The Twelfth Card

The back of the van’s filled with meat and falafel and shit like that.”
    “Oh.” The cop still didn’t feel any less nauseous.
    It was then that a bright red Camaro SS—one hell of a car—skidded to a stop in the middle of the street, just kissing the yellow police tape. Out climbed a stunning redhead, who looked over the scene, nodding to the detective.
    “Hey,” he said.
    As the woman detective hooked a headset onto her Motorola and waved to the crime scene bus, just pulling up as well, she sniffed the air, taking several deep breaths. She nodded. “Haven’t run the scene yet,” she said into the microphone, “but from the smell, Rhyme, I’d say we’ve got him.”
    It was then that the tall, bald detective swallowed and said, “You know, I’ll be right back.” He jogged to a nearby Starbucks, praying he’d make it to the restroom in time.
    *   *   *
    With Detective Bell at her side, Geneva walked into the laboratory portion of Mr. Rhyme’s town house, downstairs. She glanced at her father, who looked at her with those big puppy-dog eyes of his.
    Damnit. She looked away.
    Mr. Rhyme said, “We’ve got some news. The man who hired Boyd’s dead.”
    “Dead? The jewelry store robber?”
    “Things weren’t quite what they seemed,” Mr. Rhyme said. “We were—well, I was wrong. I was thinking whoever it was wanted to rob the jewelry exchange. But, no, he wanted to blow it up.”
    “Terrorists?” she asked.
    Mr. Rhyme nodded toward a plastic folder that Amelia was holding. Inside was a letter, addressed to The New York Times. It said the bombing of the jewelry exchange was yet another step in the holy war against Zionist Israel and its allies. It was the same paper that was used for the note about killing Geneva and the map of West Fifty-fifth Street.
    “Who is he?” she asked, trying to remember a van and a Middle Eastern man in the street outside the museum a week or so ago. She couldn’t.
    “An illegal Saudi national,” Detective Sellitto said. “Worked for a restaurant downtown. The owners’re pretty freaked, of course. They think we think they’re a cover for al-Qaeda or something.” He chuckled. “Which they might be. We’ll keep checking. But they all come up clean—citizens, been here for years, couple kids in the army, even. I will say they’re a bunch of very nervous folks at the moment.”
    The most important aspect about the bomber, Amelia went on to say, was that this man, Bani al-Dahab, didn’t appear to associate with any suspected terrorists. The women he’d dated recently and coworkers said that they didn’t know of any times he’d met with people who might be in a terrorist cell, and his mosque was religiously and politically moderate. Amelia had searched his Queens apartment and found no other evidence or connectionsto other terrorist cells. His phone records were being checked for possible links to other fundamentalists, though.
    “We’ll keep looking over the evidence,” Mr. Rhyme said, “but we’re ninety-nine percent sure he was working alone. I think it means you’re probably safe.”
    He wheeled his chair to the evidence table and looked over some bags of burnt metal and plastic. He said to Mr. Cooper, “Add it to the chart, Mel: Explosive was TOVEX, and we’ve got pieces of the receiver—the detonator—the casing, wire, a bit of blasting cap. All contained in a UPS box addressed to the jewelry exchange, attention of the director. “
    “Why’d it go off early?” Jax Jackson asked.
    Mr. Rhyme explained that it was very dangerous to use a radio-controlled bomb in the city because there were so many ambient radio waves—from construction-site detonators, walkie-talkies and a hundred other sources.
    Detective Sellitto added, “Or he may’ve killed himself. He might’ve heard that Boyd was arrested or that the jewelry exchange was being searched for a bomb. He must’ve thought it was only a matter of time until he’d be nabbed.”
    Geneva felt uneasy, confused. These people around her were suddenly strangers. The reason they’d come together in the first place no longer existed. As for her father, he was more alien to her than the police. She wanted to be back in her room in the Harlem basement with her books and her plans for the future, college, dreams about Florence and Paris.
    But then she realized Amelia was looking at her closely. The policewoman asked, “What’re you going to do now?”
    Geneva glanced at her father.