The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

Rioters, largely Irishmen, swept through the city, attacking any Colored they might see, sacking houses and places of work. I had by happenstance been in the company of two teachers and the director of the Colored Children's Orphanage when a mob attacked the building and set it aflame! Why, more than 200 children were inside! With God's help, we were able to lead the little ones to safety at a nearby police station, but the rioters would have killed us all if they had had their way.

Fighting continued throughout the day. That evening the lynchings began. After one Negro was hanged, his body was set on fire, and the rioters danced around it in drunken revels. I was aghast!

I have now fled to our farm up north and will henceforth keep my attention fixed on my mission of educating children in our school, working the orchard and furthering, however I can, the cause of freedom of our people.

My dearest wife, in the aftermath of these terrible events, life to me seems precarious and fleeting, and--if you are inclined to the journey,--it is my desire that you and our son now join me. I am enclosing herewith tickets for you both, and ten dollars for expenses. I will meet your train in New Jersey and we will take a boat up the river to our farm. You can assist me in teaching, and Joshua can continue his studies and help us and James in the cider mill and shop. Should anyone ask your business and destination, respond as do I: say only that we are caretakers of the farm, tending it for Master Trilling in his absence. Seeing the hatred in the eyes of the rioters has brought home to me the fact that nowhere is safe, and even in our idyllic locale, arson, theft and pillaging might very likely ensue, should it be learned that the owners of the farm are Negroes.

I have come from a place where I was held in captivity and considered to be merely a three-fifths man. I had hoped that moving North would change this. But, alas, that is not yet the case. The tragic events of the past few days tell me that you and I and those of our kind are not yet treated as whole men and women, and our battle to achieve wholeness in the eyes of others must continue with unflagging determination.

My warmest regards to your sister and William, as well as their children, of course. Tell Joshua I am proud of his achievement in the subject of geography.

I live for the day, now soon, I pray, when I will see you and our son once again.

Yours in love,

Charles Geneva took the letter off the optical scanner. She looked up and said, "The Civil War Draft Riots of 1863. Worst civil disturbance in U.S. history."

"He doesn't say anything about his secret," Rhyme pointed out.

"That's in one of the letters I have at home. I was showing you this so you'd know he wasn't a thief."

Rhyme frowned. "But the theft was, what, five years after he wrote that? Why do you think that means he's not guilty?"

"My point," Geneva said, "is that he doesn't sound like a thief, does he? Not somebody who's going to steal from an education trust for former slaves."

Rhyme said simply, "That's not proof."

"I think it is." The girl looked over the letter again, smoothed it with her hand.

"What's that three-fifths-man thing?" Sellitto asked.

Rhyme recalled something from American history. But unless information was relevant to his career as a criminalist, he discarded it as useless clutter. He shook his head.

Geneva explained, "Before the Civil War, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation in Congress. It wasn't an evil Confederate conspiracy, like you'd think; the North came up with that rule. They didn't want slaves counted at all, because that would give the South more representatives in Congress and the electoral college. The South wanted them counted as full people. The three-fifths rule was a compromise."

"They were counted for representation," Thom pointed out, "but they still couldn't vote."

"Oh, of course not," Geneva said.

"Just like women, by the way," Sachs added.

The social history of America wasn't of any interest to Rhyme at the moment. "I'd like to see the other letters. And I want to find another copy of that magazine, Coloreds' Weekly Illustrated. What issue?"

"July twenty-third, 1868," Geneva said. "But I've had a tough time finding it."

"I'll do my best," Mel Cooper said. And Rhyme heard the railroad track clatter of his fingers on the keyboard.

Geneva was looking at her battered Swatch. "I really--"

"Hey, y'all," a man's voice called from the doorway. Wearing a brown tweed sports coat, blue shirt and jeans, Detective Roland Bell walked into the lab. A law enforcer in his native North Carolina, Bell had moved to New York a few years ago for personal reasons. He had a flop of brown hair, gentle

eyes and was so easygoing that his urban coworkers sometimes felt a stab of impatience working with him, though Rhyme suspected the reason he sometimes moved slowly wasn't Southern heritage at all but his meticulous nature, owing to the importance of his job within the NYPD. Bell's specialty was protecting witnesses and other potential victims. His operation wasn't an official unit in the NYPD but it still had a name: "SWAT." This wasn't the traditional weapons and tactics acronym, though; it was short for "Saving the Witness's Ass Team."

"Roland, this is Geneva Settle."

"Hey there, miss," he drawled and shook her hand.

"I don't need a bodyguard," she said firmly.