“Well, I don’t know. Maybe …” After a pause he blurted: “Maybe my father.”

Sachs remembered, with irritation, the cold eyes and crude manners of Hal Babbage. She supposed that Garrett would have a lot to say to him.

“Just your father? Or both him and Mrs. Babbage?”

“No, no, not him. I mean, my real father.”

“Your real father?”

Garrett nodded. He was agitated, nervous. Clicking his nails frequently.

Insects’ antennas show their moods …

Looking at his troubled face, Sachs realized with concern that she had no idea what she was doing. There were surely all sorts of things psychologists did to draw patients out, to guide them, to protect them when they practiced any type of therapy. Was there a chance that she would make Garrett worse? Push him over a line so that he actually would do something violent and hurt himself or someone else? Nonetheless, she was going to try it. Sachs’s nickname in the New York City Police Department was P.D.—for “the portable’s daughter,” the child of a beat patrolman—and she definitely took after her old man: his love of cars, love of police work, impatience with bullshit and especially his talent for street-cop psychology. Lincoln Rhyme disparaged her being a “people cop” and warned that it would be her downfall. He extolled her talent as a criminalist and, though she was a talented forensic scientist, in her heart she was just like her father; for Amelia Sachs the best type of evidence was that found in the human heart.

Garrett’s eyes strayed to the window, where bugs thumped suicidally against the rusty screen.

“What was your father’s name?” Sachs asked.

“Stuart. Stu.”

“What did you call him?”

“‘Dad’ mostly. ‘Sir’ sometimes.” Garrett smiled sadly. “If I’d done something wrong and thought I better be, like, on good behavior.”

“You two got along?”

“Better’n most of my friends and their dads. They got whipped some and their dads were always yelling at them. You know: ‘Why’d you miss that goal?’ ‘Why’s your room so messy?’ ‘Why didn’t you get your homework done?’ But Dad was okay to me. Until …” His voice bled out.

“Go on.”

“I don’t know.” Another shrug.

Sachs persisted. “Until what, Garrett?”

Silence.

“Say it.”

“I don’t want to tell you. It’s stupid.”

“Well, don’t tell me. Tell him, your dad.” She nodded toward the chair. “There’s your father right there in front of you. Imagine it.” The boy edged forward, staring at the chair, almost fearfully. “There’s Stu Hanlon sitting there. Talk to him.”

For an instant there was such a look of longing in the boy’s eyes that Sachs wanted to cry. She knew they were close to something important and she was afraid he’d balk. “Tell me about him,” she said, changing tack slightly. “Tell me what he looked like. What he wore.”