The Twelfth Card (46 page)

• 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 Probably withdrawn in small amounts over time.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 a jewelry heist in the planning. More pure carbon—identified as diamond dust trace.

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

• Improvised explosive device, as part of booby trap. Fingerprints are those of convicted bomb maker Jon Earle Wilson. Presently searching for him.

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.

EAST HARLEM SCENE (GENEVA’S GREAT-AUNT’S APARTMENT)

• Used cigarette and 9mm round as explosive device to distract officers. Merit brand, not traceable.

• Friction ridge prints: None. Glove-prints only.

• Poisonous gas device:

  • Glass jar, foil, candleholder. Untraceable.

  • Cyanide and sulfuric acid. Neither containing markers. Untraceable.

• Clear liquid similar to that found on Elizabeth Street.

  • Determined to be Murine.

• Small flakes of orange paint. Posing as construction or highway worker?

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.

    • Determined to be Murine.

  • More fibers from rope. Garrotte?

  • Pure carbon found in map.

    • Determined to be additional diamond dust.

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

AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM SCENE

• Rape pack:

  • Tarot card, twelfth card in deck, The Hanged Man, meaning spiritual searching.

  • Smiley-face bag.

    • Too generic to trace.

  • Box cutter.

  • Trojan condoms.

  • Duct tape.

  • Jasmine scent.

  • Unknown item bought for $5.95. Probably a stocking cap.

  • Receipt, indicating store was in New York City, discount variety store or drugstore.

  • Most likely purchased in a store on Mulberry Street, Little Italy. Unsub identified by clerk.

• Fingerprints:

  • Unsub wore latex or vinyl gloves.

  • Prints on items in rape pack belonged to person with small hands, no IAFIS hits. Positive ID for clerk’s.

• Trace:

  • Cotton-rope fibers, some with traces of human blood. Garrotte?

  • Sent to CODIS.

    • No DNA match in CODIS.

  • Popcorn and cotton candy with traces of canine urine.

• Weapons:

  • Billy club or martial arts weapon.

  • Pistol is a North American Arms .22 rimfire magnum, Black Widow or Mini-Master.

  • Makes own bullets, bored-out slugs filled with needles. No match in IBIS or DRUGFIRE.

• Motive:

  • G. Settle was a witness to a crime in the planning—at the American Jewelry Exchange across the street from the African-American museum.

• Profile of incident sent to VICAP and NCIC.

  • Murder in Amarillo, TX, five years ago. Similar M.O.—staged crime scene (apparently ritual killing, but real motive unknown).

    • Victim was a retired prison guard.

    • Composite picture sent to Texas prison.

      • Identified as Thompson G. Boyd, executions control officer.

    • Murder in Ohio, three years ago. Similar M.O.—staged crime scene (apparently sexual assault, but real motive probably hired killing). Files missing.

PROFILE OF UNSUB 109

• Determined to be Thompson G. Boyd, former executions control officer, from Amarillo, TX.

• Presently in custody.

PROFILE OF PERSON HIRING UNSUB 109

• No information at this time.

PROFILE OF UNSUB 109’S ACCOMPLICE

• Black male.

• Late 30’s, early 40’s.

• Six feet.

• Solidly built.

• Wearing green combat jacket.

• Ex-convict.

• Has a limp.

• Reportedly armed.

• Clean-shaven.

• Black do-rag.

• Awaiting additional witnesses and security tapes.

  • Tape inconclusive, sent to lab for analysis.

• Old work shoes.

PROFILE OF CHARLES SINGLETON

• Former slave, ancestor of G. Settle. Married, one son. Given orchard in New York state by master. Worked as teacher, as well. Instrumental in early civil rights movement.

• Charles allegedly committed theft in 1868, the subject of the article in stolen microfiche.

• Reportedly had a secret that could bear on case. Worried that tragedy would result if his secret was revealed.

• Attended meetings in Gallows Heights neighborhood of New York.

  • Involved in some risky activities?

• Worked with Frederick Douglass and others in getting the 14th Amendment to the Constitution ratified.

• The crime, as reported in
Coloreds’ Weekly Illustrated
:

  • Charles arrested by Det. William Simms for stealing large sum from Freedmen’s Trust in NY. Broke into the trust’s safe, witnesses saw him leave shortly after. His tools were found nearby. Most money was recovered. He was sentenced to five years in prison. No information about him after sentencing. Believed to have used his connections with early civil rights leaders to gain access to the trust.

• Charles’s Correspondence:

  • Letter 1, to wife: Re: Draft Riots in 1863, great anti-black sentiment throughout NY State, lynchings, arson. Risk to property owned by blacks.

  • Letter 2, to wife: Charles at Battle of Appomattox at end of Civil War.

  • Letter 3, to wife: Involved in civil rights movement. Threatened for this work. Troubled by his secret.

  • Letter 4, to wife: Went to Potters’ Field with his gun for “justice.” Results were disastrous. The truth is now hidden in Potters’ Field. His secret was what caused all this heartache.

Minus the shopping cart, Jax was playing homeless again.

He wasn’t being schizo at the moment, like before. The Graffiti King was fronting he was your typical fired-ass former vet, feeling sorry for himself, begging for change, a shabby Mets cap upturned on the gum-stained sidewalk and filled with, God bless you, thirty-seven cents.

Cheap pricks.

No longer in his olive-drab army jacket or the gray sweatshirt, but wearing a dusty black T-shirt under a torn beige sports coat (picked out of the garbage the way a real homeless person would do), Jax was sitting on the bench across from the town house on Central Park West, nursing a can wrapped up in a stained, brown-paper bag. Ought to be malt liquor, he thought sourly. Wished it was. But it was only Arizona iced tea. He sat back, like he was thinking about what kind of job he’d like to try for, though also enjoying the cool fall day, and sipped more of the sweet peach drink. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the stunningly clear sky.

He was watching the kid from Langston Hughes walk up, the one who’d just left that town house on Central Park West, where he’d delivered the bag to Geneva Settle. Still no sign of anyone checking out the street from inside, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anybody there. Besides, two police cars sat out front, one squad car and one unmarked, right by
that wheelchair ramp. So Jax had waited here, a block away, for the boy to make the delivery.

The skinny kid came up and plopped down on the bench next to the not-really-homeless Graffiti King of Blood.

“Yo, yo, man.”

“Why do you kids say ‘yo’ all the time?” Jax asked, irritated. “And why the fuck do you say it twice?”

“Ever’body say it. Wus yo’ problem, man?”

“You gave her the bag?”

“What up with that dude ain’t got legs?”

“Who?”

“Dude in there ain’t got no legs. Or maybe he got legs but they ain’t work.”

Jax didn’t know what he was talking about. He would rather’ve had a smarter kid deliver the package to the town house, but this was the only one he’d found around the Langston Hughes school yard who had any connection at all with Geneva Settle—his sister sort of knew her. He repeated, “You give her the bag?”

“I give it to her, yeah.”

“What’d she say?”

“I don’t know. Some shit. Thanks. I don’t know.”

“She believed you?”

“She look like she ain’t know who I be at first, then she was cool, yeah. When I mention my sister.”

He gave the kid some bills.

“Phat . . . Yo, you got anything else fo’ me to do, I’m down, man. I—”

“Get outa here.”

The kid shrugged and started away.

Jax said, “Wait.”

The loping boy stopped. He turned back.

“What was she like?”

“The bitch? What she
look
like?”

No, that wasn’t what he was curious about. But Jax didn’t quite know how to phrase the question. And then he decided he didn’t want to ask it. He shook his head. “Go on ’bout your business.”

“Later, man.”

The kid strolled off.

Part of Jax’s mind told him to stay here, where he was. But that’d be stupid. Better to put some distance between himself and the place. He’d find out soon enough, one way or the other, what happened when the girl looked through the bag.

*   *   *

Geneva sat on her bed, lay back, closed her eyes, wondering what she felt so good about.

Well, they’d caught the killer. But that couldn’t be all of the feeling, of course, since the man who’d hired him was still out there somewhere. And then there was also the man with the gun, the one at the school yard, the man in the army jacket.

She should be terrified, depressed.

But she wasn’t. She felt free, elated.

Why?

And then she understood: It was because she’d told her secret. Unburdened her heart about living alone, about her parents. And nobody’d been horrified and shocked and hated her because of the lie. Mr. Rhyme and Amelia had even backed her up, Detective Bell too. They hadn’t freaked, and dimed her out to the counselor.

Damn, it felt fine. How hard it’d been, carrying around this secret—just like Charles had carted
his
with him (whatever it was). If the former slave had told somebody, would he have avoided all the
heartache that followed? According to his letter, he seemed to think so.

Geneva glanced at the shopping bag of books the girls at Langston Hughes had gotten for her. Curiosity got the better of her and she decided to look through them. She lifted the bag onto the bed. As Ronelle’s brother had said, it weighed a ton.

She reached inside and lifted out the Laura Ingalls Wilder book. Then the next one: Geneva laughed out loud. This was even stranger: It was a Nancy Drew mystery. Was this wack, or what? She looked at a few of the other titles, books by Judy Blume, Dr. Seuss, Pat McDonald. Children’s and young adult books. Wonderful authors, she knew them all. But she’d read their stories years ago. What was up with this? Didn’t Ronelle and the kids know her? The most recent books she’d read for pleasure had been novels for adults:
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro and
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
by John Fowles. The last time she’d read
Green Eggs and Ham
had been ten years ago.

Maybe there was something better in the bottom. She started to reach into it.

A knock on the door startled her.

“Come in.”

Thom entered, carrying a tray with a Pepsi and some snacks on it.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Thought you’d need some sustenance.” He opened the soda for her. She shook her head at the glass he was about to pour it into. “The can’s fine,” she said. She wanted to keep all the empties so she knew exactly how much to repay Mr. Rhyme.

“And . . . health food.” He handed her a Kit Kat candy bar, and they laughed.

“Maybe later.” Everybody was trying to fatten her up. Fact was, she just wasn’t used to eating. That was something you did with family around a table, not by yourself, hunched over an unsteady table in a basement as you read a book or jotted notes for a paper about Hemingway.

Geneva sipped the soda, as Thom took over unloading the books for her. He held them up one by one. There was a novel by C. S. Lewis. Another:
The Secret Garden.

Still nothing for adults.

“There’s a big one at the bottom,” he said, lifting it out. It was a Harry Potter book, the first one in the series. She’d read it when it had first come out.

“You want it?” Thom asked.

She hesitated. “Sure.”

The aide handed her the heavy volume.