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"Sachs--" Rhyme began.
But she repeated to Geberth, "I'll plead."
The lawyer rose. He nodded. "I'll call the prosecutor right now, see if he'll accept it. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything." With a nod at Rhyme the lawyer left the room.
Mason glanced at Sachs's face. He stood and walked to the door, his boots tapping loudly. "I'll leave you two for a few minutes. I don't have to search you, do I, Lincoln?"
Rhyme smiled wanly. "I'm weapon-free, Mason."
The door swung shut.
"What a mess, Lincoln," she said.
"Uh-uh, Sachs. No first names."
"Why not?" she asked cynically, nearly a whisper. "Bad luck?"
"Maybe."
"You're not superstitious. Or so you're always telling me."
"Not usually. But this is a spooky place."
Tanner's Corner.... The town with no children.
"I should've listened to you," he said. "You were right about Garrett. I was wrong. I looked at the evidence and got it dead wrong."
"But I didn't know I was right. I didn't know anything. I just had a hunch and I acted."
Rhyme said, "Whatever happens, Sachs, I'm not going anywhere." He nodded down at the Storm Arrow and laughed. "I couldn't get very far even if I wanted to. You do some time, I'll be there when you get out."
"Words, Rhyme," she said. "Only words.... My father said he wasn't going anywhere either. That was a week before the cancer shut him down."
"I'm too ornery to die."
But you're not too ornery to get better, she thought, to meet someone else. To move on and leave me behind.
The door to the interrogation room opened. Garrett stood in the doorway, Mason behind him. The boy's hands, no longer in shackles, were cupped in front of him.
"Hey," Garrett said in greeting. "Check out what I found. It was in my cell." He opened his fist and a small insect flew out. "It's a sphinx moth. They like to forage in valerian flowers. You don't see 'em much inside. Pretty cool."
She smiled faintly, taking pleasure in his enthusiastic eyes. "Garrett, there's one thing I want you to know."
He walked closer, looked down at her.
"You remember what you said in the trailer? When you were talking to your father in the empty chair?"
He nodded uncertainly.
"You were saying how bad you felt that he didn't want you in the car that night."
"I remember."
"But you know why he didn't want you. ... He was trying to save your life. He knew there was poison in the car and that they were going to die. If you got in the car with them you'd die too. And he didn't want that to happen."
"I guess I know that," he said. His voice was uncertain and Amelia Sachs supposed that rewriting one's history was a daunting task.
"You keep remembering it."
