Sachs gave him a wry look. But Rhyme knew the value of a flirt; Sachs would need cooperation—and a lot of it. Rhyme didn’t think Lucy or Mason would be half as helpful as the already-infatuated Jesse Corn.

Rhyme said, “I want Amelia to have a sidearm.”

“Jesse’s our ordnance expert,” Bell said. “He can rustle you up a nice Smith and Wesson.”

“You bet I can.”

“Let me have some cuffs too,” Sachs said.

“Sure thing.”

Bell noticed Mason, looking unhappy, staring at the map.

“What is it?” the sheriff asked.

“You really want my opinion?” the short man asked.

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“You do what you think is best, Jim,” Mason said in a taut voice, “but I don’t think we have time for any more searches. There’s a lot of territory out there. We’ve got to get after that boy and get after him fast.”

But it was Lincoln Rhyme who responded. Eyes on the map, at Location G-10, Blackwater Landing, the last place anyone had seen Lydia Johansson alive, he said, “We don’t have enough time to move fast.”

… chapter five

“We wanted him,” the man whispered cautiously, as if speaking too loudly would conjure a witch. He looked uneasily around the dusty front yard in which sat a wheelless pickup on concrete blocks. “We called family services and asked about Garrett specifically. ’Cause we’d heard about him and felt sorry. But, fact is, he was trouble from the start. Not like any of the other kids we had. We did our best but, I’ll tell you, I’m thinking he doesn’t see it that way. And we’re scared. Scared bad.”

He stood on the weather-beaten front porch of his house north of Tanner’s Corner, speaking to Amelia Sachs and Jesse Corn. Amelia was here, at Garrett’s foster parents’ house, solely to search his room but, despite the urgency, she was letting Hal Babbage ramble on in hopes that she might learn a bit more about Garrett Hanlon; Amelia Sachs didn’t quite share Rhyme’s view that evidence was the sole key to tracking down perps.

But the only thing this conversation was revealing was that his foster parents were indeed, as Hal had said, terrified that Garrett would return to hurt them or the other children. His wife, who stood beside him on the porch, was a fat woman with curly rust-colored hair. She wore a stained country-western radio station giveaway T-shirt. MY BOOTS TAP TO WKRT. Like her husband’s, Margaret Babbage’s eyes often scanned the yard and surrounding forest, looking for Garrett’s return, Sachs assumed.