The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

In the hallway Bell handed the uniformed officer the letters. "Get these over to Lincoln's town house ASAP."

"Yes, sir."

After he'd left, Bell called Martinez and Lynch on his radio. They reported that the street was clear. He hurried the girl downstairs and into the Crown Vic. Pulaski trotted up and jumped in after them.

As he started the engine Bell glanced at her. "O

h, say, miss, when you got a minute, how 'bout you look in that knapsack of yours and pick me out a book you won't be needing today."

"Book?"

"Like a schoolbook."

She found one. "Social studies? It's kind of boring."

"Oh, it's not for reading. It's for pretending to be a substitute teacher."

She nodded. "Fronting you're a teacher. Hey, that's def."

"I thought so too. Now, you wanta slip that seat belt on? It'd be much appreciated. You too, rookie."

Chapter Nine

Unsub 109 might or might not have been a sex offender but in any event his DNA sequence wasn't in the CODIS file.

The negative result was typical of the absence of leads in the case, Rhyme reflected with frustration. They'd received the rest of the bullet fragments, recovered from Dr. Barry's body by the medical examiner, but they were even more badly shattered than the one removed from the woman bystander and were of no better use in an IBIS or DRUGFIRE check than the earlier pieces.

They'd also heard from several people at the African-American museum. Dr. Barry hadn't mentioned to any employees that another patron was interested in the 1868 Coloreds' Weekly Illustrated. Nor had the museum phone records revealed anything; all calls went into a main switchboard and were directed to extensions, with no details kept. The incoming and outgoing calls on his cell phone offered no leads either.

Cooper told them what he'd learned from the owner of Trenton Plastics, one of the country's largest makers of plastic shopping bags. The tech related the history of the smiley-face icon, as told to him by the company's owner. "They think the face was originally printed on buttons by a subsidiary of State Mutual Insurance in the sixties to boost company morale and as a promotional gimmick. In the seventies, two brothers drew a face like it with the slogan Be happy. Sort of an alternative to the peace symbol. By then it was being printed on fifty million items every year by dozens of companies."

"The point of this pop culture lecture?" Rhyme murmured.

"That even if it's copyrighted, which no one seems to know, there are dozens of companies making smiley-face bags. And it'd be impossible to trace."

Dead end . . .

Of the dozens of museums and libraries that Cooper, Sachs and Sellitto had queried, two reported that a man had called in the past several weeks asking about an issue of Coloreds' Weekly Illustrated from July 1868. This was encouraging because it supported Rhyme's theory that the magazine might be the reason Geneva was attacked. But neither of the institutions had the issue and no one could remember the name of the caller--if he'd even given it to them. Nobody else seemed to have a copy of the magazine for them to look at. The Museum of African-American Journalism in New Haven reported that they had had a full set on microfiche but it had disappeared.

Rhyme was scowling at this news when a computer chimed and Cooper announced, "We've got a response from VICAP."

He hit a button and sent the email to all the monitors in Rhyme's lab. Sellitto and Sachs huddled around one, Rhyme looked at his own flatscreen. It was a secure email from a detective in the crime scene lab in Queens.

Detective Cooper:

Per your request we ran the crime profile you provided through both VICAP and HITS, and have two matches.

Incident One: Homicide in Amarillo, Texas. Case No. 3451-01 (Texas Rangers): Five years ago, sixty-seven-year-old Charles T. Tucker, a retired state worker, was found dead behind a strip mall near his home. He had been struck in the back of the head with a blunt object, presumably to subdue him, then lynched. A cotton-fiber rope with a slipknot was placed around his neck and thrown over a tree limb then pulled tight by the assailant. Scratch marks at the neck indicated victim was conscious for some minutes before death occurred.

Elements of similarity with Unsub 109 case:

* Victim was subdued with a single blow to the back of the head.

* Suspect was wearing size-11 walking shoes, most likely Bass brand. Uneven wear on right one, suggesting outturned foot.

* Cotton-fiber rope with bloodstains was murder weapon; fibers similar to those found at present scene.

* Motive was staged. The murder appeared to have been ritualistic. Candles were set on the ground at his feet and a pentacle was drawn in the dirt. But investigation into the victim's life and profiling of the offense led investigators to conclude that this evidence was planted to lead the police off. No other motive was established.