The Lightning Rule Read online

  “Tell me your name again, Detective?” Mrs. Webster was clutching the neckline of her housedress as if she had been caught disrobed. Without the door between them, Emmett saw that her other eye was cast milky white by a cataract. She couldn’t see out of it. Before he could repeat his name, her good eye meandered to the bag in his hands. She pursed her lips and her chin quivered. She knew.

  Mrs. Webster went weak and faltered onto the sofa. She drew in a sharp, pained breath but wouldn’t cry, not in front of him. Emmett couldn’t tell if it was because he was a cop or a white man or a stranger or because he was all of those things.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Last night.”

  She was holding herself together so tightly that she began to shake.

  “When Ambrose didn’t come home, I thought he was with Freddie, that maybe he slept at his place. Freddie’s his friend. He stuck by Ambrose when the kids would make fun, call him names. Ambrose is simple, you see,” Mrs. Webster explained, confirming Emmett’s suspicion. “His mama was a junkie. She was on the stuff when she had him. Doctor’s said his brain didn’t grow right because of it. She couldn’t take care of him. So I did.”

  “Where’s his mother now?”

  “Downtown somewhere. South Broad or Washington.”

  South Broad and Washington streets were known prostitution drags. Mrs. Webster referred to them as though they were on another planet. She wouldn’t admit whether Ambrose’s mother was her daughter. Emmett assumed she was. Unwed mothers were banned from the projects, and if a child was born out of wedlock while a woman was a resident, she was subject to summary eviction. The irony was that public assistance was intended to be exclusively available to families where one parent, usually the father, was absent and the children depended on the mother for care. The system was as defective as Hayes Home’s wiring.

  “Did she visit Ambrose?”

  “Not in months.”

  “What about his father?”

  “Ambrose never knew his daddy. Neither did his mama for that matter. Made me grateful Ambrose was too slow to know better.” Old anger flared, then faded as fast as it had come, overtaken by memory. “Ambrose was always big for his age, and he walked on his toes. He would wear out the tips of his shoes. Feet that size, it was a miracle to get sneakers that fit ’im. Sometimes I’d wonder if his daddy did that too, walked on his toes, or if it was on account of Ambrose being how he was. Kids would tease him for it and he’d take it. He wouldn’t fight back. He didn’t understand what they were doing. But Freddie wouldn’t let anybody talk down to Ambrose. He was small, got picked on too. ’Cept when he and Ambrose was together, nobody’d say boo to ’em.” Mrs. Webster smiled at that small triumph.

  Emmett hated to take the smile from her. “When did you last see your grandson?”

  “Yesterday morning when he was leaving for summer school. Teacher’s told me Ambrose couldn’t learn like normal kids. They kept him, though. He was quiet in class, no trouble to them. He could read some. Not much. Same as most kids these days. I thought if he got a diploma, he could get a job at a factory maybe. If you showed Ambrose how to do something, he could repeat it real well. He enjoyed going to school, being around people, watching and listening to them talk. Mostly, he wanted to be wherever Freddie was. When Ambrose didn’t come home, I didn’t think much of it. Freddie’s mama don’t got no phone. I couldn’t call to check on him. I just figured Ambrose would come back once he got hungry for supper.”

  A stillness settled over Mrs. Webster. She had taken custody of her senses with such exquisiteness that she ceased to tremble. “How did he die?”

  The impassive face of Jesus was gazing at Emmett from above the sofa, awaiting his answer along with Mrs. Webster.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  If Emmett could spare Mrs. Webster the details of her grandson’s death, he would. He hoped she wouldn’t press for them. When she didn’t, he realized she was sparing herself.

  “Can you give me Freddie’s address? I’d like to speak to him.”

  Emmett handed her his pad and pen, and she wrote out the information. He put his phone number on a separate sheet. “This is my home number, Mrs. Webster. You can call me whenever. Day or night. Okay?”

  She took the paper. He doubted he would hear from her.

  “These are some of Ambrose’s things.” Emmett held out the brown paper bag to her. The bloody clothes and shoes had been retained as evidence, leaving the movie pass, the house key, and some pocket change, a life distilled to so little. Mrs. Webster gazed at the bag, unable to touch it. Emmett set it on the sofa beside her.

  “I’m half blind, Detective, but I see plenty. I know what Ambrose did and didn’t do. He was no thief and no junkie. Whatever happened, believe me, he didn’t bring it on his’self.”

  Emmett did believe her. That was what bothered him.

  ELEVEN

  Emmett found Otis Fossum pacing the lobby like an expectant father. He reminded Emmett of himself when his mother had her stroke. He and Edward had been stationed outside her hospital room, wearing down the linoleum in the hall, counting the minutes until the doctor came to tell them their mother was going to be okay, that she would make it. She wasn’t and she didn’t. Every hope and dream that Emmett had longed to fulfill for his mother soon died along with her. Neither he nor Edward cried when the doctor told them. Not for lack of sorrow, but for fear of it and the floodgates it might open. Edward had held off to see if Emmett would tear up, to see if it would be okay to cry. That was how it had been when they were younger, Edward always cautious, yielding to his lead. It was the first time in years his brother had done that and the last since then.

  “I was waiting on ya, Mr. Emmett. To see if you needed anything else.”

  Kindness didn’t come easy to Fossum, and he quickly became self-conscious.

  “You didn’t have to, Otis.”

  “That’s why they call ’em favors, right?” Hundreds of mailboxes lined the empty lobby, as safe-deposit boxes would a bank vault, amplifying what Otis said and adding to his discomfort. “So what’s next?” he inquired in a softer voice.

  Emmett would have liked to ask someone that himself. This was his second homicide investigation and he was making it up as he went along, treating the murder as he would a robbery because that was what he knew how to do. He had busted shoplifters in dime stores stuffing their pockets, worked with pawnbrokers to track burglars who made off with housewares and holiday silver, and caught kids fencing whole palettes of uncut leather that had literally fallen off the back of a truck. Emmett was an expert at hunting down thieves, not killers. To compensate, he imagined Ambrose Webster as stolen property—a boy stolen from his grandmother, from his friend, from life—and Emmett had to find the thief. Only this thief was more dangerous than any Emmett had ever encountered, and he was still out there.

  “What’s next?” Emmett echoed Fossum, stalling. “I have to interview a kid named Freddie.” He read what Mrs. Webster had written. “Freddie Guthrie. He was a friend of the deceased.”

  “Want me to come with you? I can.”

  It was Fossum who wanted to come, and Emmett couldn’t decode why.

  “This is police business, Otis. And more to the point, it’s against department policy for me to bring you.”

  “You listening to yo’self, Mr. Emmett? You brought me here. Wasn’t that against the rules?”

  Emmett felt as though he was the only one giving the rules a second thought. Lieutenant Ahern should have assigned him a partner. Out of spite, he hadn’t. Now Emmett was on his own, and that definitely went against department policy.

  “It’s not smart for you to be seen with me, Otis.”

  Ahern was itching for Fossum’s name and could have put others on the lookout. Foot patrolmen avoided Hayes as much as possible, so he and Otis were safe in the projects. The streets were a different story.

  Once an hour, officers on foot patrol had to make a pull at one
of the call boxes spread five to ten blocks apart throughout the city. Without walkie-talkies, that was how the brass kept tabs. Patrolmen had to make their pulls by the appointed time or a car was sent to search for them. Two pulls in a row was the signal for help. As soon as a pull was placed, the routine was to hang around the call box for a few minutes in case the precinct had additional assignments or information to relay. There was a box on Bergen Street. They would have to pass it to get to Freddie Guthrie’s house.

  “I can follow you,” Fossum said.

  “Then you’re either very stubborn or very stupid.”

  “Or both.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Where we headed?”

  “Rose Street.”

  Otis grinned smugly. “Good. My legs could stand a stretch.”

  They were midway through the Hayes complex, moving in and out of the vast shadows cast by the tenements, when the group of teenage boys who had been playing handball began trailing them. Emmett noticed first. When Otis caught on, he panicked and picked up his pace.

  “Hey,” one of the boys shouted.

  “Keep walking,” Emmett whispered to Fossum.

  “I’m talkin’ to you,” the same kid yelled.

  “We keep walkin’ and they keep followin’.”

  The group was closing in fast. This was exactly what Emmett had been trying to avoid. They would have to stop and face them.

  Emmett gave Fossum strict orders. “Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, and don’t run.”

  “Ain’t that what Marlin Perkins on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom always says?”

  “This isn’t the zoo, Otis.”

  “’At’s for damn sure. If’n it was, there’d be a fence between us and them.”

  Emmett slowed and turned, putting himself a pace in front of Fossum to partially block him. He didn’t say a word, just looked at each of the boys one at a time.

  “What chu starin’ at? Huh, honky?”

  The kid doing the talking was bouncing a rubber handball against the concrete. Five others filed up alongside him, each of them seventeen or eighteen years old, about Ambrose Webster’s age. They were shorter than Emmett, though two had the benefit of growth spurts that had replaced skinny limbs with serious muscle.

  “He asked you a question,” one said.

  “Yeah, he asked you a question,” another repeated.

  None had the nerve to invent their own insult. Emmett remained silent, eyes latched on the kid bouncing the ball. He was lithe, all leg, and could have gotten in Emmett’s face in a single stride.

  “You deaf?” the kid with the ball sneered.

  Emmett wouldn’t answer. In his peripheral vision, he could see Fossum creeping farther behind him.

  “I said, are you deaf?”

  The kid stopped bouncing the handball and folded his arms as a final warning. Emmett thought this was their form of practice, roving in packs and learning to intimidate whomever they could. Ambrose Webster would have made an easy mark for bullies like these. They had mastered how to strut and swagger but hadn’t graduated to violence—yet.

  “Ain’t this rude, not speakin’ when you spoken to. Somebody needs to teach this cracker a lesson,” the kid with the ball said. He shifted his weight, preparing to take a step over the invisible line he and his friends were poised upon. The others muttered in agreement, psyching themselves up for action.

  Beneath Emmett’s jacket, on his right hip, hung his badge. Above his left was his gun holster. Emmett had to choose.

  “I’m not deaf,” he told them. Then he opened the left side of his jacket, revealing the Smith & Wesson strapped to his shoulder. “There’s nothing to hear when you’re listening to a bunch of punks full of hot air. Now get out of here.”

  The line of teenagers wavered, waiting for the kid with the handball to respond. He didn’t, a tacit surrender. Emmett ushered Otis on ahead, and they started to walk away. Fossum was obviously fighting the urge to look back.

  “Don’t,” Emmett instructed.

  “What if they sneakin’ up behind us?”

  “They aren’t.”

  “Then what harm’d it do if I looked?”

  “They would see that you’re scared.”

  “I am scared.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being scared. It’s acting scared that gets you in trouble.”

  “That’s how Vernon died,” Otis grumbled. “Putting his back to them men.”

  Emmett came to a dead halt. “Those men would have killed him whether he ran or stared them straight in the eye, and that’s the truth.”

  Fossum’s expression hardened with clarity. “You know who it was, don’t you, Mr. Emmett? And you can’t do nothin’ about it.”

  Frustration was a stopper in Emmett’s throat. He was positive Sal Lucaro had killed Vernon Young. Giancone wouldn’t have run the risk of shooting Vernon. Lucaro wouldn’t have run the risk of letting him live. Young’s murder weighed heavily on Emmett’s conscience, and he was desperate for another crack at Lucaro. Only he wasn’t sure how to get it.

  Neither he nor Fossum exchanged another word until they were safely out of the Hayes complex and had reached Bergen Street. People filled the sidewalks, going through the motions of their day mired in the heat. The air was laden with the odor of melting tar from the asphalt. Emmett was on watch for foot patrolmen and radio cars when he realized that Otis had fallen a few steps behind.

  “What is it?”

  “I was just thinkin’. Why didn’t you show them kids your badge?”

  “Because we wouldn’t have walked away without a fight.”

  Disheartened, Fossum said, “That’s what I figured.”

  Emmett’s badge meant different things to different people. To some, it earned him automatic respect. To others, it made him the enemy. He wasn’t sure what it meant to him anymore.

  “I told you, Otis. You don’t have to come. This isn’t your job. It’s mine.”

  “Some job.” A truck rolled by, the squeal of its loose axle acting as an exclamation point to his comment. Fossum lingered on the curb where they would cross from Bergen Street onto Rose. “I remember what you said to me, Mr. Emmett, about you deciding not to be a priest. That’s why I trusted you. You wanted me to look at them pictures, see if I saw the men who shot Vernon. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  Emmett had misread Otis’s intentions. By accompanying him, Fossum was attempting to work off his mistake in what small manner he could. Emmett knew the feeling.

  “It’s all right, Otis. I understood why you did it.”

  “Thanks. For saying so.”

  The road was clear, no traffic in either direction. Otis kept checking anyhow, as if a car might appear out of nowhere. Finally, he stepped off the curb.

  “I know this ain’t my job, Mr. Emmett. I’m comin’ anyway.”

  TWELVE

  Rose Street wasn’t that different from any other street in the Central Ward except for the fact that it bracketed one side of Woodland Cemetery. The graveyard was the largest span of grass in the entire the neighborhood. People treated it more like a park, disregarding its true function. Come nightfall, dealers sold dope behind headstones and junkies shot up among the dead.

  The houses on Rose were mainly four-floor walk-ups. They leaned against one another as a row of drunken sailors would, listing at the slightest breeze. The porches were over ten feet off the ground, the incline a test of fortitude. If you could handle the climb, you might have the stamina to live there.

  According to Mrs. Webster, Freddie Guthrie shared an apartment with his mother on the top floor of a tenement in the middle of the second block. The dilapidated building distinguished itself from the others with a beware of dog sign hanging from a rusty nail out front.

  “Terrific. More animals,” Otis said. He eyed the rickety steps. “Don’t ask. I’m still comin’.”

  Inside, they were greeted by the musk of cooking grease and an entry hall full of uncollected ma
il.

  “What do I do this time, Mr. Emmett?”

  As if in response, a shower of plaster dust rained down on them from the ceiling, syncopated with footfalls from the floor above.

  “I hadn’t made up my mind.” Emmett brushed the grit from his suit.

  Otis patted his shirt and coughed. “Don’t much care as long as I don’t have to stand here getting dirty.”

  He trudged up the stairs behind Emmett to the fourth floor. An argument was throbbing behind the door marked eight. It was the Guthrie residence.

  “This it?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Made up your mind yet?”

  “Yeah. I’ll do the talking. You keep quiet.”

  “I won’t move or run neither. Just in case.”

  When Emmett knocked, the door flew open as if spring-loaded. A runty black man dressed in nothing but boxer shorts stood at the threshold, ready to rip into whoever had the gall to darken his door. Emmett was holding his badge at eye level. It was the first thing the man in his underwear saw.

  “I’m looking for Freddie Guthrie. Is he here?”

  “No,” the man grunted. His skin was covered in an angry sheen of sweat, his fists balled.

  “Are you Mr. Guthrie?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Who is it, Cyril?” asked a woozy female voice.

  “Shut the hell up, Lossie,” Cyril shouted back. “It’s the police. They here for that damn boy ’a yours.”

  Emmett stepped into the doorway, crowding the man and forcing him inside the apartment. Otis followed. He floated behind Emmett as his shadow. “This joint could make you seasick,” he mumbled.