The Empty Chair

toward him. They scuffle. Billy backs up to a willow tree. Garrett comes toward him. More scuffling.” Sachs studied the white outline of Billy’s body. “The first time Garrett hits Billy with the shovel he gets him in the head. He falls. That didn’t kill him. But then he hit him in the neck when he was down. That finished him off.”
    Jesse gave a surprised laugh, staring at the same outline as if he were looking at something completely different from what she saw. “How’d you know that?”
    Absently she said, “The blood pattern. There’re a few small drops here.” She pointed to the ground. “Consistent with blood falling about six feet—that’s from Billy’s head. But that big spray pattern—which’d have to be from a severed carotid or jugular—starts when he was on the ground. . . . Okay, Rhyme, I’m going to start the search.”
    Walking the grid. Foot by foot. Eyes on the dirt and grass, eyes on the knotty bark of the oaks and willows, eyes up to the overhanging branches (“A crime scene is three dimensional, Sachs,” Rhyme often reminded).
    “Those cigarette butts still there?” Rhyme asked.
    “Got ’em.” She turned to Lucy. “Those cigarette butts,” she said, nodding at the ground. “Why weren’t they picked up?”
    “Oh,” Jesse answered for her, “those’re just Nathan’s.”
    “Who?”
    “Nathan Groomer. One of our deputies. He’s been trying to quit but just can’t quite manage to.”
    Sachs sighed but managed to refrain from telling them that any cop who smoked at a crime scene ought to be suspended. She covered the ground carefully but the search was futile. Any visible fibers, scraps of paper or other physical evidence had been removed or blown away. She walked to the scene of this morning’s kidnapping, stepped under the tape and started on the grid around the willow. Back and forth, fighting the dizziness from the heat. “Rhyme, there isn’t much here . . . but . . . wait. I’ve got something.” She’d seen a flash of white, close to the water. She walked down and carefully picked up a wadded-up Kleenex. Her knees cried out—from the arthritis that had plagued her for years. Rather be running down a perp than doing deep knee bends, she thought. “Kleenex. Looks similar to the ones at his house, Rhyme. Only this one’s got blood on it. Quite a bit.”
    Lucy asked, “You think Garrett dropped it?”
    Sachs examined it. “I don’t know. All I can say is that it didn’t spend the night here. Moisture content’s too low. Morning dew would have half disintegrated it.”
    “Excellent, Sachs. Where’d you learn that? I don’t recall ever mentioning it.”
    “Yes, you did,” she said absently. “Your textbook. Chapter twelve. Paper.”
    Sachs walked down to the water, searched the small boat. She found nothing inside. Then she asked, “Jesse, can you row me over?”
    He was, of course, more than happy to. And she wondered how long it would be before he fired off the first invitation for a cup of coffee. Uninvited, Lucy climbed in the skiff too and they pushed off. The threesome rowedsilently over the river, which was surprisingly choppy in the current.
    On the far shore Sachs found footprints in the mud: Lydia’s shoes—the fine tread of nurse sneakers. And Garrett’s prints—one barefoot, one in a running shoe with the tread that was already familiar to her. She followed them into the woods. They led to the hunting blind where Ed Schaeffer had been stung by the wasps. Sachs stopped, dismayed.
    What the hell had happened here?
    “God, Rhyme, it looks like the scene was swept.”
    Criminals often use brooms or even leaf blowers to destroy or confuse the evidence at crime scenes.
    But Jesse Corn said, “Oh, that was from the chopper.”
    “Helicopter?” Sachs asked, dumbfounded.
    “Well, yeah. Medevac—to get Ed Schaeffer out.”
    “But the downdraft from the rotors ruined the site,” Sachs said. “Standard procedure is to move an injured victim away from the scene before you set the chopper down.”
    “Standard procedure?” Lucy Kerr asked abrasively. “Sorry, but we were a little worried about Ed. Trying to save his life, you know.”
    Sachs didn’t respond. She eased into the shed slowly so she wouldn’t disturb the dozens of wasps that were hovering around a shattered nest. But whatever maps or other clues Deputy Schaeffer had seen inside were gone now and the wind from the helicopter had mixed up the topsoil so much