A Measure of Darkness

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “No shit.”

  “She’s on about we need to get them ID’d and start notifying ASAP. Like we’re going slow on purpose.”

  “She’s stressed.”

  “I’m stressed,” he said. “You’re stressed. We’re all stressed.”

  “For ice cream,” I said.

  He laughed and stepped over a bongo drum.

  “Anyway,” I said, “allow me to point out, you’re the one guy got to sleep in today.”

  “The baby was up at two.”

  “Stop fucking having babies, then.”

  “Please please tell that to my wife.”

  Forensics had removed the sacks covering the body and set them out on the ground for examination. A tech was going through the trash cans, removing the contents piece by piece. Another was dusting the gardening implements.

  I stepped over to get a look at my decedent.

  White female, slight build. As with Jasmine Gomez, the lack of insulating fat meant that rigor had begun to set in, evident in the clenched jaw, the hands hooked into talons.

  Like Jasmine, like everyone who had died there that night, she was young.

  She wasn’t wearing a costume, so far as I could tell. The dirty blue shoes were an off brand. Faded black Levi’s. Gray cotton sweatshirt near the same shade. She’d picked holes in the sleeves, near the cuffs, for sticking her thumbs through. Among certain demographics, it can be difficult to know if threadbare clothing signifies wealth or poverty.

  On the whole her outfit seemed inadequate, given the chill.

  Had she left a coat inside the house? A bag?

  Had she been in the house?

  Had we been in the house?

  Zaragoza moved in a semicircle around the shed, taking flicks.

  The body conformed to the concrete, her left arm thrown up over her head, leaving the inside of the wrist and a bit of forearm exposed. Needle marks.

  Nwodo had asked my permission. Just plain manners to reciprocate. “Okay for us to get started?”

  “Be my guest.”

  I spread sheets on the gravel. Zaragoza put down the camera and we crouched to ease the decedent out. Her limbs were stiff but not fully set; when we placed her on the sheet, her left arm curled back into position, like a spring-loaded doll.

  Daylight revealed extensive bruising around her throat. No ligature marks apparent, although it does happen that they get lost amid other trauma. My gut told me she’d been throttled. Skull and neck unbroken, extremities intact. I detected a soft spot on the left side of her rib cage, possibly a fracture.

  Turning her over, I saw outlines of finger pads in the bruises, as well as the scratch marks characteristic of an attempt to pry loose an assailant’s hands. Ruptured blood vessels bloomed in her cheeks and the whites of her eyes.

  Up close, her features suggested that she was of mixed race.

  Her jeans were buttoned and zipped.

  Her pockets were empty.

  I stared at them, turned inside out like dry white tongues; no paper, no possessions, nothing to establish her personhood or validate her place in society. Of all the awful things I’d witnessed in the last eight hours, it was the sight of those pockets that got to me most. Perhaps exhaustion had finally set in. But I couldn’t stop myself from imagining her final moments.

  Rough hard concrete against the back.

  Lazy trickle of dirt inside plastic bags.

  The solitude; darkness waxing.

  Behind me, the techs were discussing soil types.

  Nwodo was shuffling her feet.

  Zaragoza had resumed taking flicks.

  I completed my preliminary exam, noting the extent and location of lividity.

  We bagged and zip-tied her hands.

  We covered her and knotted the sheets.

  My primary concern was getting her ID’d. At the request of Forensics, Zaragoza and I hadn’t searched inside the shed. Could be her wallet was tossed behind the sacks, or its contents scattered in the yard.

  Other than Jasmine’s friend Didi, I hadn’t spoken to many witnesses.

  Someone would have seen this girl, arrived with her, known her.

  “Is there a guest list?” I asked.

  “My guys talked to twenty, thirty people,” Acosta said. “I think there was a lot more. You got to assume most of them took off after the shots.”

  “What about the homeowner?”

  “Downtown.”

  “Is she under arrest?”

  “Not yet.”

  The lead tech said he planned to empty the shed, scour the yard, search the house.

  Nwodo turned to me. “Anything comes up, I’ll let you know.”

  I believed her. I had to.

  As with Bischoff, I promised to call her about the autopsy. “I can’t predict how the schedule’ll stack up. Hopefully no later than end of week.”

  She thanked me. We swapped info, and then Zaragoza and I picked up the dead woman and carried her out through the maze.

  * * *

  —

  OFFICER GRELLING WAS on his knees, by a flower bed, genuflecting in the shadow of a weeping willow. After Zaragoza and I had loaded the decedent in the van, I went back to him.

  “You find your suspect?” I asked.

  Grelling peered up at me.

  I made goat horns.

  “No,” he said. He gestured to the overturned earth. “Look what he did, though.”

  Uprooted greenery. Azaleas chewed to nubs. A black sign with white lettering had been pulled up, aluminum stakes bent, edges ragged with tooth marks. BLACK LIVES MATTER.

  “You’ll get him,” I said.

  Grelling nodded. He wasn’t convinced, though, and neither was I.

  CHAPTER 7

  11:31 a.m.

  I drove myself to the bureau and met Zaragoza in the rear lot. Over the course of the night and morning my boots had accumulated a second sole of dirt; I cleaned them on the brush scraper, and we got the gurney out and onto the scale.

  The decedent weighed a hundred and five pounds.

  Beneath the merciless lights of the intake bay, Zaragoza took more flicks. We left the body dressed, protocol for homicides. The pathologist would examine her clothes for evidence before removing them for the autopsy.

  I called to the morgue for a tech and began filling out paperwork.

  The automatic doors glided open, and Dani Botero came in, dressed in scrubs, absent her usual smirk. Without a word she fetched a fingerprint card and an ink pad. One by one I pried the decedent’s fingers open, and Dani inked and rolled them. I couldn’t tell what had her so subdued. The age of the victims, perhaps. Although it’s an unfortunate fact that Coroner’s cases are often young. Young people are disproportionately likely to die of violence.

  I suspect, rather, it was the general feeling of failure, the collective guilt, that permeates the unit following any mass casualty event. Reality has gone off the rails. What did we do to get here? Why didn’t we do something to prevent it?

  Deep down, we know we’re powerless. We’re not on the front lines. And those on the front lines are pretty much powerless themselves. All of us, however, would like to imagine that we’re contributing in some small way to keeping the world orderly. Then comes along a stark reminder to the contrary.

  Then come the families.

  Whose photos are no longer accurate. Whose calendars have acquired a hideous new holiday. Those broken apart by grief; those already broken, for whom death will provide the worst reason to mend fences. The mothers emptied, like amputees of the heart; the fathers bewildered. Sisters without confidantes and brothers missing necessary rivals.

  Circles of lovers and friends, irreparably deformed.

&nbs
p; Dani said, “I’ll take it from here.”

  I glanced at my decedent, small, pale, silent. Went upstairs.

  * * *

  —

  THE SQUAD ROOM was hectic. A phone conversation ended and the receiver went down and the ringing began again. Keyboards creaked. Lunches wilted, forgotten.

  In the conference room the television was on mute. Morning news had given way to The Price Is Right.

  Moffett was still there, working into his nineteenth straight hour. Turnbow was trying to persuade him to leave, acting offended that he hadn’t.

  “It’s under control,” she was saying.

  Moffett said, “I just want to get it down while it’s still fresh.”

  “You’re not fresh, Brad. That’s my point.”

  I went to my cubicle.

  We label cases by year and number. There are exceptions: complex deaths or those involving multiple casualties, which merit their own category. The Oikos campus shooting. The Ghost Ship fire. When I sat to upload my photos, I found a newly created folder.

  ALMOND STREET

  I had a moment of indecision about where to put my flicks of the dead woman. Hadn’t I told Turnbow that it looked different? Hadn’t she agreed? The new folder already contained over four hundred pictures. I didn’t want mine getting lost.

  Lindsey Bagoyo said, “We’re trending.”

  I stood up and leaned over the partition. She pointed to the edge of her computer screen, where #OaklandShooting was ninth in the Twitter rankings.

  Across the room, Moffett rose, defeated, and headed for the exit.

  The sergeant went back to her office. I heard the door close.

  I sat down and got to work on Jasmine Gomez.

  4:35 p.m.

  By day’s end we had made presumptive identification on four of five victims. Turnbow gathered us in the conference room to review. Somehow the television had managed to remain on; Judge Judy filled the screen with silent indignation. The sergeant switched it off and scribbled on the whiteboard.

  Rebecca Ristic

  Grant Hellerstein

  Benjamin Felton

  Jasmine Gomez

  Jane Doe

  In a second column she added two more names.

  Oswald Schumacher

  Jalen Coombs

  “Housekeeping, first,” Turnbow said. “Kennedy’s the primary. Everything you do goes in one file, with her name on it. I don’t want to get a month in and realize we can’t find something cause someone hid it in the wrong place. Okay? Okay. Let’s start with the GSWs.”

  “Rebecca Ristic, twenty-six,” Bagoyo said. “Grant Hellerstein, twenty-four, her boyfriend. She’s local, he’s out of state. We pulled addresses but haven’t notified either.”

  “We tried her parents’ house,” Zaragoza said. “Nobody answered the door.”

  “They might be traveling for the holidays,” Turnbow said. “Which reminds me. The captain is”—a beat—“requesting that we get the notifications done ASAP so that they can release names to the media.”

  “ ‘Requesting,’ ” Shupfer said.

  “Call it a ‘strong suggestion,’ ” Turnbow said.

  I understood now why she’d been riding us hard. Someone was doing it to her.

  “If possible,” she said, “let’s aim for Christmas, the latest.”

  “If not possible?” I asked.

  “Go ahead and notify whoever you can find and we’ll deal with the rest in time. Anyway it ain’t practical to sit on anything.”

  A truth of the social media age: we as an institution could not control the flow of information.

  “Who’s next?” Turnbow said. “Shoops.”

  Shupfer said, “Benjamin Felton, six years old. Mom’s Bonita Felton. OPD took her to her sister’s. I’ll look in on her, make sure she understands what’s going on.”

  “Please do. I’ve asked for him to be autopsied first. From what it appears that’ll happen Wednesday. Which, another thing, reminds me: Dr. Bronson and Dr. Lewkowicz are out till after the New Year. Dr. Park will cover the week of Christmas. Cold keeps up, we’re gonna have our hands full. Expect delays. Clay, you have the ped struck.”

  “Jasmine Gomez,” I said. “Twenty-two. Born male, so I’m pretty certain that’s not the birth name. Accurint’s not giving me anything for the female name, and CIB doesn’t have prints on file for Alameda. She’s listed as female on her driver’s license. I’ll ping DMV in case she filed the change with them.”

  “Wouldn’t she have to?” Bagoyo said.

  “Not if she first applied as a female,” Shupfer said.

  “I asked IT to pull the phone data,” I said. “I’ll hit the home address tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” Turnbow said. “Jane Doe.”

  “Same deal, nothing local from CIB. I’m hoping they found ID after we left the scene, or someone who was at the party’ll recognize her.”

  I tried to sound confident. Inwardly, I squirmed. I kept thinking about those empty pockets. The prospect of a Doe—a real Doe, not a twenty-four-hour blank space on a form, but a ghost that hangs around for years—turns my stomach. A person’s home serves as a form of soft identification, so the fact that that she was found outside, minus the context that a residence provides, unsettled me further.

  Either Turnbow didn’t share my concerns or she didn’t have time for hand-holding. She had moved on, tapping the names in the second column. Oswald Schumacher and Jalen Coombs. “These are the two got brought to Highland. No need to go chasing them down. If they’re ours we’ll hear about it sooner or later. All right,” she said, erasing, “good work everyone, now get the hell to bed.”

  I waited till the room had cleared to say, “Sarge, about my Doe. We discussed whether to break it out into a separate file.”

  “We discussed that?”

  “Over the phone.”

  “If you say so. My head’s”—she spread her fingers, made an exploding sound.

  “You want Advil? I have some in my desk.”

  “Nn…Okay, explain it to me again.”

  I reviewed the circumstances.

  “Right,” she said. “You did tell me that. Well, look. From my end, the important thing is that you don’t isolate yourself. Because, say she is connected to the others. I’d rather you be sharing information than keeping it to yourself.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Go ahead, then. Just—Clay? Stay focused.”

  She didn’t elaborate, but I knew what she meant and that she meant well. The last time I’d wandered down a byway, I’d strayed far outside my mandate, earning myself a weeklong suspension. I accepted it without complaint. Still, my old sergeant, a guy by the name of Joe Vitti, wouldn’t let it go. Any interaction, no matter how mundane, became an excuse for him to level at me some disparaging comment masquerading as wisdom.

  Trust isn’t given, Clay. It has to be earned.

  The tension got bad enough that I’d toyed with transferring to another duty station. I might’ve, if he hadn’t beaten me to it.

  That it was Turnbow who replaced him was a lucky break. She was a different breed, sharp and thoughtful, nuanced where Vitti was blunt, driven by a pathological aversion to disorder and waste.

  I said to her now, “I’ll be careful.”

  “All I ask,” she said. “That and a couple of Advil.”

  7:28 p.m.

  Amy said, “Hello?”

  “In here.”

  I heard her familiar tread, its gentle clip-clop, and I pictured her long, graceful, purebred stride.

  She paused before coming into the living room, as though afraid of how she’d find me. As though death were contagious.

 
I did in fact look half dead. Drowned in TV glow, skin blued, one foot on the sofa arm and the other on the carpet; my cheek smushed against the cushion, a hand pinned beneath me, numb; uncomfortable but doing nothing to change that.

  Amy dropped her bag, slipped off her shoes, unpinned her hair and shook it out, a billow of gold. “What are you watching?”

  “I have no clue.”

  “Can I join you?”

  I curled up to accommodate her. “I didn’t get a chance to start the cooking.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I know we have a lot to do.”

  “It’s fine. The only thing that has to be done in advance is the duck, because that needs to cure. The rest we can deal with on Monday and Tuesday morning.”

  I started to rise. “I’ll do the duck.”

  “Stop, please,” she said, pressing me back down.

  The Modern Marvels logo appeared on the screen, subtitled: “Avocados.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still awake,” she said. She stroked my knee. “I thought for sure you’d be passed out.”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Also, I sat down and then I couldn’t get up.”

  She laughed.

  On the screen, a man in a lab coat caressed a Hass, rhapsodizing over essential oils.

  “Seriously,” Amy said, “why are you watching this.”

  “It’s really interesting. It might be the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Do you want to tell me about your day?”

  “I’d rather hear about yours.”

  I’m grateful for Amy for many reasons. Among them is that she never tells me I’m avoiding my feelings. Even when I am.

  “Okay,” she said, and she proceeded to talk about her patients. Not by name, of course. But the jokes they made, the wild stories they told. Piece of bad news: there’d been an overdose over the weekend.