The Twelfth Card

so well, that I-ain’t-got-time-t’waste-on-wack-bitches look, and walk off. But, no, it seemed he thought that she just wasn’t in the mood to play, probably still freaked from the morning’s events, and that was all right with him. He just said, “I’m serious, Gen, you’re about more’n just DJs and braids and bling. What it is, you’re smart. Nice to talk with somebody smart. My boys”—he nodded toward his posse’s table—“they’re not exactly rocket scientists, you know what I’m saying?”
    A flash in her mind. Go for it, girl. “Yeah,” shesaid, “some of ’em’re so dumb, if they spoke their minds, they’d be speechless.”
    “Def, girl! Straight up.” Laughing, he tapped his fist to hers, and an electric jolt shot through her body. She struggled not to grin; it was way bad form to smile at your own snap.
    Then, through the exhilaration of the moment, she was thinking how right he was, how rarely it happens, just talking with somebody smart, somebody who could listen, somebody who cared what you had to say.
    Kevin lifted an eyebrow at Detective Bell, who was paying for the food, and said, “I know that dude fronting he’s a teacher is five-0.”
    She whispered, “Man does sorta have ‘Cop’ written on his forehead.”
    “That’s word,” Kevin said, laughing. “I know he’s stepping up for you and all and that’s cool. But I just wanta say I’ma watch yo’ back too. And my boys. We see anything wack, we’ll let him know.”
    She was touched by this.
    But then troubled. What if Kevin or one of his friends got hurt by that terrible man from the library? She was still sick with sorrow that Dr. Barry had been killed because of her, that the woman on the sidewalk had been wounded. She had a horrible premonition: Kevin laid out in the Williams Funeral Home parlor, like so many other Harlem boys, shot down on the street.
    “You don’t have to do that,” she said, unsmiling.
    “I know I don’t,” he said. “I want to. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. That’s word. Okay, I’ma hang with my boys now. Catch you later? ’Fore math class?”
    Heart thudding, she stammered, “Sure.”
    He tapped her fist again and walked off. Watching him, she felt feverish, hands shaking at the exchange.Please, she thought, don’t let anything happen to him . . . .
    “Miss?”
    She looked up, blinked.
    Detective Bell was setting down a tray. The food smelled so fine . . . . She was even hungrier than she’d thought. She stared at the steaming plate.
    “You know him?” the policeman asked.
    “Yeah, he’s down. We’re in class together. Known him for years.”
    “You look a little addled, miss.”
    “Well . . . I don’t know. Maybe I am. Yeah.”
    “But it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened at the museum, right?” he asked with a smile.
    She looked away, feeling heat across her face.
    “Now,” the detective said, setting the steaming plate in front of her. “Chow down. Nothing like turkey tetrazzini to soothe a troubled soul. You know, I might just ask ’em for the recipe.”

Chapter Eleven
    These’d do just fine.
    Thompson Boyd looked down at his purchases in the basket, then started for the checkout counter. He just loved hardware stores. He wondered why that might be. Maybe because his father used to take him every Saturday to an Ace Hardware outside of Amarillo to stock up on what the man needed for his workshop in the shed outside their trailer.
    Or maybe it was because in most hardware stores, like here, all the tools were clean and organized, the paint and glues and tapes were all ordered logically and easy to find.
    Everything arranged by the book.
    Thompson liked the smell too, sort of a pungent fertilizer/oil/solvent smell that was impossible to describe, but one that everyone who’d ever been in an old hardware store would recognize instantly.
    The killer was pretty handy. This was something he’d picked up from his dad, who, even though he spent all day with tools, working on oil pipelines, derricks and the bobbing, dinosaur-head pumps, would still spend lots of time patiently teaching his son how to work with—and respect—tools, how to measure, how to draw plans. Thompson spent hours learning how to fix what was broken and how to turn wood and metal and plastic into things that hadn’t existed. Together they’d work on the truck or the trailer, fix the fence, make furniture, build a presentfor his mom or aunt—a rolling pin or