A Measure of Darkness

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A Measure of Darkness Page 13

by Jonathan Kellerman


  “Thanks.”

  I walked to the top of the key, hitched, put up a fadeaway fifteen-footer.

  Brick.

  Luke sprang up, corralling the rebound near the baseline for a turnaround three.

  Net.

  The ball was hopping around, low to the ground, excited.

  We both moved. I got there first and looped out to half-court. When I faced him, he was waiting for me, feet planted, palms at ten and two, shifting his hips easily. I swung back and forth, prodding the space between us. He knew better than to fall for it; he knew all my tricks.

  I knew his tricks, too.

  “It’s late,” I said.

  He nodded. Terms unspoken, same as ever, game to eleven by ones and twos.

  He met me at the arc, resisting me with a forearm against my back, heels dug in, our fighting waltz.

  Familiar patterns, slower, wearier. Compensating for battle scars, handicaps self-inflicted or accidental. It occurred to me—as I turned at the block, banked it high and in—that those are two of the five manners of death.

  “One–nothing,” I said.

  Eleven by ones and twos, and when we tied at ten, game to fifteen, because winner had to win by two. These rules live in you forever.

  I hit a two.

  He hit a two.

  Game to twenty-one.

  I held his shirt.

  He sank an elbow in my ribs.

  To twenty-five.

  Backing him down, bumping him to create space. He darted in to strip me cleanly, recovering the loose ball at the weak-side wing, where he paused, scissoring his legs, licking at a wolfish smile. Twenty-three all. He could win with a two. A long two was well within his range.

  We both knew. We had the math in our bones. I closed on him. He initiated the cascade of movements I expected: right thigh sagging inward five or so degrees, a fractional collapse that reverses to explode through the hips. Well before he reaches an apex, the ball is up and back and out of reach. He shoots out of the top of his head. It’s next to impossible to defend, because by the time you react and get your own hands up you’re eighteen inches too late.

  I’d watched him do it ten thousand times before my tenth birthday.

  In every aspect of our lives, I outstripped him: I excelled in school, I was reflexively polite, simpatico with adults. In the one arena that counted to us, the game, he got by on natural gifts. I had to work. I’d worked so hard that eventually I destroyed my own body.

  Luke did nothing, I did too much, and those were our downfalls. It made him ungovernable and me a clockwork. He knew what I would do and I knew that he knew and yet I did it anyway, because he had victory sewn up unless I acted to stop him, now.

  He sagged.

  I scrambled, my arm outstretched, seeing him through the gap between thumb and forefinger, the webbing stretched taut.

  He did nothing. Drew down, sneakers screwed to the hardwood, and I sailed past, grabbing at air, leaving him a clear path to the basket.

  After you, sir.

  He took two lazy dribbles into the lane and tossed up a finger roll.

  “Twenty-four twenty-three,” he said.

  On the next out he inexplicably went for the winner from far.

  No, wrong: explicably. Luke in a nutshell. Maximum unnecessary drama.

  The ball traced overhead against the glare.

  I exhaled. God exhaled.

  Iron.

  I hauled in the rebound and we traded positions.

  “Dead at twenty-five,” I said.

  He pounded his thighs, unsympathetic.

  “I mean it,” I said. “I need to get home.”

  He waved assent, and I hunkered to plot my attack. But his mouth was still jawing.

  I propped the ball on my hip and gawked at him. “What was that?”

  “Huh?”

  “What did you say.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  I started to laugh. “Did you really just do that? Call me a pussy?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

  Still laughing, I shook my head, slammed the ball once, twice. “All right.”

  He stood up, aggrieved. “Are we playing or not?”

  My answer was to barrel down the lane, knocking him on his ass. He slid to a stop under the basket as the ball fell through the net and landed in his lap.

  “You want a foul?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  He bowled the ball to me and got up. “Twenty-four all.”

  I checked it to him, hard.

  He checked it back, harder.

  Game point. The prudent play: back him down again, use my weight and strength. He’d left prison thirty pounds lighter. I reversed, and he squared in anticipation, falling against me bodily, draping me. I could feel his heart clubbing at my spine.

  I made a sharp strong-side cut.

  No surprises. In our bones. He began his lateral slide.

  Too slow. He’d lost a step.

  His eyes chased the ball as it left my hands, preparing for a rebound that never came.

  The shot peaked, paused, and dropped through the cylinder with a nylon kiss.

  How I made it, I’ll never know.

  Because I’d lost a step, too. On my way up, my foot caught on his shin, pitching me forward to an off-center landing.

  Electric shock, patella to groin.

  Luke turned in a circle, looking for me, ready to demand game to thirty-one. He seemed surprised to find me curled up on the pine, breathless and agonized, knee pulled into my stomach.

  * * *

  —

  HE KEPT APOLOGIZING as he helped me out.

  “Not your fault,” I said.

  Except for my car, the parking lot was deserted. He’d taken the bus.

  I told him to get in.

  For the duration of the drive to San Leandro, Luke fidgeted, alternately staring out the window and glancing at me, his expression meek. I’d racked the seat way back so I could work the pedals with my right leg fully extended. I could bend the joint, although the surrounding tissue had begun to balloon with hot fluid.

  One of the downsides of a morgue education is the ability to picture your own anatomical processes with revolting precision.

  Luke apologized again.

  “Forget it,” I said, pulling to the curb outside our parents’ house.

  “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Let me know what the doctor says,” he said.

  I nodded curtly.

  He hesitated with his thumb on the seatbelt release.

  I said, “I really gotta—”

  “Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. Sorry.”

  I watched him slink up the porch, like a teenager out past curfew. But he was a grown man. We both were. Allegedly.

  I throttled the ignition as hard as I could.

  CHAPTER 15

  Saturday, January 5

  A sprain. Not a tear.

  Four to six weeks, light duty.

  I would’ve preferred to get hurt arresting Dane Jankowski. That, at least, would’ve spared me the ordeal of having to explain myself to my sergeant. What could I say that wouldn’t sound absurd?

  But…he called me a pussy.

  “I’m gonna have you sign one of those contracts,” Turnbow said. She was standing at my cubicle, admiring the aluminum scaffolding that ran the length of my leg. “ ‘No waterskiing in the off-season.’ ”

  “Call my agent.” I tugged down my pant cuff. “I’m sorry, Sarge.”

  “Tell me you won, at least.”

 
“By one point.”

  Dani Botero breathed crowd goes wild noises.

  Turnbow turned to inspect the mosaic of windows open on my computer screen.

  Jane Doe narrative.

  Missing persons reports.

  Spreadsheet, sixteen credit card numbers, sixteen names.

  “Silver lining,” she said. “You got plenty of time.”

  * * *

  —

  I’D IGNORED THE seven women with common-sounding names. Now I started plugging them into Accurint, triggering an avalanche of hits.

  Jessica Chen. Beth Green. Include every variant of Catherine or Kathy or Cathie or Kate Myers, and in California alone you had forty-three people.

  Plenty of time.

  Nothing but.

  Carmen Woolsey shook crumbs from her big witchy skirt, pausing en route to the coffee station to offer me some.

  “Please,” I said. “Thank you.”

  When she brought it to me, Sully clucked her tongue. “This how it’s gonna be.”

  “How’s that.”

  “Us waiting on you, hand and foot?”

  With a guilty laugh, I sat back, blowing on the cup.

  Tell me you won, at least.

  Packed inside the sergeant’s words, her real question: Was it worth it?

  My mind replayed Amy’s words from Christmas dinner.

  You only get this way around him.

  We are who we are in relation to others.

  Without a second data point, a name is close to meaningless.

  But a name, in relation to others, is itself a data point.

  I started searching the names in pairs.

  Your search—“Karla Abruzzo” “Frances Ann Flatt”—did not match any documents.

  Your search—“Karla Abruzzo” “Dara Kenilworth”—did not match any documents.

  I worked systematically, keeping track of the failed combinations.

  Your search—“Dara Kenilworth” “Kelly Doran”—did not match any documents.

  Despite no after no, I felt charged up, intent, in contrast with the day sluggishly unwinding outside. Noncommittal rain pricked the windows. The phone burped and bleeped while around the room idle chatter skated. Lindsey Bagoyo’s church was running a children’s clothing drive. Best Real Housewives franchise, by consensus: New York. Though Maggie Garcia made a strong case for Atlanta.

  How do you watch that garbage, Shupfer wanted to know.

  How do you not, Dani Botero countered.

  Your search—“Dara Kenilworth” “Lainie Pedersen”—did not match any documents.

  Two funerals had taken place while I was out of the office, Rebecca Ristic and Jalen Coombs. Grant Hellerstein’s body was in transit to his family in Upper Michigan. Benjamin Felton’s funeral was scheduled for the coming week.

  Your search—“Dara Kenilworth” “Catherine Myers”—did not match any (goddamn) documents.

  My ears pricked up: Zaragoza, behind the partition, saying, “They got him?”

  “A week ago,” Bagoyo said. “It’s like, how come they don’t call and tell us that?”

  “Got who?” Sully asked.

  “Come on, dude,” Bagoyo said. “You call me when you have a problem. You think I don’t like good news? I have to get it from the internet?”

  “That’s us,” Shupfer said. “The bad news brigade.”

  “Got who,” Sully said.

  “Shooter from the party,” Zaragoza said.

  “Nice.”

  Did you really think that your search—“Leah Horvuth” “Kelly Doran”—would match any documents? Sucker.

  With Dane Jankowski’s name floating around, people had begun pulling apart his social media, poring over every photo and comment and trying to mold them into a coherent political position that could then be used as evidence for their own beliefs.

  Bagoyo said, “He showed up to the rally thingy.”

  “Moron,” Sully said.

  “Thank God for morons,” Shupfer said.

  Your search—“Leah Horvuth” “Beth Green”—hahahaha.

  My coffee was stone-cold. I’d tried fifty-four combinations. Karla-with-a-K Abruzzo was out of the running, as were Dara Kenilworth and Lainie Pedersen.

  As far as Leah Horvuth was concerned, my attitude was: Screw you, Leah Horvuth. What have you done for me lately?

  On my fifty-fifth attempt I typed “Leah Horvuth” “Catherine Myers” and pressed ENTER.

  The browser crowded with words; a tingle crowded on the surface of my skin.

  Hits.

  Twenty-nine of them.

  Leah Horvuth, I take it all back.

  * * *

  —

  THE FIRST LINK led to a San Francisco arts website—a theater review, several years old.

  Bringing Up Baby in a New Era

  How do you tell your children that the world has gone mad?

  This is the question at the heart of playwright Leah Horvuth’s new black comedy, which opens Thursday at Hidden City Theatre.

  Plot summary: two women huddle together in a bomb shelter. It’s never made clear if there is an actual bomb to shelter from. End of plot summary. The reviewer flagged the play’s “heavy-handed parallels to Godot.” He preferred the younger actress. Directing for the Articulate Apes Company, Catherine Myers had chosen to emphasize the script’s surreal elements over “apocalypse shop-talk of fallout and MRE expiration dates.” Tickets cost $38 and could be purchased by calling the box office.

  The remainder of the links were archived listings for the same show.

  I searched for “Catherine Myers” “Articulate Apes.”

  The troupe’s website listed Cathie Myers as a co–artistic director. A native of San Francisco, she held an MFA in theater arts from Yale University.

  I opened Accurint.

  In San Francisco proper, there were two people with that exact spelling of the name. Age sixty-eight, residing in the Sunset; age fifty-one, residing in the Mission.

  Like the critic, I preferred the younger woman.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Myers?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Deputy Edison with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. Am I catching you at an okay time?”

  “Sorry,” she said. Pleasant enough; unguarded. “You said Alameda?”

  “Yes, ma’am, county sheriff. Are you Cathie Myers the director?”

  “I’m sorry, what’s this about?”

  Defenses starting to rise.

  I restated my credentials. “It’s about an identification. I’m trying to verify that I have the correct person. I was wondering if I might be able to come by and have a brief word with you. Nothing to worry about. Routine inquiry.”

  “Regarding what? What does that mean? You’re making me nervous.”

  “Please don’t be. It’s nothing major. Please feel free to call my office and verify.”

  A beat. “What was that badge number again?”

  I gave it to her. “Would this afternoon work for you?”

  “I have rehearsal at six.”

  “I’ll make sure we’re done well before. Thanks. You’re still on Capp Street?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Thanks again.”

  I grabbed my crutch and hobbled toward the exit.

  Dani Botero yelled, “It lives!”

  2:14 p.m.

  The orthopedist had fixed the brace at thirty degrees, an angle intended to permit most everyday functions. I raced to the edge of San Francisco in twenty minutes, then crawled along for half an hour to reach the 101 North, squirming in my seat, tapping at the gas,
ankle starting to tire. By the time I made it to Mission Street and found parking, everything from the waist down pounded like a disco.

  I climbed out of the car and steadied myself against a lamppost, catching my breath against the pain, buffeted by whiffs of rancid fryer oil and off-key Spanish oozing from a storefront evangelical church. Outside a head shop, men in rotted garments perched curbside, watching a sun-scorched woman delight over the squashed remains of a mouse. She slapped the pavement with her bare palms, shrieking Inside out! Inside out!

  I dry-swallowed four ibuprofen and set off.

  * * *

  —

  CATHERINE MYERS LIVED, mercifully, on the ground-floor unit of a begrimed row house. She answered the door with the chain on. Protuberant green eyes peered out from beneath an overhang of sapped gray hair. She was white, thin-lipped, wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket over a loose Hawaiian-print dress and brown Uggs.

  “Deputy Edison,” I said. “We spoke on the phone.”

  My smile did nothing to relax her. Neither did the uniform or the crutch. Maybe she took them for props. The home invasion specialist doth protest too much.

  She kept the chain on, took her time comparing me to my ID. A Yorkshire terrier padded up behind her and cocked its head to one side.

  “There’s a café on Van Ness and Twenty-First,” she said, shoving the badge back at me. “Five minutes.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE BROUGHT THE dog. It trod circles beneath the table before bedding down at her feet.

  I showed her a color copy of the credit card in her name, a Wells Fargo Cash Wise Visa. “Our department recovered it, along with several other fraudulent cards.”

  “Why would you think this is me? As opposed to any other Catherine Myers.”

  I took out a copy of the Credit One Bank Platinum Visa issued to Leah Horvuth.

  That unsettled her more than her own card had. She tucked her hands in her lap, frowning. “Does Leah know about this?”

  “I haven’t been able to reach her. I could use help finding the right contact information. When did you last speak to her?”

 

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