“Sure. Shooting vantages. I’ll go do that.” And he nodded in an exaggerated way that told her that he’d had virtually no tactical experience. He disappeared into the side yard.

The wife said to Sachs, “His room’s this way.”

Sachs followed Garrett’s foster mother down a dim, corridor filled with laundry and shoes and stacks of magazines. Family Circle, Christian Life, Guns & Ammo, Field and Stream, Reader’s Digest.

Her neck crawled as she passed each doorway, eyes flicking left and right, and her lengthy fingers stroked the oak checkerboard of the pistol grip. The door to the boy’s room was closed.

Garrett tossed a hornets’ nest inside. Got herself stung 137 times…

“You’re really scared he’ll come back?”

After a pause the woman said, “Garrett’s a troubled boy. People don’t understand him and I got more feeling for him than Hal does. I don’t know if he’ll come back but if he does it’ll be trouble. Garrett don’t mind hurting people. Once at school some boys kept breaking into his locker and leaving notes and dirty underwear and things. Nothing terrible, just pranks. But Garrett made this cage that popped open if you didn’t open the locker just right. Put a spider inside. Next time they broke in the spider bit one of the boys in the face. Nearly blinded him…. Yeah, I’m scared he’ll come back.”

They paused outside a bedroom door. On the wood was a handmade sign. DANGER. DO NOT ENTER A badly done pen-and-ink drawing of a mean-looking wasp was taped to the door below it.

There was no air-conditioning and Sachs found her palms sweating. She wiped them on her jeans.

Sachs turned on the Motorola radio and pulled on the headset she’d borrowed from the Sheriff’s Department Central Communications Office. She spent a moment finding the frequency Steve Farr had given her. The reception was lousy.

“Rhyme?”

“I’m here, Sachs. I’ve been waiting. Where’ve you been?”

She didn’t want to tell him that she’d spent a few minutes trying to learn more about the psychology of Garrett Hanlon. She said only, “Took us some time to get here.”

“Well, what’ve we got?” the criminalist asked.

“I’m about to go in.”

She motioned Margaret back into the living room then kicked the door in and leapt back into the corridor, pressed flat against the wall. No sound from the dimly lit room.

Got herself stung 137 times …

Okay. Pistol up. Go, go, go! She pushed inside.

“Jesus.” Sachs dropped into a low-profile combat stance. Several earnest pounds of pressure on the trigger, she held the gun steady as a mountain at the figure just inside.

“Sachs?” Rhyme called. “What is it?”

“Minute,” she whispered, flicking the overhead light on. The gun sight rested on a poster of the creepy monster in the movie Alien.