The Lightning Rule (9 page)

The Fourth Precinct could have passed for a condemned building. With plywood boards covering the ground-floor windows, burn marks on the brick, and last night’s spent ammunition of trash and broken bottles strewn across the sidewalks, the only sign that it was an operating police station were the cops out front.

Patrolmen stood watch at the entrance, more for effect than any real function. They milled around the steps, smoking, talking, and baking under the vicious sun, their faces and forearms burnt red. A television crew had staked a plot directly across from the precinct, and the cameraman was killing time, tinkering with a tripod while a reporter in a wrinkled summer-weight suit was testing out the best angles. The crew had been on the block for so long that they ceased to interest passersby. Although the protest rally was hours away, the sense that something big was about to take place had diminished, the previous night’s uproar a fading thought.

Emmett hadn’t intended to return to the station that day, however he needed to get the scoop on Freddie Guthrie’s charges, and something was tapping at his conscience, begging to be remembered, a detail from a case that had recently come through the Records Room. He
bypassed the front door and its fence of patrolmen and used his key to the rear.

The light he usually left on in the Records Room was off, which immediately put him on guard. Somebody had been there. Emmett lurched through the pitch-black basement, brushing against shelves that appeared in his path like phantoms. The darkness was disarming. Blind, he groped the walls for the light switch, then the fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life, stinging his eyes until they could adjust.

Three new cases were stacked on his desk, ready to be filed. Whoever had delivered them might have shut off the lights, force of habit when exiting a room. Nevertheless, Emmett checked the desk to see if anything had been disturbed. The drawers didn’t appear to have been rifled through. He wrote off the lights to happenstance, hung his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and started in on the top shelf where he had filed the most recent cases.

The folder Emmett was hunting for was one of the first he had read after his demotion. It had been sent down from Homicide, unsolved. What had welded it into his memory was the fact that the investigating officers were Detectives Larry Hochwald and Nic Serletto, the guy who baited him. Petty as it was, Emmett got a certain satisfaction from the seasoned detectives’ inability to close the case. Their failure put him on equal footing with them, though Serletto and Hochwald weren’t men Emmett would ever consider equals.

He ceased to feel quite so superior once he had read the report. The details were grim, and guilt over his gloating had Emmett wishing for the culpa beads he wore inside his cassock as a novice. Twice daily at the seminary, before lunch and in the evening, Emmett would stand beside his desk, bend and kiss the floor, then for fifteen minutes he had to recollect his actions and examine his conscience. He and his novitiate cohorts were given tiny notebooks in which to catalog the number and types of transgressions they made, and they were provided a string of culpa beads to be hung vertically on a safety pin by the heart. If a novice indulged in a particular vice, they were to reach into the cassock and move a bead from the top down, tallying their moral conduct. Emmett’s culpa beads were gone, yet he continued to keep a mental count.

Although he had filed Serletto and Hochwald’s case himself, Emmett couldn’t recall the victim’s name. He had to skim through dozens of others to find it. Most were fraught with unintelligible scrawl or words slanting across the page because someone had fed the paper into the typewriter crookedly. Typing class was compulsory at the academy, but the two-finger method prevailed, and the sound of men pecking at the station’s typewriters could be heard at any hour of the day. The staccato metal clicking of keys, interspersed with the odd swear, had become the precinct’s de facto background music. Sometimes it sifted to the basement through the vents. Not that day.

A pile was growing at Emmett’s ankles. Displaced folders began sliding across the shelf, pushing the next right into his hands. He instantly recognized the name on the tab: Julius Dekes.

Clipped to the top sheet of the report was a school photo of a black teenage boy in a striped shirt, his hair grown into an Afro. He was smiling, showcasing the wide gap between his two front teeth. His shoulders were so broad there wasn’t enough room for them in the camera frame.

Whoever had been in charge of managing the file—be it Serletto or Hochwald—hadn’t typed their portion of the report. It was practically illegible. Deciphering it would take effort. Luckily, the coroner had better handwriting.

Sixteen-year-old Julius Dekes was discovered in an overgrown empty lot on Sayre Street by a vagrant scrounging for something to pawn. The boy’s body was badly decomposed and showing signs of predation. The autopsy attributed numerous injuries on the teen’s arms and legs to rats. It also blamed them for Dekes’s missing ring finger. When he first read that, Emmett had trouble believing a rat would gnaw off an entire digit and ignore the rest. That was the detail that had been thumping in his mind since Dr. Ufland told him about Webster’s severed finger.

Emmett paged ahead to the line diagram of the human body that was included in every autopsy. On Julius Dekes’s, the ring finger on his left hand had been scribbled out with a pen to indicate that it was gone. Seeing that in black and white gave Emmett a disorienting jolt, similar to when the fluorescent lights had snapped on. He didn’t believe in co
incidences. Coincidences weren’t logical, and this coincidence was more than just illogical—it was disturbing. Emmett read on.

Numerous other slashes and circles dotted the human diagram, displaying a broken wrist, sizable abrasions, and untold rat bites. Cause of death was listed as loss of blood from a stab wound to the liver. The location was marked on the lower abdomen with an X like a treasure map. The weapon was listed as a large knife. Dekes’s height and weight put him over six feet and two hundred pounds, not as large as Ambrose Webster, but close, too close to be coincidence.

The signature on the coroner’s report was that of Dr. Conrad Aberbrook. Emmett had only met the old man once, standing across a surgical table from him with Vernon Young’s body between them. Aberbrook had retired shortly after that, meaning Julius Dekes’s was one of the final autopsies he performed. The procedure might be fresher in the doctor’s mind or muddled in the haste to ditch the daily grind for the blue skies and golden beaches of Florida. The odds of Aberbrook recollecting Dekes’s autopsy with any clarity were an even split.

Emmett could get a hold of Aberbrook by telephone if need be. What he would have preferred was to review the case notes. Hitting up Serletto and Hochwald for them promised to be an exercise in futility. Cops guarded their cases as their own private domains. Those two would have made Emmett grovel for the notes and never relinquished them. They would demand to know why he was interested in Dekes and would undoubtedly tell Lieutenant Ahern. Emmett couldn’t allow that. It was too soon. There wasn’t sufficient evidence to link Ambrose Webster’s death to Julius Dekes’s. Their deaths were similar—a missing finger, their age, build, and race. Emmett couldn’t go to the lieutenant with mere similarities, not if he wanted to hold on to the case. The second Ahern sniffed a connection between the murders, he would yank them from Emmett and toss them to Serletto and Hochwald. Emmett couldn’t allow that either.

Logic told him the cases were connected. The idea appalled and intrigued him, like a riddle he wasn’t certain he wanted the answer to. Earlier that year, the media had been abuzz about the conviction of Henry De Salvo as the Boston Strangler, murderer of thirteen women
from 1962 to 1964, and that April, Richard Speck had been sentenced to life in prison for killing eight nurses in Chicago. Those were big city investigations that had terrified the nation, multiple premeditated murders that hinted at a unique, new breed of killer. But Speck and De Salvo targeted women, catching them when they were unaware and helpless. Ambrose Webster and Julius Dekes were anything but helpless. That didn’t weaken Emmett’s logic, however it didn’t provide him with any leads.

In Robbery Division, Emmett had come across repeat offenders, burglars who stole for a living. Tracking them was often harder than finding the kid who broke into his neighbor’s apartment or the woman who swiped bottles of perfume off store counters. The pros worked at random, and Emmett would be forced to wait until they struck again to pick up their trails. He didn’t want to wait for whoever murdered Ambrose Webster and Julius Dekes to kill again, so he would have to work backward, piecing together what he could from the file he had, which was relatively thin, just the necessary paperwork, along with the crime scene photographs. In the pictures, Dekes’s body lay among trash and thriving weeds, a miserable end to an all too brief existence. Emmett couldn’t permit the sadness of it all to sink in or it would derail him and his logic. He removed the report and stored the empty folder in his desk drawer with the other files that had been delivered so it would seem as if he shelved them, then he rolled the documents regarding Julius Dekes’s murder into his inner breast pocket where his culpa beads would have been.

Ideally, Emmett would have taken his time to read the report thoroughly, but finding Freddie Guthrie took precedence. The desk sergeant would have the details of Guthrie’s arrest on the police blotter. A trip upstairs, beyond the seclusion of the basement, carried the risk of a run-in with Ahern, albeit remote. The lieutenant rarely deigned to come down from his office unless it was for his lunch break, when he would make a beeline for a cop bar on Belmont Avenue to have a gin and tonic and a sandwich, or when he cut out early to go to the house on Gold Street that had been set up as a gentlemen’s club for off-duty brass, no patrolmen allowed. Liquor and gambling as well as white and
black prostitutes were available noon and night. Rumor had it that Ahern would play poker until the wee hours of the morning, and he was a notoriously bad loser, at cards and everything else. It was Emmett who was about to take the biggest gamble. He had two murders now. He had to chance it.

The precinct’s front desk stood five feet high, a promontory of shellacked wood that was the focal point of the main hall. Presiding from atop it was the desk sergeant. A cigarette poked from the corner of his mouth. The threads of rising smoke caused him to squint his left eye. With his right, he perused that day’s newspaper.

He acknowledged Emmett by way of a question. “You read this article about last night?” he asked in his distinctively husky voice. “Says, ‘Hundreds of teenagers began forming roaming bands. The youths were rampaging in the blocks surrounding the police station.’ ‘Roaming’ and ‘rampaging.’ Sounds like a movie, like
Spartacus
or somethin’, doesn’t it? Wonder who they’d get to play me if it was. Humphrey Bogart’d be good.”

“Humphrey Bogart’s dead,” Emmett told him.

“I’m just sayin’ he’d be good. So what can I do for you, Detective?”

“I’m looking for a kid who was booked last night. Name’s Freddie Guthrie. Can you tell me why he was brought in?”

The sergeant set his cigarette in a full ashtray, dragged over the blotter, and turned the page to the previous day’s arrests. “Says here, ‘Loitering.’”

“Loitering? When was the last time someone was booked for loitering?”

A shrug was the sergeant’s best guess. “I’m supposta keep track ’a that?”

“Who arrested him?”

“Ionello and Vass. They’re in Auto.”

“And they made a collar for loitering?”

“Like I said, I don’t keep track. What I can tell you is that this Guthrie fella ain’t at Central. He’s at Newark Street.”

“What? Why?”

The Central Cellblock was a way station for defendants due in
court, ten cells for men and six for women, no lights, no toilet seats, and no mattresses, only concrete shelves that served as a bed or a bench. Few people spent longer than a night in Central, and it was designed so that one night would discourage a repeat visit. Compared to Newark Street, which housed four hundred male prisoners, most en route to state penitentiaries, the Central Cellblock was a deluxe hotel. Freddie Guthrie was a minor and shouldn’t have been detained at either facility. His being transferred to Newark Street didn’t bode well.

“Why was he sent there?”

“I couldn’t say.” The desk sergeant knew more than he was letting on.

“Have you ever heard of that happening or don’t you keep track?”

“Other people’s business. Not mine. You don’t see me asking you why you’re interested in this guy Guthrie, do ya?”

That was a warning, a shot fired across the bow. The desk sergeant plugged his cigarette back into his mouth and resumed reading his newspaper. His position made him privy to the inner workings of the precinct, like a view inside a clock at the moving parts, however, seeing too much could get a man, even a cop, in trouble. Staying out of other people’s business was sound advice, advice Emmett might be sorry he didn’t take.

The name “Newark Street” was department slang for the Essex County Jail, a boxy building that had the look of a lead safe. At the front of the prison compound was a small, stately house that acted as the entry gate. It was the city’s original jail and had been erected in 1837, a year after Newark incorporated, confirmation that crime was a motivating concern from the earliest days. The house’s brownstone facade and gracious front door gave off an air of affluence and civility, but in the jail beyond, the occupants weren’t affluent, and nothing about the place was civil.

A mesh cage encased the receiving desk. The heavyset prison guard sitting inside had an electric fan positioned a foot from his face. His uniform pulled across the chest, puckering at the buttons with every breath he took. “Visiting hours is on Monday and Wednesday,” he said flatly.

Emmett proffered his badge. “I’m here to see Freddie Guthrie.”

“That kid must be a star. You’re his third visitor today.” The guard retrieved the visitor’s log from a drawer, exasperated at having to move out of the direct path of the fan for even a second. “Sign in please.” Saying “please” was as close to polite as he would venture.

The last signatures in the log were those of Detectives Ionello and Vass. They had been there an hour ago. Emmett couldn’t ask for details. The guard might get suspicious.

“I missed the fan club. I was running late. Couldn’t tag along with my buddies. They told you to keep this quiet, right?”

“I figured it wasn’t a friggin’ conjugal visit. What do I care about some stool pigeon who hot-wired a car or whatever. Let him rot. I’d put him on the third tier with the nut jobs if it was up to me, ’cept your pals said to segregate him ’cause of his age. Said to watch his hands too. He’s a pickpocket, got fast fingers. Came in packing a water pistol, if you can believe it. Pretty dangerous character, huh?”

Emmett had been hoping for more from the guard. Ionello and Vass must not have shared much because whatever Freddie Guthrie was into involved them too. They had pulled strings to get him locked up in Newark Street. If their aim was to frighten Freddie that badly, they must have been frightened of him.

“Kid’s on the first tier. I’ll have somebody take you. Mind yourself, Detective. Most of the inmates know they’ll get hosed if they throw piss at ’cha, but they’ll spit if they think they’ll get away with it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Another guard came to escort Emmett from the reception area through a set of iron sliding doors into the jail. The pungent odor of four hundred sweaty men was a slap to the senses. A cacophony of shouting, talking, and off-key singing crowded Emmett’s ears. The cells were stacked three stories high, connected by narrow gangways and surrounded by warehouse-size windows embedded with chicken wire. Sunlight struggled to penetrate the dingy glass.

“Best stick close,” warned the guard. “If they try an’ touch you, lemme handle it, okay?” He was skinny, his shoulders stooped, the opposite of intimidating.

“Okay,” Emmett said.

The guard led him up a metal staircase. Paint was molting off the railings and walls in scabby flakes. Since the gangway wouldn’t accom
modate two astride, Emmett held a tight pace behind him. The noise level dropped at the sound of their footsteps. The men in the cells were waiting to see who would go by. Some lay on their bunks while others were right at the bars, arms hanging through. Many pulled their hands inside as the guard approached. One, however, timed it so he could snag Emmett’s sleeve. Emmett kept walking, yet the prisoner held on, reeling him backward. The instant the guard noticed, he spun on his heel and smashed his baton across the prisoner’s outstretched wrist. The man recoiled with a yelp.

“See,” the guard said, holstering the baton. “They’re sneaky.”

Afterward, the prisoners pushed to the rear of their cells when Emmett and the guard passed.

“Your guy’s on the end. Can’t let you inside with him, but I’ll give you some privacy. Wave when you’re done.” The guard ambled to the other end of the gangway, lightly strumming his baton as he went.

In the last cell on the tier sat a black boy. He was perched on the bottom bunk, his feet hanging over the edge of the bed, too short to reach the ground. He could have passed for twelve. The collar of his T-shirt was torn. Somebody had grabbed him and pulled too hard to make a point. Emmett could guess who.

“Freddie Guthrie?”

“Who’s askin’?”

“Are you all right?”

“What’s it to you?” Freddie fired back. His sarcasm and perfected scowl confirmed him to be a teenager. He had the come-out-swinging attitude of a kid who had been picked on because of his size, just as Mrs. Webster described.

“You a cop. I can smell your kind comin’ a mile away.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t be in jail, would you?”

“Whatever, man.”

“Look, I’m not with those other detectives who arrested you, Freddie.”

“You all the same to me.”

“I’m here about your friend, Ambrose Webster.”

Freddie’s eyes flashed, a moment of weakness, then his defenses rearmed. “What about him?”

“When was the last time you saw Ambrose?”

“Dunno.”

“Was it last night?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Yesterday afternoon?”

“Not sure.”

“That morning?”

“Maybe. My memory’s real fuzzy,” he said dryly, covering for Ambrose in case he was in trouble. “I ain’t talking to you, cop. So beat it.”

“He’s dead, Freddie. Ambrose is dead.”

Confusion softened Freddie’s face. He finally looked his age. “Nutuh. This is some kinda trick. You lyin’ to get me to say stuff.”

“I’m not lying. And I’m not here about stolen cars. My name’s Martin Emmett. I’m a Homicide detective. I need you to tell me where Ambrose was from yesterday morning on.”

The reality of his friend’s death descended on Freddie as a hammer would an anvil, stunning him into a daze. He pushed himself in the corner of the cell farthest from Emmett and began to cry.

Emmett was at a loss. He had been unable to bestow any comfort on his own brother that day outside their mother’s hospital room, and he had nothing to offer the boy before him now. Emmett didn’t know how to console Freddie or his brother or even himself. That was one of his reasons for abandoning the priesthood, and it was why he stayed in Robbery and never sought out a slot in Homicide. People rarely shed tears over stolen property. Their possessions were inanimate, usually replaceable. Murder was all about the irreplaceable.

“Tell me how,” Freddie said, regaining his composure. Emmett hesitated, but the kid was persistent, playing brave. “Tell me.”

“His throat was cut. His body was found in the Warren Street subway tunnel this morning.”

The facts dissolved Freddie’s courage. He wiped new tears
from his cheeks. “’Brose wasn’t smart like regular folks. I had to protect him. He woulda protected me too, if he knew how.” Freddie had succumbed to the sadness. He sounded grown up beyond his years.

“You can help him, Freddie, by helping me.”

“No, I can’t, Mister. I can’t help nobody. Your cop friends, they said that when I get back from court I won’t be in this cell alone, not no more.”

Freddie was smart enough to comprehend the implication. By rights, he should have been in Juvenile Hall, not jail. Emmett couldn’t get him transferred without tipping his hand, but the kid wouldn’t stand a chance fending off another prisoner.

“You’re what? Sixteen? What could you have done that has two police detectives breathing down your neck?”

All the fight had washed out of Freddie. Resigned, he told his story as if he was giving away his own ransom. “I was ditchin’ summer school, hanging around this junkyard on South Orange Avenue. I’d bring ’Brose with me sometimes. Show him the cars. He liked that. Some’d be smashed up, missing windshields and wheels and crap. But some still had good parts, so I took ’em and sold ’em to this guy who’s got a body shop on Springfield.”

The location rang an alarm to Emmett. “This guy wouldn’t happen to be Luther Reed, would it?”

Freddie nodded regretfully that it was. “You know him?”

Every cop at the Fourth Precinct did. Luther Reed was to the Central Ward what Ruggiero Caligrassi was to the Mafia’s crime syndicate. Reed ran his entire operation out of a body shop in the heart of the ward, however, he didn’t deal in hubcaps and dented fenders. He was the first to bring raw heroin in from New York City. Once he got it to Newark, he would cut it with quinine and sell it in glassine packets called “decks” for five dollars a pop. Reed was careful to steer clear of the mob’s numbers traffic and pimped solely black prostitutes. There was no love lost between his crew and Caligrassi’s, but they got along by sidestepping each other’s turf.

“Freddie, Luther Reed would knock your teeth out as soon as talk to you. Why on earth would you go to him?”

“The parts were stolen. I couldn’t sell ’em to just anybody. Luther started giving me lists. I’d bring him what he asked for, and he’d pay me. After a while, I got this idea about switchin’ the deeds from the wrecked cars for ones he boosted. Luther told me where all the identification numbers were on the locks and chassis, and I’d file them off. He’d buy the junkers, get the pink slips, and sell ’em so the stolen cars looked legit, then we’d split the money.”

“Luther Reed gave you half?” Emmett didn’t believe that for a second.

“Didn’t say it was a fifty-fifty split. More like a hundred bucks for every car.”

“That’s far from half. But it’s a hell of a lot of money and a pretty impressive scam. I bet Luther loved it.”

“Your cop pals did too. The day they came to the body shop to shake Luther down I was in the garage sanding a serial number off the door to a Plymouth. They dragged me out. Luther said I was nobody, that I swept up the place, and they was gonna let me go, but….” Embarrassment sapped Freddie’s momentum.

“But?”

“Those cops were saying how smart Luther was to think up the scheme with the cars, givin’ him compliments. I spoke up, said it was my idea. I wasn’t gonna let him take the credit. Not for my idea.” As clever as Freddie was, he was only a kid. His mistake had adult consequences.

“The cops said me and Luther’d go to jail if we didn’t give them some of the money we was making. Every two weeks, the one named Vass would come and collect, act nice, talk about which model cars we was pickin’, how we did it. That made me get another idea. I took my mama’s boyfriend’s tape recorder and put it under a car in the body shop. When that guy came back, makin’ like he was our friend, I hit record.”

Suddenly Emmett understood why Freddie was incarcerated. “You told the detectives you had them on tape.”

“You bet your ass I did. I said I was gonna get them fired. I thought that’d make them leave me and Luther alone.”

“Cops can’t get fired, Freddie. It’s more complicated than that. The detectives would have to be brought up on formal charges, and there would have to be a hearing to determine if they should be relieved of duty.”

“Hold up. You’re saying that if a waitress spits in your food, she gets canned, but a cop is allowed to do all kinda bad stuff and he won’t lose his job?”

“To put a fine point on it, yes. Except the tape you recorded could be used as evidence at trial.”

“Then I got ’um, right?”

Emmett gestured to the cell bars. “No, they’ve got you.”

“Man, I wasn’t doin’ nothing. I was mindin’ my business, walkin’ out my house, and they roll up in a cop car, tell me I’m loitering, and throw me in the backseat. They took me to the station, then to court, and when the judge guy asked me if I was guilty, I said, ‘Hell no.’ I been here since.”

“They want the tape.”

“Well, they ain’t getting’ it. It’s hidden. Somewhere safe.”

“Tell me you didn’t give it to Luther.”

“I said it was somewhere safe. I mighta run my mouth, but I ain’t that stupid.”

“Listen to me, Freddie. You and I can make a deal. An even split. Fifty-fifty. You help me. I help you.”

“You mean I help you, I help Ambrose.”

“Exactly. Now tell me where he was yesterday morning.”

“No way. Not until you get me outta here.”

“You don’t understand. I won’t be able to protect you until you’ve been released.”

“Then get me released.”

“If you haven’t noticed, you’re in jail. I can’t just open the door and let you go.”

“Yes, you can. You’re the police. You can do anything.”

To Freddie, that must have seemed true. Ionello and Vass had unfairly locked him up for a bogus arrest, a flagrant abuse of power. In his eyes, the police could do anything, right or wrong, and they could get away with it.

“Your mother can’t cover your bail?”

“It’s not that she can’t. Her boyfriend won’t let her ’cause he’s mad at me for takin’ his tape player.”

“I met him. He’s a real charmer.”

“If that’s cop lingo for he’s an asshole, then yeah, he’s a real charmer. He beats on her, and me, and I’m the one who goes in front of a judge.”

The comment tripped a wire in Emmett’s memory. “When you went before the magistrate, that was your preliminary hearing. You should have another court date set. Did anybody tell you when?”

“Nope.” Freddie shook his head as though it was a lost cause.

“I think I know how I can get you out of here. Don’t talk to anyone. Not the prisoners or the guards. Not until you see me again.”

“When’ll that be?”

Emmett glanced at his watch. “In the courtroom in an hour.”

Freddie mimed zipping his mouth shut, and Emmett saw the child in him, a child alone in a men’s prison. Emmett signaled for the guard. Arms darted inside the cells domino-style as they went back down to reception.

“When is Guthrie’s hearing scheduled?”

The guard in the mesh cage was rocking in his chair, tottering on its hind legs. “I’d have to check.”

“Do that.”

The chair legs fell to the floor with a thud, giving voice to the guard’s aggravation. He grudgingly flicked through the pages of a clipboard. “Little prick’s on the list for today’s two-o’clock bus. But your buddies told me to lose the paperwork and put him on tomorrow’s bus instead.”