"You're not? Where're you living?"
"I'm not sure yet."
She regretted saying this. It gave him, she realized, a foot in the door. And, sure enough, he pushed his way in: "I'm going to ask my P.O. again if I can move back here. Knowing I've got family to take care of, he might say it's all right."
"You don't have a family here. Not anymore."
"I know you're mad, baby. But I'll make it up to you. I--"
She flung the book to the floor. "Six years and nothing. No word. No call. No letter." Infuriatingly, tears swelled in her eyes. She wiped them with shaking hands.
He whispered, "An' where would I write? Where would I call? I tried steady all those six years to get in touch with you. I'll show you the stack of letters I got, all sent back to me in prison. A hundred of 'em, I'd guess. I tried everything I could think of. I just couldn't find you."
"Well, thanks for the apology, you know. If it is an apology. But I think it's time for you to go."
"No, baby, let me--"
"Not 'baby,' not 'Genie,' not 'daughter.' "
"I'll make it up to you," he repeated. He wiped his eyes.
She felt absolutely nothing, seeing his sorrow--or whatever it was. Nothing, that is, except anger. "Leave!"
"But, baby, I--"
"No. Just go away!"
Once more the detective from North Carolina, the expert at guarding people, did his job smoothly and without wavering. He rose and silently but firmly ushered her father into the hallway. He nodded back at the girl, gave her a comforting smile and closed the door behind him, leaving Geneva to herself.
Chapter Thirty-Six
While the girl and her father had been upstairs, Rhyme and the others had been going over leads to potential jewelry store heists.
And having no success.
The materials that Fred Dellray had brought them about money-laundering schemes involving jewelry were small-time operations, none of them centered in Midtown. And they had no reports from Interpol or local law enforcement agencies containing anything relevant to the case.
The criminalist was shaking his head in frustration when his phone rang. "Rhyme here."
"Lincoln, it's Parker."
The handwriting expert analyzing the note from Boyd's safe house. Parker Kincaid and Rhyme traded newsbites about health and family. Rhyme learned that Kincaid's live-in partner, FBI agent Margaret Lukas, was fine, as were Parker's children, Stephie and Robby.
Sachs sent her greetings and then Kincaid got down to business. "I've been working on your letter nonstop since you sent me the scan. I've got a profile of the writer."
Serious handwriting analysis never seeks to determine personality from the way people form their letters; handwriting itself is relevant only when comparing one document with another, say, when determining forgeries. But that didn't interest Rhyme at the moment. No, what Parker Kincaid was talking about was deducing characteristics of the writer based on the language he used--the "unusual" phrasing that Rhyme had noted earlier. This could be extremely helpful in identifying suspects. Grammatical and syntactical analysis of the Lindbergh baby ransom note, for instance, gave a perfect profile of the kidnapper, Bruno Hauptmann.
With the enthusiasm he typically felt for his craft, Kincaid continued, "I found some interesting things. You've got the note handy?"
"It's right in front of us."
A black girl, fifth floor in this window, 2 October, about 0830. She saw my delivery van when he was parked in a alley behind the Jewelry echange. Saw enough to guess the plans of mine. Kill her.
Kincaid said, "To start with, he's foreign born. The awkward syntax and the misspellings tell me that. So does the way he indicates the date--putting the day before the month. And the time is given in the twenty-four-hour clock. That's rare in America."
The handwriting expert continued, "Now, another important point: he--"
"Or she," Rhyme interrupted.