The Empty Chair (27 page)

"I hope you're not billing the defense," Sachs said acerbically, "if that's your sympathetic testimony."

Dr. Penny shook his head. "Based on the evidence I've heard that boy's going to jail with or without expert witnesses."

"I don't think he killed the boy. And I think the kidnapping's not as black-and-white as we're making it."

Dr. Penny shrugged. "My professional opinion is that he did. Obviously I haven't run all the tests but he exhibits clear dissocial and sociopathic behavior – and I'm thinking of all
three
major diagnostic systems.
The International Classification of Diseases
,
The DSM-IV
and
The Revised Psychopathy Checklist
. Would I have to run the complete battery of tests? Of course. But he clearly presents with an affect-less antisocial/criminal personality. He's got a high IQ, he exhibits strategic thinking patterns and organized-offender behavior, considers revenge acceptable, displays no remorse . . . he's a very dangerous person."

"Sachs," Rhyme said, "what's the point? This isn't our game anymore."

She ignored him and his piercing eyes. "But, Doctor –"

The doctor held up a hand. "Can I ask
you
a question?"

"What?"

"Do you have children?"

A hesitation. "No," she responded. "Why?"

"You understandably feel sympathy for him – I think we all do – but you might be confusing that with some latent maternal sense."

"What does that mean?"

The doctor continued, "I mean that if you have some desire to have children yourself you might not be able to take an objective view about a sixteen-year-old boy's innocence or guilt. Especially one who's an orphan and has had a tough time in life."

"I can take a perfectly objective role," she snapped. "There's just too much that doesn't add up. Garrett's motives don't make sense, he –"

"Motives are the weak leg of the evidentiary stool, Sachs, you know that."

"I don't need any more maxims, Rhyme," she snapped.

The criminalist sighed in frustration, glanced at the clock.

Dr. Penny continued. "I heard you asking Cal Fredericks about Lancaster, about what was going to happen to the boy."

She lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, I think you can help him," the doctor said. "The best thing you can do is to just spend some time with him. The county'll assign a caseworker to liaise with the guardian the court appoints and you'll have to get their approval but I'm sure it can be arranged. He might even open up with you about Mary Beth."

As she was considering this Thom appeared in the doorway. "Van's outside, Lincoln."

Rhyme glanced at the map one last time and then turned toward the doorway. "'Once more into the breach, dear friends.'"

Jim Bell walked into the room and rested his hand on Rhyme's insensate arm. "We're organizing a search of the Outer Banks. With a little luck we'll have her in a few days. Listen, I can't thank you enough, Lincoln."

Rhyme deflected the gratitude with a nod and wished the sheriff good luck.

"I'll come visit you at the hospital, Lincoln," Ben said. "I'll bring some scotch. When're they going to let you start drinking again?"

"Not soon enough."

"I'll help Ben finish up," Sachs told him. Bell said to her, "We'll get you a ride over to Avery." She nodded. "Thanks. I'll be there soon, Rhyme." But the criminalist had, it seemed, already departed from Tanner's Corner, mentally if not physically, and he said nothing. Sachs heard only the vanishing whine as the Storm Arrow steamed down the corridor.

• • •

Fifteen minutes later they had most of the forensic equipment put away and Sachs sent Ben Kerr home, thanking him for his volunteer efforts.

In his wake Jesse Corn had appeared at Sachs' side. She wondered if he'd been staking out the corridor, waiting for a chance to catch her alone.

"He's quite somebody, isn't he?" Jesse asked. "Mr. Rhyme." The deputy began stacking boxes that didn't need to be stacked.

"That he is," she said noncommittally.

"That operation he's talking about. Will it fix him?"

It'll kill him. It'll make him worse. It'll turn him into a vegetable.

"No."

She thought Jesse would ask,
Then why's he doing it?
But the deputy offered another one of his sayings: "Sometimes you just find yourself standing in need to do
something
. No matter it seems hopeless."

Sachs shrugged, thinking:
Yeah, sometimes you just do.

She snapped the locks on a microscope case and coiled the last of the electrical cords. She noticed a stack of books on the table, the ones she'd found in Garrett's room in his foster parents' house. She picked up
The Miniature World
, the book that the boy had asked Dr. Penny for. She opened it. Flipped through the pages, read a passage.

There are 4,500 known species of mammals in the world but 980,000 known species of insects and an estimated two to three million more not yet discovered. The diversity and astonishing resilience of these creatures arouses more than simple admiration. One thinks of Harvard biologist and entomologist E. O. Wilson's coined term "Biofilia," by which he means the emotional affiliation humans feel toward other living organisms. There is certainly as great an opportunity for such a connection with insects as there is for a pet dog or prize racehorse, or indeed, other humans.

She glanced out into the corridor, where Cal Fredericks and Bryan McGuire were still engaged in their complicated verbal fencing match. Garrett's lawyer was clearly losing.

Sachs snapped the book shut. Hearing in her mind the doctor's words.
The best thing you can do is to just spend some time with him.

Jesse said, "Say, might be a little hectic to go out to the pistol range. But you interested in some coffee?"

Sachs laughed to herself. So she'd got the Starbucks invite after all. "Probably shouldn't. I'm going to drop this book over at the lockup. Then I have to go over to the hospital in Avery. How 'bout a rain check?"

"You got it."

21

In Eddie's, the bar a block from the lockup, Rich Culbeau said sternly, "This ain't no game."

"I don't think it's a game," Sean O'Sarian said. "I only
laughed
. I mean, shit, was just a laugh. I was looking at that commercial there." Nodding at the greasy TV screen above the Beer Nuts rack. "Where this guy's trying to get to the airport and his car –"

"You do that too much. You prank around. You don't pay attention."

"All right. I'm listening. We're going in the back. The door'll be open."

"That's what I was gonna ask," Harris Tomel said. "The back door to the lockup's never open. It's always locked and it's got that, you know, bar on the inside."

"The bar'll be off and the door'll be unlocked. Okay?"

"You say so," Tomel said skeptically.

"It'll be open." Culbeau continued, "We go in. There'll be a key to his cell on the table, that little metal one. You know it?"

Of course they knew the table. Anybody who'd spent a night in the Tanner's Corner lockup had to've barked his shins on that fucking table bolted to the floor near the door, especially if they were drunk.

"Yeah, go ahead," O'Sarian said, now paying attention.

"We unlock the cell and go in. I'm going to hit the kid with the pepper spray. Put a bag over him – I got a crocus sack like I use for kittens in the pond, just put that over his head and get him out the back. He can shout if he wants but won't nobody hear him. Harris, you be waiting with the truck. Back it right up near the door. Keep it in gear."

"Where we gonna take him to?" O'Sarian asked.

"None of our places," Culbeau said, wondering if O'Sarian was thinking they
were
going to take a kidnapped prisoner to one of their houses. Which, if he did, meant the skinny kid was even more stupid than Culbeau thought he was. "The old garage, near the tracks."

"Good," O'Sarian offered.

"We get him out there. I got my propane torch. And we start on him. Five minutes is all it'll take, I figure, and he'll tell us where Mary Beth is."

"And then do we . . ." O'Sarian's voice faded.

"What?" Culbeau snapped. Then whispered, "You gonna say something you maybe don't want to say out loud in public?"

O'Sarian whispered back, "
You
were just talking 'bout using a torch on the boy. Doesn't seem to me that's any worse than what I'm asking – about afterward."

Which Culbeau had to agree with, though of course he didn't tell O'Sarian he may have a point. Instead he said only, "Accidents happen."

"They do," Tomel agreed.

O'Sarian toyed with a beer-bottle cap, dug some crud out from under his nails with it. He'd turned moody.

"What?" Culbeau asked.

"This's getting risky. Woulda been easier to take the boy in the woods. At the mill."

"But he's
not
in the woods at the mill anymore," Tomel said.

O'Sarian shrugged. "Just wondering if it's worth the money."

"You wanta back out?" Culbeau scratched his beard, thinking it was so hot he ought to shave it but then you could see his triple chin more. "I'd rather split it two ways than three."

"Naw, you know I don't want to. Ever'thing's fine." O'Sarian's eyes strayed to the TV again. A movie caught his attention and he shook his head, eyes wide, looking at one of the actresses.

"Hold on here," Tomel said, eyes out the window. "Take a look." He was nodding outside.

That redheaded policewoman from New York, the one so damn fast with the knife, was walking up the street, carrying a book.

Tomel said, "Nice-looking lady. I could use a little of that."

But Culbeau remembered her cold eyes and the steady point of the knife under O'Sarian's chin.

He said, "Juice ain't worth the squeeze."

The redhead walked into the lockup.

O'Sarian was looking too. "Well, that fucks things up a bit."

Culbeau said slowly, "No, it don't. Harris, get that truck over there. And keep the motor running."

"But what about
her
?" Tomel asked.

Culbeau said, "I got plenty of pepper spray."

• • •

Inside the lockup Deputy Nathan Groomer leaned back in the rickety chair and nodded at Sachs.

Jesse Corn's infatuation had grown tedious; Nathan's formal smile was a relief to her. "Hello, miss."

"It's Nathan, right?"

"Right."

"That's some decoy there." Sachs looked down at his desk.

"This old thing?" he asked humbly.

"What is it?"

"Female mallard. About a year old. The duck. Not the decoy."

"You make that yourself?"

"Hobby of mine. Have a couple others at my desk in the main building. Check 'em out, you want. Thought you were leaving."

"Will be soon. How's he doing?"

"He who? Sheriff Bell?"

"No, I mean Garrett."

"Oh, I dunno. Mason went back to see him, had a talk. Tried to get him to tell where the girl was. But he wouldn't say anything."

"Mason's back there now?"

"No, he left."

"How about Sheriff Bell and Lucy?"

"Nope, they're all gone. Back at the County Building. Anything I can help you with?"

"Garrett wanted this book." She held it up. "Is it okay if I give it to him?"

"What is it, a Bible?"

"No, it's about insects."

Nathan took it and searched it carefully – for weapons, she supposed. Then he handed it back. "Creepy, that boy is. Somethin' out of a horror movie. You
oughta
give him a Bible."

"I think this is all he's interested in."

"I guess you're right about that. Slip your weapon in the lockbox there and I'll let you in."

Sachs put the Smith & Wesson inside and stepped to the door but Nathan was looking at her expectantly. She lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, miss, I understand you got a knife too."

"Oh, sure. I forgot about it."

"Rules is rules, you know."

She handed over the switchblade. He dropped it in beside the gun.

"You want the cuffs too?" She touched her handcuff case.

"Nope. Can't get into much trouble with those. 'Course, we had us a reverend who did once. But that was only 'cause his wife come home early and found him hitched to the bedpost with Sally Anne Carlson atop him. Come on, I'll let you in."

• • •

Rich Culbeau, flanked by nervous Sean O'Sarian, stood beside a dying lilac bush at the back of the lockup.

The back door to the place overlooked a large field, filled with grass and trash and parts of old cars and appliances. More than a few limp condoms too.

Harris Tomel drove his sparkling Ford F-250 up over the curb and backed around. Culbeau thought he should've come the other way because this looked a little obvious but there was nobody out on the street and, besides, after the custard stand closed, there was no reason for anybody to come down here. At least the truck was new and had a good muffler; it was quiet.

"Who's in the front office?" O'Sarian asked.

"Nathan Groomer."

"That girl cop with him?"

"I don't know. How the hell do I know? But if she is she'll have her gun and that knife she was tattooing you with in the lockbox."

"Won't Nathan hear if the girl screams?"

Recalling the redhead's eyes and the flash of the blade once more, Culbeau said, "The boy'll be more likely to scream than her."

"Well, then, what if
he
does?"

"We'll get the bag over him fast. Here." Culbeau handed O' Sarian a red-and-white canister of pepper spray. "Aim low 'cause people duck."

"Does it? . . . I mean, will it get on us? The spray?"

"Not if you don't shoot yourself in the fucking face. It's a stream. Not like a cloud."

"Which of 'em should I take?"

"The boy."

"What if the girl's closer to me?"

Culbeau muttered, "She's mine."