The Twelfth Card (24 page)

“J. T., if you please, sir.”

“All right, J. T.” Rhyme explained the situation to him.

“Charlie Tucker? Sure, the guard who was killed. Lynching, or whatever. I wasn’t here then. Tucker retired just before I moved from Houston. I’ll pull his file. Put you on hold.” A moment later the warden returned. “I’ve got it right here. Nope, no formal complaints against him, ’cepting from one prisoner. He said Charlie was ridin’ him pretty hard. When Charlie didn’t stop they got into a little scuffle ’bout it.”

“That could be our man,” Rhyme pointed out.

“ ’Cepting the prisoner was executed a week later. And Charlie didn’t get hisself killed for another year.”

“But maybe Tucker hassled another prisoner, who hired somebody to even the score.”

“Possible. Only hiring a pro for that? Little sophisticated for our lot down here.”

Rhyme tended to agree. “Well, maybe the perp was a prisoner himself. He went after Tucker as soon as he got out, then set up the murder to look like some ritual killing. Could you ask some of your guards or other employees? We’d be looking for a white male, forties, medium build, light brown hair. Probably doing time for a violent felony. And probably released or escaped—”

“No escapes, not from here,” the warden added.

“Okay then,
released
not long before Tucker was killed. That’s about all we know. Oh, and he has a knowledge of guns and’s a good shot.”

“That won’t help. This’s Texas.” A chuckle.

Rhyme continued, “We have a computer composite of his face. We’ll email a copy to you. Could you have somebody compare it to the pictures of releasees around that time?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll have my gal do it. She’s got a pretty good eye. But may take a while. We’ve had ourselves a lotta inmates go through here.” He gave them his email address and they hung up.

Just as the call was disconnected, Geneva, Bell and Pulaski arrived.

Bell explained about the accomplice’s escape at the school. He added a few details about him, though, and told them that somebody was going to canvass the students and teachers and dig up a security tape if there was one.

“I didn’t get to take my last test,” Geneva said angrily, as if this were Rhyme’s fault. This girl could definitely get on your nerves. Still, he said patiently, “I have some news you might be interested
in. Your ancestor survived his swim in the Hudson.”

“He did?” Her face brightened and she eagerly read the printout of the 1868 magazine article. Then she frowned. “They make him sound pretty bad. Like he’d planned it all along. He wasn’t that way. I know it.” She looked up. “And we still don’t know what happened to him if he was ever released.”

“We’re still searching for information. I hope we can find out more.”

The tech’s computer chimed and he looked it over. “Maybe something here. Email from a professor at Amherst who runs an African-American history website. She’s one of the people I emailed about Charles Singleton.”

“Read it.”

“It’s from Frederick Douglass’s diary.”

“Who was he again?” Pulaski asked. “Sorry, I probably should know. Got a street named after him and all.”

Geneva said, “Former slave.
The
abolitionist and civil rights leader of the nineteenth century. Writer, lecturer.”

The rookie was blushing. “Like I say, should’ve known.”

Cooper leaned forward and read from the screen, “ ‘May third, 1866. Another evening at Gallows Heights—’ ”

“Ah,” Rhyme interrupted, “our mysterious neighborhood.” The word “gallows” again reminded him of The Hanged Man tarot card, the placid figure swinging by his leg from a scaffold. He glanced at the card, then turned his attention back to Cooper.

“ ‘ . . . discussing our vital endeavor, the Fourteenth Amendment. Several members of the Colored
community in New York and myself met with,
inter alia,
the Honorable Governor Fenton and members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, including Senators Harris, Grimes and Fessenden, and Congressmen Stevens and Washburne and the Democrat, Andrew T. Rogers, who proved far less partisan than we had feared.

“ ‘Governor Fenton began with a moving invocation, whereupon we began to present to the members of the committee our opinions on the various draft versions of the Amendment, which we did at length. (Mr. Charles Singleton was particularly articulate in his view that the amendment should incorporate a requirement of universal suffrage for all citizens, Negroes and Caucasians, women as well as men, which the members of the committee took under advisement.) Lengthy debates lasted well into the night.’ ”

Geneva leaned over his shoulder and read. “ ‘Particularly articulate,’ ” she whispered out loud. “And he wanted voting for women.”

“Here’s another entry,” Cooper said.

“ ‘June twenty-fifth, 1867. I am troubled by the slow progress. The Fourteenth Amendment was presented to the states for ratification one year ago, and with expediency twenty-two blessed the measure with their approval. Only six more are required, but we are meeting with stubborn resistance.

“ ‘Willard Fish, Charles Singleton and Elijah Walker are traveling throughout those states as yet uncommitted and doing what they can to implore legislators therein to vote in favor of the amendment. But at every turn they are faced with ignorance in perceiving the wisdom of this law—and personal disdain and threats and anger. To have sacrificed so much, and yet not achieve our goal . . . . Is our prevailing
in the War to be hollow, merely a Pyrrhic victory? I pray the cause of our people does not wither in this, our most important effort.’ ” Cooper looked up from the screen. “That’s it.”

Geneva said, “So Charles was working with Douglass and the others on the Fourteenth Amendment. They were friends, sounds like.”

Or were they? Rhyme wondered. Was the newspaper article right? Had he worked his way into the circle to learn what he could about the Freedmen’s Trust and rob it?

Although, for Lincoln Rhyme, truth was the only goal in any forensic investigation, he harbored a rare sentimental hope that Charles Singleton had not committed the crime.

He stared at the evidence board, seeing far more question marks than answers.

“Geneva, can you call your aunt? See if she’s found any more letters or anything else about Charles?”

The girl called the woman with whom Aunt Lilly was living. There was no answer but she left a message for one of them to call back at Rhyme’s. She then placed another call. Her eyes brightened. “Mom! Are you home?”

Thank God, Rhyme thought. Her parents were back at last.

But a frown crossed the girl’s face a moment later. “No . . . What happened? . . . When?”

A delay of some sort, Rhyme deduced. Geneva gave her mother an update, reassured them she was safe and being looked out for by the police. She handed the phone to Bell, who spoke to her mother at some length about the situation. He then gave the phone back and Geneva said good-bye to her and to her father. She reluctantly hung up.

Bell said, “They’re stuck in London. The flight was canceled, and they couldn’t get anything else today. They’re on the earliest plane out tomorrow—it goes to Boston and they’ll catch the next flight here.”

Geneva shrugged, but Rhyme could see the disappointment in her eyes. She said, “I better get back home. I have some projects for school.”

Bell checked with his SWAT officers and Geneva’s uncle. Everything seemed safe, he reported.

“You’ll stay out of school tomorrow?”

A hesitation. She grimaced. Would there be another battle?

Then someone spoke. It was Pulaski, the rookie. “The fact is, Geneva, it’s not just you anymore. If that guy today, the one in the combat jacket, had gotten close, and started shooting, there might’ve been other students hurt or killed. He might try again when you’re in a crowd outside of school or on the street.”

Rhyme could see in her face that his words afffected her. Maybe she was reflecting about Dr. Barry’s death.

So he’s dead because of me . . . .

“Sure,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll stay home.”

Bell nodded at her. “Thanks.” And cast a grateful glance toward the rookie.

The detective and Pulaski ushered the girl out the door and the others returned to the evidence from the unsub’s safe house.

Rhyme was upset to see there wasn’t much. The diagram of the street in front of the African-American museum, which Sachs had found hidden in the man’s bed, yielded no prints. The paper was off-the-shelf generic, the sort sold at Staples and Office Depot. The ink was cheap and untraceable. The
sketch contained far more details of the alleys and buildings across the street than of the museum itself—this map was for the man’s escape route, Rhyme assumed. But Sachs had already searched those locations carefully and detectives had canvassed potential witnesses in the jewelry exchange and other buildings shown on the plan.

There were more fibers from the rope—his garrotte, they speculated.

Cooper ran a portion of the map through the GC/MS, and the only trace found in the paper was pure carbon. “Charcoal from a street fair vendor?” he wondered.

“Maybe,” Rhyme said. “Or maybe he burned evidence. Put it on the chart. Maybe we’ll find a connection later.”

The other trace evidence on the map—stains and crumbs—were more food: yogurt and ground chickpeas, garlic and corn oil.

“Falafel,” Thom, a gourmet cook, offered. “Middle Eastern. And often served with yogurt. Refreshing, by the way.”

“And extremely common,” Rhyme said sourly. “We can narrow down the sources to about two thousand in Manhattan alone, wouldn’t you think? What the hell else do we have?”

On the way back here Sachs and Sellitto had stopped at the real estate company managing the Elizabeth Street building and had gotten information on the lessee of the apartment. The woman running the office had said the tenant had paid three months’ rent in cash, plus another two months’ security deposit, which he’d told her to keep. (The cash, unfortunately, had been spent; there was none left to fingerprint.) He’d given his name as Billy Todd Hammil on the lease, former
address, Florida. The composite picture that Sachs had done bore a resemblance to the man who’d signed the lease, though he’d worn a baseball cap and glasses. The woman confirmed that he had a Southern accent.

A search of identification databases revealed 173 hits for Billy Todd Hammils throughout the country in the past five years. Of the ones who were white and between thirty-five and fifty, none was in the New York area. The ones in Florida were all elderly or in their twenties. Four Billy Todds had criminal records, and of these, three were still in prison and one had died six years ago.

“He picked the name out of a hat,” Rhyme muttered. He looked over the computer-generated image.

Who are you, Unsub 109? he wondered.

And
where
are you?

“Mel, email the picture to J. T.”

“To?”

“Our good ole boy warden down in Amarillo.” A nod toward the picture. “I’m still leaning toward the theory our boy’s an inmate who had a run-in with that guard who was lynched.”

“Got it,” Cooper said. After he’d done so he took the sample of liquid that Sachs had found in the safe house, carefully opened it up and prepared it for the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.

A short time later the results popped up on the screen.

“This’s a new one to me. Polyvinyl alcohol, povidone, benzalkonium chloride; dextrose; potassium chloride; water; sodium bicarbonate; sodium chloride—”

“More salt,” Rhyme chimed in. “But it ain’t popcorn this time.”

“And sodium citrate and sodium phosphate. Few other things.”

“Fucking Greek to me.” Sellitto shrugged and wandered into the hall, turning toward the bathroom.

Cooper nodded at the list of ingredients. “Any clue what it is?”

Rhyme shook his head. “Our database?”

“Nothing.”

“Send it down to Washington.”

“Will do.” The tech sent the information off to the FBI’s lab and then turned to the final item of evidence that Sachs had found: wood scrapings of the stains on top of the desk. Cooper prepared a sample for the chromatograph.

As they waited for the results Rhyme scanned the evidence chart. He was looking over the entries when he saw some fast motion from the corner of his eye. Startled, he turned toward it. But no one was in that portion of the lab. What had he seen?

Then he saw movement again and realized what he was looking at: a reflection in the glass front of a cabinet. It was Lon Sellitto, alone in the hallway, apparently believing no one could see him. The fast motion had been the big detective’s practicing a fast draw of his pistol. Rhyme couldn’t see the man’s face clearly but his expression appeared distressed.

What was
this
about?

The criminalist caught Sachs’s eye and nodded toward the doorway. She edged closer to the door and looked out, watching the detective draw his weapon several more times then shake his head, grimacing. Sachs shrugged. After three or four minutes of the exercise, the detective put his gun away, stepped into the bathroom and without closing the door flushed the toilet and stepped out again a second later.

He returned to the lab. “Jesus, Linc, when’re you going to put in a classy john in this place? Didn’t yellow and black go out in the seventies?”

“You know, I just don’t hold a lot of meetings in the toilet.”

The big man laughed, but too loudly. The sound, like the banter that inspired it, rang false.

But whatever was troubling the man instantly ceased to occupy Rhyme’s mind when the results of the GC/MS analysis flashed onto the computer screen—the scrapings from the unsub’s desktop at the safe house. Rhyme frowned. The analysis had reported that the substance that had stained the wood was pure sulfuric acid, news that Rhyme found particularly discouraging. For one thing, from an evidentiary point of view, it was readily available and therefore virtually impossible to trace to a single source.

But more upsetting was the fact that it was perhaps the most powerful—and dangerous—acid you could buy; as a weapon, even a tiny quantity could, within seconds, kill or permanently disfigure.