“Just set it over there.” Nodding toward a table. “Tell me about these other deaths Garrett was a suspect in.”

Bell said, “All in and around Blackwater Landing. Two of the victims drowned in the canal. Evidence looked like they’d fallen and hit their heads. But the medical examiner said they could’ve been hit intentionally and pushed in. Garrett’d been seen around their houses not long before they died. Then last year somebody was stung to death. Wasps. Just like with Ed. We know Garrett did it.”

Bell started to continue but Mason interrupted. He said in a low voice, “Girl in her early twenties—like Mary Beth. Real nice, good Christian. She was taking a nap on her back porch. Garrett tossed a hornets’ nest inside. Got herself stung a hundred thirty-seven times. Had a heart attack.”

Lucy Kerr said, “I ran the call. It was a real bad sight, what happened to her. She died slow. Real painful.”

“Oh, and that funeral we passed on the way here?” Bell asked. “That was Todd Wilkes. He was eight. Killed himself.”

“Oh, no,” Sachs muttered. “Why?”

“Well, he’d been pretty sick,” Jesse Corn explained. “He was at the hospital more than at home. Was real tore up about it. But there was more—Garrett was seen shouting at Todd a few weeks ago, really giving him hell. We were thinking that Garrett kept harassing and scaring him until he snapped.”

“Motive?” Sachs asked.

“He’s a psycho, that’s his motive,” Mason spat out. “People make fun of him and he’s out to get them. Simple as that.”

“Schizophrenic?”

Lucy said, “Not according to his counselors at school. Antisocial personality’s what they call it. He’s got a high IQ. He got mostly A’s on his report cards—before he started skipping school a couple of years ago.”

“You have a picture of him?” Sachs asked.

The sheriff opened a file. “Here’s the booking shot for the hornets’ nest assault.”

The picture showed a thin, crew-cut boy with prominent, connected brows and sunken eyes. There was a rash on his cheek.

“Here’s another.” Bell unfolded a newspaper clipping. It showed a family of four at a picnic table. The caption read, “The Hanlons at the Tanner’s Corner Annual Picnic, a week before a tragic auto accident on Route 112 took the lives of Stuart, 39, and Sandra, 37, and their daughter, Kaye, 10. Also pictured is Garrett, 11, who was not in the car at the time of the accident.”

“Can I see the report of the scene yesterday?” Rhyme asked.

Bell opened a folder. Thom took it. Rhyme had no page-turning frame so he relied on his aide to flip the pages.

“Can’t you hold it steadier?”

Thom sighed.