The criminalist looked at Sellitto. “Where’s Roland?”

“ Bell? He delivered somebody into witness protection upstate but he should be back by now. Think we should give him a call?”

“Yes,” Rhyme said.

Sellitto called the detective’s mobile phone and, from the conversation, Rhyme deduced that Bell would leave Police Plaza immediately and head uptown.

Rhyme noticed Geneva ’s frown. “Detective Bell ’s just going to look out for you. Like a bodyguard. Until we get everything sorted out…Now, do you have any idea what Charles was accused of stealing?”

“The article said gold or money or something.”

“Missing gold. Ah, that’s interesting. Greed – one of your better motives.”

“Would your uncle know anything about it?” Sachs asked her.

“My uncle? Oh, no, he’s my mother’s brother. Charles was from my father’s side of the family. And Dad just knew a few things. My great-aunt gave me a few letters of Charles’s. But she didn’t know anything more about him.”

“Where are they? Those letters?” Rhyme asked.

“I have one with me.” She fished in her purse and pulled it out. “And the others’re at home. My aunt thought she might have some more boxes of Charles’s things but she wasn’t sure where they were.” Geneva fell silent as the brows in her dark, round face furrowed and she said to Sachs, “One thing? If it’s helpful?”

“Go ahead,” Sachs said.

“I remember from one of the letters. Charles talked about this secret he had.”

“Secret?” Sachs asked.

“Yeah, he said it bothered him not to be able to reveal the truth. But there’d be a disaster, a tragedy, if he did. Something like that.”

“Maybe it was the theft he was talking about,” Rhyme said.

Geneva stiffened. “I don’t think he did it. I think he was framed.”

“Why?” Rhyme asked.

A shrug. “Read the letter.” The girl started to hand it to Rhyme, then caught herself and gave it to Mel Cooper, unapologetic about the faux pas.

The tech placed it in an optical reader and a moment later the elegantly scripted words from the nineteenth century were scrolling across flat-screen monitors from the twenty-first.

Mrs. Violet Singleton

In care of

Mr. & Mrs. William Dodd

Essex Farm Road

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

July 14, 1863

My dearest Violet:

News has surely reached you of the terrible events in New York of late. I can now report that peace has returned, but the cost was great.

The climate here has been incendiary, with hundreds of thousands of less fortunate citizens still reeling from the economic panic of several years ago – Mr. Greeley’s Tribune reported that unconscionable stock speculation and imprudent lending had led to the “bursting bubbles” of the world’s financial markets.

In this atmosphere, it took merely a small spark to ignite the recent rioting: the order to draft men into the Federal army, which was acknowledged by many to be necessary in our fight against the Rebels, owing to the enemy’s surprising strength and resilience. Still, the opposition to the draft was sturdier, and more deadly, than any had anticipated. And we – Coloreds, abolitionists and Republicans, – became the target of their hate, as much as the conscription provost and his men, if not more so.

Rioters, largely Irishmen, swept through the city, attacking any Colored they might see, sacking houses and places of work. I had by happenstance been in the company of two teachers and the director of the Colored Children’s Orphanage when a mob attacked the building and set it aflame! Why, more than 200 children were inside! With God’s help, we were able to lead the little ones to safety at a nearby police station, but the rioters would have killed us all if they had had their way.

Fighting continued throughout the day. That evening the lynchings began. After one Negro was hanged, his body was set on fire, and the rioters danced around it in drunken revels. I was aghast!

I have now fled to our farm up north and will henceforth keep my attention fixed on my mission of educating children in our school, working the orchard and furthering, however I can, the cause of freedom of our people.

My dearest wife, in the aftermath of these terrible events, life to me seems precarious and fleeting, and – if you are inclined to the journey, – it is my desire that you and our son now join me. I am enclosing herewith tickets for you both, and ten dollars for expenses. I will meet your train in New Jersey and we will take a boat up the river to our farm. You can assist me in teaching, and Joshua can continue his studies and help us and James in the cider mill and shop. Should anyone ask your business and destination, respond as do I: say only that we are caretakers of the farm, tending it for Master Trilling in his absence. Seeing the hatred in the eyes of the rioters has brought home to me the fact that nowhere is safe, and even in our idyllic locale, arson, theft and pillaging might very likely ensue, should it be learned that the owners of the farm are Negroes.

I have come from a place where I was held in captivity and considered to be merely a three-fifths man. I had hoped that moving North would change this. But, alas, that is not yet the case. The tragic events of the past few days tell me that you and I and those of our kind are not yet treated as whole men and women, and our battle to achieve wholeness in the eyes of others must continue with unflagging determination.

My warmest regards to your sister and William, as well as their children, of course. Tell Joshua I am proud of his achievement in the subject of geography.

I live for the day, now soon, I pray, when I will see you and our son once again.

Yours in love,

Charles

Geneva took the letter off the optical scanner. She looked up and said, “The Civil War Draft Riots of 1863. Worst civil disturbance in U.S. history.”

“He doesn’t say anything about his secret,” Rhyme pointed out.

“That’s in one of the letters I have at home. I was showing you this so you’d know he wasn’t a thief.”

Rhyme frowned. “But the theft was, what, five years after he wrote that? Why do you think that means he’s not guilty?”

“My point,” Geneva said, “is that he doesn’t sound like a thief, does he? Not somebody who’s going to steal from an education trust for former slaves.”

Rhyme said simply, “That’s not proof.”

“I think it is.” The girl looked over the letter again, smoothed it with her hand.

“What’s that three-fifths-man thing?” Sellitto asked.

Rhyme recalled something from American history. But unless information was relevant to his career as a criminalist, he discarded it as useless clutter. He shook his head.

Geneva explained, “Before the Civil War, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation in Congress. It wasn’t an evil Confederate conspiracy, like you’d think; the North came up with that rule. They didn’t want slaves counted at all, because that would give the South more representatives in Congress and the electoral college. The South wanted them counted as full people. The three-fifths rule was a compromise.”

“They were counted for representation,” Thom pointed out, “but they still couldn’t vote.”

“Oh, of course not,” Geneva said.

“Just like women, by the way,” Sachs added.

The social history of America wasn’t of any interest to Rhyme at the moment. “I’d like to see the other letters. And I want to find another copy of that magazine, Coloreds’ Weekly Illustrated. What issue?”

“July twenty-third, 1868,” Geneva said. “But I’ve had a tough time finding it.”