The Lightning Rule

by Brett Ellen Block

  “You’re going to have to grab his legs, Mrs. Guthrie. I can’t carry him down the stairs alone.”

  She ran her hand over Cyril’s bloody brow. “Okay.”

  Together they got him out of the tenement and into Emmett’s car. Because there was no backseat, Lossie had to squeeze in front, hunched on Cyril’s lap. Emmett was spent from the effort and paused to catch his breath before he could drive.

  “You okay?” It was a slight variation on the single word she had been repeating. Her cheek was so badly swollen, Emmett should have been asking her that.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” he replied, though the term had ceased to signify much of anything.

  An orderly helped him load Cyril onto a stretcher at City Hospital, then the orderly wheeled Cyril into the emergency room. From outside, Emmett could see that the waiting room was packed. The wounded overflowed into the hallways. Dozens were holding bloody towels to their heads and extremities. Those with leg injuries and worse lay on the floor. These were the people who had made it to the hospital. Emmett wondered how many were still waiting for ambulances.

  “You go with Cyril, Mrs. Guthrie. Freddie can sleep at my house tonight.”

  Her expression became quizzical, as if her son’s name was foreign to her. Freddie’s welfare hadn’t entered her mind. That made Emmett even more tired.

  “Go on,” he told her. “Cyril needs you.”

  Weary, Emmett went home. He rattled the key in the lock, a signal to Edward that it was him. “It’s me,” he added when he opened the door.

  Edward was sitting in the dark, the pistol at his side. He clicked on the safety. “Was the kid’s mom all right?”

  Emmett let his brother see the blood on his clothes. “I took her and her boyfriend to the hospital. I’d take you too, except the emergency room was jammed. We’d be there ’til morning. Might as well go then.”

  “For a shiner? Please. I’ve seen worse.” Edward gestured at his legs.

  “You go on to bed. I’ll stay up.” Emmett removed his jacket, grateful to finally have it off. His muscles were stiff. Hauling Cyril to the hospital had done him in.

  “You’re the one who should get some sleep.” Edward handed him the glass of water he had been drinking.

  Emmett guzzled it. “And you’re the one who got slugged.”

  “You shoulda seen ’em, Marty. They were a pair ’a pansy hoodlums who’d watched too many Edward G. Robinson movies. What a joke. If I wasn’t….” He bridled himself and abandoned the thought. Emmett knew what he was about to say. Hearing it aloud would have been uncomfortable for both of them.

  “Tell me what they looked like. Do you remember?”

  “’Course I remember. How could I forget? The first guy was short, stocky. His collar was squeezing his fat neck into rolls. The other was taller, nicer suit, had a dimple in his chin so deep you could eat soup outta it.”

  The second description fit Sal Lucaro to a T. Emmett sighed and dropped heavily onto the couch.

  “What? You know them?”

  “Only the one with the dimple.”

  “Is he that big cheese mobster? The guy you liked for the murder?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’re you gonna do, Marty?”

  “For now, I’m going to make sure they don’t come back and you’re going to get some rest.”

  “I rest all day.”

  “Always have to argue, don’t you?”

  “We’ll take turns. One of us sleeps while the other stays awake. How ’bout that?”

  “Fine.”

  “You first,” they both said at once.

  “You win,” Edward relented, tired. “I’ll go first.”

  Emmett assisted him into bed and laid a sheet over him.

  “Wake me in an hour.”

  “Deal.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Emmett took the .22 from him and sat watch from the couch. He had no intention of waking his brother. Edward had been through enough. Though Lucaro and his accomplice probably wouldn’t put in another appearance that evening, part of Emmett wished they would.

  A true Jesuit should have prayed for them and their sins. A true Jesuit should have prayed away any feelings of revenge. Emmett wasn’t a Jesuit anymore. The payback he prayed for kept him awake the rest of the night.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The watery dawn light woke Emmett, that and the voice of Director Sloakes. He had tucked the police band radio next to his pillow, the volume low. Sloakes was making an announcement.

  “As of this Friday, the fourteenth of July, 1967, the mayor has officially declared a state of emergency. The National Guard and state police have been called in to aid our department in this time of crisis. Troopers and Guardsmen are presently arriving at the Roseville armory and will continue to arrive throughout the day. Your orders are to patrol in radio cars in groups of four. One patrolman will be assigned to guide two troopers and one Guardsman around the city. Continuing updates will be broadcast throughout the day.”

  “Better late than never,” Emmett said with a yawn.

  “You awake.” Mrs. Poole was tiptoeing down the stairs.

  He stood up and rubbed his face. His wristwatch said it was quarter to six. Emmett hadn’t gotten up that early since he was a novice. Even then, it felt unnatural.

  “At this hour, I’m as close to awake as I can be.”

  They were speaking in the hushed tones parents would use around a slumbering baby so as not to disturb Edward, who was asleep in the dining room. His eye was a deeper shade of a purple than last night, making the bruise on his forehead from his fall seem minor.

  “I put Freddie in the other bedroom upstairs. I hope that’s okay.”

  It was Emmett’s childhood room that he had shared with his brother. Of the two twin mattresses, Edward’s was now downstairs. Freddie was sleeping in Emmett’s old bed.

  “Of course. Did he give you any flak?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “No doubt. How are you feeling?”

  “Not too bad. I was more shaken up than anything.”

  He could tell that Mrs. Poole wanted to hear about where he had been but wouldn’t ask. “I’m truly sorry about what happened.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me, Mr. Emmett. Be sorry for him.” She motioned at Edward. “If he could’ve, your brother would have jumped up out ’a his wheelchair and clobbered those men senseless. Not being able to, that had nothing on the beatin’ he took.”

  Edward was breathing heavily in his sleep, his chest rising and falling tranquilly. Emmett wondered if his brother could walk in his dreams or if he was in the wheelchair then too.

  “I’m gonna put on a pot of coffee,” Mrs. Poole said.

  She went into the kitchen, and he trailed her. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

  “Depends on the something.” She poured water into the coffeepot.

  “What was it like having your husband in a wheelchair?”

  “It was no picnic,” she admitted, ladling in the coffee grounds. “But I’d rather have had him alive and in the chair than not have him at all.”

  She plugged in the pot and took a pair of mugs from the cupboard. “Percy stepped on a land mine. Lost both legs from the knees down. Should’ve killed him. When he got out of the hospital, he couldn’t look me in the eye. I’d been married to him for going on fifteen years and he couldn’t look at me. Said he was ashamed to be half a man. I told him I was thankful to have half and I’d have gladly taken less. Easy for me to say ’cause it was true. Wasn’t easy for him to believe. That’s the rough part. Believing that life isn’t over. That it hasn’t been cut in half and is still worth living.”

  The coffee began to perk. “Try explaining that to Edward,” Emmett said.

  “Have you? Tried, I mean.”

  “He won’t tell you this, so I will,” Emmett confided. “Edward wasn’t supposed to be there when it happened. The troops had driven th
e Vietcong out of the Iron Triangle and captured their supplies, crates of M-16s and medical kits and rations they’d stolen from American bases. He was fresh off the plane from Fort Dix, been in Vietnam for less than a month, and his job was to repair the radios and radars on the howitzers. That day, they had him driving a six-by-six truck to cart off all the contraband. When Edward got out of the truck to load in the crates, a sniper shot him from a concealed tunnel, hit him in the base of the spine. Do you want to know what was in those crates? Tin cans of peas. My brother will never walk again. And for what? For a crate of peas.”

  The coffeepot stopped bubbling and fell quiet.

  Emmett hadn’t been in favor of the war. Every day, he went to work in a war zone, and he had seen firsthand that there were never any winners. He hadn’t been able to talk Edward out of enlisting, so he held himself partially responsible for the accident, an older brother who had failed his younger brother. It was one of many in a long list of failures.

  “You can be angry, Mr. Emmett. You got every right. But don’t you think Edward’s angry enough for the both of you? Somebody’s got to show him how not to be.”

  “I’m not sure I’m the person to do that, Mrs. Poole.”

  She poured him a mug of coffee and pushed it along the counter, as if passing him a note. “You’re his brother. You’re all he’s got. You don’t do it, nobody will.”

  Emmett brought the mug to his lips and blew on it. The coffee was too hot to drink. He put the mug aside. “I have to get ready. I have to go.”

  “Again?”

  “It’ll be okay. Gangsters don’t get out of bed this early in the morning.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” she said.

  “There’s a file I need from the station house. As soon as I get it, I’ll come straight home.”

  “You promise, Mr. Emmett?”

  He had broken his promise to Edward last night. This time, he wouldn’t. “Yes, I promise.”

  Emmett showered, shaved, and changed into a clean suit, then tucked an extra box of bullets into his jacket pocket. He went by his old bedroom on the way downstairs. The door was half open.

  Baseball pennants hung on the walls. Atop the dresser, Edward’s basketball trophies mingled with Emmett’s from track and field. The rising sun glinted off the medals and brass figurines. Freddie lay curled on the bed. He had kicked off the covers and was hugging the pillow tightly to him, anxious even in his sleep.

  In the burgeoning daylight, the living room looked like a crime scene. Chairs were flung over, and books and lamps were scattered across the floor, chaos for the sake of chaos. It was as if the riot had spilled into Emmett’s house.

  “They did a real number on the place, didn’t they?”

  Mrs. Poole was putting away yesterday’s dishes from the drying rack. “I’ll clean up, Mr. Emmett. I don’t believe they broke anything.”

  Nothing tangible, Emmett thought.

  “I should be back before Freddie or Edward are up. If I’m not, you can’t let Freddie leave. Not for a second. He listens to you, Mrs. Poole. He’ll do what you say.”

  “The boy’s in real trouble, isn’t he?”

  Telling her how much would frighten her. “Just don’t let him go anywhere.”

  Emmett’s mug of coffee had cooled. He finished it in three gulps, then went and hid his .22 under the bedsheet, right beside Edward’s hand.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Getting into the Fourth Precinct was more difficult that morning than it had been yesterday with a mob of protesters outside. Out front, state troopers in full garb—light blue shirtsleeves and dark blue pants with yellow stripes on the sides—were lined up awaiting radio cars to patrol in. In the rear, a formation of officers was guarding the cruisers as they fueled up. Emmett elected for the front door because the troopers wouldn’t recognize him.

  The station’s entrance hall was carpeted with glass. The boards on the windows made the hall dusky despite the lights. No one was around, not even the desk sergeant.

  Emergency twelve-hour shifts went from eight a.m. to eight p.m. and eight p.m. to eight a.m., splitting the day. They were long hours, especially for detectives. Patrolmen usually worked five days on, two days off. Detectives often worked a day less. The end of the second shift was approaching, and Emmett was relying on those long hours to have emptied out the Homicide squad room.

  “Hey, Detective.” Patrolman Nolan was bounding down the staircase as he was going up, happy for a familiar face. “You get a load ’a those state troopers outside? Talk about calling in the cavalry? I wish I had a camera. Wasn’t it nuts last night? We had ourselves a genuine riot. Everybody—”

  Emmett cut him off. “Officer, is your shift over?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Where were you assigned?”

  “Back of the building, sir. To pump gas. I had to go to the john.”

  “If you were assigned there, why are you standing here talking to me?”

  “Understood, sir.” Browbeaten, Nolan ambled off.

  Emmett had to be blunt. The narrow wedge of time when the station was deserted was his best shot at getting in and out unobserved. He would apologize to Nolan later.

  Though the sun had only recently risen, the third floor was already agonizingly hot. Split by the stairs, the top floor was chopped into two cramped squad rooms, one for Vice, one for Homicide. Emmett slunk past his division’s door, prepared to dart into the men’s room if anyone was inside. All of the desks were empty, including his old desk, which was now home to the coffeemaker. He hadn’t been welcome when he was transferred to Homicide and he still wasn’t, so Emmett had no qualms about sneaking in when the squad room was unguarded.

  Any of the four detectives could have been sitting on the murder case he was after. He had to start with somebody. He chose Serletto.

  His desk was in the corner, facing the door. That way he could see who was coming and going. In a room full of cops, Serletto was too suspicious to put his back to an entry. His desktop was covered with paper coffee cups and unfinished reports. Emmett picked through the dog-eared piles, then dug into the drawers. Racing spreads and candy wrappers were mashed in among the cases. Shoved at the bottom in an envelope was Serletto’s diploma from the academy, stashed like an incriminating secret. Nowhere among the clutter did Emmett see any mention of a missing finger.

  Hochwald’s desk was pristine compared to his partner’s and virtually empty. In the top drawer sat a single pencil and a string of paper clips linked together, the sort of thing someone assembled out of boredom. Of the two of them, Hochwald was the brawn. Serletto did the talking and, apparently, all the paperwork. Emmett didn’t trouble with the rest of Hochwald’s desk. If the guy didn’t have a single notepad, he wouldn’t have held on to a file.

  The other detectives’ desks were relatively clean, which gave Emmett an idea. Overflow of active and pending cases was stored in the squad’s standing filing cabinet until due to go to the Records Room. He rolled open the cabinet’s top drawer and paged through the folders, skipping any with female names. Evander Hammond’s body was discovered in April, Julius Dekes’s in May, and Ambrose Webster’s in July. If the killer was staying true to form, the report Emmett was searching for would have been posted in June. The files weren’t packed together as tightly as they were in the basement, yet the number of murders was greater than Emmett had foreseen. That was bad for him, though not nearly as bad as it was for the victims and their families.

  From outside the squad room came muffled voices, getting louder. People were coming up the steps. Emmett shut the drawer and positioned himself in the middle of the room so he wasn’t near any desk in particular. The voices passed, going across the hall to Vice. Emmett realized he had been holding his breath. He exhaled and embarked on the next drawer.

  The room was stuffy and he was sweating. His fingertips were sticking to the folders. He would have removed his jacket, but the seconds that would have taken were too precious. Diagrams speckl
ed with wounds flicked by, a gruesome comic strip of the same man murdered by various methods. Some were shot, some strangled, and many stabbed. None were absent a finger. Emmett began to doubt his theory. Then, from the back of the drawer, came the autopsy of Tyrone Cambell, a seventeen-year-old whose body was spotted by a sanitation crew. The teenager had been rolled behind a row of garbage cans on a dead-end street, and he had a stab wound to his right inner thigh. On his autopsy report, the middle finger on his left hand was circled in pen.

  Cambell’s file restored Emmett’s faith in his theory and shook it simultaneously. He had been so busy trying to prove his hypothesis correct that he hadn’t given much thought to the killer or why these boys had been killed. In his haste, Emmett had forgotten about the quality of his thinking. Give me a reason. That was what the Jesuit priests from college would have demanded from him. He was new to the logic of murder, but in his experience with robberies, some thieves had predilections for certain items such as vintage records, teddy bears, or picture frames with the owner’s photos still in them, a quirk that made them easier to pursue. Perhaps this killer had his own predilection for a type of victim and for hacking off their fingers. Beyond that supposition, there was little quality to Emmett’s thinking. He had no evidence as to who the killer might be. Maybe Cambell’s file would change that. After Ambrose Webster, Tyrone Cambell was the most recent victim. His case was a month old, not recent by Homicide’s standards, but it was all Emmett had to go on.

  He removed Cambell’s report from the folder, closed the cabinet, and made for the door, shoving the file under his jacket. The pages got stuck on his gun holster. He was disentangling them when someone said, “Got an itch you can’t scratch, Emmett?”

  Detective Nic Serletto was standing at the threshold to the squad room, smiling under his thick mustache. The top button of his dress shirt was open. His tie was knotted loosely. Behind him stood Detective Larry Hochwald. He had fifty pounds on Serletto, though only a few inches, and his prominent brow branded him with a perpetual glower. Emmett hadn’t heard them coming. They had walked up with the others who went into Vice.