The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

"Yeah," Cooper confirmed.

"But there are prints," the criminalist offered. "And they're probably the clerk's, since they're the same that're on the receipt."

"Right." Sellitto shrugged. "So?"

"So he wiped his prints before he got to the cash register. While he was in the store." Silence in the room. Irritated that nobody caught on, the criminalist continued, "Because he wanted the clerk's prints on everything."

Sachs understood. "He meant to leave the rape pack behind. So we'd find it."

Pulaski was nodding. "Otherwise, he'd just have wiped everything after he got it home."

"Exactly," Rhyme said with a hint of triumph in his voice. "I think it was staged evidence. To make us think it was a rape, with some kind of occult overtones. Okay, okay . . . . Let's step back." Rhyme was amused at Pulaski's uneasy glance at Rhyme's legs when the criminalist used the expression. "An attacker tracks down Geneva in a public museum. Not the typical setting for sexual assault. Then he hits her--well, the mannequin--hard enough to kill her, if not knock her out for hours. If that's the case then what's he need the box cutter and duct tape for? And he leaves a tarot card he thinks is scary but is really just about spiritual searching? No, it wasn't an attempted rape at all."

"What's he up to then?" Sellitto asked.

"That's what we damn well better find out." Rhyme thought for a moment then asked, "And you said that Dr. Barry didn't see anything?"

"That's what he told me," Sellitto replied.

"But the unsub still comes back and kills him." Rhyme frowned. "And Mr. One-oh-nine broke up the microfiche reader. He's a pro, but tantrums're very un-pro. His vic's getting away--he's not going to waste time thumpin' on things because he's having a bad morning." Rhyme asked the girl, "You said you were reading some old newspaper?"

"Magazine," she corrected.

"On the microfiche reader?"

"Right."

"Those?" Rhyme nodded at a large plastic evidence bag containing a box of microfiche trays that Sachs had brought back from the library. Two slots, carriages one and three, were empty.

Geneva looked at the box. She nodded. "Yeah. Those were the ones that had the article I was reading, the missing ones."

"Did you get the one that was in the reader?"

Sachs replied, "There wasn't one. He must've taken it with him."

"And smashed the machine so we wouldn't notice that the tray was gone. Oh, this is getting interesting. What was he up to? What the hell was his motive?"

Sellitto laughed. "I thought you didn't care about motive. Only evidence."

"You need to draw the distinction, Lon, between using motive to prove a case in court--which is speculation at best--and using motive to lead you to the evidence, which conclusively convicts a perp: A man kills his business partner with a gun that we trace to his garage loaded with bullets he bought per a receipt with his fingerprints on it. In that case who cares if he killed the partner because he thinks a talking dog told him to or because the guy was sleeping with his wife? The evidence makes the case.

"But what if there are no bullets, gun, receipt or tire tracks? Then a perfectly valid question is why was the vic killed? Answering that can point us toward the evidence that will convict him. Sorry for the lecture," he added with no apology in his voice.

"Good mood gone, is it?" Thom asked.

Rhyme grumbled, "I'm missing something here and I don't like it."

Geneva was frowning. Rhyme noticed and asked, "What?"

"Well, I was thinking . . . Dr. Barry said that somebody else was interested in the same issue of that magazine that I was. He wanted to read it, but Dr. Barry told him he'd have to wait until I was through with it."

"Did he say who?"

"No."

Rhyme considered this. "So let's speculate: The librarian tells this somebody that you're interested in the magazine. The unsub wants to steal it and he wants to kill you because you've read it or will read it." The criminalist wasn't convinced this was the situation, of course. But one of the things that made him so successful was his willingness to consider bold, sometimes far-fetched theories. "And he took the one article you were reading, right?"

The girl nodded.