The Twelfth Card

The criminalist sized the man up. “Almost. One last thing. Open your mouth.”

“You’re my father?”

Breathless, nearly dizzy from the news, Geneva Settle felt her heart pounding. She looked him over carefully, her eyes sca

Despite the driver’s license, the picture of her as a baby with him and her mother, the photo of one of his old graffiti drawings, she still would’ve denied the co

They were alone upstairs – alone, of course, except for Detective Bell, her protective shadow. The rest of the police officers were downstairs working on the case, still trying to figure out who was behind the jewelry exchange robbery.

But Mr. Rhyme and Amelia and all the others – as well as the killer and everything else about the frightening events of the past few days – were, for the moment, forgotten. The questions that now consumed Geneva were: How had her father gotten here? And why?

And, most important: What does this mean for me?

A nod at the shopping bag. She picked up the Dr. Seuss book. “I don’t read children’s books anymore.” It was all she could think of to say. “I turned sixteen two months ago.” Her point, she guessed, was to remind him of all the birthdays she’d spent alone.

“I brought you those just so you’d know it was me. I know you’re too old for them.”

“What about your other family?” she asked coldly.

Jax shook his head. “They told me what Venus said to you, Genie.”

She was pissed he was using the nickname he’d given her years ago. Short for both “Geneva” and “genius.”

“She was making that up. To turn you against me. No, no, Genie, I’d never leave you. I got arrested.”

“Arrested?”

“It’s true, miss,” Roland Bell said. “We’ve seen his files. He got arrested the day he left you and your mother. He’s been in prison ever since. Just got out.”

He then told her a story about a robbery, about being desperate to get some money to make their life better, to help her mother.

But the words were tired, exhausted. He was giving her one of the thousands of limp excuses you heard so often in the neighborhood. The crack dealer, the shoplifter, the welfare scammer, the chain snatcher.

I did it for you, baby…

She looked down at the book in her hand. It was used. Who’d it been for when it was new? Where was the parent who’d bought it originally for his or her child? In jail, washing dishes, driving a Lexus, performing neuro-surgery?

Had her father stolen it from a used bookstore?

“I came back for you, Genie. I’ve been desperate to find you. And I was even more desperate when Betty called and told me you’d been attacked… What happened yesterday? Who’s after you? Nobody ever told me.”

“I saw something,” she said dismissingly, not wanting to give him too much information. “Maybe somebody committing a crime.” Geneva had no interest in the direction of this conversation. She looked him over and said more cruelly than she intended, “You know that Mom’s dead.”

He nodded. “I didn’t know it till I came back. Then I heard. But I wasn’t surprised. She was a troubled woman. Maybe she’s happier now.”

Geneva didn’t think so. And in any case no amount of heaven would make up for the unhappiness of dying alone the way she had, her body shrunken but her face puffed up like a yellow moon.

And it wouldn’t make up for the earlier unhappiness – of getting fucked in stairways for a couple rocks of crack while her daughter waited outside the front door.

Geneva said none of this.

He smiled. “You’ve got yourself a real nice place you’re staying.”

“It was temporary. I’m not there anymore.”

“You’re not? Where’re you living?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

She regretted saying this. It gave him, she realized, a foot in the door. And, sure enough, he pushed his way in: “I’m going to ask my P.O. again if I can move back here. Knowing I’ve got family to take care of, he might say it’s all right.”

“You don’t have a family here. Not anymore.”

“I know you’re mad, baby. But I’ll make it up to you. I -”

She flung the book to the floor. “Six years and nothing. No word. No call. No letter.” Infuriatingly, tears swelled in her eyes. She wiped them with shaking hands.

He whispered, “An’ where would I write? Where would I call? I tried steady all those six years to get in touch with you. I’ll show you the stack of letters I got, all sent back to me in prison. A hundred of ’em, I’d guess. I tried everything I could think of. I just couldn’t find you.”

“Well, thanks for the apology, you know. If it is an apology. But I think it’s time for you to go.”

“No, baby, let me -”

“Not ‘baby,’ not ‘Genie,’ not ‘daughter.’”

“I’ll make it up to you,” he repeated. He wiped his eyes.

She felt absolutely nothing, seeing his sorrow – or whatever it was. Nothing, that is, except anger. “Leave!”

“But, baby, I -”

“No. Just go away!”

Once more the detective from North Carolina, the expert at guarding people, did his job smoothly and without wavering. He rose and silently but firmly ushered her father into the hallway. He nodded back at the girl, gave her a comforting smile and closed the door behind him, leaving Geneva to herself.

Chapter Thirty-Six

While the girl and her father had been upstairs, Rhyme and the others had been going over leads to potential jewelry store heists.

And having no success.

The materials that Fred Dellray had brought them about money-laundering schemes involving jewelry were small-time operations, none of them centered in Midtown. And they had no reports from Interpol or local law enforcement agencies containing anything relevant to the case.

The criminalist was shaking his head in frustration when his phone rang. “Rhyme here.”

“Lincoln, it’s Parker.”

The handwriting expert analyzing the note from Boyd’s safe house. Parker Kincaid and Rhyme traded newsbites about health and family. Rhyme learned that Kincaid’s live-in partner, FBI agent Margaret Lukas, was fine, as were Parker’s children, Stephie and Robby.

Sachs sent her greetings and then Kincaid got down to business. “I’ve been working on your letter nonstop since you sent me the scan. I’ve got a profile of the writer.”

Serious handwriting analysis never seeks to determine personality from the way people form their letters; handwriting itself is relevant only when comparing one document with another, say, when determining forgeries. But that didn’t interest Rhyme at the moment. No, what Parker Kincaid was talking about was deducing characteristics of the writer based on the language he used – the “unusual” phrasing that Rhyme had noted earlier. This could be extremely helpful in identifying suspects. Grammatical and syntactical analysis of the Lindbergh baby ransom note, for instance, gave a perfect profile of the kidnapper, Bruno Hauptma

With the enthusiasm he typically felt for his craft, Kincaid continued, “I found some interesting things. You’ve got the note handy?”

“It’s right in front of us.”

A black girl, fifth floor in this window, 2 October, about 0830. She saw my delivery van when he was parked in an alley behind the Jewelry exchange. Saw enough to guess the plans of mine. Kill her.