The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

Traffic was instantly frozen, including two approaching police cars on Sixth Avenue.

He crossed the street slowly, leaving the gathering crowd of horrified passersby, who

were crying, or shouting, or just staring in shock at the limp, bloody body, crumpled against a chain-link fence. Her unseeing eyes stared blankly skyward. Apparently nobody thought the tragedy was anything more than a terrible accident.

People running toward her, people calling 911 on mobile phones . . . chaos. Thompson now calmly crossed the street, weaving through the stopped traffic. He'd already forgotten the Asian girl and was considering more important matters: He'd lost one safe house. But at least he'd escaped with his weapons, the things he'd bought at the hardware store and his instruction book. There were no clues at the apartment to lead to him or the man who'd hired him; not even the woman in white could find any connection. No, this wasn't a serious problem.

He paused at a pay phone, called voice mail and received some good news. Geneva Settle, he learned, was attending Langston Hughes High School in Harlem. She was also, he found out, being guarded by police, which was no surprise, of course. Thompson would find out more details soon--presumably where she lived or even, with some luck, the fact that an opportunity had presented itself, and the girl had already been shot to death, the job finished.

Thompson Boyd then continued on to his car--a three-year-old Buick, in a boring shade of blue, a medium car, an average car, for Average Joe. He pulled into traffic and circled far around the bus accident congestion. He made his way toward the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, his thoughts occupied about what he'd learned in the book he'd been studying for the past hour, the one bristling with Post-it tabs, thinking about how he'd put his new skills to use.

*

"I don't . . . I don't know what to say."

Miserable, Lon Sellitto was looking up at the captain who'd come directly here from Police Plaza as soon as the brass learned of the shooting incident. Sellitto sat on the curb, hair askew, belly over his belt, pink flesh showing between the buttons. His scuffed shoes pointed outward. Everything about him was rumpled at the moment.

"What happened?" The large, balding African-American captain had taken possession of Sellitto's revolver and was holding it at his side, unloaded, the cylinder open, following NYPD procedures after an officer has discharged a weapon.

Sellitto looked into the tall man's eyes and said, "I fumbled my piece."

The captain nodded slowly and turned to Amelia Sachs. "You're okay?"

She shrugged. "It was nothing. Slug hit nowhere near me."

Sellitto could see that the captain knew she was being cool about the incident, making light of it. Her protecting him made the big detective even more miserable.

"You were in the line of fire, though," the captain said.

"It wasn't any--"

"You were in the line of fire?"

"Yes, sir," Sachs said.

The 38-caliber slug had missed her by three feet. Sellitto knew it. She knew it.

Nowhere near me . . .

The captain looked over the warehouse. "This hadn't happened, the perp would still've gotten away?"

"Yep," Bo Haumann said.

"You sure it had nothing to do with his escape? It's going to come up."

The ESU commander nodded. "It's looking now like the unsub got onto the roof of the warehouse and headed north or south--probably south. The shot"--He nodded toward Sellitto's revolver--"was after we'd secured the adjacent buildings."

Sellitto again thought, What's happening to me?

Tap, tap, tap . . .

The captain asked, "Why'd you draw your weapon?"

"I wasn't expecting anybody to come through the basement door."

"Didn't you hear any transmissions about the building being cleared?"

A hesitation. "I missed that." The last time Lon Sellitto had lied to brass had been to protect a rookie who'd failed to follow procedure when trying to save a kidnap victim, which he'd managed to do. That had been a good lie. This was a cover-your-own-ass lie, and it hurt like a broken bone to utter it.