Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

“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.

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.”