The Twelfth Card

by Jeffery Deaver

  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:

  * Uncertain. Rape was probably staged.

  * True motive may have been to steal microfiche containing July 23, 1868, issue of Coloreds' Weekly Illustrated magazine and kill G. Settle because of her interest in an article for reasons unknown. Article was about her ancestor Charles Singleton (see accompanying chart).

  * Librarian victim reported that someone else wished to see article.

  * Requesting librarian's phone records to verify this.

  * No leads.

  * Requesting information from employees as to other person wishing to see story.

  * No leads.

  * Searching for copy of article.

  * Several sources report man requested same article. No leads to identity. Most issues missing or destroyed. One located. (See accompanying chart.) * Conclusion: G. Settle still at risk.

  * 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.

  * 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

  * White male.

  * 6 feet tall, 180 lbs.

  * Middle-aged.

  * Average voice.

  * Used cell phone to get close to victim.

  * Wears three-year-old, or older, size-11 Bass walkers, light brown. Right foot slightly outturned.

  * Additional jasmine scent.

  * Dark pants.

  * Ski mask, dark.

  * Will target innocents to help in killing victims and escaping.

  * Most likely is a for-hire killer.

  * Possibly a former prisoner in Amarillo, TX.

  * Talks with a Southern accent.

  * Has trim, light brown hair, clean-shaven.

  * Nondescript.

  * Seen wearing dark raincoat.

  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.

  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.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Walking down a street in Queens, carrying his shopping bag and briefcase, Thompson Boyd paused suddenly. He pretended to look at a newspaper in a vending machine and, cocking his head in concern at the state of world affairs, glanced behind him.

  Nobody following, nobody paying any attention to Average Joe.

  He didn't really think there was a chance of a tail. But Thompson always minimized risks. You could never be careless when your profession was death, and he was particularly vigilant after the close call on Elizabeth Street with the woman in white.

  They'll kill you in a kiss . . . .

  He now doubled back to the corner. Saw no one ducking into buildings or turning away fast.

  Satisfied, Thompson continued in the direction he'd been heading originally.

  He glanced at his watch. It was the agreed-upon time. He walked to a phone kiosk and placed a call to a pay phone in downtown Manhattan. After one ring he heard, "Hello?"

  "It's me." Thompson and the caller went through a little song and dance--security stuff, like spies--to make certain each knew for sure who was on the other end of the line. Thompson was minimizing his drawl, just like his client was altering his voice too. Wouldn't fool a voiceprint analyzer, of course. Still, you did what you could.

  The man would already know the first attempt had failed since the local news had broken the story. His client asked, "How bad is it? We have a problem?"

  The killer tilted his head back and put Murine into his eyes. Blinking as the pain dissipated, Thompson replied in a voice as numb as his soul, "Oh, well now, you gotta understand 'bout what we're doing here. It's like everything else in life. Nothing ever goes smooth one hundred percent. Nothing runs just the way we'd like. The girl outsmarted me."

  "A high school girl?"

  "The girl's got street smarts, simple as that. Good reflexes. She lives in a jungle." Thompson felt a brief pang that he'd made this comment, thinking the man might believe it referred to the fact she was black, a racist thing, though he only meant she lived in a tough part of town and had to be savvy. Thompson Boyd was the least prejudiced person on earth. His parents had taught him that. Thompson himself had known people of all races and backgrounds and he'd responded to them solely on the basis of their behavior and attitudes, not what color they were. He'd worked for whites, blacks, Arabs, Asians, Latinos, and he'd killed people of those same races. He could see no difference between them. The people who'd hired him all avoided his eyes and acted edgy and cautious. The people who'd died by his hand had gone to their rewards with varying degrees of
dignity and fear, which had nothing to do with color or nationality.

  He continued, "Wasn't what you wanted. It wasn't what I wanted, bet your bottom dollar. But what happened was a reasonable possibility. She's got good people watching her. Now we know. We'll just rerig and keep going. We can't get emotional about it. Next time we'll get her. I've brought in somebody knows Harlem pretty good. We've already found out where she goes to school, we're working on where she lives. Trust me, we've got everything covered."

  "I'll check for messages later," the man said. And hung up abruptly. They'd spoken for no more than three minutes, Thompson Boyd's limit.

  By the book . . .

  Thompson hung up--there was no need to wipe prints; he was wearing leather gloves. He continued down the street. The block was a pleasant strip of bungalows on the east side of the street and apartments on the west, an old neighborhood. There were a few children nearby, just getting home from school. Inside the houses here Thompson could see the flicker of soap operas and afternoon talk shows, as the women ironed and cooked. Whatever life was like in the rest of the city, a lot of this neighborhood had never dug out of the 1950s. It reminded him of the trailer park and the bungalow of his childhood. A nice life, a comforting life.

  His life before prison, before he grew numb as a missing arm or a snakebit leg.

  A block ahead of him Thompson saw a young blonde girl dressed in a school uniform approach a beige bungalow. His heart sped up a bit--just a beat or two--watching her climb the few concrete stairs, take a key from her book bag, open the door and walk inside.

  He continued on to this same house, which was as neat as the others, perhaps slightly more so, and featured a hitching-post jockey, with black features painted politically correct tan, and a series of small ceramic deer grazing on the tiny, yellowing lawn. He walked past the bungalow slowly, looking into the windows, and then continued up the block. A gust of wind blew the shopping bag in an arc and the cans clanked dully against each other. Hey, careful there, he told himself. And steadied the bag.

  At the end of the block he turned and looked back. A man jogging, a woman trying to parallel park, a boy dribbling a basketball on a leaf-covered driveway. No one paid him any attention.

  Thompson Boyd started back toward the house.

  *

  Inside her Queens bungalow Jeanne Starke told her daughter, "No book bags in the hall, Brit. Put 'em in the den."

  "Mom," the ten-year-old girl sighed, managing to get at least two syllables out of the word. She tossed her yellow hair, hung her uniform jacket on the hook and picked up the heavy knapsack, groaning in exasperation.

  "Homework?" her pretty, mid-thirties mother asked. She had a mass of curly brunette hair, today tied back with a rosy red scrunchy.

  "Don't have any," Britney said.

  "None?"

  "Nope."

  "Last time you said no homework, you had homework," her mother said pointedly.

  "It wasn't really homework. It was a report. Just cutting something out of a magazine."

  "You had work for school to do at home. Homework."

  "Well, I don't have any today."

  Jeanne could tell there was more. She lifted an eyebrow.

  "It's just we have to bring in something Italian. For show-and-tell. You know, for Columbus Day. Did you know he was Italian? I thought he was Spanish or something."

  The mother of two did happen to know this fact. She was a high school graduate and the holder of an associate degree in nursing. She could have worked, if she'd wanted to, but her boyfriend made good money as a salesman and was happy to let her take care of the house, go shopping with her girlfriends and raise the children.

  Part of which was making sure they did their homework, whatever form it took, including show-and-tell.

  "That's all? Loving, loving, tell the truth?"

  "Mommmmm."

  "The truth?"

  "Yeah."

  " 'Yes.' Not 'yeah.' What're you going to take?"

  "I don't know. Something from Barrini's deli maybe. Did you know that Columbus, like, was wrong? He thought he'd found Asia, not America. And he came here three times and still never got it right."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah . . . yes." Britney vanished.

  Jeanne returned to the kitchen, thinking this fact she hadn't known. Columbus really thought he'd found Japan or China? She dredged the chicken in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs, and started to lose herself in a fantasy about the family traveling in Asia--the images courtesy of cable TV. The girls would love that. Maybe . . . It was then that she happened to glance outside and, through the opaque curtain, saw the form of a man slow as he approached the house.

  This made her uneasy. Her boyfriend, whose company made computer components for government contractors, had stirred up some paranoia inside her. Always be on the lookout for strangers, he'd say. You notice anybody slowing down as they drive past the house, anybody who seems unusually interested in the children . . . tell me about it right away. Once, not long ago, they'd been in the park up the street with the girls, who were playing on the swings, when a car slowed up and the driver, wearing sunglasses, glanced at the children. Her boyfriend had gotten all freaked and made them go back to the house.

  He'd explained: "Spies."

  "What?"

  "No, not like CIA spies. Industrial spies--from our competitors. My company made over six billion dollars last year and I'm responsible for a good chunk of that. People would love to find out what I know about the market."

  "Companies really do that?" Jeanne had asked.

  "You never really know about people," had been his response.

  And Jeanne Starke, who had a rod imbedded in her arm where it'd been shattered by a whisky bottle a few years ago, had thought: You never did, true. She now wiped her hands on her apron, walked to the curtain and looked out.

  The man was gone.

  Okay, stop spooking yourself. It's--

  But wait . . . She saw motion on the front steps. And believed she saw a corner of a bag--a shopping bag--sitting on the porch. The man was here!

  What was going on?

  Should she call her boyfriend?

  Should she call the police?

  But they were at least ten minutes away.

  "There's somebody outside, Mommy," Britney called.

  Jeanne stepped forward fast. "Brit, you stay in your room. I'll see."

  But the girl was opening the front door.

  "No!" Jeanne called.

  And heard: "Thanks, honey," Thompson Boyd said in a friendly drawl as he stepped inside the house, toting the shopping bag she'd seen.

  "You gave me a fright," Jeanne said. She hugged him and he kissed her.

  "Couldn't find my keys."

  "You're home early."

  He grimaced. "Problems with the negotiations this morning. They were postponed till tomorrow. Thought I'd come home and do some work here."

  Jeanne's other daughter, Lucy, eight, ran into the hallway. "Tommy! Can we watch Judge Judy?"

  "Not today."

  "Aw, please. What's in the bag?"

  "That's the work I have to do. And I need your help." He set the bag down on the floor in the hallway, looked at the girls solemnly and said, "You ready?"

  "I'm ready!" Lucy said.

  Brit, the older girl, said nothing but that was because it wouldn't be cool to agree with her sister; she was definitely ready to help too.

  "After we postponed my meeting I went out and bought these. I've been reading up on it all morning." Thompson reached into the shopping bag and pulled out cans of paint, sponges, rollers and brushes. Then he held up a book bristling with yellow Post-it tabs, Home Decor Made Easy. Volume 3: Decorating Your Child's Room.

  "Tommy!" Britney said. "For our rooms?"

  "Yep," he drawled. "Your mom and I sure don't want Dumbo on our walls."

  "You're going to paint Dumbo?" Lucy frowned. "I don't want Dumbo."

  Neither did Britney.

>   "I'll paint whoever y'all want."

  "Let me look first!" Lucy took the book from him.

  "No, me!"

  "We'll all look together," Thompson said. "Let me hang up my coat and put my briefcase away." He headed into his office, in the front of the house.

  And returning to the kitchen, Jeanne Starke thought that despite his incessant travel, the paranoia about his job, the fact that his heart didn't join into either his joy or his sadness, the fact that he wasn't much of a lover, well, she knew she could do a lot worse in the boyfriend department.

  *

  Escaping down the alley from the police at the Langston Hughes school yard, Jax had piled into a cab and told the driver to head south, fast, ten bucks extra you roll through that light. Then five minutes later he'd told the man to circle back, dropping him off not far from the school.

  He'd been lucky, getting away. The police were obviously going to do whatever was necessary to keep people from getting close to the girl. He was uneasy; it was almost like they'd known about him. Had that asshole claimer Ralph dimed him, after all?

  Well, Jax'd have to be smarter. Which is what he was trying to do right now. Just like in prison--never make your move until you'd checked everything out.

  And he knew where to look for help.

  City men always gravitated together, whether they were young or old, black or Hispanic or white, lived in East New York or Bay Ridge or Astoria. In Harlem they'd gather in churches, bars, rap and jazz clubs and coffee shops, living rooms, on park benches and doorsteps. They'd be on front stairs and fire escapes in the summer, around burning trash drums in the winter. Barbershops too--just like the movie from a few years ago (Jax's real first name, Alonzo, in fact, had come from Alonzo Henderson, the former Georgia slave who became a millionaire by creating a popular chain of barbershops--a man whose drive and talent Jax's father had hoped would rub off on the boy, vainly, as it turned out).

  But the most popular place for men to congregate in Harlem was on basketball courts.

  They'd go there to play ball, sure. But they'd also go just to bullshit, to solve the world's problems, to speak of women fine and women mean, to argue sports, to dis, and to boast--in a modern, freewheeling version of signifying and toasting: the traditional art of telling the tales of mythical characters in black culture, like the criminal Stackolee or the stoker on the Titanic who survived the ice disaster by swimming to safety.

  Jax now found the closest park to Langston Hughes with basketball courts. Despite the chill autumn air and low sun, they were plenty crowded. He eased up to the nearest one and took off his combat jacket, which the cops had probably tipped to, turned it inside out and slung it over his arm. He leaned against the chain link, smoking and looking like a big version of Pharaoh Ralph. He pulled off the do-rag and brushed his 'fro up with his fingers.