The Twelfth Card

from a computer, via electrodes connectedto his leg muscles. The device was known as an FES ergometer bike. Functional electrical stimulation uses a computer, wires and electrodes to mimic the nervous system and send tiny jolts of electricity into muscles, making them behave exactly the same as if the brain were in charge.
    FES isn’t much used for day-to-day activity, like walking or using utensils. Its real benefit is in therapy, improving the health of badly disabled patients.
    Rhyme had been inspired to start the exercises because of a man he much admired, the late actor Christopher Reeve, who’d suffered an even more severe trauma than Rhyme’s in a horseback-riding accident. Through willpower and unflagging physical effort—and surprising much of the traditional medical community—Reeve had recovered some motor ability and sensation in places where he’d had none. After years of debating whether or not to have risky experimental surgery on his spinal cord, Rhyme had finally opted for an exercise regimen similar to Reeve’s.
    The actor’s untimely death had inspired Rhyme to put even more energy than before into an exercise plan, and Thom had tracked down one of the East Coast’s best spinal cord injury doctors, Robert Sherman. The M.D. had put together a program for him, which included the ergometer, aquatherapy and the locomotor treadmill—a large contraption, fitted with robotic legs, also under computer control. This system, in effect, “walked” Rhyme.
    All this therapy had produced results. His heart and lungs were stronger. His bone density was that of a nondisabled man of his age. Muscle mass had increased. He was nearly in the same shape as when he’d run Investigation Resources at the NYPD,which oversaw the Crime Scene Unit. Back then he’d walk miles every day, sometimes even running scenes himself—a rarity for a captain—and prowl the streets of the city to collect samples of rocks or dirt or concrete or soot to catalog in his forensic databases.
    Because of Sherman’s exercises Rhyme had fewer pressure sores from the hours and hours his body remained in contact with the chair or bed. His bowel and bladder functions were improved and he’d had far fewer urinary tract infections. And he’d had only one episode of autonomic dysreflexia since he’d started the regimen.
    Of course another question remained: Would the months of grueling exercise do something to actually fix his condition, not just beef up the muscles and bone? A simple test of motor and sensory functions would tell him instantly. But that required a visit to a hospital and Rhyme never seemed to find the time to do it.
    “You can’t take an hour off?” Thom would ask.
    “An hour? An hour? When in recent memory does a trip to the hospital take an hour? Where would that particular hospital be, Thom? Neverland? Oz?”
    But Dr. Sherman had finally pestered Rhyme into agreeing to undergo the test. In half an hour he and Thom would be leaving for New York Hospital to get the final word on his progress.
    At the moment, though, Lincoln Rhyme was thinking not of that, but of the bicycle race he was presently engaged in—which was on the Matterhorn, thank you very much. And he happened to be beating Lance Armstrong.
    When he was finished Thom removed him from the bicycle, bathed then dressed him in a white shirtand dark slacks. A sitting transfer into his wheelchair and Rhyme drove to the tiny elevator. He went downstairs, where red-haired Amelia Sachs sat in the lab, a former living room, marking evidence from one of the NYPD cases that Rhyme was consulting on.
    With his one working digit—the left ring finger—on the touch-pad controller, Rhyme deftly maneuvered the bright red Storm Arrow wheelchair through the lab to a spot next to her. She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back, pressing his lips against hers hard. They remained like this for a moment, Rhyme enjoying the heat of her proximity, the sweet, floral smell of soap, the tease of her hair against his cheek.
    “How far’d you get today?” she asked.
    “I could be in northern Westchester by now—if I hadn’t been pulled over.” A dark glance at Thom. The aide winked at Sachs. Water off a duck.
    Tall, willowy Sachs was wearing a navy blue pantsuit with one of the black or navy blouses that she usually wore since she’d been promoted to detective. (A tactical handbook for officers warned: Wearing a contrasting shirt or blouse presents