The Empty Chair

The wife offered her own testimony: "We were ma

"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 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 back but 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. DANGER. DO NOT ENTER. 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. "What is it?"

"Minute," she whispered, flicking the overhead light on. The gun sight rested on a poster of the creepy monster in the movie Alien.

With her left hand she swung the closet door open. Empty.

"It's secured, Rhyme. Have to say, though, I don't really care for the way he decorates."

It was then that the stench hit her. Unwashed clothing, bodily scents. And something else…

"Phew," she muttered.

"Sachs? What is it?" Rhyme's voice was impatient.

"Place stinks."

"Good. You know my rule."

"Always smell the crime scene first. Wish I hadn't."

"I meant to clean it up." Mrs. Babbage had padded up behind Sachs. "I shoulda, before you got here. But I was too afraid to go in. Besides, skunk's hard to get out unless you wash in tomato juice. Which Hal thinks is a waste of money."

That was it. Crowning the smell of dirty clothes was the burnt-rubber scent of skunk musk. Hands clasped desperately, looking like she was about to cry, Garrett's foster mother whispered, "He'll be mad you broke the door."

Sachs said to her, "I'll need a little time alone here." She ushered the woman out and closed the door.

"Time's wasting, Sachs," Rhyme snapped.

"I'm on it," she responded. Looking around. Repulsed by the gray, stained sheets, the piles of dirty clothes, the dishes glued together with old food, the Cell-o bags filled with the dust of potato and corn chips. The whole place made her edgy. She found her fingers in her scalp, compulsively scratching. Stopped, then scratched some more. She wondered why she was so angry. Maybe because the slovenliness suggested that his foster parents didn't really give a damn about the boy and that this neglect had contributed to his becoming a killer and a kidnapper.

Sachs sca

She turned to the wall opposite the bed and squinted. Felt a chill slide through her. "We've got ourselves a collector here, Rhyme."

She looked over the dozen large jars – terrariums filled with colonies of insects clustered together, surrounding pools of water in the bottom of each one. Labels in sloppy handwriting identified the species: Water Boatman… Diving Bell Spider. A chipped magnifying glass sat on a nearby table, beside an old office chair that looked as if Garrett had retrieved it from a trash heap.

"I know why they call him the Insect Boy," Sachs said, then told Rhyme about the jars. She shivered with revulsion as a horde of moist, tiny bugs moved en masse along the glass of one jar.

"Ah, that's good for us."

"Why?"

"Because it's a rare hobby. If te