The Twelfth Card

Pulaski arrived.
    Bell explained about the accomplice’s escape at the school. He added a few details about him, though, and told them that somebody was going to canvass the students and teachers and dig up a security tape if there was one.
    “I didn’t get to take my last test,” Geneva said angrily, as if this were Rhyme’s fault. This girl could definitely get on your nerves. Still, he said patiently, “I have some news you might be interestedin. Your ancestor survived his swim in the Hudson.”
    “He did?” Her face brightened and she eagerly read the printout of the 1868 magazine article. Then she frowned. “They make him sound pretty bad. Like he’d planned it all along. He wasn’t that way. I know it.” She looked up. “And we still don’t know what happened to him if he was ever released.”
    “We’re still searching for information. I hope we can find out more.”
    The tech’s computer chimed and he looked it over. “Maybe something here. Email from a professor at Amherst who runs an African-American history website. She’s one of the people I emailed about Charles Singleton.”
    “Read it.”
    “It’s from Frederick Douglass’s diary.”
    “Who was he again?” Pulaski asked. “Sorry, I probably should know. Got a street named after him and all.”
    Geneva said, “Former slave. The abolitionist and civil rights leader of the nineteenth century. Writer, lecturer.”
    The rookie was blushing. “Like I say, should’ve known.”
    Cooper leaned forward and read from the screen, “ ‘May third, 1866. Another evening at Gallows Heights—’ ”
    “Ah,” Rhyme interrupted, “our mysterious neighborhood.” The word “gallows” again reminded him of The Hanged Man tarot card, the placid figure swinging by his leg from a scaffold. He glanced at the card, then turned his attention back to Cooper.
    “ ‘ . . . discussing our vital endeavor, the Fourteenth Amendment. Several members of the Coloredcommunity in New York and myself met with, inter alia, the Honorable Governor Fenton and members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, including Senators Harris, Grimes and Fessenden, and Congressmen Stevens and Washburne and the Democrat, Andrew T. Rogers, who proved far less partisan than we had feared.
    “ ‘Governor Fenton began with a moving invocation, whereupon we began to present to the members of the committee our opinions on the various draft versions of the Amendment, which we did at length. (Mr. Charles Singleton was particularly articulate in his view that the amendment should incorporate a requirement of universal suffrage for all citizens, Negroes and Caucasians, women as well as men, which the members of the committee took under advisement.) Lengthy debates lasted well into the night.’ ”
    Geneva leaned over his shoulder and read. “ ‘Particularly articulate,’ ” she whispered out loud. “And he wanted voting for women.”
    “Here’s another entry,” Cooper said.
    “ ‘June twenty-fifth, 1867. I am troubled by the slow progress. The Fourteenth Amendment was presented to the states for ratification one year ago, and with expediency twenty-two blessed the measure with their approval. Only six more are required, but we are meeting with stubborn resistance.
    “ ‘Willard Fish, Charles Singleton and Elijah Walker are traveling throughout those states as yet uncommitted and doing what they can to implore legislators therein to vote in favor of the amendment. But at every turn they are faced with ignorance in perceiving the wisdom of this law—and personal disdain and threats and anger. To have sacrificed so much, and yet not achieve our goal . . . . Is our prevailingin the War to be hollow, merely a Pyrrhic victory? I pray the cause of our people does not wither in this, our most important effort.’ ” Cooper looked up from the screen. “That’s it.”
    Geneva said, “So Charles was working with Douglass and the others on the Fourteenth Amendment. They were friends, sounds like.”
    Or were they? Rhyme wondered. Was the newspaper article right? Had he worked his way into the circle to learn what he could about the Freedmen’s Trust and rob it?
    Although, for Lincoln Rhyme, truth was the only goal in any forensic investigation, he harbored a rare sentimental hope that Charles Singleton had not committed the crime.
    He stared at the evidence board, seeing far more question marks than answers.
    “Geneva, can you call your aunt? See if