The Empty Chair

Bell, “I’m going to need that forensics tech to help me with the analysis and the equipment. I’d prefer a cop but the important thing is that they know science. And know the area here. A native.”
    Mason’s thumb danced a circle over the ribbed hammer of his revolver. “We can dig somebody up but I thought you were the expert. I mean, isn’t that why we’re using you?”
    “One of the reasons you’re using me is because I know when I need help.” He looked at Bell. “Anybody come to mind?”
    It was Lucy Kerr who answered. “My sister’s boy—Benny—he’s studying science at UNC. Grad school.”
    “Smart?”
    “Phi Beta. He’s just . . . well, a little quiet.”
    “I don’t want him for his conversation.”
    “I’ll call him.”
    “Good,” Rhyme said. Then: “Now, I want Amelia to search the crime scenes: the boy’s room and Blackwater.”
    Mason said, “But”—he waved his hand at the report—“we already did that. Fine-tooth comb.”
    “I’d like her to search them again,” Rhyme saidshortly. Then looked at Jesse. “You know the area. Could you go with her?”
    “Sure. Be happy to.”
    Sachs gave him a wry look. But Rhyme knew the value of a flirt; Sachs would need cooperation—and a lot of it. Rhyme didn’t think Lucy or Mason would be half as helpful as the already-infatuated Jesse Corn.
    Rhyme said, “I want Amelia to have a sidearm.”
    “Jesse’s our ordnance expert,” Bell said. “He can rustle you up a nice Smith and Wesson.”
    “You bet I can.”
    “Let me have some cuffs too,” Sachs said.
    “Sure thing.”
    Bell noticed Mason, looking unhappy, staring at the map.
    “What is it?” the sheriff asked.
    “You really want my opinion?” the short man asked.
    “I asked, didn’t I?”
    “You do what you think is best, Jim,” Mason said in a taut voice, “but I don’t think we have time for any more searches. There’s a lot of territory out there. We’ve got to get after that boy and get after him fast.”
    But it was Lincoln Rhyme who responded. Eyes on the map, at Location G-10, Blackwater Landing, the last place anyone had seen Lydia Johansson alive, he said, “We don’t have enough time to move fast.”

. . . chapter five
    “We wanted him,” the man whispered cautiously, as if speaking too loudly would conjure a witch. He looked uneasily around the dusty front yard in which sat a wheelless pickup on concrete blocks. “We called family services and asked about Garrett specifically. ’Cause we’d heard about him and felt sorry. But, fact is, he was trouble from the start. Not like any of the other kids we had. We did our best but, I’ll tell you, I’m thinking he doesn’t see it that way. And we’re scared. Scared bad.”
    He stood on the weather-beaten front porch of his house north of Tanner’s Corner, speaking to Amelia Sachs and Jesse Corn. Amelia was here, at Garrett’s foster parents’ house, solely to search his room but, despite the urgency, she was letting Hal Babbage ramble on in hopes that she might learn a bit more about Garrett Hanlon; Amelia Sachs didn’t quite share Rhyme’s view that evidence was the sole key to tracking down perps.
    But the only thing this conversation was revealing was that his foster parents were indeed, as Hal had said, terrified that Garrett would return to hurt them or the otherchildren. His wife, who stood beside him on the porch, was a fat woman with curly rust-colored hair. She wore a stained country-western radio station giveaway T-shirt. MY BOOTS TAP TO WKRT. Like her husband’s, Margaret Babbage’s eyes often scanned the yard and surrounding forest, looking for Garrett’s return, Sachs assumed.
    “It’s not like we ever did anything to him,” the man continued. “I never whipped him—the state won’t let you do that anymore—but I’d be firm with him, make him toe the line. Like, we eat on a schedule. I insist on that. Only Garrett wouldn’t show up on time. I lock the food up when it’s not mealtime so he went hungry a lot. And sometimes I’d take him to father and son’s Saturday Bible study and he hated that. He just sat there and didn’t say a word. Embarrassed me, I’ll tell you. And I’d nag him to clean that pigsty of a room.” He hesitated, caught between anger and fear. “Those’re just things you gotta make children do. But I know he hates me for ’em.”
    The wife offered her own testimony: “We were mannerable to him. But he’s not going to