Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

Standing unsteadily, Frazier looked for the gun, which was ten feet away. Don’t need it, don’t want it. The tire iron’d do just fine. Seething with anger, she picked it up and started forward. She looked down at the girl with undiluted hate and lifted the metal rod above her head. Geneva cringed and covered her face with her hands.

Then a voice from behind the big woman shouted, “No!”

Frazier turned to see that redheaded policewoman from the crippled man’s apartment walking slowly forward, her large automatic pistol held in both hands.

Alina Frazier looked down at the revolver nearby.

“I’d like the excuse,” the policewoman said. “I really would.”

Frazier slumped, tossed the tire iron aside and, feeling faint, dropped into a sitting position. She cradled her shattered hand.

The cop moved close and kicked the pistol and tire iron away, as Geneva rose to her feet and staggered toward a duo of medics who were running forward. The girl directed them toward her father.

Tears of pain in her eyes, Frazier demanded, “I need a doctor.”

“You’ll have to wait in line,” the policewoman muttered and slipped a plastic restraint around her wrists with what, under the circumstances, Frazier decided, was really a pretty gentle touch.

“He’s in stable condition,” Lon Sellitto announced. He’d fielded the phone call from an officer on duty at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. “He didn’t know what that means. But there you have it.”

Rhyme nodded at this news about Jax Jackson. Whatever “stable” meant, at least the man was alive, for which Rhyme was immensely grateful – for Geneva ’s sake.

The girl herself had been treated for contusions and abrasions and released.

It had been a photo finish to save her from Boyd’s accomplice. Mel Cooper had run the tags on the car that the girl and her father had gotten into and found it registered to someone named Alina Frazier. A fast check of NCIC and state databases revealed that she had a record: a manslaughter charge in Ohio and two assaults with deadly weapons in New York, as well as a slew of sealed juvie offenses.

Sellitto had put out an Emergency Vehicle Locator, which alerted all law enforcers in the area to look for Frazier’s sedan. A traffic enforcement cop had radioed a short time later that the vehicle had been seen near a demolition site in South Harlem. There’d also been a report of shots fired in the vicinity. At Rhyme’s town house Amelia Sachs jumped into her Camaro and sped to the scene, where she found Frazier about to beat Geneva to death.

Frazier had been interrogated but was no more cooperative than her accomplice. Rhyme guessed that one had to think long and hard about betraying Thompson Boyd, especially in jail, given the long reach of his prison connections.

Was Geneva finally safe or not? Most likely she was. Two killers under wraps and the main actor blown to pieces. Sachs had searched Alina Frazier’s apartment and found nothing except weapons and cash – no information that would suggest there was anyone else who wanted to kill Geneva Settle. Jon Earle Wilson, the ex-con from New Jersey who’d made the booby trap in Boyd’s Queens safe house, was presently en route to Rhyme’s, and the criminalist hoped he’d confirm their conclusions. Still, Rhyme and Bell decided to dedicate a uniformed officer in a squad car to protection detail for Geneva.

Now, a computer sounded a friendly chirp and Mel Cooper looked over at the screen. He opened an email. “Ah, the mystery is solved.”

“Which mystery would that be?” Rhyme said this gruffly. His moods, forever fragile, tended to sour toward the end of a case, when boredom loomed.

“‘Winskinskie.’”

The Indian word on the ring Sachs had found around the finger bone beneath the ruins of Potters’ Field tavern.

“And?”

“This’s from a professor at the University of Maryland. Aside from the literal translation in the Delaware language, ‘Winskinskie’ was a title in the Tammany Society.”

“Title?”

“Sort of like a sergeant at arms. Boss Tweed was the Grand Sachem, the big chief. Our boy” – a nod toward the bones and skull Sachs had found in the cistern – “was the Winskinskie, the doorkeeper.”

“Tammany Hall…” Rhyme nodded as he considered this, letting his mind wander back in time, past this case, into the smoky sepia world of nineteenth-century New York. “And Tweed hung out in Potters’ Field. So he and the Tammany Hall machine were probably behind setting Charles up.”

He ordered Cooper to add the recent findings to the chart. He then spent some moments looking over the information. He nodded. “Fascinating.”

Sellitto shrugged. “The case is over with, Linc. The hitmen, excuse me, hit people’ve been collared. The terrorist is dead. Why’s something that happened a hundred years ago so fascinating?”

“Nearly a hundred and forty years, Lon. Let’s be accurate.” He was frowning as he stared intently at the evidence chart, the maps – and the placid face of the Hanged Man. “And the answer to your question is: You know how much I hate loose ends.”

“Yeah, but what’s loose?”

“What’s the one thing we’ve forgotten all about in the heat of battle, if we may tread through a minefield of clichés again, Lon?”

“I give,” Sellitto grunted.

“Charles Singleton’s secret. Even if it doesn’t have anything to do with constitutional law or terrorists, I, at least, am dying to know what it was. I think we should find out.”

VAN BOMBING SCENE

· Van registered to Bani al-Dahab (see profile).

· Delivered food to Middle Eastern restaurants and carts.

· Letter taking responsibility for jewelry exchange bombing recovered. Paper matches earlier documents.

· Components of explosive device recovered: residue of Tovex, wires, battery, radio receiver detonator, portions of container, UPS box.

THOMPSON BOYD’S RESIDENCE AND PRIMARY SAFE HOUSE

· More falafel and yogurt, orange paint trace, as before.

· Cash (fee for job?) $100,000 in new bills. Untraceable. Probably withdrawn in small amounts over time.

· Weapons (guns, billy club, rope) traced to prior crime scenes.

· Acid and cyanide traced to prior crime scenes, no links to manufacturers.

· No cell phone found. Other telephone records not helpful.

· Tools traced to prior crime scenes.

· Letter revealing that G. Settle was targeted because she was a witness to jewelry heist in the planning. More pure carbon – identified as diamond dust trace.

· Sent to Parker Kincaid in Washington, D.C., for document examination.

· Writer’s first language most likely Arabic.

· Improvised explosive device, as part of booby trap. Fingerprints are those of convicted bomb maker Jon Earle Wilson.

· Located. En route to Rhyme’s for interviewing.

POTTERS’ FIELD SCENE (1868)

· Tavern in Gallows Heights – located in the Eighties on the upper West Side, mixed neighborhood in the 1860s.

· Potters’ Field was possible hangout for Boss Tweed and other corrupt New York politicians.

· Charles came here July 15, 1868.

· Burned down following explosion, presumably just after Charles’s visit. To hide his secret?

· Body in basement, man presumably killed by Charles Singleton.

· Shot in forehead by.36 Navy Colt loaded with.39-caliber ball (type of weapon Charles Singleton owned).

· Gold coins.

· Man was armed with Derringer.

· No identification.

· Had ring with name “Winskinskie” on it.

· Means “doorman” or “gatekeeper” in Delaware Indian language.

· Currently searching other meanings.