The Twelfth Card

Billy Todds had criminal records, and of these, three were still in prison and one had died six years ago.
    “He picked the name out of a hat,” Rhyme muttered. He looked over the computer-generated image.
    Who are you, Unsub 109? he wondered.
    And where are you?
    “Mel, email the picture to J. T.”
    “To?”
    “Our good ole boy warden down in Amarillo.” A nod toward the picture. “I’m still leaning toward the theory our boy’s an inmate who had a run-in with that guard who was lynched.”
    “Got it,” Cooper said. After he’d done so he took the sample of liquid that Sachs had found in the safe house, carefully opened it up and prepared it for the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.
    A short time later the results popped up on the screen.
    “This’s a new one to me. Polyvinyl alcohol, povidone, benzalkonium chloride; dextrose; potassium chloride; water; sodium bicarbonate; sodium chloride—”
    “More salt,” Rhyme chimed in. “But it ain’t popcorn this time.”
    “And sodium citrate and sodium phosphate. Few other things.”
    “Fucking Greek to me.” Sellitto shrugged and wandered into the hall, turning toward the bathroom.
    Cooper nodded at the list of ingredients. “Any clue what it is?”
    Rhyme shook his head. “Our database?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Send it down to Washington.”
    “Will do.” The tech sent the information off to the FBI’s lab and then turned to the final item of evidence that Sachs had found: wood scrapings of the stains on top of the desk. Cooper prepared a sample for the chromatograph.
    As they waited for the results Rhyme scanned the evidence chart. He was looking over the entries when he saw some fast motion from the corner of his eye. Startled, he turned toward it. But no one was in that portion of the lab. What had he seen?
    Then he saw movement again and realized what he was looking at: a reflection in the glass front of a cabinet. It was Lon Sellitto, alone in the hallway, apparently believing no one could see him. The fast motion had been the big detective’s practicing a fast draw of his pistol. Rhyme couldn’t see the man’s face clearly but his expression appeared distressed.
    What was this about?
    The criminalist caught Sachs’s eye and nodded toward the doorway. She edged closer to the door and looked out, watching the detective draw his weapon several more times then shake his head, grimacing. Sachs shrugged. After three or four minutes of the exercise, the detective put his gun away, stepped into the bathroom and without closing the door flushed the toilet and stepped out again a second later.
    He returned to the lab. “Jesus, Linc, when’re you going to put in a classy john in this place? Didn’t yellow and black go out in the seventies?”
    “You know, I just don’t hold a lot of meetings in the toilet.”
    The big man laughed, but too loudly. The sound, like the banter that inspired it, rang false.
    But whatever was troubling the man instantly ceased to occupy Rhyme’s mind when the results of the GC/MS analysis flashed onto the computer screen—the scrapings from the unsub’s desktop at the safe house. Rhyme frowned. The analysis had reported that the substance that had stained the wood was pure sulfuric acid, news that Rhyme found particularly discouraging. For one thing, from an evidentiary point of view, it was readily available and therefore virtually impossible to trace to a single source.
    But more upsetting was the fact that it was perhaps the most powerful—and dangerous—acid you could buy; as a weapon, even a tiny quantity could, within seconds, kill or permanently disfigure.
    ELIZABETH STREET SAFE HOUSE SCENE
    • Used electrical booby trap.
    • Fingerprints: None. Glove prints only.
    • Security camera and monitor; no leads.
    • Tarot deck, missing the twelfth card; no leads.
    • Map with diagram of museum where G. Settle was attacked and buildings across the street.
    • Trace:
      • Falafel and yogurt.
      • Wood scrapings from desk with traces of pure sulfuric acid.
      • Clear liquid, not explosive. Sent to FBI lab.
      • More fibers from rope. Garrotte?
      • Pure carbon found in map.
    • Safe house was rented, for cash, to Billy Todd Hammil. Fits Unsub 109’s description, but no leads to an actual Hammil.
    AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM SCENE
    • Rape pack:
      • Tarot card, twelfth card in deck, the Hanged Man, meaning spiritual searching.
      • Smiley-face bag.
        • Too generic to