The Twelfth Card

Tape inconclusive, sent to lab for analysis.
    • Old work shoes.
    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 Freedman’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.
      • Letter 4, to wife: Went to Potters’ Field with his gun for “justice.” Results were disastrous. The truth is now hidden in Potters’ Field. His secret was what caused all this heartache.
    “ ’Lo?”
    “Hey there, J. T. This’s Lincoln Rhyme in New York.” Speaking to someone who went by initials and lived in the Lone Star State—not to mention his drawl—made you tend to drop words like “hey,” and “listen here” into your speech.
    “Oh, yes, sir, how you doing? Say, I read up on you after we talked last time. Didn’t know you were famous.”
    “Ah, just a former civil servant,” Rhyme said with a modesty that rang like dull tin. “Nothing more or less than that. Any better luck with the picture we sent you?”
    “Sorry, Detective Rhyme. Fact is, he looks like half the white guys who graduated from here. ’Sides, we’re like most correctional outfits—got ourselves a big turnover. Aren’t hardly any employees still here from the time when Charlie Tucker was killed.”
    “We’ve got a little more information about him. This might help narrow down the list. You got a minute?”
    “Shoot.”
    “He may have an eye problem. He uses Murine regularly. That could be recent but maybe he did it when he was a prisoner there. And then we think he may’ve had the habit of whistling.”
    “Whistling? Like at a woman or some such?”
    “No, whistling a tune. Songs.”
    “Oh. Okay. Hold on.” Five impossibly long minutes later he came back on the line. “Sorry. Nobody could remember anything about anybody whistling, or having bad eyes, not particular. But we’ll keep looking.”
    Rhyme thanked him and disconnected. He stared at the evidence chart in frustration. In the early 1900s, one of the greatest criminalists who ever lived, Edmond Locard of France, came up with what he called the exchange principle, which holds that at every crime scene there is some exchange of evidence, however minute, between the criminal and the scene or the victim. Finding that evidence was the goal of the forensic detective. Locard’s principle, however, didn’t go on to guarantee that simply establishing that connection would lead you to the perp’s door.
    He sighed. Well, he’d known it would be a long shot. What’d they have? A vague computer drawing, a possible eye condition, a possible habit, a grudge against a prison guard.
    What else should the—?
    Rhyme frowned. He was staring at the twelfth card in the tarot deck.
    The Hanged Man does not refer to someone being punished . . . .
    Maybe not, but it still depicted a man dangling from a scaffold.
    Something clicked in his mind. He glanced at the evidence chart again. Noting: the baton, the electricity hookup on Elizabeth Street, the poison gas, the cluster of bullets in the heart, the lynching of Charlie Tucker, the rope fibers with traces of blood . . .
    “Oh, hell!” he spat out.
    “Lincoln? What’s