by Randy Alcorn
“I’ve heard gang killings are low priority,” Clarence said.
“Not low priority. It’s just that there’s getting to be more of them. Hard to keep up with. And hard not to move on when there isn’t a quick solution. What can I say? We’re overworked.”
“So you’re going to let my sister’s murder fall through the cracks?” Clarence watched Ollie’s red neck get redder.
One of the advantages of black skin. Easier to hide your emotions.
“Nope. Told you that already. I’m doing my best. See this?” He lifted up a half-inch stack of papers held together by a metal clamp. “Those are reports from the uniformed officers who first arrived on the scene.”
He picked up another stack and pushed it toward Clarence. “These are interviews with neighbors conducted by Manny and me.”
He picked up a big bulging manila envelope. “These are the photographs from the scene, and the autopsy.” He kept the envelope on his side of the desk, his hand on top of it.
“I’ve gone over it all three or four times, looking for anything.” As Ollie flipped through the big stack of papers, Clarence saw yellow highlighting and red underlining and scribbling in the margins.
“I’m just trying to help you understand why I can’t give it my undivided attention,” Ollie said. “I’ve got other victim’s families just as anxious as you are.” Ollie’s eyes went to the office window. He jumped up and opened the door.
“Hey, Manny, come on in here. Say hi to Mr. Abernathy.”
Manny came over and nodded coldly to Clarence, flashing an unmistakable “what the heck is he doing here” look at Ollie. He didn’t extend his hand. Neither did Clarence.
“We were just discussing his sister’s case.”
“Think that’s a good idea?” Manny spit out the words as though they were stale chewing tobacco that couldn’t spend another moment in his mouth.
“Don’t know,” Ollie said. “But I’m trying to be accommodating. I size up the person and ask myself how much I should say. A skill you need to learn, Manny. Now look at Mr. Abernathy. What strikes you about him?”
Manny sized up Clarence, as if at a loss to come up with anything. “He’s big,” he finally said.
“Good, Manny. The eyes of a skilled detective, picking up the subtleties other people would miss. Now, what impresses you about him? Something positive.”
Manny paused, searching. “He doesn’t speak ghettoese.”
Clarence stared at him hard. Tacobender.
“You’ll have to excuse my partner, Mr. Abernathy. He doesn’t try to be offensive. It just comes naturally.” Manny looked unrepentant.
“Now, Manny,” Ollie continued, “what I see is a man who loved his sister and wants to see that the bad guys get caught. We can understand that, now can’t we?”
“But we shouldn’t let him get in our way. The time you spend holdin’ his hand could be used on the case.”
Ollie looked at Clarence. “Manny’s a former gangbanger. Fresno, wasn’t it? Still has that flair, don’t you think? What he knows could come in handy on this case. He’s like sixty grade sandpaper. He rubs on you, but he gets the job done. Right, Manny?”
“Speaking of the job,” Manny said, “I’ve got work to do. Later.” He looked at Ollie, not Clarence.
“Okay. Have a nice day. Try not to spread too much good cheer.” Ollie smiled and waved as Manny shut the door behind him.
“Charming guy,” Clarence said.
“Savvy guy. Glad he’s on our side.”
“Doesn’t he get to you?”
“Occasionally,” Ollie said. “He’s not Mr. Personality, but he’s fast, careful, and efficient. He hasn’t been a detective long, still on probation. Everybody is their first year in detective division. I’m breaking him in. By the time I’m done, maybe he’ll be as good as I am. But he’ll never be as handsome. Wasn’t gifted with a kisser like this one.” Ollie patted his own cheeks affectionately.
“What was he before? A patrol officer?”
“Yeah. That’s where we all come from. You pay your dues, emerge from the ranks. I recommended Manny. Saw him work uniformed in a few cases. His reports were clear and detailed. He’s perceptive, vivid imagination on how to pull off a crime. Comes with the gangbangin’. Knows how to think like a crook. That’s a gift for a detective, you know. Separates the men from the boys. Now, if we could just get him a personality.”
“So, there’s no other witness besides Mrs. Burns?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But you said—”
“Truth is, there could easily be witnesses. It wasn’t that late, and it was a Saturday night. In fact, I’m surprised they did it as early as midnight. Maybe they just got anxious and jumped the gun. People are out on the streets late in that part of town. I drove around same time last Saturday night, up and down the streets. I saw maybe eight people who could have easily seen something if it happened that night. You got this car squirreling off following forty rounds? My theory is there was a witness or two. Getting them to come forward is something else.”
“They don’t trust the police,” Clarence said. “They come forward and they think they’ll be arrested for the crime.”
“You got it,” Ollie said. “Irrational, but that’s what they think.”
Blacks are irrational, huh? Or maybe they’re smart enough to learn from experience.
“Let’s say you do find a witness,” Ollie said. “Try getting them to talk. Try getting them to go all the way to the witness stand. Either it’s a betrayal—they feel like they can’t snitch—or they’re afraid of retaliation. Sometimes the gangs fill the court when the witness testifies, and all of a sudden they forget their story. With gangs, usually we know who did it but we can’t prove it in court and it’s all a waste of time.”
“What do you mean you usually know who did it? How?”
“With gang killings, word gets out on the street. Guys brag about it to their homies, somebody overhears, tells all his friends. The ghetto grapevine. Next thing you know, one of our gang officers catches the word. Often it’s the girlfriends.”
“Huh?”
“The homegirls, the gals that hang around the set. It’s the latest gossip, bragging rights on whose man shot who. Usually within twelve hours everybody knows on the street. These guys are into building their reputations, and you can’t build your rep unless people know what you did. A Blood wants people to know when he kills a Crip. He wants credit for it. Puts up the newspaper clipping on his wall. You do the work, you want the payoff, and the rep’s the biggest part of it.”
“What makes you think you know so much about gangs?”
“Used to work gangs for LAPD,” Ollie said. “Before I transferred up here in ’86.”
Figures. LAPD. Racism capital of the world.
“Speaking of people knowing on the street,” Ollie said, “that’s what bothers me most about this case. Word isn’t out on the street. Typically we hear who did it. Hearing isn’t proof, but then we can focus in on the guy. If we can nail him on another charge, say shoplifting or possession, we can get a warrant to search him. We can do a ballistics match on his weapon, the whole nine yards. But this time, there’s nowhere to begin. No word on the streets. Totally quiet. That’s different. Really different. And that’s not all that bothers me.”
“What else?”
“Okay.” Ollie stood up and paced, like a professor getting wound up for a lecture. “Why do gangbangers do drive bys rather than go face to face? Mostly to take them by surprise and avoid being shot back. And of course, to get recognition and send a warning. The Italian gangsters started it back in old Chicago, and the Irish picked it up. In the sixties, the Hispanic gangs perfected it, and all the gangs do it now.”
Clarence took strange comfort in picturing Italians and Irish and other Anglos originating gangland drive bys.
“The difference is, in those days, the crooks shot each other. They seldom wasted women, children, or innocents. I
f they did, they got in trouble with the bosses, who conned themselves into thinking they were moral people. But today’s drive by is looser. It’s still aimed at an enemy, but it’s more careless. They can hit bystanders, even babies, and they may just think of it as casualties of war. Not like the old days.”
The good old days. When murders were careful, thoughtful, responsible.
“Okay,” Ollie said. “I can see how they could go after someone outside your sister’s house or even somebody they thought was inside, and your sister and niece could accidentally get shot. But that’s not what happened. This was thought out. They had to know it was your sister’s bedroom. But why your sister? I just can’t see why they’d go after her. It doesn’t make sense. Can you help me out?”
“I’ve thought about it,” Clarence said. “I asked my whole family. I mean, Dani didn’t greet the bangers with open arms, but there’s lots of anti-gang people in the neighborhoods. She’s just one among many. There’s nothing about Dani that could explain what happened.”
“Nothing we know about. The question is, what don’t we know?”
“I know her…knew her better than anybody.”
Ollie looked at notes in front of him. “No needle marks. No indications of drug use. No prostitution. Nobody she was sleeping with.”
“Who do you think you are, talkin’ about Dani like that?” Clarence was on his feet, leaning forward, his hands on Ollie’s side of the desk, his face inches away, close enough for Ollie to feel the heat of his breath.
“Hey. Chill. I said she wasn’t doin’ any of that. My point is, she was a model citizen.”
Clarence sat down.
“Maybe,” Ollie said, “she knew something she shouldn’t have and somebody wanted to keep her quiet. All I know is, it just doesn’t fit the profile.”
“What profile?”
“The kind of people who get hit. Lots of drive bys are just to scare people, warn them. If they get hit fine, but most people survive drive bys. But this was a makesure killing, a big-time hit, one of the biggest we’ve ever had in Portland. By L.A. standards, no big deal, but in Portland at most you might have a nine millimeter spray from an AK-47 or a MAC 10, a Tech 9, maybe an Uzi. A dozen shots, maybe as many as twenty. But forty automatic high penetration rounds targeted into a single bedroom?”
Clarence stared at the back of his hands on the table.
“I could see it if it was a gang leader or somebody who raped the killer’s sister or murdered his brother. Or maybe a baller or high roller who sold bad cocaine to your best friend, so it’s personal and you want to take him out in a blaze. Here, the only remote connection we can make is that your nephew’s been hanging with some Rollin’ 60s taggers and wannabes.”
“You’re saying they were after Ty?”
“No, I don’t think so. His room’s on the other side of the house, in the back. They wanted him, they’d have shot up his room. But it’s too much. Nobody would do this to get a fourteen-year-old wannabe.”
“How do you know all this about my nephew?”
“It’s my job to know. I interviewed a dozen people in the hood. Asked about your sister, your nephew, anything and everything. It’s like panning for gold. You have to go through a lot of mud and rocks, and you don’t know what’s what till you sift it out.”
Clarence stared blankly.
“Nobody pulls out that kind of weapon for a crime of passion.”
“What kind of weapon exactly?”
“Still working on that. We know from the number of shells, the distribution, and how quickly it happened it was a fully automatic rifle. The weapon caliber is common—not as common as nine millimeter, but .223 is no big clue. The penetration was exceptional; .223 doesn’t sound like an impressive caliber, but it’s very high velocity, and at close range it had a devastating effect.”
“That night, when I saw you at my sister’s?”
“Yeah?”
“You said something about using lasers. What did you mean?”
“It’s pretty new. Been using it less than two years. Called the total station. It sends out a laser beam, a light beam technically, which strikes a mirrored prism on top of a pole. In three to five seconds it measures horizontal distance, vertical height and degree of azimuth based on a compass point. Gets pretty technical.”
I can understand. I’m not stupid.
“A handheld computer, less than a pound, interfaces with the station, and it screens plots with points and lines. Then you take it back to the office and download it to a bigger computer, like our Pentium here. Draws everything to scale. Accuracy is something like three millimeters per mile.”
“What’s the point?”
“Lets you study the crime scene exactly as it was, only a day later, a week or a month. I was just looking at it again this morning.”
“Can I see it?”
“Doesn’t tell you that much, really,” Ollie said. “I don’t know if it would be good for you to see it. I mean, with your sister and all.”
“I want to see it.”
“Don’t know if I can do that,” Ollie said. “Better talk to my lieutenant.”
“She’s my sister.”
“Right. That’s why I’ve been talking with you—and because Jake Woods vouched for you. But it’s my case. Don’t forget it.”
“It’s a free country,” Clarence said. “I can nose around myself.”
“Yeah, you can. But you better not get in the way of my investigation.” Ollie caught the tension in his own voice, though he couldn’t see the red splotches on his neck.
“Tell you what, Abernathy. You let me write your columns for you, and I’ll let you take over my investigation. Deal?”
“I’m headed out to the trail.”
“Okay. Be careful. Got some raisins?”
Clarence grunted and was gone. Geneva lived in fear of him having a serious insulin reaction when he was biking. He’d had a couple, which is why she insisted he keep a sugar source in his bike pack.
Clarence got on his eighteen-speed Cannondale and headed toward the Spring-water Corridor Trail. Crossing the Mount Hood Freeway at Hillyard Road, he saw a McDonald’s bag, then a Taco Bell sauce packet, then a Ben and Jerry’s wrapper.
What’s wrong with you people? Think you’re the only ones living on this planet?
It frosted him to see what people were doing to his beloved Oregon. Dumping garbage by a roadside was once practically a capital offense in this state. You could be pardoned for armed robbery, maybe, but not for littering. Now he’d see high school kids throw their garbage out the window as if what they did just didn’t matter. Once he even pulled some over and bawled them out.
After a quick left and a quick right, he was on the Springwater Corridor Trail, in another world. It was an escape from roads, litter, noise, crime, and congestion. He felt the tension draining already. The only people he met on the trail were fellow respecters of nature and wildlife and solitude. Trees surrounded him. He picked up the speed and kicked it into high gear but could still see minutia all around him. A huge, architecturally perfect spider web, the white froth of the stream as it swallowed big rocks.
He listened to the soothing sound of the gravel, like pouring milk on a huge bowl of Rice Krispies. He heard birds sing and crickets chirp and a bossy squirrel chatter at him. He thought of what people back in the Chicago projects, people even in Portland, would give to have daily access to a place such as this. It was a better world. Something inside told him he was made for a better world, and if this wasn’t it, at least it contained hints of what he longed for.
He passed by the old brick factory just before crossing under Hogan Road. There was another squirrel. Two rabbits. A few days ago he’d seen a raccoon and a skunk. Two weeks ago, three coyotes.
The trail had been developed by removing old train tracks that connected Portland to Gresham. There were seemingly endless miles of trail hidden behind trees and invisible from streets. It afforded a chance for Clarence to work
his body while resting his mind, a welcome change from the usual pattern.
He noted the waxy green of the leaves, the bulging black of the overripe blackberries, the penetrating purple of the faux paws. Colors thrived here, outside the destructive reach of human hands. What a stark contrast to the encroaching concrete jungle of the city, which like the Sahara seemed to claim more turf every day.
A low powerful growl erupted into a series of excited barks.
Ah, Hugo.
He looked at the Rottweiler he’d christened Hugo, who had the good fortune of living near the trail and challenging every rider who flew by. Clarence had gotten into the habit of bringing leftovers to make the dog’s day.
“See you in thirty minutes, Hugo.”
Twice he’d taken Dani out here this summer, and she’d loved it. “If you move out to Gresham, we’ll find you a nice place near this trail,” Clarence had promised her. Why hadn’t she listened to him? Why hadn’t she moved out here where it was safe? Why had she been so stubborn?
He pedaled toward Main Street Park. He looked carefully into the shadows on his left, down at the pond, looking for familiar faces. There they were. A mother doe and her fawn, drinking from the pond. He’d told Dani about these two, and she’d wanted to see them. He said he’d bring her out here again. It hadn’t ever worked out.
He rode by the baseball diamond at the back of the park, today empty, but where white kids played summer baseball. White kids? Why had he said that in his mind? It was open to all kids in the community, blacks as well as whites. But he’d never seen a black kid out there. Nobody’s fault. There were just so few black kids around. He winced at the fresh gang graffiti above a garbage can. Just a few years earlier there had been no gang presence in Gresham.
He came to the cemetery and zipped the windbreaker high up his neck. It was mid-September and the heat of just ten days ago was a fading memory. Why did everything feel like winter now? Many of the leaves seemed past their prime, dried out prematurely, giving up on life and ready to be blown away into oblivion.
After a few minutes of sprinting hard on the bike, he turned around and parted from the trail at Eastman, riding up across Powell. He headed to Coffee’s On, by GI Joe’s, to reward himself.
