The Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver
"We got a bad one, Linc," Sellitto said, standing up. He started to take his overcoat off but changed his mind. "Jesus, it's cold. Is this a record?"
"Don't know. Don't spend much time with the Weather Channel." He thought of a good opening paragraph of his letter to the editor.
"Bad," Sellitto repeated.
Rhyme glanced at Sellitto with a cocked eyebrow.
"Two homicides, same MO. More or less."
"Lots of 'bad ones' out there, Lon. Why're these any badder?" As often happened in the tedious days between cases, Rhyme was in a bad mood; of all the perps he'd come across, the worst was boredom.
But Sellitto had worked with Rhyme for years and was immune to the criminalist's attitudes. "Got a call from the Big Building. Brass want you and Amelia on this one. They said they're insisting."
"Oh, insisting?"
"I promised I wouldn't tell you they said that. You don't like to be insisted."
"Can we get to the 'bad' part, Lon? Or is that too much to ask?"
"Where's Amelia?"
"Westchester, on a case. Should be back soon."
The detective held up a wait-a-minute finger as his cell phone rang. He had a conversation--nodding and jotting notes. He disconnected and glanced at Rhyme. "Okay, here we have it. Sometime last night our perp, he grabs--"
"He?" Rhyme asked pointedly.
"Okay. We don't know the gender for sure."
"Sex."
"What?"
Rhyme said, "Gender's a linguistic concept. It refers to designating words male or female in certain languages. Sex is a biological concept differentiating male and female organisms."
"Thanks for the grammar lesson," the detective muttered. "Maybe it'll help if I'm ever on Jeopardy! Anyway, he grabs some poor schmuck and takes him to that boat-repair pier on the Hudson. We're not exactly sure how he does it, but he forces the guy, or woman, to hang on over the river and then cuts their wrists. The vic holds on for a while, looks like--long enough to lose a shitload of blood--but then just lets go."
"Body?"
"Not yet. Coast Guard and ESU're searching."
"I heard plural."
"Okay. Then we get another call a few minutes later. To check out an alley downtown, off Cedar, near Broadway. The perp's got another vic. A uniform finds this guy duct-taped and on his back. The perp rigged this iron bar--weighs maybe seventy-five pounds--above his neck. The vic has to hold it up to keep from getting his throat crushed."
"Seventy-five pounds? Okay, given the strength issues, I'll grant you the perp's sex probably is male."
Thom came into the room with coffee and pastries. Sellitto, his weight a constant issue, went for the Danish first. His diet hibernated during the holidays. He finished half and, wiping his mouth, continued, "So the vic's holding up the bar. Which maybe he does for a while--but seventy-five pounds? He doesn't make it."
"Who's the vic?"
"Name's Theodore Adams. Lived near Battery Park. A nine-one-one came in last night from a woman said her brother was supposed to meet her for dinner and never showed. That's the name she gave. Sergeant from the precinct was going to call her this morning."
Lincoln Rhyme generally didn't find soft descriptions helpful. But he conceded that "bad" fit the situation.
So did the word "intriguing." He asked, "Why do you say it's the same MO?"
"Perp left a calling card at both scenes. Clocks."
"As in tick-tock?"
"Yup. The first one was next to the pool of blood on the pier. The other was next to Adams's head. It was like the doer wanted them to see it. And, I guess, hear it."
"Describe them. The clocks."
"Looked old-fashioned. That's all I know."
"Not a bomb?" Nowadays--in the time of the After--every item of evidence that ticked was routinely checked for explosives.
"Nope. Won't go bang. But the squad sent 'em up to Rodman's Neck to check for bio or chemical agents. Same brand of clock, looks like. Spooky, one of the respondings said. Has this face of a moon on it. Oh, and just in case we were slow, he left a note, under the clocks. Computer printout. No handwriting."
"And they said . . . ?"
Sellitto glanced down at his notes, not relying on memory. Rhyme appreciated this in the detective. He wasn't brilliant but he was a bulldog and did everything slowly and with perfection. He read, " 'The full Cold Moon is in the sky, shining on the corpse of earth, signifying the hour to die and end the journey begun at birth.' " He looked up at Rhyme. "It was signed 'The Watchmaker.' "
Rhyme raised an eyebrow. "We've got two vics and a lunar motif." Often, an astronomical reference meant that the killer was planning to strike multiple times. "He's got more on the agenda."
"Hey, why d'you think I'm here, Linc?"
Rhyme glanced at the beginning of his missive to the Times. He closed his word processing program. The essay about Before and After would have to wait.
JEFFERY DEAVER is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two suspense novels, and the originator of the acclaimed detective hero Lincoln Rhyme, featured in the bestsellers The Cold Moon, The Twelfth Card, The Vanished Man, The Stone Monkey, The Empty Chair, The Coffin Dancer, and The Bone Collector. His new thriller, The Sleeping Doll, is available in hardcover from Simon & Schuster. As William Jefferies, he is the author of Shallow Graves, Bloody River Blues, and Hell's Kitchen. His short fiction is anthologized in two acclaimed collections from Pocket Books: Twisted and More Twisted. He is a five-time Edgar Award nominee, an Anthony Award nominee, a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He has also won a Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year for Garden of Beasts and a Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. His novel The Bone Collector became a Universal Pictures feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. A former attorney, Deaver has been hailed as "the best psychological thriller writer around" (The Times, London).
Visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.
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ALSO BY JEFFERY DEAVER
Carte Blanche
Edge
The Burning Wire*
Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor) The Watch List (The Copper Bracelet and The Chopin Manuscript) (Contributor) Roadside Crosses**
The Bodies Left Behind
The Broken Window*
The Sleeping Doll**
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two The Cold Moon*/**
The Twelfth Card*
Garden of Beasts
Twisted: Collected Stories The Vanished Man*
The Stone Monkey*
The Blue Nowhere
The Empty Chair*
Speaking in Tongues
The Devil's Teardrop
The Coffin Dancer*
The Bone Collector*
A Maiden's Grave
Praying for Sleep
The Lesson of Her Death Mistress of Justice
Hard News
Death of a Blue Movie Star Manhattan Is My Beat
Hell's Kitchen
Bloody River Blues
Shallow Graves
A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor) A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor) Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Introduction) *Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs **Featuring Kathryn Dance
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Jeffery Deaver Originally published in hardcover in 2005
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9156-3
ISBN-10: 0-7434-9156-4
This Simon & Schuster premium edition May 2006
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Jacket Photograph (c) Photomorgana/Corbis; Author Photography by David Sharpe
Jeffery Deaver, The Twelfth Card
(Series: Lincoln Rhyme # 6)