The Twelfth Card

fact, I don’t think he’s ever lost.”
    “This’s crazy,” Sellitto muttered, absently brushing at a dot of blood on his jacket. He muttered, “You’re a kid—”
    Wrong thing to say.
    Geneva glared at him and snapped, “You’re not going to let me make a phone call? Don’t prisoners get to do that, even?”
    The big detective sighed. He gestured toward the phone.
    She walked to it, looked in her address book and punched in a number.
    “Wesley Goades,” Rhyme said.
    Geneva cocked her head as the call was connected. She said to Rhyme, “He went to Harvard. Oh, and he sued the army too. Gay rights, I think.”
    She spoke into the phone. “Mr. Goades, please . . . Could you tell him Geneva Settle called? I was a witness to a crime, and I’m being held by the police.” She gave the address of Rhyme’s town house then added, “It’s against my will and—”
    Rhyme glanced at Sellitto, who rolled his eyes and said, “All right.”
    “Hold on,” Geneva said into the phone. Then turned to the big detective, who towered over her. “I can go to school?”
    “For the test. That’s all.”
    “There are two of them.”
    “All right. Both goddamn tests,” Sellitto muttered. To Bell, he said, “Stay with her.”
    “Like a flat-coated retriever, y’all got that right.”
    Into the phone Geneva said, “Tell Mr. Goades never mind. We’ve got it worked out.” She hung up.
    Rhyme said, “But first I want those letters.”
    “Deal.” She slung her book bag over her shoulder.
    “You,” Sellitto barked to Pulaski, “go with ’em.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    After Bell, Geneva and the rookie had left, Sachs looked at the door and laughed. “Now, that’s one spitfire.”
    “Wesley Goades.” Rhyme smiled. “I think she was making him up. Probably called time and temperature.”
    He nodded toward the evidence board. “Let’s get going on all of this. Mel, you take over street-fair detail. And I want the facts and profile of what we’ve got so far sent to VICAP and NCIC. I want all the libraries and schools in town polled to see if this guy who talked to Barry also called them and asked about Singleton or that Coloreds’ Weekly magazine. Oh, and find out who makes smiley-face bags.”
    “Tall order,” Cooper called.
    “Hey, guess what? Life’s a tall order sometimes. Then send a sample of the blood on the rope to CODIS.”
    “I thought you didn’t think it was a sex crime.” CODIS was a database that contained the DNA of known sex offenders.
    “The operative words are ‘I think,’ Mel. Not ‘I know to a fucking certainty.’ ”
    “So much for the mood,” Thom said.
    “One other thing . . . ” He wheeled closer and examined the pictures of the librarian’s body and thediagram of the shooting crime scene, which Sachs had drawn. “The woman was how far from the vic?” Rhyme asked Sellitto.
    “Who, the bystander? I’d guess fifteen feet to the side.”
    “Who was hit first?”
    “She was.”
    “And the shots were grouped tight? The ones that hit the librarian?”
    “Real tight. Inches apart. He knows how to shoot.”
    Rhyme muttered, “It wasn’t a miss, the woman. He shot her on purpose.”
    “What?”
    The criminalist asked the best pistol shot in the room, “Sachs, when you’re rapid-firing, what’s the one shot that’s bound to be the most accurate?”
    “The first. You’re not fighting recoil.”
    Rhyme said, “He wounded her intentionally—aimed for a major blood vessel—to draw off as many officers as he could and give him a chance to get away.”
    Cooper muttered, “Jesus.”
    “Tell Bell. And Bo Haumann and his people at Emergency Services. Let ’em know that’s the kind of perp we’re dealing with—one who’s more than happy to target innocents.”

II
T HE G RAFFITI K ING

Chapter Eight
    The big man walked down the Harlem sidewalk, thinking about the phone conversation he’d had an hour ago. It’d made him happy, made him nervous, made him cautious. But mostly he was thinking: Maybe, at last, things are looking up.
    Well, he deserved a boost, just something to help him get over.
    Jax hadn’t had much luck lately. Sure, he’d been glad to get out of the system. But the two months since his release from prison had been coal hard: lonely and without a single lick of anything by way of righteous fortune falling into his lap. But today was different. The phone call about Geneva Settle could change his life forever.
    He was walking along