The Twelfth Card

What’s he got in his?”
    “Little weird, Rhyme. It’s got the typical duct tape, box cutter, condoms. But there’s also a tarot card. Picture of this guy hanging from a scaffold.”
    “Wonder if he’s a genuine sicko, or just a copycat?” Rhyme mused. Over the years many killershad left tarot cards and other occult memorabilia at crime scenes—the most notable recent case being the Washington, D.C., snipers of several years earlier.
    Sachs continued, “The good news is that he kept everything in a nice slick plastic bag.”
    “Excellent.” While perps might think to wear gloves at the crime scene itself, they often forgot about prints on the items they carried with them to commit that crime. A discarded condom wrapper had convicted many a rapist who’d otherwise been compulsive about not leaving his prints or bodily fluids at a scene. In this case, even if the killer thought to clean off the tape, knife and condoms, it was possible that he’d forgotten to wipe the bag.
    She now placed the pack in a paper evidence bag—paper was generally better than plastic for preserving evidence—and set it aside. “He left it on a bookshelf near where the girl was sitting. I’m checking for latents.” She dusted the shelves with fluorescent powder, donned orange goggles and shone an alternative light source on the area. ALS lamps reveal markings like blood, semen and fingerprints that are otherwise invisible. Playing the light up and down, she transmitted, “No prints. But I can see he’s wearing latex gloves.”
    “Ah, that’s good. For two reasons.” Rhyme’s voice had a professorial tone. He was testing her.
    Two? she wondered. One came immediately to mind: If they were able to recover the glove they could lift a print from inside the fingers (something else perps often forgot). But the second?
    She asked him.
    “Obvious. It means he’s probably got a record, so when we do find a print, AFIS’ll tell us who he is.”State-based automated fingerprint identification systems and the FBI’s Integrated AFIS were computer databases that could provide print matches in minutes, as opposed to days or even weeks with manual examinations.
    “Sure,” Sachs said, troubled that she’d blown the quiz.
    “What else rates the assessment ‘good’?”
    “They waxed the floor last night.”
    “And the attack happened early this morning. So you’ve got a good canvas for his footprints.”
    “Yep. There’re some distinct ones here.” Kneeling, she took an electrostatic image of the print of the man’s tread marks. She was sure they were his; she could clearly see the trail where he’d walked up to Geneva’s table, adjusted his stance to get a good grip on the club to strike her and then chased her down the hall. She’d also compared the prints with those of the only other man who’d been here this morning: those of Ron Pulaski, whose mirror-shined issue shoes left a very different impression.
    She explained about the girl’s using the mannequin to distract the killer and escape. He chuckled at her ingenuity. She added, “Rhyme, he hit her—well, the mannequin—really hard. A blunt object. So hard he cracked the plastic through her stocking cap. Then he must’ve been mad she fooled him. He smashed the microfiche reader too.”
    “Blunt object,” Rhyme repeated. “Can you lift an impression?”
    When he was head of the Crime Scene Unit at the NYPD, before his accident, Rhyme had compiled a number of database files to help identify evidence and impressions found at scenes. The blunt object file contained hundreds of pictures of impact marks left on skin and inanimate surfaces by various typesof objects—from tire irons to human bones to ice. But after carefully examining both the mannequin and the smashed microfiche reader, Sachs said, “No, Rhyme. I don’t see any. The cap Geneva put on the mannequin—”
    “Geneva?”
    “That’s her name.”
    “Oh. Go on.”
    She was momentarily irritated—as she often was—that he hadn’t expressed any interest in knowing anything about the girl or her state of mind. It often troubled her that Rhyme was so detached about the crime and the victims. This, he said, was how a criminalist needed to be. You didn’t want pilots so awed by a beautiful sunset or so terrified of a thunderstorm that they flew into a mountain, the same was true with cops. She saw his point but to Amelia Sachs victims were human beings, and crimes were not scientific exercises;