The Empty Chair

"That's it exactly. Garrett doesn't have a single pinup, a single Playboy or Penthouse poster. No Magic cards, no Pokemon, no toys. No Alanis or Celine. No rock-musician posters… And – hey, get this: no VCR, TV, stereo, radio. No Nintendo. My God, he's sixteen and he doesn't even have a computer." Her goddaughter was twelve and the girl's room was virtually an electronics showroom.

"Maybe it's a money thing – the foster parents."

"Hell, Rhyme, if I were his age and wanted to listen to music I'd build a radio. Nothing stops teenagers. But those aren't the things that excite him."

"Excellent, Sachs."

Maybe, she reflected, but what did it mean? Recording observations is only half of the job of a forensic scientist; the other half, the far more important half, is drawing helpful conclusions from those observations.

"Sachs -"

"Shhhh."

She struggled to put aside the person she really was: the cop from Brooklyn, the lover of taut General Motors vehicles, former fashion model for the Chantelle agency on Madison Avenue, champion pistol shot, the woman who wore her straight red hair long and her fingernails short lest the habit of digging into her scalp and skin mar her otherwise perfect flesh with yet more stigmata of the tension that drove her.

Trying to turn that person into smoke and emerge as a troubled, scary sixteen-year-old boy. Someone who needed, or wanted, to take women by force. Who needed, or wanted, to kill.

What do I feel?

"I don't care about normal pleasures, music, TV, computers. I don't care about normal sex," she said, half to herself. "I don't care about normal relationships. People are like insects – things to be caged. In fact, all I care about are insects. They're my only source of comfort. My only amusement." She said this as she paced in front of the jars. Then she looked down at the floor at her feet. "The tracks of the chair!"

"What?"

"Garrett's chair… it's on rollers. It's facing the insect jars. All he does is roll back and forth and stare at them and draw them. Hell, he probably talks to them too. His whole life is these bugs." But the tracks in the wood stopped before they got to the jar on the end of the row – the largest of them and one set slightly apart from the others. It contained yellow jackets. The tiny yellow-and-black crescents zipped about angrily as if they were aware of her intrusion.

She walked to the jar, looked down at it carefully. She said to Rhyme, "There's a jar full of wasps. I think it's his safe."

"Why?"

"It's nowhere near the other jars. He never looks at it – I can tell by the tracks of the chair. And all the other jars have water in them – they're aquatic bugs. This's the only one with flying insects. It's a great idea, Rhyme – who'd reach inside something like that? And there's about a foot of shredded paper on the bottom. I'd think he's buried something in there."

"Look inside and see."

She opened the door and asked Mrs. Babbage for a pair of leather gloves. When she brought them she found Sachs looking into the wasp jar.

"You're not going to touch that, are you?" she asked in a desperate whisper.

"Yes."

"Oh, Garrett'll have a fit. He yells at anyone who ever touches his wasp jar."

"Mrs. Babbage, Garrett's a fleeing felon. Him yelling at anybody isn't really a concern here."

"But if he sneaks back and sees you bothered it… I mean… It could push him over the edge." Again, tears threatened.

"We'll find him before he comes back," Sachs said in a reassuring tone. "Don't worry."

Sachs put on the gloves, and she wrapped a pillowcase around her bare arm. Slowly she eased the mesh lid off and reached inside. Two wasps landed on the glove but flew off a moment later. The rest just ignored the intrusion. She was careful not to disturb the nest.

Stung 137 times…

She dug only a few inches before she found the plastic bag.

"Gotcha." She pulled it out. One wasp escaped and disappeared into the house before she got the mesh lid back on.

Pulling off the leather gloves and putting on the latex, she opened the bag and spilled the contents out on the bed. A spool of thin fishing line. Some money – about a hundred dollars in cash and four Eisenhower silver dollars. Another picture frame; this one held the photo from the newspaper of Garrett and his family, a week before the car accident that killed his parents and sister.

On a short chain was an old, battered key – like a car key, though there was no logo on the head; only a short serial number. She told Rhyme about this.

"Good, Sachs. Excellent. I don't know what it means yet but it's a start. Now get over to the primary scene. Blackwater Landing."

Sachs paused and looked around the room. The wasp that had escaped had returned and was trying to get back into the jar. She wondered what kind of message it was sending to its fellow insects.

• • •

"I can't keep up," Lydia told Garrett. "I can't go this fast," she gasped. Sweat streaming down her face. Her uniform was drenched.

"Quiet," he scolded angrily. "I need to listen. Can't do it with you bitching all the time."

Listen for what? she wondered.

He consulted the map again and led her along another path. They were still deep in the pine woods but, even though they were out of the sun, she was dizzy and recognized the early symptoms of heatstroke.

He glanced at her, eyes on her breasts again.

The fingernails snapping.

The immense heat.

"Please," she whispered, crying. "I can't do this! Please!"

"Quiet! I'm not going to tell you again."

A cloud of gnats swarmed around her face. She inhaled one or two and spit in disgust to clear her mouth. God, how she hated it here – in the woods. Lydia Johansson hated to be out of doors. Most people loved the woods and swimming pools and backyards. But her happiness was a fragile contentment that occurred mostly inside: her job, chatting with her other single girlfriends over margaritas at T.G.I. Friday's, horror books and TV, trips to the outlet malls for a shopping spree, those occasional nights with her boyfriend.

Indoor joys, all of them.

Outside reminded her of the cookouts her married friends gave, reminded her of families sitting around pools while their children played with inflatable toys, of picnics, of trim women in Speedos and thongs.

Outside reminded Lydia of a life she wanted but didn't have, of her loneliness.

He led her down another path, out of the forest. Suddenly the trees vanished and a huge pit opened in front of them. It was an old quarry. Blue-green water filled the bottom. She remembered years ago kids used to swim here, before the swamp started to reclaim the land north of the Paquo and the area got more dangerous.

"Let's go," Garrett said, nodding toward it.

"No. I don't want to. It's scary."

"Don't give a shit what you want," he snapped. "Come on!"

He gripped her taped hands and led her down a steep path to a rocky ledge. Garrett stripped off his shirt and bent down, splashed water on his blotched skin. He scratched and picked at the welts, examined his fingernails. Disgusting. He looked up at Lydia. "You want to do this? It feels good. You can take your dress off, you want. Go for a swim."

Horrified at the thought of being naked in front of him she shook her head adamantly. Then sat down near the edge and splashed water on her face and arms.

"Just don't drink it. I've got this."

He pulled a dusty burlap bag out from behind a rock, where he must've stashed it recently. He pulled out a bottle of water and some packets of cheese crackers with peanut butter. He ate a package of crackers and drank half of a bottle of water. He offered the rest to her.

She shook her head, repulsed.

"Fuck, I don't have AIDS or anything if that's what you're thinking. You gotta drink something."