The Twelfth Card Read online

  "One finger?" Keesha glanced at one of her orange nails. "That all you can move?"

  "That's right. Other than my head and shoulders."

  "Mr. Rhyme," Geneva said, looking at a red Swatch, which sat large and obvious on her thin wrist, "about those tests? The first one's in a couple of hours. How long'll this be?"

  "School?" Rhyme asked, surprised. "Oh, you can stay home today, I'm sure. After what happened, your teachers'll understand."

  "Well, I don't really want to stay home. I need to take the tests."

  "Yo, yo, girl, time out. Here the man say you can take a pass, all one hundred percent phat, and you sayin' no. Come on. That wack."

  Geneva looked up into her friend's eyes. "And you're taking your tests too. You're not skipping."

  "It ain't skippin', you got a pass," the big girl pointed out with flawless logic.

  Rhyme's phone rang and he was grateful for the interruption.

  "Command, answer phone," he said into the hands-free microphone.

  "Def!" Lakeesha said, lifting her eyebrows. "Look at that, Gen. I want one of them."

  Eyes narrowing, Geneva whispered something to her friend, who rolled her eyes and slurped more coffee.

  "Rhyme," Sachs's voice said.

  "They're here, Sachs," Rhyme said in a brittle voice. "Geneva and her friend. And I'm hoping you're--"

  "Rhyme," she repeated. It was a particular tone. Something was wrong.

  "What is it?"

  "The scene was hot, after all."

  "He was there?"

  "Yep. Never left. Or doubled back."

  "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. It wasn't me he was after."

  "What happened?"

  "Got up close, into an alley. Fired four shots. He wounded a bystander . . . and he killed a witness. His name was Don Barry. He was in charge of the library at the museum. He took three rounds in the heart. Died instantly."

  "You're sure the shooter's the same?"

  "Yep. The shoe prints I found from his shooting position match the ones in the library. Lon was just starting to interview him. He was standing right in front of him when it happened."

  "He get a look at the doer?"

  "Nope. Nobody did. He was hiding behind a Dumpster. Couple of the uniforms on the scene went to work on the woman to save her. She had a major bleeder. He got away in the crowd. Just disappeared."

  "Somebody take care of the details?"

  Calling the next of kin. Details.

  "Lon was going to make the calls but he had phone problems or something. There was a sergeant on the scene. He did it."

  "All right, Sachs, come on back with what you've found . . . . Command, disconnect." He looked up and found the two girls staring at him.

  He explained, "It looks like the man who attacked you didn't leave, after all. Or he came back. He killed the head librarian and--"

  "Mr. Barry?" A gasp from Geneva Settle. She stopped moving, simply froze.

  "That's right."

  "Shit," Lakeesha whispered. She closed her eyes and shivered.

  A moment later Geneva's mouth tightened and she looked down. She set the cocoa on a table. "No, no . . . "

  "I'm sorry," Rhyme said. "Was he a friend of yours?"

  She shook her head. "Not really. He was just helping me with my paper." Geneva sat forward in her chair. "But it doesn't matter if he was a friend or not. He's dead--that's so terrible." She whispered angrily, "Why? Why did he do it?"

  "He was a witness, I'd guess. He could identify the man who attacked you."

  "So he's dead because of me."

  Rhyme muttered some words to her, no, how could it be her fault? She didn't plan on being attacked. It was just bad luck for Barry. Wrong time, wrong place.

  But the reassurance had no effect on the girl. Her face grew taut, her eyes cold. Rhyme didn't have a clue what to do next. It wasn't enough that he had to endure the presence of teenagers--now he had to comfort them, get their minds off this tragedy. He wheeled closer to the girls and pushed his patience to its limit by making small talk.

  Chapter Five

  An endless twenty minutes later, Sachs and Sellitto arrived at Rhyme's, accompanied by a young, blond patrol officer named Pulaski.

  Sellitto explained that he'd requisitioned the kid to cart the evidence back to Rhyme's and help with the investigation. Clearly a rookie, he had "eager" written on his smooth forehead. He'd obviously been briefed about the criminalist's disability; he was overly oblivious to the fact that the man was paralyzed. Rhyme hated these fake reactions. He infinitely preferred Lakeesha's brashness.

  Just, you know, damn . . .

  The two detectives greeted the girls. Pulaski looked them over sympathetically and asked in a kid-friendly voice how they were doing. Rhyme noted a nicked wedding ring on his finger and deduced a high school marriage; only having children of your own could produce this kind of look.

  Lakeesha answered, "Messed up is what I be. Buggin' . . . Some asshole tryin' to bust up my girlfriend. Whatta you think?"

  Geneva said she was doing all right.

  "I understand you're staying with a relative?" Sachs asked.

  "My uncle. He's living at our place till my folks get back from London."

  Rhyme happened to look at Lon Sellitto. Something was wrong. He'd changed dramatically in the past two hours. The boisterous mood had vanished. His eyes were spooked and he was fidgety. Rhyme noticed too that his fingers repeatedly touched a particular spot on his cheek. He'd rubbed it red.

  "Get dinged by some lead?" Rhyme asked, recalling that the detective had been right next to the librarian when the perp had shot him. Maybe Sellitto had been hit by a bullet fragment or bit of stone if a slug had passed through Barry and struck a building.

  "What?" Then Sellitto realized he'd been rubbing his skin and dropped his hand. He said in a soft voice, so the girls couldn't hear, "I was pretty close to the vic. Got spattered by some blood. That's all. Nothing."

  But a moment later he absently started the rubbing again.

  The gesture reminded Rhyme of Sachs, who had the habit of scratching her scalp and worrying her nails. The compulsion came and went, linked somehow to her drive, her ambition, the indefinable churning inside most cops. Police officers hurt themselves in a hundred different ways. The harm ranged from the minor inflictions of Sachs's, to destroying marriages and children's spirits with harsh words, to closing your lips around the tangy barrel of your service pistol. He'd never seen it in Lon Sellitto, though.

  Geneva asked Sachs, "There was no mistake?"

  "Mistake?"

  "About Dr. Barry."

  "I'm sorry, no. He's dead."

  The girl was motionless. Rhyme could feel her sorrow.

  Anger too. Her eyes were black dots of fury. Then she looked at her watch, said to Rhyme, "Those tests I mentioned?"

  "Well, let's just get some questions out of the way and then we'll see. Sachs?"

  With the evidence now set out on the examining table and chain of custody cards completed, Sachs pulled up a chair beside Rhyme and interviewed the girls. She asked Geneva exactly what had happened. The girl explained she'd been looking up an article in an old magazine when somebody came into the library. She'd heard hesitant footsteps. Then a laugh. The voice of a man ending a conversation and the snap of a closing cell phone.

  The girl squinted. "Hey, you know, maybe what you could do is check out all the mobile companies in town. See who was on the phone then."

  Rhyme gave a laugh. "That's a good thought. But at any given moment in Manhattan there're about fifty thousand cell phone calls in progress. Besides, I doubt he was really on the phone."

  "He was frontin'? How you know that?" Lakeesha asked, furtively slipping two sticks of gum into her mouth.

  "I don't know it. I suspect it. Like the laughing. He was probably doing it to make Geneva drop her guard. You tend not to notice people on cell phones. And you rarely think of them as being a threat."

  Genev
a was nodding. "Yeah. I was kinda freaked when he first came into the library. But when I heard him on the phone, well, I thought it's rude to be talking on a phone in a library but I wasn't scared anymore."

  "What happened then?" Sachs asked.

  She explained that she'd heard a second click--she thought it sounded like a gun--and saw a man in a ski mask. She then told how she'd dismantled the mannequin and dressed it in her own clothes.

  "That phat," Lakeesha offered proudly. "My sista here, she smart."

  She sure is, Rhyme thought.

  "I hid in the stacks till he walked to the microfiche reader then I ran for the fire door."

  "You didn't see anything else about him?" Sachs asked.

  "No."

  "What color was the mask?"

  "Dark. I don't know exactly."

  "Other clothes?"

  "I didn't see anything else really. Not that I remember. I was pretty freaked."

  "I'm sure you were," Sachs said. "When you were hiding in the stacks, were you looking in his direction? So you'd know when to run?"

  Geneva frowned for a moment. "Well, yeah, that's right, I was looking. I forgot about that. I watched through the bottom shelves so I could run when he got close to my chair."

  "So maybe you saw a little more of him then."

  "Oh, you know, I did. I think he had brown shoes. Yeah, brown. Sort of a lighter shade, not dark brown."

  "Good. And what about his pants?"

  "Dark, I'm pretty sure. But that's all I could see, just the cuffs."

  "You smell anything?"

  "No . . . Wait. Maybe I did. You know, something sweet, like flowers."

  "And then?"

  "He came up to the chair and I heard this crack and then another couple of sounds. Something breaking."

  "The microfiche reader," Sachs said. "He smashed it."

  "By then I was running as fast as I could. To the fire door. I went down the stairs and when I got to the street I found Keesh and we were going to run. But I was thinking maybe he was going to hurt somebody else. So I turned around and"--she looked at Pulaski--"we saw you."

  Sachs asked Lakeesha, "Did you see the attacker?"

  "Nothin'. I was just chillin' and then Gen come up, runnin' all fast and buggin' an' ever'thing, you know what I'm sayin'? I didn't see nothin'."

  Rhyme asked Sellitto, "The doer killed Barry because he was a witness--what'd he see?"

  "He said he didn't see anything. He gave me the names of the museum's white, male employees in case it was one of them. There're two but they checked out. One was taking his daughter to school at the time, the other was in the main office, people around him."

  "So, an opportunistic perp," Sachs mused. "Saw her go inside and went after her."

  "A museum?" Rhyme asked. "Odd choice."

  Sellitto asked both girls, "Did you see anyone following you today?"

  Lakeesha said, "We come down on the C train durin' rush hour. Eighth Avenue line . . . be all crowded and nasty. Couldn't see nobody weird. You?"

  Geneva shook her head.

  "How 'bout recently? Anybody hassling you? Hitting on you?"

  Neither of them could think of anybody who'd seemed to be a threat. Embarrassed, Geneva said, "Not exactly a lot of stalkers coming round after me. They'd be looking for a little more booty, you know. Blingier."

  "Blingier?"

  "Girl mean flashy," translated Lakeesha, who obviously typified both booty and bling. She frowned and glanced at Geneva. "Why you gotta go there, girl? Don't be talkin' trash 'bout yo'self."

  Sachs looked at Rhyme, who was frowning. "What're you thinking?"

  "Something's not right. Let's go over the evidence while Geneva's here. There might be some things that she can help explain."

  The girl shook her head. "That test?" She held up her watch.

  "This won't take long," Rhyme said.

  Geneva looked at her friend. "You can just make it to study period."

  "I'ma stay with you. I can't be sittin' for all them hours in class worryin' 'bout you and ever'thing."

  Geneva gave a wry laugh. "No way, girl." She asked Rhyme, "You don't need her, do you?"

  He glanced at Sachs, who shook her head. Sellitto jotted down her address and phone number. "We'll call you if we have any more questions."

  "Take a pass, girl," she said. "Just kick it an' stay home."

  "I'll see you at school," Geneva said firmly. "You'll be there?" Then lifted an eyebrow. "Word?"

  Two loud snaps of gum. A sigh. "Word." At the door the girl paused and turned back, said to Rhyme, "Yo, mister, how long fo' you get outa that chair?"

  No one said anything to fill the awkward moment. Awkward to everyone, Rhyme supposed, but himself.

  "It'll probably be a long time," he said to her.

  "Man, that suck."

  "Yeah," Rhyme said. "Sometimes it does."

  She headed into the hall, toward the front door. They heard, "Damn, watch it, dude." The outer door slammed.

  Mel Cooper entered the room, looking back at the spot where he'd nearly been run down by a teenager who outweighed him by fifty pounds. "Okay," he said to no one. "I'm not going to ask." He pulled off his green windbreaker and nodded a greeting to everyone.

  The slim, balding man had been working as a forensic scientist for an upstate New York police department some years ago when he'd politely but insistently told Rhyme, then head of NYPD forensics, that one of his analyses was wrong. Rhyme had far more respect for people who pointed out mistakes than for sycophants--provided, of course, they were correct, which Cooper had been. Rhyme had immediately started a campaign to get the man to New York City, a challenge at which he ultimately succeeded.

  Cooper was a born scientist but even more important he was a born forensic scientist, which is very different. It's often thought that "forensic" refers to crime scene work, but in fact the word means any aspect of debating issues in courts of law. To be a successful criminalist you have to translate raw facts into a form that'll be useful to the prosecutor. It's not enough, for instance, to simply determine the presence of nux vomica plant materials at a suspected crime scene--many of which are used for such innocuous medical purposes as treating ear inflammations. A true forensic scientist like Mel Cooper would know instantly that those same materials produce the deadly alkaloid poison strychnine.

  Cooper had the trappings of a computer-game nerd--he lived with his mother, still wore madras shirts with chinos and had a Woody Allen physique. But looks were deceiving. Cooper's longtime girlfriend was a tall, gorgeous blonde. Together they would sail in unison across ballroom floors in dance competitions, in which they were often top champions. Recently they'd taken up skeet shooting and winemaking (to which Cooper was meticulously applying principles of chemistry and physics).

  Rhyme briefed him on the case and they turned to the evidence. Rhyme said, "Let's look at the pack."

  Donning latex gloves, Cooper glanced at Sachs, who pointed out the paper bag containing the rape pack. He opened it over a large piece of newsprint--to catch bits of ambient trace--and extracted the bag. It was a thin plastic sack. No store logo was printed on it, only a large yellow smiley face. The tech now opened the bag, then paused. He said, "I smell something . . . . " A deep inhalation. "Flowery. What is that?" Cooper carried the bag to Rhyme and he smelled it. There was something familiar about the fragrance, but he couldn't decide what. "Geneva?"

  "Yes?"

  "Is that what you smelled back in the library?"

  She sniffed. "Yeah, that's it."

  Sachs said, "Jasmine. I think it's jasmine."

  "On the chart," Rhyme announced.

  "What chart?" Cooper asked, looking around.

  In each of his cases, Rhyme made whiteboard charts of evidence found at crime scenes and profiles of the perps. "Start one," he ordered. "And we need to call him something. Somebody give me a name."

  No one had any inspiration.

  Rhyme said, "No time to be creative. Octob
er ninth today, right? Ten/nine. So he'll be Unsub one-oh-nine. Thom! We need your elegant handwriting."

  "No need to butter up," the aide said as he stepped into the room with another coffeepot.

  "Unsub one-oh-nine. Evidence and profile charts. He's a white male. Height?"

  Geneva said, "I don't know. Everybody's tall to me. Six feet, I'd guess."

  "You seem observant. We'll go with that. Weight?"

  "Not too big or small." She fell quiet for a moment, troubled. "About Dr. Barry's weight."

  Sellitto said, "Make it one eighty. Age?"

  "I don't know. I couldn't see his face."

  "Voice?"

  "I didn't pay any attention. Average, I guess."

  Rhyme continued, "And light brown shoes, dark slacks, dark ski mask. A pack in a bag that smells of jasmine. He smells of it too. Soap or lotion maybe."

  "Pack?" Thom asked. "What do you mean?"

  "Rape pack," Geneva said. A glance at Rhyme. "You don't need to sugarcoat anything for me. If that's what you were doing."

  "Fair enough." Rhyme nodded at her. "Let's keep going." He noticed Sachs's face turn dark as she watched Cooper pick up the bag.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The smiley face. On a rape pack bag. What kind of sick asshole'd do that?"

  He was perplexed by her anger. "You realize that it's good news he used that, don't you, Sachs?"

  "Good news?"

  "It limits the number of stores we have to search for. Not as easy as a bag with an individuated logo on it but better than unprinted plastic."

  "I suppose," she said, grimacing. "But still."

  Wearing latex gloves, Mel Cooper looked through the bag. He took out the tarot card first. It showed a man hanging upside down by his foot from a scaffold. Beams of light radiated from his head. His face was oddly passive. He didn't seem to be in pain. Above him was the Roman numeral for twelve, XII.

  "Mean anything to you?" Rhyme asked Geneva.

  She shook her head.

  Cooper mused, "Some kind of ritual or cult thing?"

  Sachs said, "Got a thought." She pulled out her cell phone, placed a call. Rhyme deduced that the person she'd spoken to would be arriving soon. "I called a specialist--about the card."

  "Good."

  Cooper examined the card for prints and found none. Nor was any helpful trace revealed.

  "What else was in the bag?" Rhyme asked.

  "Okay," the tech replied, "we've got a brand-new roll of duct tape, a box cutter, Trojan condoms. Nothing traceable. And . . . bingo!" Cooper held up a little slip of paper. "A receipt."