time for a crime scene to be unprotected. A lot of evidence could get stolen, a lot could get added. The boy could have raped and killed the girl and hidden the body then returned to remove some pieces of evidence and plant others to lead investigators off. “You searched it by yourself?” Rhyme asked Mason.
    “First time through. Then we got three, four deputies out there. They went over the area real good.”
    And found only the murder weapon? Lord almighty . . . Not to mention the damage done by four cops unfamiliar with crime scene search techniques.
    “Can I ask,” Sachs said, “how you know Garrett was the perp?”
    “I saw him,” Jesse Corn said. “When he took Lydia this morning.”
    “That doesn’t mean he killed Billy and kidnapped the other girl.”
    “Oh,” Bell said. “The fingerprints—we got them off the shovel.”
    Rhyme nodded and said to the sheriff, “And his prints were on file because of those prior arrests?”
    “Right.”
    Rhyme said, “Now tell me about this morning.”
    Jesse took over. “It was early. Just after sunup. Ed Schaeffer and I were there keeping an eye on the crime scene in case Garrett came back. Ed was north of the river, I was south. Lydia comes ’round to lay some flowers. I left her alone and went back to the car. Which I guess I shouldn’t’ve done. Next thing I know she’s screaming and I see the two of them disappear over the Paquo. They were gone ’fore I could find a boat or anything to get across. Ed wouldn’t answer his radio. I was worried about him and when I got over there I found him stung half to death. Garrett’d set a trap.”
    Bell said, “We think Ed knows where he’s got Mary Beth. He got a look at a map that was in that blind Garrett’d been hiding in. But he got stung and passed out before he could tell us what the map showed and Garrett must’ve took it with him after he kidnapped Lydia. We couldn’t find it.”
    “What’s the deputy’s condition?” Sachs asked.
    “Went into shock because of the stinging. Nobody knows if he’s going to make it or not. Or if he’ll remember anything if he does come to.”
    So we rely on the evidence, Rhyme thought. Which was, after all, his preference; far better than witnesses any day. “Any clues from this morning’s scene?”
    “Found this.” Jesse opened an attaché case and took out a running shoe in a plastic bag. “Garrett lost it when he was grabbing Lydia. Nothing else.”
    A shovel at yesterday’s scene, a shoe at today’s. . . .