The Twelfth Card

Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Amelia Sachs walked into the Critical Care Unit at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital she saw two Pulaskis.

One was in bed, swathed in bandages and hooked up to creepy clear plastic tubes. His eyes were dull, his mouth slack.

The other sat at his bedside, awkward in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Just as blond, just as fresh-faced, in the same crisp blue NYPD uniform Ron Pulaski had been wearing when Sachs had recruited him in front of the African-American museum yesterday and told him to act concerned about a pile of garbage.

How many sugars?…

She blinked at the mirror image.

“I’m Tony. Ron’s brother. Which you probably guessed.”

“Hi, Detective,” Ron managed breathlessly. His voice wasn’t working right. It was slurred, sloppy.

“How you feeling?”

“How ish Geneva?”

“She’s all right. I’m sure you heard – we stopped him at her aunt’s place but he got away… You hurting? Must be.”

He nodded toward the IV drip. “Happy soup…Don’t feel a thing.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“I’ll be okay,” Ron echoed his brother’s words. He took a few deep breaths, blinked.

“A month or so,” Tony explained. “Some therapy. He’ll be back on duty. Some fractures. Not much internal damage. Thick skull. Which Dad always said.”

“Shkull.” Ron gri

“You were at the academy together?” She pulled up a chair and sat.

“Right.”

“What’s your house?”

“The Six,” Tony answered.

The Sixth Precinct was in the heart of west Greenwich Village. Not many muggings or carjackings or drugs. Mostly breakins, gay domestics and incidents by emotionally disturbed artists and writers off their meds. The Six was also home to the Bomb Squad.

Tony was shaken, sure, but angry too. “The guy kept at him, even when he was down. He didn’t need to.”

“But maybe,” came Ron’s stumbling words, “it took for time…took more time on me. So he didn’t get…didn’t get a good chance to go after Geneva.”

Sachs smiled. “You’re kind of a glass-is-half-full sorta guy.” She didn’t tell him that he’d been beaten nearly to death simply so Unsub 109 could use a bullet from his weapon for a distraction.

“Sorta am. Thank Sheneva. Gen-eva for me. For the book.” He couldn’t really move his head but his eyes slipped to the side of the bedside table, where a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird lay. “Tony’sh reading to me. He even can read the big wordsh.”

His brother laughed. “You putz.”

“So what can you tell us, Ron? This guy’s smart and he’s still out there. We need something we can use.”

“I don’t know, ma – I don’t know, Detective. I wasssh goin’ up and down th’alley. He hid when I want to…went to the street. Came back to the back, the alley…I washn’t expecting hih. Him. He was around the corner of the, you know, the bidling…the building. I got to the corner. I shaw this guy, in a mask like a ski mashk. And then this thing. Club, bat. Came too fasht. Couldn’t shee it really. Got me good.” He blinked again, closed his eyes. “Careless. Washhh, was too close to the wall. Won’t do that again.”

You didn’t know. Now you do.

“A woosh.” He winced.

“You okay?” his brother asked.

“I’m okay.”

“A woosh,” Sachs encouraged, nudged her chair closer.

“What?”

“You heard a woosh.”

“Yes, I heard it, ma’am. Not ‘ma’am.’ Detective.”

“It’s okay, Ray. Call me whatever. You see anything? Anything at all?”

“This thing. Like a bat. No, not Batman and Robin. Ha. A baseball bat. Right at my face. Oh, I told you that. And I went down. I mean, Detective. Not ‘ma’am.’”

“That’s okay, Ron. What do you remember then?”

“I don’t know. I remember lying on the ground. Thinking…I was thinking he was going for my weapon. I tried to control my weapon. Wash…was in the book, not to let it go. ‘Always control your weapon.’ But I didn’t. He got it anyway. I wash dead. I knew I was dead.”

She encouraged softly, “What do you remember seeing?”

“A tangle.”

“A what?”

He laughed. “I didn’t mean tangle. A triangle. Cardboard. On the ground. I couldn’t move. It was all I could see.”

“And this cardboard. It was the unsub’s?”

“The trangle? No. I mean, triangle. No, it was jusht trash. I mean, it’s all I could see. I tried to crawl. I don’t think I did.”

Sachs sighed. “You were found on your back, Ron.”

“I washhh?…I was on my back?”

“Think back. Did you see the sky maybe?”

He squinted.

Her heart beat faster. Did he get a look at something?

“Bluh.”

“What?”

“Bluh in my eyes by then.”

“Blood?” his brother offered.

“Yeah. Blood. Couldn’t shee anything then. No trangles, no building. He got my piece. He stayed neareye for a few minutes. Then I don’t remember anything elshe.”

“He was nearby? How close?”

“I don’t know. Not close. Couldn’t see. Too much bluh.”

Sachs nodded. The poor man looked exhausted. His breathing was labored, his eyes much more unfocused than when she’d arrived. She rose. “I’ll let him get some rest.” She asked, “You heard of Terry Dobyns?”

“No. Ishh he…Who ishh?” A grimace crossed the injured officer’s face. “Who is he?

“Department psychologist.” She glanced at Ron with a smile. “This’ll take the starch out of you for a while. You should talk to him about it. He’s the man. He rules.”

Ron said, “Don’t need to -”

“Patrolman?” she said sternly.

He lifted an eyebrow, winced.

“It’s an order.”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean…ma’am.”

Anthony said, “I’ll make sure he does.”

“You’ll thank…Geneva for me? I like that book.”

“I will.” Sachs slung her bag over her shoulder and started for the door. She just stepped through it when she stopped abruptly, turned back. “Ron?”

“Wusthat?”

She returned to his bedside, sat down again.

“Ron, you said the unsub was near you for a few minutes.”

“Yuh.”

“Well, if you couldn’t see him, with the blood in your eyes, how did you know he was there?”

The young officer frowned. “Oh…yeah. There’s shomething I forgot to tell you.”

“Our boy’s got a habit, Rhyme.”

Amelia Sachs was back in the laboratory.

“What’s that?”

“He whistles.”

“For taxis?”

“Music. Pulaski heard him. After he’d been hit the first time and was lying on the ground the unsub took his weapon and, I’m guessing, spent a few minutes to hook the bullet to the cigarette. While he was doing that, he was whistling. Real softly, Ron said, but he’s sure it was whistling.”

“No pro’s going to whistle on the job,” Rhyme said.

“You wouldn’t think. But I heard it too. At the safe house on Elizabeth Street. I thought it was the radio or something – he was good.”

“How’s the rookie doing?” Sellitto asked. He hadn’t rubbed his invisible bloodstain recently but he was still edgy.

“They say he’ll be okay. A month of therapy or so. I told him to see Terry Dobyns. Ron was pretty out of it but his brother was there. He’ll look after him. He’s a uniform too. Identical twin.”

Rhyme wasn’t surprised. Being on the force often ran in the family. “Cop” could be the name of a human gene.

But Sellitto shook his head at the news of a sibling. He seemed all the more upset, as if it was his fault that an entire family had been affected by the attack.

There was no time, though, to deal with the detective’s demons. Rhyme said, “All right. We’ve got some new information. Let’s put it to use.”

“How?” Cooper asked.

“The murder of Charlie Tucker’s still the closest lead we have to Mr. One-oh-nine. So, obviously,” the criminalist added, “we call Texas.”

“Remember the Alamo,” Sachs offered and hit the speaker button on the phone.