The Twelfth Card

“A NEW LINCOLN RHYME NOVEL IS CAUSE FOR EXCITEMENT . . . . ”
    —Booklist
    “[He] is among the most brilliant and most vulnerable of crime fiction’s heroes.”
    —New York Post
    “The Lincoln Rhyme series is simply outstanding.”
    —San Jose Mercury News
    JEFFERY DEAVER
    delivers “rock-solid suspense” ( People ) in these Lincoln Rhyme bestsellers
    THE TWELFTH CARD
    “Well-written, suspenseful . . . . The Rhyme novels are among the cleverest of contemporary detective fiction . . . . Deaver must have been born with a special plot-twist gene.”
    — Booklist
    “Like the CBS hit CSI , Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books have nearly fetishized crime-scene procedures and technology . . . . These details form the absorbing core of The Twelfth Card .”
    — Entertainment Weekly
    “Deaver has no trouble getting inside the tormented mind of a killer.”
    — The New York Times
    This title is also available from Simon & Schuster Audio
    THE VANISHED MAN
    “A crackling thriller.”
    — Chicago Sun-Times
    “Ingeniously devious . . . . [The] plot is so crooked it could hide behind a spiral staircase . . . . Deaver delivers.”
    — People
    THE STONE MONKEY
    “Deaver’s labyrinthine plots are astonishing . . . . [He] knows how to play this game for all it’s worth.”
    — The New York Times Book Review
    “Devious and heart-stopping.”
    — The Ottawa Citizen
    THE EMPTY CHAIR
    “[A] pulse-racing chase . . . . Scientific smarts and psychological cunning.”
    — The New York Times Book Review
    “Outstanding . . . . When the suspense starts, the pages fly.”
    — Library Journal
    THE COFFIN DANCER
    “This is as good as it gets.”
    — San Jose Mercury News
    “Wake up, Scarpetta fans—Lincoln Rhyme is here to blast you out of your stupor.”
    — Entertainment Weekly
    More acclaimed suspense fiction from JEFFERY DEAVER, who creates “a thrill ride between covers” ( Los Angeles Times ) in these explosive bestsellers!
    GARDEN OF BEASTS
    “This is prime Deaver, which means prime entertainment.”
    — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
    “Keeps the pulse racing while challenging the emotions . . . . Deaver does a masterful job of conveying incipient evil.”
    — The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
    “Deaver pulls out all the stops in building up the suspense . . . . [A] page-turner.”
    — The Denver Post
    SPEAKING IN TONGUES
    “A shocker . . . . Speaking in Tongues is like Cape Fear on steroids . . . . ”
    — Los Angeles Times
    THE DEVIL’S TEARDROP
    “A fiendish suspense thriller . . . . Leaves us weak.”
    — The New York Times Book Review
    THE BLUE NOWHERE
    “High-tension wired . . . . Deaver . . . fills every keystroke with suspense.”
    — People

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To the memory of Christopher Reeve, a lesson in courage, a symbol of hope

“Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.”
    —Ralph Ellison

I
T HE T HREE -F IFTHS M AN

    T UESDAY , O CTOBER 9

Chapter One
    His face wet with sweat and with tears, the man runs for freedom, he runs for his life.
    “There! There he goes!”
    The former slave does not know exactly where the voice comes from. Behind him? To the right or left? From atop one of the decrepit tenements lining the filthy cobblestoned streets here?
    Amid July air hot and thick as liquid paraffin, the lean man leaps over a pile of horse dung. The street sweepers don’t come here, to this part of the city. Charles Singleton pauses beside a pallet stacked high with barrels, trying to catch his breath.
    A crack of a pistol. The bullet goes wide. The sharp report of the gun takes him back instantly to the war: the impossible, mad hours as he stood his ground in a dusty blue uniform, steadying a heavy musket, facing men wearing dusty gray, aiming their own weapons his way.
    Running faster now. The men fire again. These bullets also miss.
    “Somebody stop him! Five dollars’ gold if you catch him.”
    But the few people out on the streets this early—mostly Irish ragpickers and laborers trooping to work with hods or picks on their shoulders—have no