Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

Wincing in pain, Bell trained the big gun on the uncle and said, “Don’t move a damn muscle.”

The man blinked and frowned.

“Lie down. And your arms – stretch ’em out.”

“Detective Bell – ” Geneva began.

“Just a minute, miss.”

The uncle did as he was told. Bell cuffed him, as the uniforms from the RMP trotted through the alley.

“Frisk him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The uncle said, “Look, you don’t know what you doin’, sir.”

“Quiet,” Bell said to him and took Geneva aside, put her in a recessed doorway so she’d be out of the line of fire from anyone on rooftops nearby.

“Roland!” Barbe Lynch hurried down the alley.

Bell leaned against the brick wall, catching his breath. He glanced to the left, seeing the homeless guy he’d noticed earlier squint uneasily at the police and turn around, then head in the opposite direction. Bell ignored him.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Geneva said to the detective, nodding at the cuffed man.

“But he’s not your uncle,” the detective said, calming slowly, “is he?”

“No.”

“What was he doing with you just now?”

She looked down, a sorrowful expression on her face.

“ Geneva,” Bell said sternly, “this’s serious. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I asked him to take me someplace.”

“Where?”

She lowered her head. “To work,” she said. “I couldn’t afford to miss my shift.” She opened her jacket, revealing a McDonald’s uniform. The cheery name tag read, Hi, my name’s Gen .

“What’s the story?” Lincoln Rhyme asked. He was concerned but, despite the fright at her disappearance, there was no accusation in his voice.

Geneva was sitting in a chair near his wheelchair, on the ground floor of the town house. Sachs stood beside her, arms crossed. She’d just arrived with a large stack of material she’d brought from the Sanford Foundation archives where she’d made the Potters’ Field discovery. It sat on the table near Rhyme, ignored now that this new drama had intruded.

The girl looked defiantly into his eyes. “I hired him to play my uncle.”

“And your parents?”

“I don’t have any.”

“You don’t -”

“- have any,” she repeated through clenched teeth.

“Go on,” Sachs said kindly.

She didn’t speak for a moment. Finally: “When I was ten, my father left us, my moms and me. He moved to Chicago with this woman and got married. Had himself a whole new family. I was torn up – oh, it hurt. But deep down I didn’t really blame him much. Our life was a mess. My moms, she was hooked on crack, just couldn’t get off it. They’d have these bad fights – well, she fought. Mostly he tried to straighten her out and she’d get mad at him. To pay for what she needed she’d perp stuff from stores.” Geneva held Rhyme’s eyes as she added, “And she’d go to girlfriends’ places and they’d have some men over – you know what for. Dad knew all about it. I guess he put up with it for as long as he could then moved on.”

She took a deep breath and continued, “Then moms got sick. She was HIV positive but didn’t take any medicine. She died of an infection. I lived with her sister in the Bronx for a while but then she moved back to Alabama and left me at Auntie Lilly’s apartment. But she didn’t have any money either and kept getting evicted, moving in with friends, just like now. She couldn’t afford to have me with her anyway. So I talked to the superintendent of the building where my moms had worked some, cleaning. He said I could stay in the basement – if I paid him. I have a cot down there, an old dresser, a microwave, a bookshelf. I put his apartment down as my address for mail.”

Bell said, “You didn’t seem real at home in that place. Whose was it?”

“This retired couple. They live here half the year and go to South Carolina for the fall and winter. Willy has an extra key.” She added, “I’ll pay them back for the electric bill and replace the beer and things that Willy took.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Yes, I do,” she said firmly.

“Who’d I talk to before, if it wasn’t your mother?” Bell asked.

“Sorry,” Geneva said, sighing. “That was Lakeesha. I asked her to front she was my moms. She’s kind of an actress.”

“She had me fooled.” The detective grinned at being taken in so completely.

“And your own language?” Rhyme asked. “You sure sound like a professor’s daughter.”

She slipped into street talk. “Don’t be talkin’ like no homegirl, you sayin’?” A grim laugh. “I’ve worked on my Standard English ever since I was seven or eight.” Her face grew sad. “The only good thing about my father – he always had me into books. He used to read to me some too.”

“We can find him and -”

“No!” Geneva said in a harsh voice. “I don’t want anything to do with him. Anyway, he’s got his own kids now. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“And nobody found out you were homeless?” Sachs asked.

“Why would they? I never applied for welfare or food stamps so no social workers came to see me. I never even signed up for free meals at school ’cause it’d blow my cover. I forged my parents’ names on the school papers when I needed their signatures. And I have a voice-mail box at a service. That was Keesh again. She recorded the outgoing message, pretending to be my mother.”

“And the school never suspected?”

“Sometimes they asked why I never had anybody at parent-teacher conferences, but nobody thought anything about it because I have straight A’s. No welfare, good grades, no problems with the police…Nobody notices you if there’s nothing wrong.” She laughed. “You know the Ralph Ellison book, Invisible Man? No, not that science fiction movie. It’s about being black in America, being invisible. Well, I’m the invisible girl.”

It made sense now: the shabby clothes and cheap watch, not at all what jet-setting parents would buy for their girl. The public school, not a private one. Her friend, the homegirl Keesh – not the sort who’d be close to the daughter of a college professor.

Rhyme nodded. “We never saw you actually call your parents in England. But you did call the super yesterday, after what happened at the museum, right? Had him pretend to be your uncle?”

“He said he’d agree if I paid him extra, yeah. He wanted me to stay in his place – but that wouldn’t be a good idea. You know what I’m saying? So I told him to use Two-B, with the Reynolds being away. I had him take their name off the mailbox.”

“Never thought that man seemed much like kin,” Bell said and Geneva responded with a scoffing laugh.

“When your parents never showed up, what were you going to say?”

“I didn’t know.” Her voice broke and for an instant she looked hopelessly young and lost. Then she recovered. “I’ve had to improvise the whole thing. When I went to get Charles’s letters yesterday?” She glanced at Bell, who nodded. “I snuck out the back door and went down to the basement. That’s where they were.”

“You have any family here?” Sachs asked. “Other than your aunt?”

“I don’t have no – ” The flash of true horror in the girl’s eyes was the first that Rhyme had seen. And its source was not a hired killer but the near slip into hated nonstandard grammar. She shook her head. “I don’t have anybody.”

“Why don’t you go to Social Services?” Sellitto asked. “That’s what they’re there for.”

Bell added, “You more’n anybody’re entitled to it.”