The Lightning Rule (6 page)

Daylight felt like a beating. The sun was a jab to the face, the heat an uppercut that knocked the wind from Emmett’s lungs. He would take that kind of abuse over a tunnel any time.

The coroner’s wagon had drawn a clump of people who gathered outside the subway station, trying to peek in past the signs. The patrolman would wave them away, and they would move off a bit, then inch in again, similar to shooing pigeons. As Emmett cut through the throng, someone shouted to him, “What’s going on in there?”

“Why’s the cops here?” another asked.

“Sign says repairs,” Emmett told them.

“Cops don’t do repairs.”

“That’s exactly what we do,” he said.

At his car, he realized that he had accidentally walked off with the flashlight the officer loaned him. He was clutching it as though he didn’t trust the blaring noon sun to stay bright. Returning the flashlight to the patrolmen would have been the right thing to do, but Emmett couldn’t bring himself to go back into the tunnel. He would replace the flashlight in the storage closet at the station instead, just not yet.

A flyer was stuffed under the windshield wiper of his car. In bold
print, it read: “Stop Police Brutality. Come and join us at the mass rally tonight at the Fourth Precinct at 7:30.”

If anything, the rally would be an invitation for more brutality and an encore of last night’s disorder. Whether that was the organizers’ goal was open for debate. Emmett folded the flyer into his pocket. To be safe, he got his spare radio from under the front seat of his car and propped it on the passenger seat, close at hand. Edward had rigged it to the police band frequency for him. The department didn’t have the budget for walkie-talkies, and only the patrol cars were equipped with radios. Assuming another riot broke out during the rally, Emmett wanted to know where not to be.

When he switched on the radio, dispatch was summoning the Traffic Division for any available assistance. Teams of reporters with television cameras were assembling around the Fourth Precinct and attracting a crowd. By normal standards, it was hardly an emergency. After the riot, normal standards no longer applied.

Factoring in Albert Rafshoon’s usual delays, the coroner wouldn’t get to the victim’s autopsy for hours. Emmett had calculated for that when he phoned to make his appointment earlier that morning. He stowed the borrowed flashlight in his glove compartment and drove home, unsure what was in store for him.

The house was painfully hot, the air stale. Edward was napping in his wheelchair, head nestled into his shoulder, and the television was turned down to a whisper. Emmett closed the door gently. At the click of the latch, Edward snapped awake. Groggy, he asked, “What’re you doing home?”

A wet hand towel lay across his lap. It had been a compress for his head, and the ice in it had melted, soaking through to his pants and staining them embarrassingly at the crotch. Edward couldn’t feel it. He followed Emmett’s gaze to the spot.

“It’s okay. Let me get another towel.”

“It’s the ice,” Edward said defensively.

“I know. It’s okay.”

A knock came at the front door, interrupting them.

“You expecting someone?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

Emmett gave his brother a chance to cover the stain with the towel before he answered the door.

A black woman stood on the stoop, clutching her purse in one hand, a note in the other. White hair feathered from her temples, and she wore a floral cotton dress over broad hips as well as stockings despite the heat.

“Is this the Emmett residence?” She read the name off the note in a drummed-down southern drawl.

“It is. Can I help you?”

“I’m Mavis Poole. The hospital sent me. Somebody phoned about hiring a nurse’s aide.” She smiled hesitantly.

Emmett had been expecting someone white. He was embarrassed by his assumption. The oversight was a far cry from the overt racism that spurred the riots, yet he realized that it grew from a common root. He considered apologizing to her, but there was too much to apologize for.

The call to the hospital was the one Emmett had made after speaking to the lieutenant on the rooftop. Edward’s fall had convinced him that he couldn’t care for his brother on his own. It hurt him to admit it, and it hurt him to see Edward’s expression slide from stunned to hostile, his jaw working under the cheek.

“Come in, Mrs. Poole. I’m Martin Emmett, and this is my brother, Edward.”

She shook Emmett’s hand, a soft, polite grip. When she offered the same hand to Edward, he wheeled away. The back door slammed, resounding through the house.

“Would I be right to assume you didn’t mention my coming ahead of time, Mr. Emmett?”

“You would.” He regretted springing the poor woman on Edward.

“No harm done, dear. I can be on my way if you think that’s best. If not,” she added, hopeful, “I’d ask if I might not sit a spell. Took me two buses to get here.”

“Please. Make yourself at home.”

She opted for a spot on the unused couch and perched on the edge of the cushions daintily. Emmett noticed that Mrs. Poole had a slight limp that she tried to conceal by her posture and the style in which she carried her purse. His guess, her lower back bothered her. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t pick a firmer chair.

“I don’t move as fast as some, but I’m strong,” she said. “I’ve taken care of men as big as you, Mr. Emmett, and bigger. My late husband weighed over two hundred pounds. He lost both legs in Korea, and I learned to flip him like a pancake, so don’t mistake me for weak. I’m no stranger to hard work. I can do the job. That is, if you want me to.”

Emmett saw in Mrs. Poole a quiet need, for a paying position or to be working, to have something to fill her days. She wouldn’t let on which. It wasn’t desperation, though it wasn’t that different. He could relate.

“I imagine you’re no stranger to hard work either.” Mrs. Poole gestured at the badge hanging from his belt.

“Your accent’s too nice to be from Newark,” he said, dodging a response with a compliment. “Where are you from?”

“Swainsboro, Georgia. You heard of it?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Not many folks have. When the farming dried up, my daddy moved us here, me and my ten brothers and sisters. Lordy, that practically cut the population of Swainsboro in half. For as many years as I’ve lived in Newark, I shouldn’t have any accent left. Some things just stay with you, I suppose.”

There were things that stayed with Emmett too, things he couldn’t let go of, like an accent he couldn’t drop.

“Let me see if I can talk to Edward,” he told her, turning to go.

“Must be tough, caring for your brother on your own,” Mrs. Poole said in a tone tender and low to ensure Edward wouldn’t overhear. “You’re a grown man. You have a career, a life to lead.”

She was giving him permission not to feel guilty for asking for help. Emmett had confessed nothing, yet she saw through him to his heart as clearly as she had seen his badge.

“Give me a minute with him,” he said.

Edward was at the far end of the porch, staring at the backyard, hands knitted tight. Emmett stepped outside, the screen door creaking and announcing his arrival. Edward wouldn’t acknowledge his presence. Emmett went and stood beside him. He had to let his brother speak first.

“That crabgrass is going to ruin the lawn. You see it? By the garage,” Edward said. A patch of scrubby, yellow blades was encroaching on the property. “You’ll have to pull it up or else the grass’ll die.”

“Okay. I’ll pull it up.”

“And you’d better put some of that weed killer Pop used on it too.”

“Okay.”

Edward shook a cigarette out of his pack. He didn’t light it. “You coulda warned me, Marty.”

“I know. I should have.”

“I don’t have to like her.”

“No, you don’t have to like her. But you might.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you don’t.”

“You’ll get somebody else, won’t you?”

“It can’t be me, Ed. I can’t quit to be here with you.”

“I know that,” he said, a hitch in his voice. “I wish…”

“What?”

Edward was wavering, wary of loosening some emotional valve. Being in the wheelchair, it was easier for him not to meet Emmett’s eyes, to act as if they were on the telephone talking long-distance rather than person to person. The moment passed. He dammed up whatever it was he was going to say, sealing it inside him again. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Emmett held the screen door, and Edward wheeled himself inside. Mrs. Poole was roosted on the edge of the couch, smoothing her dress over her knees.

“Have you ever worked with somebody like me?” Edward asked her, getting right to the point. An awkward silence bloated the room.

“I don’t know, dear. I just met you. What’re you like?”

Mrs. Poole was looking Edward squarely in the face as though the wheelchair didn’t exist. She looked at him the way Emmett couldn’t.

Rarely at a loss, Edward’s bravado dissolved. Emmett realized that Mrs. Poole had picked the couch because it was the lowest seat in the living room and it put her right on Edward’s level. It would hurt her to stand up again. She had sat there nonetheless.

“I have references if you need to see them.” Mrs. Poole unsnapped her purse, prepared to present them in case Edward was on the fence.

He deferred to Emmett. “Do we need to see her references?”

The woman was tougher than Emmett initially thought, and it would take more than Edward to fluster her. That spoke louder than any reference could.

“Do we?” He bounced the question back, leaving the final say to his brother, who deliberated for a beat.

“No, that’s all right.”

With that, the deal was sealed. Emmett gave Mrs. Poole a tour of the house, told her that she was welcome to whatever food was in the refrigerator, then wrote her a check for a week’s pay in advance.

“You don’t have to give this to me now, Mr. Emmett.”

“Really, I do.”

Mrs. Poole tucked the check into her purse, taking the hint. “Is this a bribe so I’ll stick out the week?”

“If I’d known you were that easy to bribe, I would have paid you for a month,” Emmett said with a wink. He jotted the phone number to the police station on a pad. “Here’s where I can be reached. It’s the Fourth Precinct.”

“Ain’t that something. I live on Charlton Street. We’re practically neighbors.” Her inflection telegraphed the message that she was aware of what went on at the precinct, but this was business. Any differences would be left at the door.

“I usually try to get home by five. If I’m late, you don’t have to stay.”

“If you’re late, you’re late, Mr. Emmett. It’s okay. Life isn’t always predictable.”

Life wasn’t predictable. All he could be certain of was that the victim from the subway tunnel was lying in the morgue with his throat slit. Nothing and no one could change that, including Emmett. He hadn’t settled on what he was going to do about the case. It was a decision even he couldn’t predict.

The entrance to Newark City Hospital was as inviting as a vise grip. The stoic, redbrick building had been designed in a horseshoe shape, creating a cul-du-sac with the main door at the center. Throughout different eras, the original structure had been expanded upon, so additions protruded from the roofline like growths gone unchecked. The hospital seemed less like a refuge than a last resort.

Established to serve the city’s indigent and needy, City Hospital was as poorly funded as its patients. Its equipment was outmoded, its staff a skeleton crew, and its security nonexistent. Bedside curtains and toilet seats were considered luxuries, and mice could be seen scampering along the corridors’ baseboards. A diarrhea epidemic had broken out two years earlier, resulting in the death of eighteen infants and branding the hospital with a reputation as a place where people had a higher chance of dying than getting better. It was appropriate then that the Essex County coroner’s office was situated in the hospital’s basement. Knowing the elevators carried cadavers, lice-infested linens, and infectious patients as well as the visitors, Emmett took the stairs down.

In order to reach the morgue, he had to navigate an intricate network of hallways, each virtually identical in their blandness, all of the doors closed save for the occasional supply closet. Emmett had gotten
lost on his first trip there to see the body of Vernon Young. No signage marked the path. The morgue was the sort of place that seemed intentionally difficult to find.

When Emmett finally did find it, he almost wished he hadn’t. Heavy double doors opened into the examination area, which bore an uncanny resemblance to a mechanic’s shop. Spray nozzles dangled from the ceiling, and metal tables split the basement into bays. Because of the coolers, the air was chilly, congealing the oily odor of innards with the tartness of chemicals and cleaning fluid. Tiled floors and walls created the faint echo of an empty pool. A bald man in a rubber apron was standing at the sink, the water running high. His back was to the door and to the corpse of an elderly black man lying on a slab, the chest cavity exposed, the skin peeled open.

Emmett wasn’t squeamish. Life at the abbey had prepared him to be dispassionately passionate. Denied worldly possessions and frequent contact with family, he had mastered the art of detachment. Beliefs were to be intense, fervent. Emotions were not.

“Didn’t hear you come in,” the man in the apron said amiably, cranking off the faucet as soon as he noticed Emmett. He was so trim that he had to loop the apron strings around his waist repeatedly to keep it tied on.

“Is this a bad time?”

“I’m sure this gentleman won’t mind. He’s not in a rush.”

“Is Doctor Aberbrook around?” Emmett shifted his jacket to show his badge.

“Nope. He retired. Moved to Florida.”

That was news to Emmett. Working in the Records Room had the same effect on him as living at the seminary, where television, books, papers, and all links to the outside were prohibited. Emmett was utterly ignorant of change. Again, the world hadn’t waited for him and he was sprinting to catch up.

“Retired? When?”

“Two months ago.”

“Are you the new coroner?”

“New is a relative term.” He motioned to his balding pate. “How about you? You new to the department?”

“Like you said, it’s a relative term. I’m Detective Emmett.”

“Well, Detective, I’m Doctor Ufland. We’ll have to skip the handshake.” He was holding a length of entrail that he had been examining over the sink. He slopped the organ onto a scale. “Who’re you here for?”

“The deceased’s name is Ambrose Webster.”

Before leaving his house, Emmett had checked the phonebook listings. The address clipped to the movie pass in the victim’s pocket matched. That alone didn’t confirm that the body in the tunnel had been that of Ambrose Webster. Emmett had a strong suspicion that it was, though. While he should have been grateful for the lead, that the victim wasn’t a John Doe, he couldn’t deny the twinge of disappointment. Something about this murder was off.

“Is he the one with the severed leg?”

“That’s him. He was only delivered a couple of hours ago. I was going to ask if you had any idea what time you’d be—”

“He’s done. I just finished him. It’s been slow today. The kid would still be on the table if it weren’t for this heat. If it doesn’t break soon, my coolers are going to conk out. Trust me, that would be unpleasant.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Ufland rolled a drawer out from a wall of individual coolers. Ambrose Webster’s naked body lay on a metal tray, his dark skin gleaming. His torso was thickly roped with muscle and unmarred apart from the stitches in the Y incision left from the autopsy and the slash across his neck that arced like a smile. His amputated leg lay beside its mate, the foot facing away, the knee turned out. Vernon Young’s body was completely different in shape and scale, but standing over Webster’s body brought Emmett right back to that day.

The bullet the former coroner, Dr. Aberbrook, had pulled from Young’s body was a .22, not a .38, a fact that did little to further the case. All it established was that Detective Giancone hadn’t shot Vernon with his service revolver. He very well might have had a second piece. Like many a cop, Emmett himself also carried a .22 in a calf holster.
Giancone could have had one too and discarded it. Lucaro was the likelier suspect. While he claimed not to have a weapon, Emmett didn’t believe that a mobster of his distinction went anywhere without one. Emmett had searched the crime scene thoroughly, sifting through crates of rotten food and garbage cans, dirty work that yielded nothing. He never found a gun. Without the murder weapon or Otis Fossum’s cooperation, the case stalled. His reassignment to the Records Room had convinced Emmett that he wouldn’t get another opportunity to jump-start it. Ambrose Webster had changed that. As Emmett stood beside Webster’s corpse, he had to remind himself that the dead boy wasn’t a means to an end.

“Autopsy was pretty cut-and-dried if you’ll pardon the pun,” the doctor began. “I’d put his age at sixteen, maybe seventeen. He was in perfect health. Strong as an ox. Didn’t need me to tell you that. The laceration to the throat was what killed him, obviously. It was deep, down to the vertebrae. Could’ve taken his head clean off if the neck muscles weren’t so dense.”

Dr. Ufland wasn’t saying anything Emmett hadn’t intuited. On the ride from his house to the hospital, he had been going over the scant information he had, hashing through various scenarios. Webster could have gotten into a fight that went bad, pissed off the wrong person, or owed somebody money. Emmett didn’t know enough yet to point him in any specific direction.

“Time of death?”

“Last night. Between midnight and three.”

“The riot had already started.”

“Read about that in the paper,” Ufland said with a shudder. “Were you there?”

Emmett preferred not to go into it. “It was my night off. Listen, Doc, I’m flying blind here. This kid was dumped on the train tracks. I don’t have the original crime scene.”

“I’m not sure how much help I can be. Prior to death, he took a heck of a beating. He had bruises everywhere, a sprained ankle, a chipped tooth. What I thought was interesting was that he had about three pounds of steak in his stomach. Chunks of it. Partially chewed. The
good stuff. We’re not talking ground chuck. That’s a lot of meat. Even for a guy his size. Maybe he won a supermarket raffle or something.”

Webster’s address was in the Hayes Home projects across from the Fourth Precinct, where welfare families lived cheek to jowl, often sharing cramped apartments with a second family to cover the cost of rent. In Hayes, a freezer was a status symbol. Women cooked on antiquated coal-or wood-burning stoves because the landlords refused to upgrade, and tenants ate their meals with a can of insect spray within reach. Rats and roaches added to the number of mouths to feed. Emmett doubted that Ambrose Webster would ever have tasted steak, let alone eaten three whole pounds of it.

“Almost forgot. The leg wasn’t all he was missing.”

Ufland raised Webster’s left arm, holding the hand aloft. The pointer finger was gone, cleanly cut at the base of the knuckle. The incident in the tunnel with the pigeon had prevented Emmett from noticing. Suddenly, a memory fluttered at the back of his brain, like a note being slid under a door. Before he could grab onto it, the doctor was talking again.

“It was removed postmortem. Different knife from the throat.”

Despite the gruesome manner of the murder, the fact that the boy’s finger hadn’t been cut off while he was alive was a small comfort to Emmett.

“I heard that the guys who kidnapped Sinatra’s son were going to lop off one of his fingers to send it in as proof that they had him,” Ufland said. “Scare Old Blue Eyes into coughing up the cash.”

“I have a feeling this kid’s family doesn’t fall into Frank Sinatra’s tax bracket. Any chance the finger was sheered off by a train?”

“This is what train wheels do to tissue.” The doctor twisted the root of Webster’s severed leg toward Emmett. The flesh was mangled, ragged. “The knives that were used on the finger and the neck were sharp, not serrated. And the one that caused the neck wound had to be a big blade. See? There’s a single line all the way around. No switchblade could do this amount of damage in one fell swoop.” He demonstrated, drawing his own finger across his throat. It was too short to bridge the circumference.

“The angle of the wound is upward. A nifty trick, given how big this
kid is. That would suggest one of two things. The first would be that the boy’s attacker was bigger than him. You’d be looking for a guy pushing seven feet. If that’s the case, I’m glad I’m not in your shoes, Detective.”

It was a sobering speculation. It was also far-fetched. Other possibilities spun through Emmett’s head. He doubted that Webster would obligingly bend over and allow someone to slit his throat or stand idly by as they stood on a stool in order to kill him.

“And the second choice?”

“Door number two: he was leaning forward or backward, affecting the angle of the wound. The degree would depend on where the killer was in relation to the victim.”

An unwelcome image sprang into Emmett’s mind. “What if he was kneeling and someone came at him from behind? Would that be consistent with this wound.”

A similar picture must have appeared to the doctor. He grimaced. “Yeah, that would work.”

Webster’s huge stature belied his actual age. He was just a teenager. The idea of someone so young on the ground with a knife at his throat was deeply unsettling. Emmett’s shins were calloused from all the time he had spent in prayer, and he tried to think of what could have brought Ambrose Webster to his knees.

“This body was in a subway tunnel, right?” Ufland asked. “Must’ve been dark. The finger may still be at the scene. It’d be easy to miss, especially if it rolled away from the body when the train took off his leg. You could go and check.”

That wasn’t an option Emmett was eager to entertain.

“If I found the finger, would that tell us anything?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Would be nice to give the boy back to his family with all the pieces.”

Emmett was ashamed to admit that he hadn’t stopped to consider Ambrose Webster’s family. They might not have even realized he was missing.

“Are you going to take his personal effects, Detective? Or should I save them for the next of kin?”

Leaving the effects for the family to collect would get Emmett off
the hook, if that was what he wanted. He could avoid any calls or make excuses, claim there were no leads, no evidence to connect anyone to the crime, which at present wasn’t a lie. He could let the Webster file wither and go cold, then investigate Vernon Young’s murder full-time. If he took the boy’s belongings, Emmett would have to deliver them to the family himself. He would have to face them with the news that Ambrose was dead. It would mean he was on the case.

Dr. Ufland set a brown paper bag containing Ambrose Webster’s personal property on an empty surgical table, as if to remain impartial. “I have to finish this gentleman so I can get to my next customer,” he said. “Glad to have met you, Detective.”

“Likewise. Thanks, Doc.”

“You know your way out, right? It can be kind of confusing. An orderly once told me that the builders did that on purpose, so visitors wouldn’t stumble into the morgue by accident. Strange, huh? The things people think of.”

Emmett knew the way out, his way out. But he couldn’t take it. Because Ambrose Webster hadn’t ended up in the morgue by accident.

He picked up the paper bag and left.