Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

Damn, that’s slick, she thought with dark admiration.

There was no sign that his partner, the black man in the combat jacket, had been – or still was – nearby.

Donning the mask again, she carefully examined the glass parts of the poison device itself, but they yielded no prints or other clues, which surprised nobody. Maybe the cyanide or acid would tell them something. Discouraged, she reported her results to Rhyme.

He asked, “And what did you search?”

“Well, the car and the alleyway around Pulaski. And then the entrance and exit routes into and out of the alley, the street where he approached the Crown Vic – both directions.”

Silence for a moment, as Rhyme considered this.

She felt uneasy. Was she missing something? “What’re you thinking, Rhyme?”

“You searched by the book, Sachs. Those were the right places. But did you take in the totality of the scene?”

“Chapter Two of your book.”

“Good. At least somebody’s read it. But did you do what I say?”

Although time was always of the essence when searching a crime scene, one of the practices Rhyme insisted on was taking a few moments to get a sense of the entire scene in light of the particular crime. The example he cited in his forensic science textbook was an actual murder in Greenwich Village. The primary crime scene was where the strangled victim was found, his apartment. The secondary was the fire escape by which the killer had gotten away. It was the third scene, though, an unlikely one, at which Rhyme had found the matches bearing the killer’s fingerprints: a gay bar three blocks away. No one would’ve thought to search the bar, except that Rhyme found some gay porno tapes in the victim’s apartment; a canvass of the nearest gay bar turned up a bartender who identified the victim and recalled him sharing a drink with a man earlier that night. The lab raised latents from the book of matches resting on the bar near where the two men had sat; the prints led them to the murderer.

“Let’s keep thinking, Sachs. He sets up this plan – improvised but elaborate – to distract our people and get the device into a car. That meant he had to know where all the players were, what they were doing and how he could make enough time to set the device. Which tells us what?”

Sachs was already scanning the street. “He was watching.”

“Yes, indeed, Sachs. Good. And where might he have been doing that from?”

“Across the street’d have the best visibility. But there’re dozens of buildings he could’ve been in. I have no idea which one.”

“True. But Harlem’s a neighborhood, right?”

“I…”

“Understand what I’m saying?”

“Not exactly.”

“Families, Sachs. Families live there, extended families living together, not yuppie singles. A home invasion wouldn’t go unnoticed. Neither would somebody skulking about in lobbies or alleys. Good word, isn’t that? Skulking. Says it all.”

“Your point, Rhyme?” His good mood had returned but she was irritated that he was more interested in the puzzle of the case than he was about, say, Pulaski’s chances for recovery or that Roland Bell and Geneva Settle had nearly been killed.

“Not an apartment. Not a rooftop – Roland’s people always look there. There’ll be someplace else he was watching from, Sachs. Where do you think it might be?”

Scanning the street again…“There’s a billboard on an abandoned building. It’s full of graffiti and handbills – real busy, you know, hard to spot anybody looking out from behind it. I’m going to see.”

Checking carefully for signs that the unsub was nearby, and finding none, she crossed the street and walked to the back of the old building – a burnt-out store, it seemed. Climbing through the back window, she saw that the floor was dusty – the perfect surface for footprints and, sure enough, she spotted Unsub 109’s Bass walker shoes right away. Still, she slipped rubber bands around the booties of the Tyvek overalls – a trick Rhyme invented to make certain that an officer exploring the crime scene didn’t confuse his or her own prints with those of the suspect. The detective started into the room, her Glock in hand.

Following the unsub’s prints to the front, she paused from time to time, listening for noises. Sachs heard a skitter or two but, no stranger to the sound track of seamier New York, she knew immediately that the intruder was a rat.

In the front she looked out through a gap in the plywood panels of the billboard where he’d stood and noticed that, yes, it provided a perfect view of the street. She collected some basic forensic equipment then returned and hit the walls with ultraviolet spray. Sachs turned the alternative light source wand on them.

But the only marks she found were latex glove prints.

She told Rhyme what she’d found and then said, “I’ll collect trace from where he stood but I don’t see very much. He’s just not leaving anything.”

“Too professional,” Rhyme said, sighing. “Every time we outsmart him, he’s already outsmarted us. Well, bring in what you’ve got, Sachs. We’ll look it over.”

As they waited for Sachs to return, Rhyme and Sellitto made a decision: While they believed that Unsub 109 had fled the area around the apartment they still arranged to have Geneva ’s great-aunt, Lilly Hall, and her friend moved to a hotel room for the time being.

As for Pulaski, he was in intensive care, still unconscious from the beating. The doctors couldn’t say whether he’d live or not. In Rhyme’s lab, Sellitto slammed his phone shut angrily after getting this news. “He was a fucking rookie. I had no business recruiting him for Bell’s team. I should’ve gone myself.”

A curious thing to say. “Lon,” Rhyme said, “you’ve got rank. You graduated from guard detail, when? Twenty years ago?”

But the big cop wouldn’t be consoled. “Put him in over his head. Stupid of me. Goddamn.”

Once again the hand rubbed at the hotspot on his cheek. The detective was edgy and looked particularly rumpled today. He usually wore pretty much what he wore now: light shirt and dark suit. Rhyme wondered, though, if these were the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. It seemed so. Yes, there was a dot of blood from the library shooting on the jacket sleeve – as if he were wearing the clothing as penance.

The doorbell rang.

Thom returned a moment later with a tall, lanky man. Pale skin, bad posture, unruly beard and brown, curly hair. He was dressed in a tan corduroy jacket and brown slacks. Birkenstocks.

His eyes scanned the laboratory then glanced at Rhyme and looked him over. Unsmiling, he asked, “Is Geneva Settle here?”

“Who’re you?” Sellitto asked.

“I’m Wesley Goades.”

Ah, the legal Terminator – who was not fictional, Rhyme was somewhat surprised to find. Sellitto checked his ID and nodded.

The man’s long fingers continually adjusted thick wire-rimmed glasses or tugged absently at his long beard and he never looked anyone in the eye for more than a half second. The constant ocular jitters reminded Rhyme of Geneva’s friend, the gum-snapping Lakeesha Scott.

He offered a card to Thom, who showed it to Rhyme. Goades was director of the Central Harlem Legal Services Corporation and was affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union. The fine print at the bottom said that he was licensed to practice law in New York state, the federal district courts in New York and Washington, D.C., and before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Maybe his days representing capitalist insurance companies had turned him to the other side.

In response to the querying glances from Rhyme and Sellitto, he said, “I’ve been out of town. I got the message that Geneva called my office yesterday. Something about her being a witness. I just wanted to check on her.”