Free The Blackstone Commentaries by Rob Riggan Page A

Up in the mountains, they could almost smell time—the past, present and future, but the past particularly. They would cruise the top of the world, holding to the pure, unfettered feel of it. If they’d been smart, they would have done that instead of getting a search warrant for Martin Pemberton’s car.
    Eddie knew you didn’t embarrass Pemberton twice, and judging by hislook when he steamed out of the jail the Monday after the Carver shooting, someone sure as hell had.
    â€œMorning, Dr. Pemberton,” Eddie said as he climbed the steps to the office, being friendly, but the doctor just shoved by him without a word. That not being like Pemberton, it was then Eddie knew for sure it all was ready for the oven, as his father used to say, and it was going to be one hell of a taco. What he thought was that Charlie and Pemberton had hated each other from the outset but convinced themselves that somehow they could be friends, or ought to be friends, the way people sometimes do, so it had been just a matter of time before things unraveled. The fact it went almost thirteen years was nothing short of a miracle.
    And Eddie knew Charlie could push buttons, drive men to real violence sometimes with just a look. He once thought that if Charlie believed in God, it would be Jehovah in the Old Testament, not a Jesus kind of God.
    Eddie saw Charlie heave a man into a vat of hot mash once and knew it wasn’t an act of wanton violence by a person in love with his authority. It was Maynard Pease who was heaved, one of the meanest bootlegging sonsuvbitches ever whelped in those mountains. Charlie got under his skin without a word, as Eddie had seen by the way Pease’s face suddenly darkened like every blood vessel in it burst at once. As quick as a person could blink, Pease shoved a pistol in Charlie’s face and pulled the trigger. The gun went off, only in the air because Pease was already flying backward. No one was ever prepared for Charlie’s speed. But if speed and physical strength and political instincts were what kept Charlie alive, they weren’t what made him special. No, it was that moral force—righteousness, some would call it—that could incense a man to outright foolishness. Eddie knew Martin Pemberton knew it, too.
    Though not very religious, Eddie had grown up with the Bible out on the Panhandle of Oklahoma, where there wasn’t much else except grass and wind. And dust. The wind was always blowing, and sometimes it bore the dust. And the dust would seep through the walls of a house like something coming to get a person. He’d always felt there was something timeless and sad and inevitable about it all.
    Eddie had come to believe that if vengeance was the Lord’s, justice wasn’t, no matter what the preachers said. God pointed out to Job that Hecreated the shivering horse and the toothsome crocodile and everything else, right down to the ostrich that dropped its eggs on the ground and walked away, leaving them to fate. Now, was that just? Eddie had asked himself that question more than once. And no, it wasn’t, but it was the way He’d made it, so who was going to argue? Who could stand up to that kind of power? God didn’t have to think, didn’t have to believe in any justice. What He did simply was. But Eddie had noticed that for some people with real power, justice wasn’t an issue either. Unless someone like Charlie made it one.
    Maybe that’s all it was—the have-nots wanted the power so they could compete on equal ground. Short of that, they’d take justice, some kind of boundary on bad behavior. Maybe deep in their hearts, people carried around a remnant from Eden, a memory or yearning for a time when everything made sense and they could live without pain.
    But it was Pemberton himself who took Charlie to the mountaintop—a steak dinner at Dorothy’s Restaurant, back when Charlie was still with the preacher—and offered