The Twelfth Card

They hung up. Ashberry reached into the box and clicked the safety button on the shotgun to the off position. Then he hefted the carton and started toward the building, through a swirl of autumn leaves spun in tiny cyclones by the cold breeze.

Chapter Forty

“Professor?”

“You’re Steve Macy?” The dowdy professor, sporting a bow tie and tweed jacket, was sitting behind piles of papers covering his desk.

He smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m Richard Mathers. This is Geneva Settle.”

A short teenage girl, her skin as dark as the professor’s, glanced at him and nodded. Then she looked eagerly at the box he carted. She was so young. Could he really kill her?

Then an image of his daughter’s wedding on the dock of his summer house flashed through his mind, followed by a series of fast thoughts: the Mercedes AMG his wife wanted, his membership at the Augusta golf course, the di

Those images answered his question.

Ashberry set the box on the floor. No cops inside, he noticed with relief. He shook Mathers’s hand. And thought: Fuck, they can lift fingerprints from flesh. After the shootings he’d have to take the time to wipe off the man’s palms. (He remembered what Thompson Boyd had told him: When it came to death, you did everything by the book, or you walked away from the job.)

Ashberry smiled at the girl. Didn’t shake her hand. He looked around the office, judging angles.

“Sorry for the mess,” Mathers said.

“Mine isn’t any better,” he said with a faint laugh. The room was filled with books, magazines and stacks of photocopies. On the wall were a number of diplomas. Mathers was, it turned out, not a history but a law professor. And a well-known one, apparently. Ashberry was looking at a photo of the professor with Bill Clinton and another with former mayor Giuliani.

As he saw these photos, the remorse raised its head again but it was really nothing more than a faint blip on the screen by now. Ashberry was comfortable with the fact that he was in the room with two dead people.

They chatted for a few minutes, with Ashberry talking in vague terms about schools and libraries in Philadelphia, avoiding any direct comments about what he was looking into. He stayed on the offensive, asking the professor, “What exactly’re you researching?”

Mathers deferred to Geneva, who explained that they were trying to find out about her ancestor, Charles Singleton, a former slave. “It was pretty weird,” she said. “The police thought that there was this co

“Let’s take a look at what you’ve got,” Mathers said, clearing a spot on a low table in front of his desk. “I’ll get another chair.”

This is it, Ashberry thought. His heart began pounding fast. He then recalled the razor knife slipping into the shopkeeper’s flesh, cutting two inches for the two days of missed juice, Ashberry hardly hearing the man’s screams.

Recalled all the years of backbreaking work to get to where he was today.

Recalled Thompson Boyd’s dead eyes.

He was instantly calm.

As soon as Mathers stepped into the hallway, the banker glanced out the window. The policeman was still in the car, a good fifty feet away, and the building was so solid he might not even hear the gunshots. With the desk between himself and Geneva, he bent down, shuffling through the papers. He gripped the shotgun.

“Did you find any pictures?” Geneva asked. “I’d really like to find more about what the neighborhood looked like back then.”

“I have a few, I think.”

Mathers was returning. “Coffee?” he called from the hallway.

“No, thanks.”

Ashberry turned to the door.

Now!

He started to rise, pulling the gun from the box, keeping it below Geneva’s eye level.

Aiming at the doorway, finger around the trigger.

But something was wrong. Mathers wasn’t appearing.

It was then that Ashberry felt something metallic touch his ear.

“William Ashberry, you’re under arrest. I have a weapon.” It was the girl’s voice, though a very different sound, an adult voice. “Set that breakdown on the desk. Slow.”

Ashberry froze. “But -”

“The shotgun. Set it down.” The girl nudged his head with the pistol. “I’m a police officer. And I will use my firearm.”

Oh, Lord, no…It was all a trap!

“Listen up, now, you do what she’s telling you.” This was the professor – though, of course, it wasn’t Mathers at all. He was a stand-in too, a cop who was pretending to be the professor. He glanced sideways. The man had come back into the office through a side door. From his neck dangled an FBI identification card. He too held a pistol. How the hell had they gotten onto him? Ashberry wondered in disgust.

“An’ don’ move that muzzle so much’s a ski

“I’m not going to tell you again,” the girl said in a calm voice. “Do it now.”

Still he didn’t move.

Ashberry thought of his grandfather, the mobster, he thought of the screaming shopkeeper, he thought of his daughter’s wedding.

What would Thompson Boyd do?

Play it by the book and give up.

No fucking way. Ashberry dropped into a crouch and spun around, lightning fast, lifting the gun.

Somebody shouted, “Don’t!”

The last word he ever heard.

Chapter Forty-One

“Quite a view,” Thom said.

Lincoln Rhyme glanced out the window at the Hudson River, the rock cliffs of the Palisades on the opposite shore and the distant hills of New Jersey. Maybe Pe

They were in the Sanford Foundation office of the late William Ashberry atop the Hiram Sanford Mansion on West Eighty-second Street. Wall Street was still digesting the news of the man’s death and his involvement in a series of crimes over the past few days. Not that the financial community had ground to a halt; compared with, say, the betrayals visited on shareholders and employees by executives of Enron and Global Crossing, the death of a crooked executive of a profitable company didn’t make compelling news.

Amelia Sachs had already searched the office and removed evidence linking Ashberry to Boyd and taped off certain parts of the room. This meeting was in a cleared area, which happened to feature stained-glass windows and rosewood paneling.

Sitting beside Rhyme and Thom were Geneva Settle and attorney Wesley Goades. Rhyme was amused that there’d been a few moments when he’d actually suspected Goades of complicity in the case – owing to his suddenly materializing in Rhyme’s apartment, looking for Geneva, and the Fourteenth Amendment aspect of the intrigue; the lawyer would’ve had a strong motive to make certain that nothing jeopardized an important weapon for civil libertarians. Rhyme had also wondered if the man’s loyalty to his former insurance company employers had led him to betray Geneva.

But Rhyme hadn’t shared his suspicion of the lawyer and thus no apologies were in order. After Rhyme and Sachs had discovered that the case had taken an unexpected turn, the criminalist had suggested that Goades be retained for what was coming next. Geneva Settle, of course, was all in favor of hiring him.

Across the marble coffee table from them were Gregory Hanson, the president of Sanford Bank and Trust, his assistant, Stella Turner, and the senior partner at Sanford ’s law firm, a trim mid-forties attorney named Anthony Cole. They exuded a collective unease, which, Rhyme assumed, would’ve arisen late yesterday when he’d called Hanson to propose a meeting to discuss the “Ashberry matter.”