Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

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.

ELIZABETH STREET SAFE HOUSE SCENE

Used electrical booby trap.

Fingerprints: None. Glove prints only.

Security camera and monitor; no leads.

Tarot deck, missing the twelfth card; no leads.

Map with diagram of museum where G.

Settle was attacked and buildings across the street.

Trace:

Falafel and yogurt.

Wood scrapings from desk with traces of pure sulfuric acid.

Clear liquid, not explosive. Sent to FBI lab.

More fibers from rope. Garrotte?

Pure carbon found in map.

Safe house was rented, for cash, to Billy Todd Hammil. Fits Unsub 109’s description, but no leads to an actual Hammil.