ACT OF GOD
Normal engineers like to build things…James McGettigan works solely on failures. Inspiration come from listening to his wife…she’s been dead from cancer almost two years…his diagnosis is brand new. He sees politicians clearly…as venal creatures worthy more of mockery than admiration…yet his clients are those same creatures and he, himself, is a Mayor of a South Florida village. Uber-wealthy CEO’s are his fondest source of ridicule…they are his neighbors.
On a hazardous waste site, McG thinks he’s looking for a body. He finds whistle-blowers gathering evidence of corruption, only to be buried with them when a bulldozer covers their exit.
This is the second time in a year McG has been buried.
A gymnasium roof in Portland, Maine had collapsed in a snowstorm. McG’s Godson was inside. McG crawled under and over wreckage, finding bodies and saving two lives. A wrongful death suit, filed in the aftermath is defended by Louise Young, an exquisitely capable and beautiful woman. A loser, the case is scheduled to be dismissed by the trial judge.
The morning before McG’s cancer surgery, the Mayor of Memphis phones: Millions of gallons of sewage have spilled into the Mississippi River. The explanation from Eddie Tyler, the City’s lead engineer is an ACT OF GOD. Excoriated for polluting the River, black church leaders accuse Mayor Patterson, a black minister, of environmental racism.
Losing his wife brought McG to the edge of sanity. Baseball has always been a refuge. A young girl is raped at a ballfield. McG rescues the victim…singing a lullaby as he does. He’s a suspect.
In Memphis, shots are fired into McG’s car. A second rape. Hauntingly similar to Florida, is reported.
Events in Memphis drag James back thirty years in memory, when sewage last had contaminated the Mississippi. When ACT OF GOD had, again, been the rationale…and had spawned a lingering need passion for revenge.
Two cases of engineering failures. Two rapes. McG believes he’s the only one connecting the dots…if they aren’t imaginary,
Suspected by the police, thought crazy by his friends, McG stumbles upon a new technology to resurrect the wrongful death lawsuit, and plans to rescue Memphis’ Mayor by cutting deals with devils. Hunted by a monster who assaults children for corporate gain, he finds an ally in another victim of cancer’s terror.
A third rape entwines the wrongful death lawsuit in the monster’s web. McG’s theories will never pass scrutiny with the police.
Needing an adversary’s help, McG breaks the rules of law and civil behavior; never expecting what will happen. Or how he will respond.
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