A Measure of Darkness Read online

“Cool.” The man went back to his wires. “Have a good night.”

  On his way out, Isaiah nosed around a bit. There was no shortage of things to look at, and curiosity had gotten the better of him. The night was cloudy and cold, a few stars struggling to stay relevant. He ended up following a curling chain-link fence to where it converged with the back end of the house, creating a sort of triangular alley that contained yet more junk.

  Bicycles. Milk crates. A plywood shed, shoulder height, with double doors. Two city trash cans, green and burgundy, pushed flush to the siding. A third can, gray for recyclables, sat several feet off, as though shunned by its companions. At the far point of the triangle, a gate led to 11th.

  He started forward, intending to exit that way, rather than hike through the yard.

  Ahead, a stirring in the dark.

  Isaiah halted.

  With mute shock he watched the disturbance assume the shape of a man. A lump springing up between the two cans, seeming to grow straight out of the ground, a giant malignant weed vomited up by the earth.

  He was close. Fifteen feet, at most. Swaddle of greasy overcoat, sloppy scarf, head smashed flat at the temples, like it had been jammed in a vise.

  A smell reached Isaiah. Acrid and fermented: piss and body odor.

  The man didn’t seem to notice Isaiah. He rolled the gray can into line with the others, against the house. Then he turned, tentacles of hair swinging, and stepped over to the shed. He opened the doors and ducked down behind them.

  You could hear him messing around in there.

  Definitely time to find the exit.

  Isaiah stepped back and his heel touched something, something insubstantial, too late to avoid putting his weight down.

  Aluminum crinkled.

  The man shot up to his full and terrible height.

  A gasp of moonlight broke through and for the first time Isaiah could see the man’s face. White, with a beard.

  Everyone here was white, with a beard.

  The man shut the shed doors and stared at Isaiah.

  He was holding a knife.

  With a rattling gait he advanced, pushing before him a towering wave of stench. The music had stopped, so that Isaiah could hear the limbs swinging beneath many stiff layers of clothing, could hear the mouth chewing in wet anticipation. Ten feet between them and the face sharpened, every trench and pit, the moles jutting like obscene thumbs, the beard a tight mass of gray wires, gluey and twisted.

  Isaiah wanted to run.

  Why didn’t he run?

  Five feet.

  The air was fetid, a rag in Isaiah’s throat.

  The man leaned forward.

  Said, “Not you.”

  Like a burst steam pipe, he hissed.

  Isaiah ran, smashing through obstacles, through branches that tore at his flesh.

  When he found himself at the curb again, he had no idea how he’d gotten there.

  He huddled by a parked car, sucking wind. His palms were bleeding. His shirt was wet. His crotch, too, hung heavy and moist, and he was briefly mortified, thinking he’d wet himself.

  No. Just sweat.

  He felt grateful, and that had him feeling stupid and weak.

  Fumbling out his phone, the plastic blood-warm and soothing. Text from Tuan.

  U coming

  Isaiah blinked at the screen. He started to reply but his hands were shaking and he ended up typing a bunch of garbage. He erased it, tried again.

  Yes

  He dreaded facing his friends. One look at him and they would know his fear.

  Yo, what the fuck? Laughing.

  He had his breath back, and he could swallow again, but he was still crouched humiliatingly on the pavement like a child hiding from punishment.

  He stood up tall, brushing leaves from his clothes and hair. His own reflection in the car window seemed to smirk at him.

  Little bitch.

  Shame tapped at the glass of his soul, and, again, without fail, close on its heels—

  Rage.

  Filling him up, straining his guts.

  His phone chimed. Thumbs-up from Tuan.

  Isaiah put the phone away.

  The houses on the block, with their dark, drowned faces, observed him. He shook out his limbs, straightened his spine. Okay. He ran his tongue around the inside of his lower lip, feeling the backing. His grandmother was probably in bed already. He hoped she was. The van with the kegs was gone. He gave himself a final once-over. Okay, then.

  Isaiah started toward the corner. As he turned onto 11th he felt the sudden and overwhelming conviction that tonight had a significance far beyond words. A bitter joy; it almost made him laugh, so strong and giddy was the sensation. He walked along, gorging on it. Tonight he felt ready for anything. Tonight, he could yet redeem himself, after all.

  TWO

  Aftermath

  CHAPTER 2

  Saturday, December 22

  2:01 a.m.

  I go to bed early and get up early, and even when I forget to set my alarm, I wake up around four thirty a.m.

  Get dressed, grab a protein bar, in the car by quarter to. At that hour there’s no traffic. Most days I’m at my desk with a couple minutes to spare.

  That morning, I shot to the surface, mid-dream. The air felt bare and thick.

  Amy was shaking me. “Clay. Wake up.”

  My phone was going off.

  Moffett calling.

  I climbed out of bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Amy asked.

  “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  She flopped down and pulled the duvet over her head.

  I found my uniform and boots in the dark and carried them to the kitchen. The phone had stopped ringing. I called Moffett back.

  “Sorry to do this to you,” he said.

  I believed him. Before his promotion to night shift sergeant, Brad Moffett was my teammate for two and a half years. It wasn’t in his nature to be melodramatic. “What’s up?”

  “Multiple shooting.”

  “How many?”

  “At least three down, possibly more. Jurow’s tied up in Albany. It’s me and Nikki alone out here on a fuckin circus. I called your whole team. Lindsey’s coming. I can’t reach Zaragoza or Shoops.”

  He gave me an address: 11th and Almond, in the Lower Bottoms.

  “That’s close to you,” he said.

  “Close enough,” I said.

  2:24 a.m.

  I had to park several blocks away. Traffic cops with light sticks were diverting non-emergency vehicles, and they’d cordoned off the length of 1100 Almond, plus a healthy chunk of 11th in either direction, a vast T that encompassed street, sidewalks, and structures. Best practice: easier to contract a crime scene than to expand it.

  The downside was that it created three fronts to manage. Large crowds had gathered at each, shouting, sobbing, calling, texting, snapping pictures, shooting video, congregating improperly, disregarding commands. Oakland PD uniforms roved, attempting to corral witnesses, take statements, calm tempers, choreograph the chaos.

  Picking my way toward the intersection, I noted a number of people wearing costumes. A young white woman in patent-leather go-go boots retched into the gutter while a friend tried to right the thermal blanket slipping off her shoulders. A young white man in a gorilla suit sat on the curb, gorilla head tucked flat in his armpit, actual head in his hands. There were EMTs, and two news vans. The neighborhood suffered its fair share of violent crime. It took a lot to bring residents out of their homes in the middle of the night. Yet there they were, on their porches in bathrobes and slippers, craning their necks.

  The focal point of the activity was a giant gingerbread Victorian on the corner, its exter
ior smeared red and blue by flashers. Techs scoured the pavement and front yard.

  In the middle of the intersection sat a single white flip-flop.

  Thirty feet away, a body lay under a sheet.

  I started to duck under the tape but was held up by a uniform.

  “Coroner’s,” I said, in case he couldn’t read.

  “You gotta go around.”

  “Around where?”

  “Staging area’s at Twelfth.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Are you serious?”

  “Sorry, buddy. One way in, one way out.”

  I went around.

  The far end of Almond Street sat in relative quiet, the eye of a hurricane, displaced. The roar of the crowd was a tidal murmur.

  I signed in.

  Emergency vehicles clogged the block. A hand-lettered sign gave the common radio frequency; there was an easel with an oversized paper pad. A uniform was using a marker to keep a running time line.

  ShotSpotter had picked up gunfire at 2355. The first call to 911 had gone out at 0007, first call to the Coroner’s at 0102. Nikki Kennedy had arrived at 0135; Moffett, twenty minutes later. He’d taken one look and started calling for backup.

  I found the two of them leaning against a van, rubbing hands against the chill, watching the scene unfold. Forensics circled two more sheeted bodies lying in a puddle of lamplight.

  Moffett said, “Hurry up and wait.”

  “Is there a story?” I asked.

  Kennedy chinned at the Victorian. “They’re having a party. Neighbors come over to ask, can you turn the music down. Exchange of words, it goes into the street, people start throwing punches. Someone pulls a gun.”

  “GSWs,” Moffett said, pointing to the two nearest bodies. They had fallen within touching distance of each other; one of them lay half on the sidewalk, half off. “There’s a third decedent, way down by the corner.”

  “Yeah, I saw,” I said. “They made me go around.”

  “That one’s a ped struck. Far as we can tell it was an accident. Shots go off, everyone’s panicking, running, jumping in cars and speeding off without looking where they’re going.”

  “She got dragged,” Kennedy said.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “They have the driver. Some girl, totally freaked out.”

  “What about the shooter?”

  Kennedy shook her head. “Got away.”

  Moffett said, “They took a couple more people to Highland. Don’t know how bad the injuries are.”

  “So at least three,” I said.

  “As of right now, yeah.”

  “ID on any of them?”

  He shook his head.

  I looked at the Victorian. Triple-high, fancy paint scheme, elaborate shingling, gables, turrets, a widow’s walk. There were other such examples throughout West Oakland, holdovers from a wealthier bygone era, but few in such good condition, and fewer still on that scale. The lot occupied half the western side of the block, squaring off against a run of slender row houses on the eastern side, some single-family, some subdivided.

  Goliath versus the Seven Dwarfs.

  “Big house,” I said.

  “Big party,” Kennedy said.

  “Uniforms are trying to track everyone down,” Moffett said.

  “I saw a few mixed in the crowd,” I said.

  I told them about the guy in the ape suit.

  “Well,” Moffett said, “that should help.”

  Hurry up and wait.

  “Did you know,” Kennedy said, reading from her phone, “that the Summerhof Mansion, located at eleven-oh-five Almond Street, was built in eighteen ninety-five for Franz Summerhof, owner of the Summerhof Ironworks in Oakland. The house, which is a classic example of the Queen Anne style, sits on over an acre and a half of land. It was home to Summerhof’s family, including wife Gretchen and their nine children. After World War One it served as the headquarters of the German-American Friendship Society. At present it is under private ownership.”

  She looked at us. “Did you know?”

  “I do now,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  WE WATCHED OTHER folks do their jobs. Tiptoeing among the yellow plastic evidence markers, sprouted like mushrooms after a heavy rain. Groaning as they bent to inspect a cigarette butt, a bottle, a shell casing. Striving, not always successfully, to avoid treading on one another’s territory. It was like some confab of tribes negotiating an uneasy peace, each identifiable by its native tools and markings.

  Evidence, with their gloves and bags.

  Ballistics, with their residue kits and laser pointers and metal detectors.

  Blood. Photography. Uniforms feathering the grass with penlights; uniforms going door-to-door.

  Quite the turnout for Oakland.

  I could make two detectives, sleepy-eyed white guys in slacks and parkas, standing on opposite sidewalks, talking to witnesses. Two: that’s how I knew it was serious.

  And us, here, in the on-deck circle, a tribe of three.

  The meat people.

  The bodies belonged to us. In theory we could shut everyone else down to stake our claim. But patience and diplomacy go a long way, especially when you deal with these same agencies over and over again. I recognized several of the people working, by face if not by name. As a unit, we try not to get possessive, unless it’s called for.

  “Hey,” Moffett barked.

  Some uniforms were readying themselves to lift one of the GSWs in the street. “We need to clear this stuff out so we can move our vehicle.”

  “No,” Moffett said, starting forward, “you need to let these people be.”

  He proceeded to chew them out.

  I turned to Kennedy. “Truth now: how is he as a boss?”

  She tugged down her cap resolutely. “The best.”

  “You want to say that a little louder maybe, make sure he hears it?”

  She laughed. “Let’s wait till he comes back.”

  Behind us, a woman’s voice: “Evening, people.”

  Lindsey Bagoyo jogged up, breathing steam. She bumped my fist. “I thought for sure I’d beat you here.”

  “I live five miles away.”

  “Yeah, but you drive like my grandma.”

  Moffett returned, shaking his head. “Idiots.”

  “Hey Nikki,” I said, “what was that you were saying about your sergeant?”

  “What, that he’s the best?”

  Ignoring us, Moffett turned to Lindsey. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Here’s the deal. Priority number one is the decedent in the intersection. Get her concealed before people start tweeting.”

  While I admired his zeal, we all knew that ship had sailed.

  “The detective said he needs another twenty minutes on the GSWs.” He paused. “Anybody got a preference?”

  Kennedy said, “I can—”

  A scream buried her words.

  CHAPTER 3

  Up and down the block, heads raised, swinging around in confusion before they homed in on the source: a house on the east side of the street, where a woman had emerged onto the front lawn, tossing her arms and crying for help.

  She collapsed as the uniforms reached her.

  Radios crackled with a request for medical backup.

  At this point, the one-way-in, one-way-out policy revealed its shortcomings. Nobody showed up for another fifteen minutes, by which time they’d laid the woman out on the grass. She was black, in her thirties, dressed in sleepwear unsuited to the cold. She keened, rolling sluggishly from side to side, like she was burning alive and unable to summon the will to save herself.


  My baby. My baby.

  While they covered her with jackets, worked to soothe her, the patrol sergeant entered the house with his firearm drawn.

  A pair of EMTs came hurrying through the checkpoint and approached the woman on the lawn. She struggled up on her elbows, urging them toward the house instead.

  Our team observed this dumbshow without comment.

  Now the patrol sergeant came over the radio asking for assistance, eleven-twenty-four Almond, basement.

  Can I get a detective, please.

  The woman had curled up like a pietà in the arms of a uniform, moaning.

  Kennedy said, “Fuck.”

  We all knew.

  Our victim count had risen.

  One of the detectives peeled off his witness, making don’t move hands, and began shambling up the block.

  Lindsey Bagoyo said, “On me.”

  She headed for the house.

  Moffett rubbed his scalp. “I’m done sitting here like an asshole.”

  He addressed me. “Can you find out what’s the deal with the ped struck? Start taking flicks. There’s a pop-up in the Explorer.”

  * * *

  —

  STEPPING INTO THE intersection, I felt dozens of eyes on me.

  Officer.

  Back behind the line, please.

  Hey. Officer. Hey.

  A TV camera swung in my direction. A reporter began calling for comment.

  I shunted these distractions to the margins of my awareness. Moving in a straight line toward the decedent, pausing every few feet to set down the pop-up, raise the Nikon, grab establishing shots.

  Ma’am I asked you to step away.

  Officer please—

  On the sidewalk, on the street, a nauseating caption, scrawled in flesh, blood, and tire rubber. It began at the corner, where the driver had jumped the curb, bowing out toward the white flip-flop and running ten yards west along 11th to cease at the sheeted body.

  Officer I need to hey don’t touch me don’t you touch me motherfucker.

  A baby-faced uniform had been left to stand guard. He might’ve been a week out of the academy. He looked scared witless, body stiff and keyed to danger, attention yanked this way and that, flinching at each stray movement.