Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (100 best novels of all time txt) 📗

the Librarian of Congress, a dozen U.S. senators, three times as many House members, a single Supreme Court justice, various Washington staffers, the mayor and four council representatives of the District of Columbia, several members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, and Alpha Phi Alpha brothers from eighteen states occupying seven rows. The pews immediately behind you are filled with friends, neighbors from various places you’ve lived, Grant’s co-workers and yours, classmates you haven’t seen in decades, and strangers you likely will never see again. So many people have offered sympathy, tears, and embraces you have begun to feel numb.

You are seated in the middle of the front pew beside your only living relatives—your cousin Sam from Buffalo and your daughter. The only child of two only children, Miranda clutches your left arm, weeping against your shoulder, as her fiancé Ben keeps an arm draped over her shoulders. More an older brother than a cousin, Sam sits on your right, helping you to your feet when the assembly must stand, though he himself, a long-retired widower, is not in the best of health.

There is abundant security—DC police in uniforms, dark-suited men and women with earpieces and flag lapel pins, nine or ten FBI windbreakers along the walls, and a Fairfax County plainclothes detective at either end of your pew—as if the presence of politicians and the media will draw Gravel Voice and his posse out of hiding to strike during the funeral.

All this for Grant, who died in your lap as blood in his lungs made breathing harder and each head-snapping gulp for air helped bone fragments from the broken bridge of his nose sliver deeper into his brain. For Grant, whose failure to load his gun had left you dry-firing into your own temple.

In black robe and kente cloth stole, the Rev. Dr. Arlo Durance, whom you’ve known for more than twenty years, climbs into the pulpit. A big brown-skinned man with thick lenses in wire rims, large hands, and a head full of white hair, he clutches the sides of the pulpit and recites two passages of scripture without opening the Bible before him. The first is from Isaiah 57: “The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, while no one understands. For the righteous are taken away from calamity and they enter into peace.” Next is the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want…”

The sound system gives Dr. Durance’s already powerful voice more resonance. Finishing the psalm, he gazes out at the packed assembly, quiet save for shuffling feet and the occasional cough, as if waiting for a sign to continue. After a moment, he removes his glasses and wipes his eyes. His voice cracks as he says, “Friends, there is a storm coming, as destructive as any hurricane or wildfire. It did not start in recent times, with mass shootings at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, a Baptist church in rural Texas, a mosque in Quebec City, or a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Fed by the frailties and fears of those who have forgotten to love their neighbors, it is an evil as old as the human heart, with a hunger that exceeds its size. It is in a constant struggle with what Lincoln called our better angels. It is remorseless, has manifested itself as wars, genocides, and all manners of slaughter and atrocity, from the public lynching to the home invasion. Sometimes we beat it down into the ground, bury this evil for the betterment of all. But it always manages to dig its way back to the light. Now it is rising again, a tempest the like of which we have not seen in decades, with winds of rage driving a rain of hate that threatens to wash over our entire country and out into the world. Brother Grant Gibbons is not the first victim of this coming storm, and as much as I pray to God I am wrong, he will not be the last.”

Five days after the funeral, Miranda, Ben, and you sit in a small conference room in the Massey Building, across a metal table from Lieutenant Grace Wesley and Sergeant Glenn Covelli. Tall and broad-shouldered, with green eyes and ash blonde hair, Wesley is in her late forties. She is the one who interviewed you at the hospital that first night, explaining both the Castle Doctrine that exempted you from prosecution and the path the investigation would take. She is the one who called to tell you they had identified the dead man—Brick Butler of Montgomery County, Maryland—and that he had been cremated in a private service. Since then she has called at least once a day to check on you.

Perhaps a decade younger, Covelli is clean-shaven, with thinning black hair and thick eyebrows. He seldom speaks but his dark eyes are so alert you suspect he misses nothing. Today he is watching you and Miranda as Wesley reviews the latest developments. They were the detectives in your pew at the funeral, and to the extent you can trust anyone right now, you have begun—just begun—to trust them.

“As I told you on Monday,” Wesley says, “Butler had a long criminal record in Maryland—drug possession, fraud, petit larceny, assault and battery, for which he did six months in MCI Jessup. Because he lived in Montgomery County and died in Annandale during the commission of a crime, we have to work across state lines with other law enforcement entities.”

“Including the FBI,” you say. “They said they were Liberty Storm. Doesn’t that make this a hate crime?”

“Liberty Storm is a start, but this is the first murder linked to that group, with only your word that’s what they said.” She cuts off your response with an uplifted hand. “Until we have more evidence, we can move ahead with breaking and entering, assault, and murder. For what it’s worth, most hate crimes are prosecuted at the state level anyway, with support from the