The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

The others struck his intended victim just where he'd aimed. The three tiny dots appeared in the center of his chest; they'd become three rosettes of blood by the time the body hit the ground.

*

Two girls stood in front of him and, though their physiques were totally opposite, it was the difference in their eyes that Lincoln Rhyme noticed first.

The heavy one--dressed in gaudy clothes and shiny jewelry, her fingernails long and orange--had eyes that danced like skittish insects. Unable to look at Rhyme, or anything else, for more than a second, she made a dizzying visual circuit of his lab: the scientific instruments, the beakers, chemicals, the computers and monitors, wires everywhere. At Rhyme's legs and his wheelchair, of course. She chewed gum loudly.

The other girl, short, skinny and boyish, had a stillness about her. She gazed at Lincoln Rhyme steadily. One fast glance at the wheelchair, then back to him. The lab didn't interest her.

"This's Geneva Settle," explained the calm patrolwoman, Jennifer Robinson, nodding at the slim girl, the one with the unwavering eyes. Robinson was a friend of Amelia Sachs, who'd arranged for her to drive the girls here from the Midtown North house.

"And this's her friend," Robinson continued, "Lakeesha Scott. Lose the gum, Lakeesha."

The girl gave a beleaguered look but stuffed the wad somewhere in her large purse, without bothering to wrap it.

The patrolwoman said, "She and Geneva went to the museum together this morning."

"Only I didn't see nothing," Lakeesha said preemptively. Was the big girl nervous because of the attack, he wondered, or was she uncomfortable because Rhyme was a crip? Both probably.

Geneva was dressed in a gray T-shirt and black baggy pants and running shoes, which Rhyme guessed was the fashion among high school students nowadays. Sellitto had said the girl was sixteen but she looked younger. While Lakeesha's hair was done in a mass of thin gold and black braids, tied so taut that her scalp showed, Geneva's was cropped short.

"I told the girls who you are, Captain," Robinson explained, using the title that was some years out of date. "And that you're going to ask them some questions about what happened. Geneva wants to get back to her school but I said she'd have to wait."

"I have some tests," Geneva said.

Lakeesha tsked a sound through her white teeth.

Robinson continued, "Geneva's parents are out of the country. But they're getting the next flight back. Her uncle's been staying with her while they've been away."

"Where are they?" Rhyme asked. "Your parents?"

"My father's teaching a symposium at Oxford."

"He's a professor?"

She nodded. "Literature. At Hunter."

Rhyme chided himself for being surprised that a young girl from Harlem would have intellectual, globe-trotting parents. He was angry for stereotyping but mostly piqued that he'd made a flawed deduction. True, she was decked out like a gangsta but he might've guessed she had academic roots; she'd been attacked during an early-morning visit to a library, not hanging out on the street corner or watching TV before school.

Lakeesha fished a package of cigarettes out of her purse.

Rhyme began, "There's no--"

Thom walked through the doorway. "--smoking in here." He lifted the pack away from the girl and stuffed it back into her bag. Unfazed that two teenagers had suddenly materialized on his watch, Thom smiled. "Soft drinks?"

"You got coffee?" Lakeesha asked.

"I do, yes." Thom glanced at Jennifer Robinson and Rhyme, who shook their heads.

"I like it strong," the big girl announced.

"Do you?" Thom asked. "So do I." To Geneva: "Anything for you?"

The girl shook her head.

Rhyme glanced longingly at the bottle of scotch sitting on a shelf nearby. Thom noticed and laughed. The aide disappeared. To Rhyme's distress, Patrolwoman Robinson said, "I've got to get back to the house, sir."

"Ah, you do?" Rhyme asked, dismayed. "You sure you couldn't stay a little longer?"