The Twelfth Card (36 page)

“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.”

The girl frowned and her dark eyes turned darker. “I don’t take anything for free.” A shake of the head. “Besides, a social worker’d come to check things out and see my situation. I’d get sent down to my aunt’s in ’Bama. She lives in a town outside of Selma, three hundred people in it. You know what kind of education
I’d get there? Or, I stay here, and end up in foster in Brooklyn, living in one room with four gangbanger girls, boxes playing hip-hop and BET on, twenty-four hours a day, dragged to church . . . ” She shivered and shook her head.

“That’s why the job.” Rhyme glanced at the uniform.

“That’s why the job. Somebody hooked me up with this guy makes fake driver’s licenses. According to it, I’m eighteen.” A laugh. “I don’t look it, I know. But I applied to a place where the manager’s an old white guy. He didn’t have a clue how old I was from looking at me. Been at the same place ever since. Never missed a single shift. Until today.” A sigh. “My boss’ll find out. He’ll have to fire me. Shit. And I just lost my other job last week.”

“You had
two
jobs?”

The girl nodded. “Scrubbing graffiti. There’s all this renovation going on in Harlem. You see it everywhere now. Some big insurance or real estate companies fix up old buildings and rent ’em for a lot of money. The crews hired some kids to clean the walls. It was great money. But I got fired.”

“Because you were underage?” Sachs asked.

“No, because I saw these workers, three big white guys who worked for some real estate company. They were hassling this old couple who’d lived in the building forever. I told ’em to stop or I’d call the police . . . . ” She shrugged. “They fired me. I did call the police but they weren’t interested . . . . So much for doing good deeds.”

“And that’s why you didn’t want that Mrs. Barton, the counselor, to help,” Bell said.

“She finds out I’m homeless, and, bang, my ass’s in foster.” She shuddered. “I was so close! I could’ve done it. A year and a half and I’d be gone. I’d be in
Harvard or Vassar. Then that guy shows up at the museum yesterday and ruins everything!”

Geneva rose and walked to the chart that had the details about Charles Singleton on it. She gazed at it. “That’s why I was writing about him. I
had
to find out he was innocent. I wanted him to be nice and be a good husband and father. The letters were so wonderful. He could write so pretty, all his words. Even his handwriting was beautiful.” She added breathlessly, “And he was a hero in the Civil War and taught children and saved the orphans from the draft rioters. Suddenly I had a relative who was good, after all. Who was smart, who knew famous people. I wanted him to be somebody I could admire, not like my father or mother.”

Luis Martinez stuck his head in the doorway. “He checks out. Right name and address, no priors, no warrants.” He’d run the name of the phony uncle. Rhyme and Bell weren’t trusting
anybody
at this point.

“You must be lonely,” Sachs said.

A pause. “My daddy took me to church some, ’fore he ran off. I remember this gospel song. It used to be our favorite. It’s called ‘Ain’t Got Time to Die.’ That’s what my life’s like. I ain’t got time to be lonely.”

But Rhyme knew Geneva well by now. She was fronting. He said, “So you’ve got a secret just like your ancestor. Who knows yours?”

“Keesh, the super, his wife. That’s all.” She fixed Rhyme with a defiant look. “You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you?”

“You can’t live alone,” Sachs said.

“I have for two years,” she snapped. “I have my books, school. I don’t
need
anything else.”

“But—”

“No. If you tell, it’ll ruin everything.” She added, “Please.” The word was muted, as if saying it came very hard to her.

Silence for a moment. Sachs and Sellitto looked at Rhyme, the one person in the room who didn’t have to answer to city brass and regulations. He said, “No need to make any decisions right away. We’ve got our hands full catching the unsub. But I’m thinking you ought to stay here, not a safe house.” He glanced at Thom. “I think we can find room for you upstairs, can’t we?”

“You bet we can.”

“I’d rather—” the girl started.

Rhyme said with a smile, “I think we’ll insist this time.”

“But my job. I can’t afford to lose it.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Rhyme got the number from her and called the girl’s boss at McDonald’s and explained in general terms about the attack and said that Geneva wouldn’t be coming in for a few days. The manager sounded truly concerned and told him that Geneva was their most conscientious employee. She could take as much time off as she needed and could be sure that her job would be waiting for her when she returned.

“She’s the best employee we’ve got,” the man said over the speakerphone. “A teenager who’s more responsible than somebody twice that age. You don’t see that very often.”

Rhyme and Geneva shared a smile and he disconnected the call.

It was then that the doorbell rang. Bell and Sachs immediately grew vigilant, their hands slipping toward their weapons. Sellitto, Rhyme noted, still looked spooked, and though he glanced down at his weapon, he didn’t reach for it. His fingers remained
on his cheek, rubbing gently, as if the gesture could conjure up a genie to calm his troubled heart.

Thom appeared in the doorway. He said to Bell, “There’s a Mrs. Barton here, from the school. She’s brought a copy of some security video.”

The girl shook her head in dismay. “No,” she whispered.

“Send her in,” Rhyme said.

A large African-American woman walked in, wearing a purple dress. Bell introduced her. She nodded to everyone and, like most of the counselors Rhyme himself had met, had no reaction to his disabled condition. She said, “Hello, Geneva.”

The girl nodded. Her face was a still mask. Rhyme could tell she was thinking about the threat this woman represented to her: rural Alabama or a foster home.

Barton continued, “How’re you doing?”

“Okay, fine, thank you,” the girl said with a deference that wasn’t typical of her.

“This’s got to be tough on you,” the woman said.

“I’ve been better.” Geneva now tried a laugh. It sounded flat. She glanced at the woman once and then looked away.

Barton said, “I spoke to maybe a dozen or so people about that man near the school yard yesterday. Only two or three remember seeing anybody. They couldn’t describe him, except he was of color, wore a green combat jacket and old work shoes.”

“That’s new,” Rhyme said. “The shoes.” Thom wrote this on the board.

“And here’s the tape from our security department.” She handed a VHS cassette to Cooper, who played it.

Rhyme wheeled close to the screen and felt his neck straining with the tension as he studied the images.

It wasn’t much help. The camera was aimed mostly at the school yard, not the surrounding sidewalks and streets. In the periphery it was possible to see some vague images of passersby, but nothing distinctive. Without much hope that they’d pick up anything, Rhyme ordered Cooper to send the cassette off to the lab in Queens to see if it could be digitally enhanced. The tech filled out the chain-of-custody card and packed it up, called for a pickup.

Bell thanked the woman for her help.

“Anything we can do.” She paused and looked the girl over. “But I really do need to talk to your parents, Geneva.”

“My parents?”

She nodded slowly. “I have to say—I’ve been talking to some of the students and teachers, and to be honest, most of them say your folks haven’t been very involved in your classes. In fact, I haven’t found anybody who’s actually met them.”

“My grades’re fine.”

“Oh, I know that. We’re real happy with your academic work, Geneva. But school’s about children and parents working together. I’d really like to talk to them. What’s their cell number?”

The girl froze.

A dense silence.

Which Lincoln Rhyme finally broke. “I’ll tell you the truth.”

Geneva looked down. Her fists were clenched.

Rhyme said to Barton, “I just got off the phone with her father.”

Everyone else in the room turned and stared at him.

“Are they back home?”

“No, and they won’t be for a while.”

“No?”

“I asked them not to come.”

“You did? Why?” The woman frowned.

“It’s my decision. I did it to keep Geneva safe. As Roland Bell here will tell you”—a glance at the Carolina detective, who nodded, a fairly credible gesture, considering he had no clue what was going on—“when we set up protection details, sometimes we have to separate the people we’re guarding from their families.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Otherwise,” Rhyme continued, vamping, “the attacker could use their relatives to draw them into public.”

Barton nodded. “Makes sense.”

“What’s it called, Roland?” Rhyme glanced at the detective again. And filled in the answer himself, “Isolation of Dependents, right?”

“IOD,” Bell said, nodding. “What we call it. Very important technique.”

“Well, I’m glad to know that,” the counselor said. “But your uncle’ll be looking out for you, right?”

Sellitto said, “No, we think it’s probably best if Geneva stays here.”

“We’re running an IOD with her uncle too,” Bell said. The fabrication sounded particularly slick coming from a law enforcer with a Southern drawl. “Want to keep him out of sight.”

Barton bought it all, Rhyme could see. The counselor said to Geneva, “Well, when this is over, please have them call me. Seems like you’re handling it pretty well. But psychologically it has to be taking a toll. We’ll all sit down together and work through some of the issues.” She added with a smile, “There’s nothing broke that can’t be fixed.”

A sentence that was probably emblazoned on a desk plaque or coffee mug in her office.

“Okay,” Geneva said cautiously. “We’ll see.”

After the woman was gone, Geneva turned to Rhyme. “I don’t know what to say. It means so much to me, what you did.”

“Mostly,” he muttered, uneasy with the gratitude, “it was for
our
convenience. I can’t very well go calling up Child Welfare and tracking you down in foster homes every time we have a question about the case.”

Geneva laughed. “Front all you want,” she said. “Thanks anyway.” Then she huddled with Bell and told him what books, clothes and other items she needed from the basement on 118th Street. The detective said he’d also get back from the phony uncle whatever she’d paid him for the scam.

“He won’t give it back,” she said. “You don’t know him.”

Bell smiled and said amiably, “Oh, he’ll give it back.” This, from the man with two guns.

Geneva called Lakeesha and told her girlfriend that she’d be staying at Rhyme’s, then, hanging up, she followed Thom upstairs to the guest room.

Sellitto asked, “What if the counselor finds out, Linc?”

“Finds out what?”

“Well, how ’bout that you lied about Geneva’s parents and made up some department procedures? What the hell was it? The DUI?”

“IOD,” Bell reminded.

“And what’s she going to do?” Rhyme growled. “Make me stay after school?” He gave an abrupt nod at the evidence board. “Now can we get back to work? There
is
a killer out there. And he’s got a partner.
And
somebody hired them. Recall that? I’d like to figure out who the hell they are
sometime
this decade.”

Sachs walked to the table and began organizing
the folders and copies of materials that William Ashberry had let her borrow from the foundation library—the “small crime scene.” She said, “This’s mostly about Gallows Heights—maps, drawings, articles. Some things on Potters’ Field.”

She handed the documents to Cooper one by one. He taped up several drawings and maps of Gallows Heights, which Rhyme stared at intently as Sachs told them what she’d learned about the neighborhood. She then walked to the drawing and touched a two-story commercial building. “Potters’ Field was right about here. West Eightieth Street.” She skimmed some of the documents. “Seems like it was pretty disreputable, a lot of crooks hung out there, people like Jim Fisk and Boss Tweed and politicians connected to the Tammany Hall machine.”

“See how valuable small crime scenes can be, Sachs? You’re a
wealth
of helpful information.”

She gave him a minor scowl, then picked up a photocopy. “This’s an article about the fire. It says that the night Potters’ Field burned down, witnesses heard an explosion in the basement and then, almost immediately, the place was engulfed. Arson was suspected but nobody was ever arrested. No fatalities.”

“What did Charles go there for?” Rhyme mused aloud. “What did he mean by ‘justice’? And what’s ‘forever hidden beneath clay and soil’?”

Was it a clue, a bit of evidence, a scrap of document that could answer the question of who wanted to murder Geneva Settle?

Sellitto shook his head. “Too bad it was a hundred and forty years ago. Whatever, it’s gone now. We’ll never know.”

Rhyme looked at Sachs. She caught his eye. She smiled.

“Oh, you’re lucky in one way,” explained David Yu, a spiky-haired young engineer who worked for the city.