“Did that give me the right?”
Edward grew quiet. A soft breeze blew past carrying the scent of a neighbor’s garden. Somewhere, something had survived the drought to bloom.
“There are much worse things than killing somebody, Marty.” He was talking about more than the case.
While Emmett’s experience had been harrowing, he couldn’t fathom what his brother had endured in Vietnam, what any solider faced in war. Torture of the mind could be a fate that surpassed pain or death. Emmett knew that was true from experience.
“The kid, Calvin, he gonna make it?”
“When I left the hospital, they told me he would be in intensive care for a couple weeks, but yeah, he’ll live.”
Unlike Evander Hammond, Julius Dekes, Tyrone Cambell, and Ambrose Webster, Calvin Timmons would live. Yet the relatives of the murdered boys would never have the satisfaction of seeing their sons’ killer brought to justice or having their cases closed. In the end, Emmett had no hard evidence to connect Meers to their deaths. He could give a statement and Calvin could testify about Meers’s attempt on his life, but that wouldn’t corroborate the other crimes. Lieutenant Ahern would demand evidence, evidence Emmett didn’t have, that was if Ahern didn’t laugh him right out of his office. Police Director Sloakes had little to feed to the press or pin on him. That wouldn’t necessarily prevent Sloakes from trying to bury Emmett anyway. In the eyes of the Newark Police Department, he had yet to solve a single murder. He would, at last, get out of the basement, though he didn’t see a point in returning to Homicide. Then Edward reached out and patted his shoulder, a fleeting gesture that was over before Emmett fully felt it.
“You’re a hell of a cop, Marty. Don’t tell yourself different. You’ll go back to the job and everything’ll be okay.”
That simple statement was what Emmett had waited his whole life for. His brother’s confidence in him was all the assurance he needed or would ever need.
It was getting dark out. Lights in the houses across the yard were coming on. The smell of supper wafted out from the kitchen. Dinner would be ready soon. They would all sit around the table, he and Edward and Freddie and Mrs. Poole, and they would say grace together. Emmett had a lot for which to be grateful.
“If this rain lets up, should be a clear night,” Edward said.
“Should be cooler too.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Thank God for that,” Emmett seconded.
They had resorted to discussing the weather. For them, it was a good sign, a beginning.
The rain was absolution for that week’s heat wave, a temporary reprieve, like the sweet breeze from the neighbor’s garden. Summer promised to be long and hot and harsh, a season of penance that would stretch on and on. That night they had a few hours of forgiveness from the heat. A little forgiveness was all anyone could ask for. Eventually, fall would arrive, then winter, though the city would not see the rebirth of spring for some time to come. No matter what the weather held, Newark was Emmett’s home and there were no seasons in the heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents for their unwavering encouragement and continued support.
Many thanks must go to my friends as well: Ruth Foxe Blader, Grace Ray, Heather Frater, Beth Foster, Alex Parsons, Alice Dickens, Amy and Brad Miller, Ann Biddlecom, Anne Engelhardt, Caroline Zouloumian, Carrie Gross, Maureen Squillace, Sara Gegenheimer, Sue Zwick, Matthew Vaeth, Rich Natale, and Barbara Sheffer.
I would also like to acknowledge all of the efforts of my editor, Jennifer Pooley, and my agent, Jonathan Pecarsky.
The books that were invaluable to me in researching this novel were Report for Action by the New Jersey Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorder and Memoirs of a Newark, New Jersey Police Officer by Anthony Carbo, with special credit going to Carolyn Bonastia for referring it. The book Ours: The Making and Unmaking of a Jesuit by F. E. Peters taught me everything I needed to know about the novitiate experience, and The Ultimate Guide to Small Game and Varmint Hunting by H. Lea Lawrence taught me even more than I wanted to know about small game hunting. I would have been lost without the website Old-Newark.com, and I am indebted to Glenn Geisheimer, who runs the site, as well as everyone who contributed to it. I also want to thank Charlie Cheskin for sharing his experiences during the riots with me.
About the Author
BRETT ELLEN BLOCK received her undergraduate degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan. She went on to earn graduate degrees at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of East Anglia’s Fiction Writing Program in England. She won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her debut collection of short stories, Destination Known, and is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. She is also the author of The Grave of God’s Daughter. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE LIGHTNING RULE. Copyright © 2006 by Brett Ellen Block. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-191592-5
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