The Twelfth Card

woman screamed and dropped to her knees, lunging for the gun with her left hand. Just as she grabbed it, Geneva swung the iron again and caught the woman in the shoulder with a solid clonk. Frazier rolled to the ground, the gun sliding out of her reach. Blinded by the pain and the rage, the woman lunged and tackled the girl before she could swing the rod again. Geneva went down hard, the breath knocked out of her.
    The woman turned toward where the pistol lay but, choking and gasping, Geneva crawled forward, grabbed her right arm and bit Frazier’s shattered wrist. The pain that could be no worse rose like a shriek through her. Frazier swung her good fist into the girl’s face and connected with her jaw. Geneva gave a cry and blinked tears as she rolled, helpless, onto her back. Frazier climbed unsteadily to her feet, cradling her bloody, broken wrist, and kicked the girl in the belly. The teenager began to retch.
    Standing unsteadily, Frazier looked for the gun, which was ten feet away. Don’t need it, don’t want it. The tire iron’d do just fine. Seething with anger, she picked it up and started forward. She looked down at the girl with undiluted hate and lifted the metal rod above her head. Geneva cringed and covered her face with her hands.
    Then a voice from behind the big woman shouted, “No!”
    Frazier turned to see that redheaded policewoman from the crippled man’s apartment walking slowly forward, her large automatic pistol held in both hands.
    Alina Frazier looked down at the revolver nearby.
    “I’d like the excuse,” the policewoman said. “I really would.”
    Frazier slumped, tossed the tire iron aside and, feeling faint, dropped into a sitting position. She cradled her shattered hand.
    The cop moved close and kicked the pistol and tire iron away, as Geneva rose to her feet and staggered toward a duo of medics who were running forward. The girl directed them toward her father.
    Tears of pain in her eyes, Frazier demanded, “I need a doctor.”
    “You’ll have to wait in line,” the policewoman muttered and slipped a plastic restraint around her wrists with what, under the circumstances, Frazier decided, was really a pretty gentle touch.
    *   *   *
    “He’s in stable condition,” Lon Sellitto announced. He’d fielded the phone call from an officer on duty at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. “He didn’t know what that means. But there you have it.”
    Rhyme nodded at this news about Jax Jackson. Whatever “stable” meant, at least the man was alive, for which Rhyme was immensely grateful—for Geneva’s sake.
    The girl herself had been treated for contusions and abrasions and released.
    It had been a photo finish to save her from Boyd’s accomplice. Mel Cooper had run the tags on the car that the girl and her father had gotten into and found it registered to someone named Alina Frazier. A fast check of NCIC and state databases revealed that she had a record: a manslaughter charge in Ohio and two assaults with deadly weapons in New York, as well as a slew of sealed juvie offenses.
    Sellitto had put out an Emergency Vehicle Locator, which alerted all law enforcers in the area to look for Frazier’s sedan. A traffic enforcement cop had radioed a short time later that the vehicle had been seen near a demolition site in South Harlem. There’d also been a report of shots fired in the vicinity. At Rhyme’s town house Amelia Sachs jumped into her Camaro and sped to the scene, where she found Frazier about to beat Geneva to death.
    Frazier had been interrogated but was no more cooperative than her accomplice. Rhyme guessed that one had to think long and hard about betraying Thompson Boyd, especially in jail, given the long reach of his prison connections.
    Was Geneva finally safe or not? Most likely she was. Two killers under wraps and the main actor blown to pieces. Sachs had searched Alina Frazier’s apartment and found nothing except weapons and cash—no information that would suggest there was anyone else who wanted to kill Geneva Settle. Jon Earle Wilson, the ex-con from New Jersey who’d made the booby trap in Boyd’s Queens safehouse, was presently en route to Rhyme’s, and the criminalist hoped he’d confirm their conclusions. Still, Rhyme and Bell decided to dedicate a uniformed officer in a squad car to protection detail for Geneva.
    Now, a computer sounded a friendly chirp and Mel Cooper looked over at the screen. He opened an email. “Ah, the mystery is