The Empty Chair

remember that. He’s gonna remember the times we were strict.” Her voice quivered. “And he’s thinking of revenge.”
    “I’ll tell you, we’ll protect ourselves,” Garrett’s foster father warned, speaking now to Jesse Corn. He nodded to a pile of nails and a rusty hammer sitting on the porch. “We’re nailing the windows shut but if he tries to break in . . . we’ll protect ourselves. The children know what to do. They know where the shotgun is. I’ve taught ’em how to use it.”
    He encouraged them to shoot Garrett? Sachs was shocked. She’d seen several other kids in the house, peering through the screens. They seemed to be no older than ten.
    “Hal,” Jesse Corn said sternly, preempting Sachs, “don’t go taking anything into your own hands. You see Garrett, call us. And don’t let the little ones touch any firearms. Come on, you know better’n that.”
    “We have drills,” Hal said defensively. “Every Thursday night after supper. They know how to handle a gun.” He squinted as he saw something in the yard. Tensing for a moment.
    “I’d like to see his room,” Sachs said.
    He shrugged. “Help yourself. But you’re on your own. I’m not going in there. You show ’em, Mags.” He picked up the hammer and a handful of nails. Sachs noticed the butt of a pistol protruding from his waistband. He started to pound nails into a window frame.
    “Jesse,” Sachs said, “go around to the back and check in his window, see if there’re any traps rigged.”
    “You won’t be able to see,” the mother explained. “He’s got them painted black.”
    Painted?
    Sachs continued. “Then just cover the approach to the window. I don’t want any surprises. Keep an eye out for shooting vantages and don’t present a clean target.”
    “Sure. Shooting vantages. I’ll go do that.” And he nodded in an exaggerated way that told her that he’d had virtually no tactical experience. He disappeared into the side yard.
    The wife said to Sachs, “His room’s this way.”
    Sachs followed Garrett’s foster mother down a dim corridor filled with laundry and shoes and stacks of magazines. Family Circle, Christian Life, Guns & Ammo, Field and Stream, Reader’s Digest.
    Her neck crawled as she passed each doorway, eyes flicking left and right, and her lengthy fingers stroked the oak checkerboard of the pistol grip. The door to the boy’s room was closed.
    Garrett tossed a hornets’ nest inside. Got herself stung 137 times . . .
    “You’re really scared he’ll come back?”
    After a pause the woman said, “Garrett’s a troubled boy. People don’t understand him and I got more feeling for him than Hal does. I don’t know if he’ll come backbut if he does it’ll be trouble. Garrett don’t mind hurting people. Once at school some boys kept breaking into his locker and leaving notes and dirty underwear and things. Nothing terrible, just pranks. But Garrett made this cage that popped open if you didn’t open the locker just right. Put a spider inside. Next time they broke in the spider bit one of the boys in the face. Nearly blinded him. . . . Yeah, I’m scared he’ll come back.”
    They paused outside a bedroom door. On the wood was a handmade sign. D ANGER . D O N OT E NTER . A badly done pen-and-ink drawing of a mean-looking wasp was taped to the door below it.
    There was no air-conditioning and Sachs found her palms sweating. She wiped them on her jeans.
    Sachs turned on the Motorola radio and pulled on the headset she’d borrowed from the Sheriff’s Department Central Communications Office. She spent a moment finding the frequency Steve Farr had given her. The reception was lousy.
    “Rhyme?”
    “I’m here, Sachs. I’ve been waiting. Where’ve you been?”
    She didn’t want to tell him that she’d spent a few minutes trying to learn more about the psychology of Garrett Hanlon. She said only, “Took us some time to get here.”
    “Well, what’ve we got?” the criminalist asked.
    “I’m about to go in.”
    She motioned Margaret back into the living room then kicked the door in and leapt back into the corridor, pressed flat against the wall. No sound from the dimly lit room.
    Got herself stung 137 times . . .
    Okay. Pistol up. Go, go, go! She pushed inside.
    “Jesus.” Sachs dropped into a low-profile combat stance. Several earnest pounds of pressure on the trigger, she held the gun steady as a mountain at the figure just inside.
    “Sachs?” Rhyme called.