The Lightning Rule by Brett Ellen Block Page A

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 curbwhere 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 mail.
    “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.
    All of the windows and walls were tilted, and the floors pitched unevenly. The building’s foundation had gone