Jeffery Deaver: The Twelfth Card

Sprinting, sprinting…

Behind him comes the gallop of mounted police. Ahead of him, other horsemen appear, led by a helmeted police officer brandishing a pistol. “Halt, halt where you are, Charles Singleton! I am Detective Captain William Simms. I’ve been searching for you for two days.”

The freedman does as ordered. His broad shoulders slump, strong arms at his sides, chest heaving as he sucks in the humid, rancid air beside the Hudson River. Nearby is the tow boat office, and up and down the river he sees the spindles of sailing ship masts, hundreds of them, taunting him with their promise of freedom. He leans, gasping, against the large Swiftsure Express Company sign. Charles stares at the approaching officer as the clop, clop, clop of his horse’s hooves resonate loudly on the cobblestones.

“Charles Singleton, you are under arrest for burglary. You will surrender to us or we will subdue you. Either way you will end up in shackles. Pick the first and you will suffer no pain. Pick the second, you will end up bloody. The choice is yours.”

“I have been accused of a crime I did not commit!”

“I repeat: Surrender or die. Those are your only choices.”

“No, sir, I have one other,” Charles shouts. He resumes his flight – toward the dock.

“Stop or we will shoot!” Detective Simms calls.

But the freedman bounds over the railing of the pier like a horse taking a picket in a charge. He seems to hang in the air for a moment then cartwheels thirty feet into the murky waters of the Hudson River, muttering some words, perhaps a plea to Jesus, perhaps a declaration of love for his wife and child, though whatever they might be none of his pursuers can hear.

Fifty feet from the microfiche reader forty-one-year-old Thompson Boyd moved closer to the girl.

He pulled the stocking cap over his face, adjusted the eyeholes and opened the cylinder of his pistol to make sure it wasn’t jammed. He’d checked it earlier but, in this job, you could never be too certain. He put the gun into his pocket and pulled the billy club out of a slit cut into his dark raincoat.

He was in the stacks of books in the costume exhibit hall, which separated him from the microfiche-reader tables. His latex-gloved fingers pressed his eyes, which had been stinging particularly sharply this morning. He blinked from the pain.

He looked around again, making sure the room was in fact deserted.

No guards were here, none downstairs either. No security cameras or sign-in sheets. All good. But there were some logistical problems. The big room was deathly quiet, and Thompson couldn’t hide his approach to the girl. She’d know someone was in the room with her and might become edgy and alert.

So after he’d stepped inside this wing of the library and locked the door behind him, he’d laughed, a chuckle. Thompson Boyd had stopped laughing years ago. But he was also a craftsman who understood the power of humor – and how to use it to your advantage in this line of work. A laugh – coupled with a farewell pleasantry and a closing cell phone – would put her at ease, he reckoned.

This ploy seemed to work. He looked quickly around the long row of shelves and saw the girl, staring at the microfiche screen. Her hands, at her sides, seemed to clench and unclench nervously at what she was reading.

He started forward.

Then stopped. The girl was pushing away from the table. He heard her chair slide on the linoleum. She was walking somewhere. Leaving? No. He heard the sound of the drinking fountain and her gulping some water. Then he heard her pulling books off the shelf and stacking them up on the microfiche table. Another pause and she returned to the stacks once again, gathering more books. The thud as she set them down. Finally he heard the screech of her chair as she sat once more. Then silence.

Thompson looked again. She was back in her chair, reading one of the dozen books piled in front of her.

With the bag containing the condoms, razor knife and duct tape in his left hand, the club in his right, he started toward her again.

Coming up behind her now, twenty feet, fifteen, holding his breath.

Ten feet. Even if she bolted now, he could lunge forward and get her – break a knee or stun her with a blow to the head.

Eight feet, five…

He paused and silently set the rape pack on a shelf. He took the club in both hands. He stepped closer, lifting the varnished oak rod.

Still absorbed in the words, she read intently, oblivious to the fact that her attacker was an arm’s length behind her. Thompson swung the club downward with all his strength toward the top of the girl’s stocking cap.

Crack …

A painful vibration stung his hands as the baton struck her head with a hollow snap.

But something was wrong. The sound, the feel were off. What was going on?

Thompson Boyd leapt back as the body fell to the floor.

And tumbled into pieces.

The torso of the mannequin fell one way. The head another. Thompson stared for a moment. He glanced to his side and saw a ball gown draped over the bottom half of the same mannequin – part of a display on women’s clothing in Reconstruction America.

No…

Somehow, she’d tipped to the fact that he was a threat. She’d then collected some books from the shelves as a cover for standing up and taking apart a mannequin. She’d dressed the upper part of it in her own sweatshirt and stocking cap then propped it on the chair.

But where was she?

The slap of racing feet answered the question. Thompson Boyd heard her sprinting for the fire door. The man slipped the billy club into his coat, pulled out his gun and started after her.

Geneva Settle was running.

Running to escape. Like her ancestor Charles Singleton.

Gasping. Like Charles.

But she was sure she had none of the dignity her ancestor displayed in his flight from the police 140 years ago. Geneva sobbed and screamed for help and stumbled hard into a wall in the frenzy of panic, scraping the back of her hand.

There she go, there she go, the skinny little boy-girl…Get her!

The thought of the elevator terrified her, being trapped. So she chose the fire stairs. Slamming into the door at full speed, she stunned herself, a burst of yellow light in her vision, but the girl kept right on going. She leapt from the landing down to the fourth floor, tugging on the knob. But these were security doors and didn’t open from the stairwell. She’d have to use the door on the ground floor.

She continued down the stairs, gasping for breath. Why? What was he after? she wondered.

Skinny little Oreo bitch got no time fo’ girls like us…

The gun…That’s what’d made her suspicious. Geneva Settle was no gangsta girl, but you couldn’t be a student at Langston Hughes High School in the heart of Harlem without having seen at least a few guns in your life. When she’d heard a distinctive click – very different from the cell phone closing – she wondered if the laughing man was just fronting, here for trouble. So she’d stood casually, gotten a drink of water, ready to bolt. But she’d peeked through the stacks and spotted the ski mask. She realized there was no way to get past him to the door unless she kept him focused on the microfiche table. She’d stacked up some books noisily then stripped a nearby mannequin, dressed it in her hat and sweatshirt and rested it on the chair in front of the microfiche machine. Then she’d waited until he approached and, when he had, she’d slipped around him.

Bust her up, bust the bitch up…

Geneva now stumbled down another flight.

The tap of footsteps above her. Jesus Lord, he was following! He’d slipped into the stairwell after her and was now only one landing away. Half running, half stumbling, cradling her scraped hand, she raced down the stairs as his footsteps grew closer.