Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

Sachs asked, “What was that law he was talking about?”

“The Civil Rights Act of 1875,” Geneva said. “It prohibited racial discrimination by hotels, restaurants, trains, theaters – any public place.” The girl shook her head. “It didn’t last, though. The Supreme Court struck it down in the 1880s as unconstitutional. There wasn’t a single piece of federal civil rights legislation enacted after that for over fifty years.”

Sachs mused, “I wonder if Charles lived long enough to hear it was struck down. He wouldn’t’ve liked that.”

Shrugging, Geneva replied, “I don’t think it would’ve mattered. He’d think of it as just a temporary setback.”

“The hope pushing out the pain,” Rhyme said.

“That’s word,” Geneva said. Then she looked at her battered Swatch. “I’ve got to get back to work. That Wesley Goades…I’ve gotta say, the man is wack. He never smiles, never looks at you… And, come on, you can trim a beard sometimes, you know.”

Lying in bed that night, the room dark, Rhyme and Sachs were watching the moon, a crescent so thin that, by rights, it should have been cold white but through some malady of atmosphere was as golden as the sun.

Sometimes, at moments like this, they talked, sometimes not. Tonight they were silent.

There was a slight movement on the ledge outside the window – from the peregrine falcons that nested there. A male and female and two fledglings. Occasionally a visitor to Rhyme’s would look at the nest and ask if they had names.

“We have a deal,” he’d mutter. “They don’t name me. I don’t name them. It works.”

A falcon’s head rose and looked sideways, cutting through their view of the moon. The bird’s movement and profile suggested, for some reason, wisdom. Danger, too – adult peregrines have no natural predators and attack their prey from above at speeds up to 170 miles an hour. But now the bird hunkered down benignly and went still. The creatures were diurnal and slept at night.

“Thinking?” Sachs asked.

“Let’s go hear some music tomorrow. There’s a matinee, or whatever you call an afternoon concert, at Lincoln Center.”

“Who’s playing?”

“The Beatles, I think. Or Elton John and Maria Callas doing duets. I don’t care. I really just want to embarrass people by wheeling toward them… My point is that it doesn’t matter who’s playing. I want to get out. That doesn’t happen very often, you know.”

“I know.” Sachs leaned up and kissed him. “Sure, let’s.”

He twisted his head and touched his lips to her hair. She settled down against him. Rhyme closed his fingers around her hand and squeezed hard.

She squeezed back.

“You know what we could do?” Sachs asked, a hint of conspiracy in her voice. “Let’s sneak in some wine and lunch. Pâté and cheese. French bread.”

“You can buy food there. I remember that. But the scotch is terrible. And it costs a fortune. What we could do is -”

“Rhyme!” Sachs sat straight up in bed, gasping.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What did you just do?”

“I’m agreeing that we smuggle some food into -”

“Don’t play around.” Sachs was fumbling for the light, clicked it on. In her black silk boxers and gray T-shirt, hair askew and eyes wide, she looked like a college girl who’d just remembered she had an exam at eight tomorrow morning.

Rhyme squinted as he looked at the light. “That’s awfully bright. Is it necessary?”

She was staring down at the bed.

“Your…your hand. You moved it!”

“I guess I did.”

“Your right hand! You’ve never had any movement in your right hand.”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been putting off the test, but you’ve known all along you could do that?”

“I didn’t know I could. Until now. I wasn’t going to try – I was afraid it wouldn’t work. So I was going to give up all the exercise, just stop worrying about it.” He shrugged. “But I changed my mind. I wanted to give it a shot. But just us, no machines or doctors around.”

Not by myself, he added, though silently.

“And you didn’t tell me!” She slapped him on the arm.

“I didn’t feel that.”

They laughed.

“It’s amazing, Rhyme,” she whispered and hugged him hard. “You did it. You really did it.”

“I’ll try it again.” Rhyme looked at Sachs, then at his hand.

He paused a moment, then sent a burst of energy from his mind streaking through the nerves to his right hand. Each finger twitched a little. And then, as ungainly as a newborn colt, his hand swiveled across a two-inch Grand Canyon of blanket and seated itself firmly against Sachs’s wrist. He closed his thumb and index finger around it.

Tears in her eyes, she laughed with delight.

“How ’bout that,” he said.

“So you’ll keep up with the exercises?”

He nodded.

“We’ll set up the test with Dr. Sherman?” she asked.

“I suppose we could. Unless something else comes up. Been a busy time lately.”

“We’ll set up the test,” she said firmly.

She shut the light out and lay close to him. Which he could sense, though not feel.

In silence, Rhyme stared at the ceiling. Just as Sachs’s breathing stilled, he frowned, aware of an odd sensation trickling through his chest, where there ought to be none. At first he thought it was phantom. Then, alarmed, he wondered if it was perhaps the start of an attack of dysreflexia, or worse. But he realized that, no, this was something else entirely, something not rooted in nerve or muscle or organ. A scientist always, he analyzed the sensation empirically and noted that it was similar to what he’d felt watching Geneva Settle face down the bank’s attorney. Similar too to when he was reading about Charles Singleton’s mission to find justice at the Potters’ Field tavern that terrible night in July so many years ago, or about his passion for civil rights.

Then, suddenly, Rhyme understood what he was feeling: It was simple pride. Just like he’d been proud of Geneva and of her ancestor, he was proud of his own accomplishment. By tackling his exercises and then tonight testing himself, Lincoln Rhyme had confronted the terrifying, the impossible. Whether he’d regained any movement or not was irrelevant; the sensation came from what he had undeniably achieved: wholeness, the same wholeness that Charles had written of. He realized that nothing else – not politicians or fellow citizens or your haywire body – could make you a three-fifths man; it was solely your decision to view yourself as a complete or partial person and to live your life accordingly.

All things considered, he supposed, this understanding was as inconsequential as the slight movement he’d regained in his hand. But that didn’t matter. He thought of his profession: How a tiny flake of paint leads to a car that leads to a parking lot where a faint footprint leads to a doorway that reveals a fiber from a discarded coat with a fingerprint on the sleeve button – the one surface that the perp forgot to wipe clean.

The next day a tactical team knocks on his door.

And justice is served, a victim saved, a family reunited. All thanks to a minuscule bit of paint.

Small victories – that’s what Dr. Sherman had said. Small victories…Sometimes they’re all you can hope for, Lincoln Rhyme reflected, as he felt sleep closing in.

But sometimes they’re all you need.

Authors are only as good as the friends and fellow professionals around them, and I’m extremely fortunate to be surrounded by a truly wonderful ensemble: Will and Tina Anderson, Alex Bonham, Louise Burke, Robby Burroughs, Britt Carlson, Jane Davis, Julie Reece Deaver, Jamie Hodder-Williams, John Gilstrap, Cahty Gleason, Carolyn Mays, Emma Longhurst, Dianal Mackay, Tara Parsons, Carolyn Reidy, David Rosenthal, Marysue Rucci, Deborah Schneider, Vivienne Schuster, Brigitte Smith, and Kevin Smith.