The Lightning Rule by Brett Ellen Block Page B

soft on the right side. Someday soon, the structure would collapse. Emmett said a prayer that “someday” wasn’t that day.
    “Who’s this?” Cyril demanded, getting in Fossum’s face. “Where’s your badge, nigga?”
    A cautionary glance from Emmett silenced him, though he continued to hover close to Otis, straining like a dog at the end of its tether. Across the room, a woman was lying on a love seat, legs swung across the armrest, eyelids drooping. Cigarette burns stippled the seat cushions. The argument Emmett had heard through the door must have been one-sided. The woman was too strung out to stay awake.
    “Are you Freddie Guthrie’s mother, ma’am?”
    “Who wants to know?” she singsonged, a bottle of beer held loosely in her hand.
    “Act right, Lossie. I told you, this is the cops.”
    “I have to speak to your son, Mrs. Guthrie.”
    She hummed to herself and was on the verge of dozing off when Cyril slapped her shin. “Wake up. Tell him what he needs so he can leave.”
    Lossie Guthrie was thin, her eyes sunken and hollow. The silhouette of her ribs pressed through her chest. She had slept in her clothes. “Come again, Officer?” she said.
    “Your son, Freddie. Can you tell me where he is?”
    “You should know.”
    Emmett didn’t understand.
    “Don’t you cops know everything?” She said that as though the answer was a given. “He’s in jail. Got picked up yesterday. He had one phone call. And he called me, his mama,” Lossie boasted, then the beer bottle slipped from her grasp and spilled everywhere. She watched the beer seep across the floor, puzzled. Cyril was about to boil over. He hadn’t thought to get dressed.
    “Did you post his bail, ma’am?”
    “Not on your life,” Cyril growled.
    “Didn’t have the money,” Otis said under his breath.
    That snapped the tether. Cyril lunged at him and grabbed Fossum by the collar. Plaster dust puffed from his shirt. As Cyril cocked his right hand, Emmett kicked him in the back of the knee, dropping him to the floor in a heap. Pain made Cyril curl into a ball. The spilled beer soaked into his boxers.
    Emmett hustled Fossum toward the door. “What happened to you keeping quiet?”
    “I got the not runnin’ part right.”
    “You’re going home now, Otis. And don’t argue with me.”
    “Wouldn’t dream of it, Mr. Emmett.”
    This time, Fossum wasn’t tempted to glance over his shoulder. Emmett was, though. He stole a final look at Lossie Guthrie. Contrary to what she believed, the police didn’t know everything, not even close. Ambrose Webster had been dead for less than a day and Emmett had no clues, no witnesses, and no leads, and the only person who might have an idea of Webster’s whereabouts was in jail.
    Lossie was humming a lullaby and watching Cyril writhe. Emmett couldn’t tell if the lullaby was for him or for herself. He was positive it wasn’t for her son, Freddie.

THIRTEEN
    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