A Measure of Darkness

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I started to work my thumb under the flap.

  My cellphone.

  Luke.

  At first you’re annoyed. Then you worry. It’s not as though my parents are old, but I’ve written mental eulogies for everyone I care about. Occupational hazard.

  I picked up. “Who died?”

  He guffawed. “Hello to you, too.”

  “I’m at work, so unless it’s an emergency, I’ll call you back later.”

  “Just—real quick, I wanted to ask if you’re free sometime next couple of weeks.”

  “Free for what.”

  “Andrea picked her colors, she wants us to coordinate.”

  “Colors…For the wedding?”

  “Yeah, man. You and me, we’re getting new suits. I was thinking we could go and get it done, hang out afterward, if you’re up for it.”

  “Is there a reason this has to happen now?”

  “Dang,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you? We set a date.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, no.”

  “Memorial Day weekend. Mark it down.”

  “That’s—what is that? Eight weeks from now?”

  “What can I say? When it’s right, it’s right. Right? No need to screw around. We put the deposit down and everything. Make sure you can get the day off. It’s carnelian and pearl, by the way. The colors. Andrea’s gonna email Amy about it. She wants her in the wedding party. So what do you say? I can do Tuesday morning. I talked to Mom, she said she’d pay half.”

  “I don’t want her to do that.”

  “Sure, no worries. The offer’s there.”

  “I have PT on Tuesday.”

  “Oh shit, yeah. How’s that going, by the way?”

  “Not bad.”

  “CrossFit, dude. I’m telling you…Well, cool, you find a time works for you and hit me up. Don’t sleep on it, though.”

  This was the first conversation we’d had since he pitched me his business plan, and I thought it was weird that he hadn’t mentioned it. I should’ve cut bait.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Everything else good?”

  “Yeah, bro. Alrighty tighty.”

  “What about your thing?”

  “Thing.”

  I didn’t want to say weed or dispensary in earshot of my colleagues. Instead I ended up talking like a character in a bad spy novel. “Your deal. What we discussed.”

  “That? Don’t worry.” Luke laughed. “You’re off the hook.”

  “I wasn’t ever on the hook.”

  “Well, yeah, no. Don’t worry about it, though. I got it all taken care of.”

  “You’re not still going ahead with it.”

  “I mean. Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

  “Many.”

  “Look, man. I appreciate that you care about me. But it’s my life. I don’t get chances every day. I got to do what I can, when I can. All I’m asking is you respect the effort.”

  He sounded sober—reasonable, even.

  “I thought you didn’t want Andrea’s name on the paperwork,” I said.

  “Nah, it’s cool.”

  “No, as in, she’s signing, or no as in you are.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I got this. Look, I’ll let you go, I know you’re busy.”

  “Hang on a minute.”

  “Let me know about Tuesday, okay?”

  “Luke—”

  He hung up.

  I stared at my reflection in the phone’s screen.

  “So?” Dani Botero asked. “Who died?”

  I opened up my contact list, scrolled. “No one yet.”

  I hit CALL.

  My mother said, “Hi, honey.”

  * * *

  —

  I’M NOT A yeller. Even after she told me she’d agreed to put her name on the contract, I didn’t raise my voice. Even though she’d attempted to deny it at first.

  “He needs my help,” she said.

  “He needs someone’s help, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Clay. He’s doing his best to pull himself up. Do you have any idea what he’s up against? The stigma? You should see how people treat him. He goes in for a job interview and they act like he’s a leper. He’s lucky to be getting minimum wage. I know it’s easy for you, in your position, to sit there judging him—”

  “I am not—Mom. Please. I’m trying to protect you. Both of you.”

  “From what? It’s legal.”

  Round and round we went. I didn’t yell. But when I ended the call, every face in the vicinity was angled toward me.

  “Nothing to see here,” I said, glaring.

  They went back to work.

  I snatched up the white envelope from the State of Delaware and tore it open, giving myself a paper cut. I sucked on my thumb while skimming the cover letter.

  It was from the Capital One legal department.

  Dear Mr. Edison: This is in response to your request of December 28…

  Enclosed were records for one of Winnie Ozawa’s fake credit cards. Eight to twelve weeks, and they’d used every last one of them.

  I turned pages until I came to her mailing address.

  I drew my thumb from my mouth; the taste of blood lingered. “Fuck me.”

  Dani Botero said, “Now who died?”

  I stuffed some items in my bag, grabbed my vest, and hurried out.

  * * *

  —

  MY GPS ALREADY had the address from a previous search.

  I took 580 to the Maze, passing Ikea, where weekend deal hounds filled the parking lot; passing the wholesome minivans lined up for Bay Street, afternoon movie, dinner at California Pizza Kitchen; exiting at Powell and making my way through the revised Emeryville streetscape to arrive at a bland, pleasant residential mid-rise.

  I parked in the space reserved for visitors.

  It was almost one a.m. in London.

  What would Nwodo want me to do?

  Call, wake her up? I’d already ruined her vacation once.

  I sent her a text, waited twenty minutes. Got out of my car.

  In the lobby, I flashed my badge at the doorman and kept walking.

  “Sir?” he said.

  I went to the elevator bank.

  The doorman said, “Sir, come back here, please.”

  I got into the elevator.

  “Sir. I—”

  The doors closed.

  On the fourth floor I walked a hallway painted a flaccid ecru and hung with unlimited-edition lithographs. Muted abstract carpeting, green and bark, evoked the forest floor. From within the ceiling, deep within the walls, came the sound of fast-rushing air, as though I were the lone passenger on an airplane, destination unknown.

  Inside unit 4011, a TV murmured.

  I knocked.

  The dialogue snapped off.

  Behind me, the elevator dinged, and the doorman stumbled out. He spotted me and started loping down the hall.

  “Sir. You can’t be up here.”

  The door to unit 4011 opened.

  Meredith Klaar peered out at me, glazed, her mouth a puckered interrogative. Thin to begin with, she’d lost weight and now verged on frail. The blue in her hair had dulled to the color of old bruises. Sooty smears beneath her eyes. She wore flannel pajama bottoms, woolen house slippers with holes in the toes, a sweatshirt dotted with crumbs.

  I could see into the apartment, and I remembered my previous visit, wastebasket full of crumpled tissues, spent boxes everywhere and unopened boxes stacked like a bulwark on the kitchen counter.

  All of it had been cleared away.

  She’d cried herself out.

  “Sir,”
the doorman said, uncertainly.

  “It’s okay,” Meredith said to him.

  She smiled at me. “You came back.”

  “I have a couple of new questions for you.”

  She stood back to admit me.

  “Easier if you came down to the station,” I said.

  The natural question: why?

  Meredith nodded. “Is it cold out?”

  “Not so bad.”

  “I get cold easily,” she said.

  “Go grab a jacket,” I said.

  THREE

  Beforemath

  CHAPTER 26

  The drive to the Sheriff’s offices on Lakeside took fifteen minutes. In the rearview, Meredith Klaar slumped low, nibbling her thumb, gazing serenely out the window.

  She knew what was happening; had expected it.

  Guilty people put their heads down in interview rooms because they’re tired. Lying is exhausting. Running is exhausting. Waiting for the doorbell, the phone; petrified of tripping up, straining not to bust out in public confession.

  When the spirit is broken, the body follows.

  In the sluggish station elevator she smiled bashfully at her feet. She’d swapped out the slippers for eggplant-colored Converse Chucks. She seemed childlike. Like Winnie Ozawa.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For listening.”

  At that point she had yet to say a word. But I nodded.

  The elevator croaked open. I held the door. “After you.”

  I got us an interview room, got her a bottle of water. Once we were seated, I showed her the fake credit cards. I showed her the letter from Capital One, listing Winnie Ozawa’s mailing address, same as that of Meredith Klaar’s studio unit.

  When I displayed the photo of Winnie’s gray face, she hid in her sleeves.

  “Please don’t make me look at it.”

  “ ‘Her,’ ” I said. “Not ‘it.’ ”

  She huddled in her make-believe shelter.

  “Meredith,” I said.

  She sat up. Wiped her nose on her wrist. Her arms were like sticks. She uncapped the water bottle but did not drink. “I’m ready.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY’D MET AT school.

  “Watermark,” I said.

  Her reaction: amusement. Is there another?

  Meredith had arrived at age twelve, after bouncing around several other schools. In the beginning she had a hard landing. She was confused, resentful, undisciplined. She skipped class. She skipped meals. She steered clear of the other kids. They didn’t shun her, but neither did they go out of their way to make her feel welcome. She might not have lasted, had she not fallen in with Winnie Ozawa.

  “She was my first real friend,” Meredith said. “There or anywhere.”

  Theirs was a relationship forged in common disdain. For authority; for their earnest peers who’d drunk the Kool-Aid. Everyone at Watermark liked to think they were so rebellious and unique, when really they’d bought into a system, no different from that of their parents or their church or the piano teacher.

  “They non-conformed identically,” Meredith said. “ ‘Look how free we are, la-dee-dah.’ Nature, arts and crafts, the kind of cheesy garbage that just made you want to barf.”

  Winnie was a loner, too, and though younger than Meredith by a couple of years, she came off as a sophisticate. She introduced Meredith to weed, which Meredith didn’t particularly enjoy, but which she smoked anyway, because she couldn’t afford to jeopardize Winnie’s esteem. Late at night they’d sneak into the woods to pass a stubby joint back and forth, mocking the other kids, the La-Dee-Dahs, high on life.

  What started out as transgressive and cool soon felt silly. No one cared if they got high. No one gave a shit if they were in the woods late at night or ran naked or ate leaves or skinned squirrels or cut class.

  That was the crux of the problem. What was the point of breaking a rule that didn’t exist? “I was the difficult one,” she said. “I was used to having an adversary.”

  She needed an adversary.

  But you can’t push against something that gives no resistance. Swiftly she went from feeling silly to feeling pathetic; from pathetic to furious.

  One morning, she stormed over to the main office. Ready to shriek at Camille, demand that Camille call her parents and tell them to come get her right away.

  No, Camille said, I’m not going to do that.

  But she had to.

  You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Camille replied. Nor do I.

  “That totally threw me. I didn’t know what to say. I pitched a fit. Down on the floor, kicking, flailing. A full-on banshee shitstorm.”

  It seemed to be a pleasurable memory for her.

  “What did Camille do?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “She let me carry on for a minute,” Meredith said. “Then she went back to her crossword. Fine. I’ll yell louder. But it was like she couldn’t see or hear me. And then I had this out-of-body experience. I could see myself, rolling around on the ground like a two-year-old. By the end I was curled up in Camille’s arms, sobbing.”

  Everything changed after that. Others began to show her kindness. Or it was possible that they had been offering kindness all along, and she’d refused to believe them. She allowed herself to open up. She tried out their stupid activities, found they weren’t as ridiculous as she thought. She worked in the garden, hours at a stretch. It wore her out so much that she started declining Winnie’s nighttime invitations. She befriended the boy who ran the woodshop, and through him her circle began to widen.

  She introduced her first resolution at Town Hall. When it passed, the feeling she got was like none she’d ever experienced.

  “That was real freedom,” she said.

  “What was the resolution?”

  “Budget.” Hint of a smile. “Money for fertilizer.”

  By May, she dreaded the prospect of summer vacation.

  Who would take care of her tomatoes while she was gone?

  She returned for her second year a full convert. La-dee-dah. High on life.

  As for Winnie, she’d moved on to another newcomer.

  With time Meredith came to recognize the pattern: Winnie operating as a black-market welcoming committee, displaying an uncanny knack for identifying those who would fail to fit in—the misfits among the misfits.

  I asked if she thought Camille put Winnie up to the task.

  Meredith bit her lip. “I don’t think so. Camille practices what she preaches. She stayed out of our business.”

  Even after Meredith and Winnie had gone their separate paths, they retained a mutual fondness, unspoken, not unlike the embers of a first love. By no means did Meredith expect that. Nothing goes cold faster than revoked intimacy, and in the hermetically sealed world that was Watermark you had no way to avoid one particular person.

  It might have turned ugly. Yet they continued to smile at each other on the path; to share an occasional meal, share an eye roll across the meeting hall.

  “I was keeping her in my back pocket, you know? Just in case. Cause things always break down. I guess she was doing the same.”

  She sighed. “You can’t understand how…off I felt, when she just upped and went. I don’t think I’m the only one who reacted that way. Watermark without Winnie Ozawa, it’s like an insult. To the natural order.”

  The more Meredith thought about it, the sorrier she felt for Winnie. It made her sad that Winnie couldn’t appreciate what she had.

  “She’d never spent any real time out of the valley. She was the naïve one, not me. But there was nothing I could do. Her problems were hers to deal with.”

  I said, “After she left, you two kept in touch.”

/>   “No. Even if I’d wanted to, I had no way to contact her. There was nothing until she found me.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a year and a half ago.”

  That lined up with Camille’s account of Winnie’s most recent visit to the school.

  I said, “What happened?”

  “I come home from work and she’s sitting in the lobby. She jumped up and threw her arms around me in this giant hug.”

  “Where’d she been in the meantime?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “I haven’t seen her in four years and here she is behaving like it’s last week. I wasn’t prepared. Having her there felt warm and good, I didn’t want to spoil it.”

  “Why do you think she came to you?”

  “I want to think cause we’d been close. But probably she had nowhere else to go.”

  Studio apartment, one twin bed.

  I asked if she and Winnie had ever been romantically involved.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Would you have wanted something to happen?”

  “No. No. You’re not…If you’d had our experiences, you’d understand.”

  “Help me understand,” I said.

  She thought awhile before answering. “It was a spiritual connection.”

  And yet.

  Here we were.

  I centered the credit card statement. “Whose idea was this? Yours or hers?”

  “I had nothing to do with that. I swear. I didn’t know what she was up to.”

  “You let her use your mailing address.”

  “Absolutely not. Never. She just did it.”

  “There are sixteen cards,” I said. “Sixteen statements showing up in your mailbox every month.”

  Meredith shook her head violently. “I didn’t get any statements. I swear to God. Maybe the doorman thought the names were wrong and tossed them in the trash. I don’t know what to tell you. They never got to me. Never.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t want to push too hard, too soon, before we’d gotten to the main event. I sat back, stretched my legs, eased my tone. “How long did Winnie end up staying with you?”