A Measure of Darkness

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Is that it.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Marcia Marcia Marcia.”

  She laughed.

  “ ‘We’re just living in the moment, for a moment, momentarily.’ ” I sat up. “What’s it like for him, having to listen to that shit all the time?”

  “Obviously it works for him.”

  “That is the last thing he needs. Literally the last thing any addict needs is more living in the moment. He needs to do the opposite of that. He needs to think ahead. Living only in the moment is why you blow a red light at double the speed limit.”

  “He did that because he was high.”

  “Is there a difference?” I paused. “You’re going to tell me I’m wrong?”

  “I’m going to point out that you only get this way around him.”

  “I know, it’s ridiculous.”

  “On the other hand,” she said, “it’s refreshing to see you get irrationally angry once in a while.”

  “It’s been a hard week.”

  She nodded.

  “You think I should take up meditation?” I said.

  “I think you should do what makes you happy.”

  “You make me happy,” I said.

  She kissed me.

  I said, “Do what makes me happy? So I should do you.”

  “Har har.”

  I shifted to kiss her neck. “You walked right into that.”

  She said, “Ugh. I’m full of potatoes.”

  Her chest; her neck again. “Yes, Chef.”

  “Fair warning,” she said. Her body moved against mine, her fingers sliding through my hair. “I’m going to burp in your mouth.”

  “Yes, Chef. Right away.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Wednesday, December 26

  Five days post-shooting, an official narrative had begun to gel, the case chopped into manageable portions and repackaged for public consumption.

  We had served notification to Rebecca Ristic and Grant Hellerstein’s families, and the names of both victims were released to the press. Jalen Coombs, nineteen, a resident of West Oakland, was identified as the third victim. A fourth victim, run down by a car, remained unnamed, pending notification. Also unnamed was a six-year-old boy.

  The mayor of Oakland was “heartbroken and outraged.” She called for frank and open dialogue, a conversation that would help us get to the core of these tragic events and allow us to move forward as a community and heal. As always, the people of Oakland were strong, unafraid, unified.

  A memorial vigil was scheduled for Saturday evening, in Lafayette Square.

  The chief of police decried the brazenness of the shooters and empathized with the pain of the victims and their families. Thanks to the timely efforts of the men and women of OPD, one suspect was already in custody.

  That the cops hadn’t solicited the public for information regarding other suspects—declining to release names, sketches, or descriptions—signaled to me that they had a decent idea of who they wanted. No reason to tip anyone off.

  The media made no mention of Jane Doe in the shed.

  Lying in the cooler, anonymous, a secret kept by an unlucky few.

  Lodged in my consciousness like a rusty nail.

  Meanwhile our office was gearing up for a countywide hangover. As Turnbow had predicted, the plummeting temperature had already brought about three exposure deaths, two homeless men and an ill, elderly woman whose heat had cut out.

  Another homicide: a Christmas-morning dispute over a PlayStation, resolved with a kitchen knife. I had to admit that my own family looked pretty benign by comparison.

  New Year’s, with its regular spate of car accidents, loomed.

  Most wonderful time of the year.

  The logjam had spread across the entire system, which meant that my request for missing persons reports—white female, age sixteen to thirty—was taking even longer than usual.

  Benjamin Felton and Grant Hellerstein had been autopsied on Christmas Eve. Rebecca Ristic and Jalen Coombs were scheduled for today. Tomorrow was my big day, with Jasmine Gomez in the morning and Jane Doe in the afternoon.

  I called Delilah Nwodo to let her know.

  “I’ll be there,” she said.

  “Thanks for bringing me along the other day.”

  “No problem.”

  “Look, I don’t know how you feel about these things, but my thinking is you and I shouldn’t waste time conducting parallel investigations.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “I’m just putting it on the record that I plan to let you know what I find.”

  “And you expect me to do the same for you.”

  “Not expecting,” I said. “Asking.”

  “What’ve you got so far?”

  “So far? Nothing.”

  “So far, this sounds like a bad deal for me.”

  “It might appear that way for the moment,” I said. “Consider me an investment.”

  She said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I called Detective Bischoff about the Jasmine Gomez autopsy. He didn’t pick up.

  Thursday, December 27

  7:01 a.m.

  Standing at the morgue viewing station, I watched through the glass as the pathologist dried his hands on a wad of paper towels. Maggie Garcia, the tech, arranged instruments on a metal tray. A wall-mounted flat-screen displayed an overhead view of Jasmine Gomez’s wrapped body, a hyperreal echo of the physical body, lying on the nearest table.

  Dr. Park spoke through the intercom: “He’s not here yet?”

  He meant Bischoff.

  I pressed the intercom button. “I’m not sure if he’s coming.”

  “We’ll go ahead and get started,” Park said.

  Garcia switched on the recorder.

  “The date of the autopsy is Thursday, December twenty-seventh, twenty eighteen,” Park said. “The time is seven oh three in the morning. I am Dr. Simon G. Park. Assisting me is technician Margaret Garcia. The body is presented in a white sheet.”

  Garcia and Park unknotted the sheet and opened it.

  On the flat-screen, the fabric parted, and Jasmine Gomez surfaced—a kind of anti-birth. I saw the dirty angel’s costume, every shred and granule in high definition. I saw her face, a misery of flesh.

  “At the time of examination, the body is clothed in a white…” Park paused. “Robe.”

  Seeing him struggle to identify the item strapped to Jasmine’s back, I tapped the glass.

  Park glanced over.

  I made a flapping motion.

  “Attached to the body is a set of mechanical wings,” Park said.

  He described the damage to the outfit, noting the stains and rips in detail. It took a while. Simon Park had a well-deserved reputation for thoroughness. Maggie appeared relieved when the time came to cut the clothes off.

  Having talked and thought about Jasmine as female, I found it jarring to see the naked genitals, lolling against a scrawny gray thigh. Park’s narration, delivered in a neutral monotone, likewise landed odd on the ear.

  “The body is that of a normally developed, undernourished white or Hispanic male measuring sixty-six inches in length and weighing one hundred nine pounds. Appearance is consistent with the offered age of twenty-three years.”

  I listened to Park catalog Jasmine’s exterior. The hair on the head, thirteen inches long and brown. Skin. Dehydration had caused black bristles to crop up along the upper lip and jawline. Lividity. Eyes and teeth. Scars and markings, piercings and tattoos.

  The condition of the pubic hair, recently shaved. Chafing around the groin and thighs, caused by the compression shorts.

  The disrupted symmetry of the skull. Shards o
f plastic embedded in the scalp: traces of the missing halo. Three fingernails stripped off.

  Maggie Garcia reached for the circular saw.

  The whine started up.

  A question my colleagues and I get asked a lot is How do you want to die? As though we have any say in the matter; as though we’ve got Death’s private line on speed dial. I understand the curiosity as a form of anxiety, the flipside of another common question: What’s the worst way to die?

  I don’t have a ready answer for either one.

  Whatever happens to me, though, I don’t want to be a Coroner’s case.

  I waved to Maggie, indicating that I was going upstairs to get some work done. She nodded and continued opening Jasmine’s head.

  * * *

  —

  DETECTIVE BISCHOFF HAD yet to forward me a copy of Meredith Klaar’s statement. Nor had he replied to my follow-up emails. For form’s sake, I sent him another polite reminder, then looked up her home number and called her myself, unsurprised to get a voicemail. I could imagine she was under siege.

  Lisa Shupfer entered the squad room and took her place opposite me. I didn’t ask where she’d been. I didn’t need to: it was her third visit to check on Benjamin Felton’s mother, Bonita, since the night of the shooting. At this point, I doubted they were covering much new ground. But as brusque as Shoops can be at the office, there’s no one better in the field, in a situation like that, when the questions have run out, and nothing remains but the unthinkable tomorrow.

  I tossed her a small package of pretzels.

  She tore it open with an appreciative nod.

  My direct line rang.

  “Coroner’s Bureau, Edison.”

  “This is Didi Flynn. I think we met before.”

  The friend who’d gone to the party with Jasmine. “Hi, Ms. Flynn. Yeah, it’s me you talked to. Thanks for getting in touch.”

  “I was reading what they wrote,” she said. “I don’t understand. They didn’t say anything about Jasmine.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You were reading what?”

  “SFGate,” she said. “Like, what the fuck?”

  Good question. “Do you have the specific article handy?”

  She gave me the title. I found it, scanned as she went on: “It’s not right. They don’t say anything about her. It’s like she doesn’t exist.”

  I said, “It mentions a victim struck by a car. Second-to-last paragraph.”

  “That’s all it says, ‘victim.’ She has a name.”

  “We ask the media not to publicize the information before we’ve had a chance to notify next of kin. That’s so they hear it from us, first. So far I haven’t been able to reach her family. Once I do, we’ll release it.”

  “Where is she?” Didi Flynn asked. “What’s happening to her?”

  On a steel slab. Her face peeled back. Her brain on a scale. Her chest butterflied.

  “Right now, she’s with us,” I said.

  “How much longer?”

  “That depends on what the family decides.”

  “We want to have a service.”

  “You should,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “We can’t. Not without her there. What kind of service is that? That’s just, I don’t know. Sitting in a room.”

  “I get where you’re coming from. But there’s nothing says you need to wait for her to be buried to remember her—to celebrate her.”

  Didi gave an irritated honk. “How does that even make sense?”

  “If you want to expedite the process, it’d help to find out where her family’s at.”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Right. The thing is, I’m having a little trouble, because she’s not in the system under Jasmine. If she had another name, for example, I could search for that.”

  Silence.

  I said, “Can you tell me where Jasmine was living?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Silly lie. They’d gone to the party together. Jasmine had left Didi her money and phone to hold. Didi wanted to organize a memorial service. She didn’t know where Jasmine lived?

  Calling someone out on the spot seldom gets them to cooperate. Mostly, they get angry and double down. “Her license gives an address on Telegraph that belongs to a place called The Harbor. I spoke to a woman there, Greer Unger.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  More bullshit. “She told me Jasmine spent some time on the street.”

  Several beats.

  “Ms. Flynn?”

  “I guess.”

  “Was she staying with you?”

  “No.”

  “Not currently, or not ever?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “We weren’t, like, together.”

  “I meant more like, she’s your friend, she needs a place to crash.”

  No reply.

  “Ms. Flynn, I ask because legally I have to secure her possessions. Since you two were close”—so close that you claim ignorance of her address—“I thought you might be holding items for her.”

  “I gave you everything I have,” she said.

  “Okay. Thanks, then. I’ll go back to Greer and see what she has to say.”

  Another silence.

  “Kevin,” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “That’s it.”

  I said, “Her birth name was Kevin?”

  She made a sound of assent.

  “Same last name?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you know where her family’s at?” I asked. “Are they local?”

  “L.A. I really don’t know where.”

  “Okay. Great. I appreciate it. This helps a lot. You’re doing right by Jasmine.”

  “Can you do it, now,” she said. “Release her?”

  “There are a few steps, procedurally. Let’s say this, okay? Let me speak to the family and take their temperature.”

  She didn’t answer.

  I said, “You’re doing the right thing.”

  She hung up.

  * * *

  —

  GUESS HOW MANY people are named Kevin Gomez?

  I’ll wait while you go google it.

  Okay. Now guess how many of them reside in the Los Angeles metro area.

  That’s how I spent my lunch break.

  12:54 p.m.

  For my next autopsy, I met Detective Nwodo in the lobby. She was nicely dressed but looked tired. Carrying a scratched Warriors travel mug—her sixth cup of the day, she said. Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed since our most recent phone conversation. In that time, she’d caught another murder, this one gang-related.

  I offered her a free refill.

  She shook her head. “Not unless you want me on the slab.”

  Unlocking a side door, I led her past the transcriptionist’s office, the pathologists’ offices, the break room where Bagoyo sat watching Dr. Oz extol the virtues of turmeric for joint health. A second locked door opened onto the morgue viewing platform.

  We stepped into a rectangle of sterile light, Nwodo sipping her coffee.

  Buzzing quiet. Warm odor of stale carpet.

  A sunken body beneath sheets. On the table; on the flat-screen.

  Dani Botero entered the morgue and headed to the sink to wash her hands.

  While we waited for Dr. Park, Nwodo and I chatted about the status of the other investigations. They were still debating what to do with Isaiah Branch. The options ranged from nothing all the way up to charging him with murder. To a certain extent it depended on what he and his friends had intended when they rang Rhiannon Cooke’s doorbell; whether he knew his companion was carrying a firearm. It
also depended on how much pressure they wanted to put on him.

  “It’s the shooter they want,” she said.

  “They have a name yet?”

  “Tuan Trang. Another childhood friend of him and Coombs. Getaway car’s his. Witnesses picked him out from a photo array.”

  Park entered the morgue.

  The shooter from the party—the murderous Jet—was named Dane Jankowski. Nwodo confirmed that he was the shaggy guy on the tape, wearing the red beanie.

  Like Trang, he had a record, handful of drug arrests, one for misdemeanor battery.

  Like Trang, he’d gone to ground.

  The killers differed in their choice of handgun. Sixteen casings recovered; two different calibers, .38 and 9mm. Based on the tape and a relatively intact slug pulled from Grant Hellerstein’s body, it appeared that the latter belonged to Trang.

  I remembered Patrol Sergeant Acosta: Real miracle is we don’t have more bodies. Packed crowd, sixteen rounds, four casualties, not counting Jane Doe or Jasmine.

  Grant Hellerstein, Rebecca Ristic, Jalen Coombs. Little Benjamin Felton.

  “The kid,” I said. “Any idea whose shot that was?”

  Nwodo shook her head. “Bullet’s all fucked up.”

  “Charge em both,” I said.

  “Probably.”

  The intercom blipped. Park said, “Shall we begin?”

  Dani Botero turned on the recorder.

  “The date of the autopsy is Thursday, December twenty-seventh, twenty eighteen. The time is one oh eight in the afternoon. I am Dr. Simon G. Park. Assisting me is technician Daniella Botero. The body is presented in a white sheet…”

  Compared with Jasmine Gomez’s outfit, Jane Doe’s was straightforward, and Park went into less detail. Grease stains and ground-in dirt suggested that the items had not been recently laundered, although he noted the possibility of transfer from the sacks of fertilizer.

  Before undressing her, they removed the paper bags from her hands to take fingernail clippings. Park used trauma shears to cut away the clothes, and Dani piled them, along with the old blue running shoes, on a rolling steel table.