The Twelfth Card (35 page)

“Her room.”

“Uncle?”

“Don’t know. He just went to the store.”

“Listen. He flubbed the story about how he’s related to her. He said he’s her father’s brother. She said he’s her mother’s.”

“Hell, he’s a ringer.”

“Get to Geneva and stay with her until we figure it out. I’m sending another couple of RMPs over there.”

Bell walked fast to the girl’s room. He knocked but got no response.

Heart pumping fast now, he drew his Beretta. “Geneva!”

Nothing.

“Roland,” Rhyme called, “what’s going on?”

“Just a second,” the detective whispered.

In a combat shooting crouch, he pushed the door open and, lifting his weapon, stepped inside.

The room was empty. Geneva Settle was gone.

“Central, I have a ten twenty-nine, possible abduction.”

In his calm drawl Bell repeated the ominous message and gave his location. Then: “Vic is a black female, age sixteen, five-two, one hundred pounds. Suspect is a black male, stocky, early to mid forties, short hair.”

“Roger. Units en route, K.”

Bell clipped his radio to his belt and sent Martinez and Lynch to search the apartment building itself while he hurried downstairs. The street in front of the building had been under surveillance by Lynch, while Martinez had been on the roof. But they’d been expecting Unsub 109 or his accomplice to be heading
toward
the building, not going away from it. Martinez thought he’d seen a girl and a man, who could have been the uncle, walking away from the apartment about three minutes ago. He hadn’t paid attention.

Scanning the street, Bell saw no one but a few businesspeople. He jogged down the service alley beside the building. He noticed a homeless man pushing a grocery cart but he was two blocks away. Bell’d talk to him in a minute and find out if he’d seen the girl. Now, he opted for the other possible witnesses, some young girls playing double-Dutch jump rope.

“Hi.” The rope went slack as they looked up at the detective.

“Hey there. I’m a police officer. I’m looking for this teenage girl. She’s black, thin, got short hair. She’d be with an older man.”

The sirens from the responding officers’ cars filled the air, growing closer.

“You got a badge?” one girl asked.

Bell tamped down his anxiety, kept smiling and flashed his shield.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, we saw ’em,” one tiny, pretty girl offered. “They went up that street there. Turned right.”

“No, left.”

“You weren’t looking.”

“Was too. You gotta gun, mister?”

Bell jogged to the street they’d pointed to. A block away, to his right, he saw a car pulling away from the curb. He grabbed his radio. “Units responding to that ten two nine. Anybody close to One One Seven Street . . . there’s a maroon sedan moving west. Stop it and check occupants. Repeat: We’re looking for a black female, sixteen. Suspect is black male, forties, K. Assume he’s armed.”

“RPM Seven Seven Two. We’re almost there, K . . . . Yeah, we’ve got a visual. We’ll light him up.”

“Roger, Seven Seven Two.”

Bell saw the squad car, its lights flashing, speed toward the maroon sedan, which skidded to a stop. His heart beating fast, Bell started toward them, as a patrolman climbed from the squad car, stepped to the sedan’s window and bent down, his hand on the butt of his pistol.

Please, let it be her.

The officer waved the car on.

Damn, Bell said to himself angrily as he jogged up to the officer.

“Detective.”

“Wasn’t them?”

“No, sir. A black female. In her thirties. She’s alone.”

Bell ordered the RMP to cruise up and down the nearby streets to the south, and radioed the others to cover the opposite directions. He turned and picked another street at random, plunged down it. His cell phone rang.

“Bell here.”

Lincoln Rhyme asked what was happening.

“Nobody’s spotted her. But I don’t get it, Lincoln. Wouldn’t Geneva know her own uncle?”

“Oh, I can think of a few scenarios where the unsub could get a substitute in. Or maybe he’s working
with
the unsub. I don’t know. But something’s definitely wrong. Think about how he speaks. Hardly sounds like the brother of a professor. He’s got some street in him.”

“That’s true . . . . I want to check with my team. I’ll call you back.” Bell hung up then radioed his partners. “Luis, Barbe, report in. What’d y’all find?”

The woman said that the people she’d canvassed on 118th hadn’t seen either the girl or the uncle. Martinez reported that they weren’t in any of the common areas of the building and there’d been no sign of intruders or forced entry. He asked Bell, “Where’re you?”

“Block east of the building, heading east. I got RMPs sweeping the streets. One of y’all get over here with me. The other keep the apartment covered.”

“K.”

“Out.”

Bell jogged across a street and looked to his left. He saw the homeless man again, pausing, glancing toward him then bending down and scratching his
ankle. Bell started in his direction to ask if he’d seen anything.

But then he heard the sound of a car door slamming shut. Where had it come from? The sound reverberated off the walls and he couldn’t tell.

An engine began grinding.

In front of him . . . He started forward.

No, to the right.

He sprinted up the street. Just then he saw a battered gray Dodge pull away from the curb. It started forward but skidded to a stop as a patrol car cruised slowly into the intersection. The driver of the Dodge put the car into reverse and rolled backward over the curb, into a vacant lot, out of sight of the RMP. Bell believed he saw two people inside . . . . He squinted. Yes! It was Geneva and the man who’d claimed to be her uncle. The car bucked slightly as he put it in gear.

Bell grabbed his radio and called the RMPs, ordering them to blockade both intersections.

But the patrolman at the wheel of the closest squad car turned into the street, rather than just barricading it; Geneva’s uncle saw him. He slipped his car into reverse, flooring the accelerator and skidding in a circle around the vacant lot and into the alley behind a row of buildings. Bell lost sight of the Dodge. He didn’t know which way it had turned. Sprinting toward where he’d last seen the car, the detective ordered the squad cars to circle the block.

He ran into the alley and looked to his right, just in time to see the rear fender of the car disappearing. He raced for it, pulling his Beretta from his holster. He sprinted at full speed and turned the corner.

Bell froze.

Tires squealing, the old Dodge was racing in reverse
right toward him, escaping from the squad car that was blocking the man’s escape route.

Bell stood his ground. He lifted the Beretta. He saw the uncle’s panicked eyes, Geneva’s horrified expression, her mouth open in a scream. But he couldn’t fire. The squad car was directly behind the Dodge. Even if he hit the kidnapper, the jacketed rounds could go right through their target and the car and hit the officers.

Bell jumped aside, but the cobblestones were slick with garbage and he went down hard on his side, grunting. He lay directly in the path of the Dodge. The detective tried to pull himself to safety. But with the car going so fast he wasn’t going to make it.

But . . . but what was happening?

The uncle was hitting the brakes. The car skidded to a stop five feet from Bell. The doors flew open and both Geneva and her uncle were out, running to him, the man shouting, “You all right? You all right?”

“Detective Bell,” Geneva said, frowning, bending down and helping him up.

Wincing in pain, Bell trained the big gun on the uncle and said, “Don’t move a damn muscle.”

The man blinked and frowned.

“Lie down. And your arms—stretch ’em out.”

“Detective Bell—” Geneva began.

“Just a minute, miss.”

The uncle did as he was told. Bell cuffed him, as the uniforms from the RMP trotted through the alley.

“Frisk him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The uncle said, “Look, you don’t know what you doin’, sir.”

“Quiet,” Bell said to him and took Geneva aside,
put her in a recessed doorway so she’d be out of the line of fire from anyone on rooftops nearby.

“Roland!” Barbe Lynch hurried down the alley.

Bell leaned against the brick wall, catching his breath. He glanced to the left, seeing the homeless guy he’d noticed earlier squint uneasily at the police and turn around, then head in the opposite direction. Bell ignored him.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Geneva said to the detective, nodding at the cuffed man.

“But he’s not your uncle,” the detective said, calming slowly, “is he?”

“No.”

“What was he doing with you just now?”

She looked down, a sorrowful expression on her face.

“Geneva,” Bell said sternly, “this’s serious. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I asked him to take me someplace.”

“Where?”

She lowered her head. “To work,” she said. “I couldn’t afford to miss my shift.” She opened her jacket, revealing a McDonald’s uniform. The cheery name tag read,
Hi, my name’s Gen.

“What’s the story?” Lincoln Rhyme asked. He was concerned but, despite the fright at her disappearance, there was no accusation in his voice.

Geneva was sitting in a chair near his wheelchair, on the ground floor of the town house. Sachs stood beside her, arms crossed. She’d just arrived with a large stack of material she’d brought from the Sanford Foundation archives where she’d made the Potters’ Field discovery. It sat on the table near Rhyme, ignored now that this new drama had intruded.

The girl looked defiantly into his eyes. “I hired him to play my uncle.”

“And your parents?”

“I don’t have any.”

“You don’t—”

“—
have
any,” she repeated through clenched teeth.

“Go on,” Sachs said kindly.

She didn’t speak for a moment. Finally: “When I was ten, my father left us, my moms and me. He moved to Chicago with this woman and got married. Had himself a whole new family. I was torn up—oh, it hurt. But deep down I didn’t really blame him much. Our life was a mess. My moms, she was hooked on crack, just couldn’t get off it. They’d have these bad fights—well,
she
fought. Mostly he tried to straighten her out and she’d get mad at him. To pay for what she needed she’d perp stuff from stores.” Geneva held Rhyme’s eyes as she added,
“And she’d go to girlfriends’ places and they’d have some men over—you know what for. Dad knew all about it. I guess he put up with it for as long as he could then moved on.”

She took a deep breath and continued, “Then moms got sick. She was HIV positive but didn’t take any medicine. She died of an infection. I lived with her sister in the Bronx for a while but then she moved back to Alabama and left me at Auntie Lilly’s apartment. But
she
didn’t have any money either and kept getting evicted, moving in with friends, just like now. She couldn’t afford to have me with her anyway. So I talked to the superintendent of the building where my moms had worked some, cleaning. He said I could stay in the basement—if I paid him. I have a cot down there, an old dresser, a microwave, a bookshelf. I put his apartment down as my address for mail.”

Bell said, “You didn’t seem real at home in that place. Whose was it?”

“This retired couple. They live here half the year and go to South Carolina for the fall and winter. Willy has an extra key.” She added, “I’ll pay them back for the electric bill and replace the beer and things that Willy took.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Yes, I do,” she said firmly.

“Who’d I talk to before, if it wasn’t your mother?” Bell asked.

“Sorry,” Geneva said, sighing. “That was Lakeesha. I asked her to front she was my moms. She’s kind of an actress.”

“She had me fooled.” The detective grinned at being taken in so completely.

“And your own language?” Rhyme asked. “You sure sound like a professor’s daughter.”

She slipped into street talk. “Don’t be talkin’ like no homegirl, you sayin’?” A grim laugh. “I’ve worked on my Standard English ever since I was seven or eight.” Her face grew sad. “The only good thing about my father—he always had me into books. He used to read to me some too.”

“We can find him and—”

“No!” Geneva said in a harsh voice. “I don’t want anything to do with him. Anyway, he’s got his own kids now. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“And nobody found out you were homeless?” Sachs asked.

“Why would they? I never applied for welfare or food stamps so no social workers came to see me. I never even signed up for free meals at school ’cause it’d blow my cover. I forged my parents’ names on the school papers when I needed their signatures. And I have a voice-mail box at a service. That was Keesh again. She recorded the outgoing message, pretending to be my mother.”

“And the school never suspected?”

“Sometimes they asked why I never had anybody at parent-teacher conferences, but nobody thought anything about it because I have straight A’s. No welfare, good grades, no problems with the police . . . Nobody notices you if there’s nothing wrong.” She laughed. “You know the Ralph Ellison book,
Invisible Man
? No, not that science fiction movie. It’s about being black in America, being invisible. Well, I’m the invisible girl.”

It made sense now: the shabby clothes and cheap watch, not at all what jet-setting parents would buy for their girl. The public school, not a private one. Her friend, the homegirl Keesh—not the sort who’d be close to the daughter of a college professor.

Rhyme nodded. “We never
saw
you actually call
your parents in England. But you
did
call the super yesterday, after what happened at the museum, right? Had him pretend to be your uncle?”

“He said he’d agree if I paid him extra, yeah. He wanted me to stay in his place—but
that
wouldn’t be a good idea. You know what I’m saying? So I told him to use Two-B, with the Reynolds being away. I had him take their name off the mailbox.”