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  “Mr. Turner,” he said quietly, shaking his head and still smiling. “On Momma’s, I for real don’t know anything about any of this. Merch.” Although I was by no means fluent in street slang, Darnell just promised on his mother’s grave and, with the last word, short for merchandise, emphasized his claim.

  “Okay, Darnell.” I slid my card through a slit in the glass. “I’ll continue your case a couple weeks for plea. I’ll be out to see you at the jail sometime next week.”

  On my way out of court, a large, well-dressed African American woman met me in the hallway. “Mr. Turner, I’m Glenda Moore, Darnell’s mother.” She did not share her son’s light-hearted tone. “I know it’s early, but how bad does it look?”

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” I said, shaking her hand. “It’s really too early to say. If you attend next week, I’ll be able to at least summarize the evidence against your son.”

  “I know you must hear this from lots of mothers, but I hope you can believe me. Darnell doesn’t have it in him to take someone’s…” Her voice cracked, and she looked away for a moment before continuing. “God knows that child can act the fool, Mr. Turner, but he’s not a murderer.”

  “Ms. Moore, I will certainly do my best for your son,” I told her, intentionally not responding to her pronouncement of her son’s innocence.

  On one hand, she was right. I’d heard a similar refrain from several mothers of the accused. On the other hand, it was a somewhat hopeful sign that at least Darnell had been raised in a household with a good mother—not a given for many of my court-appointed clients. Also, I was glad to know that Ms. Moore seemed to grasp the seriousness of Darnell’s situation and hoped that she would share that with her son.

  Chapter Two

  Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults.—Harper Lee

  Oakland, California 2006

  Both boys’ hands were chafed raw from hauling the rough cinderblocks. Damon was convinced that Danny, the twins’ new foster dad, had made up the chore just to be mean. Who ever heard of moving a giant pile of cinderblocks from one side of a vacant lot to the other?

  Jesse, the smaller of the twins, was too tired to care. His mind was numb as his spindly arms struggled with the weight of the blocks, his small back bent in half by the time he reached the pile, dropping his burden from ankle level.

  Danny was turning out to be a real loser, like all the rest of them. He’d been so nice and happy during the interview at social services. He’d talked about them playing rec league baseball and riding to school in his big shiny pick-up. But what had really gotten the boys’ attention was the ice cream.

  “So, growing boys need healthy meals, of course,” Ms. Caverly the social worker had cautioned in the interview.

  “Well, I suppose I eat healthy enough,” Danny said as he reclined casually in his chair, hands behind his head as he flexed his biceps. “So long as ice cream is okay once in a while,” he added, winking at the boys. The twins had looked at each other with mouths agape, barely able to contain themselves.

  The interview had been like a dozen others: enthusiastic with the promise of happy times ahead. Deep down both boys knew that this was all likely too good to be true. They had been disappointed so many times. They were nine now and knew that something always went wrong with foster care. As they had been told over and over, it was difficult to find someone willing to take on both boys even though the pay for the foster parents was double. Still, though, the ice cream comment had gotten them excited and it had been fun to be happy, even for a while.

  It was after dark before the oversized pick-up pulled into the dusty lot. Danny motioned for them to climb in the back and flung a plastic bag of fast food at them. They hadn’t been allowed inside the cab of the truck since their ride home from social services.

  “This sucks, Jess,” Damon said, grinning at his use of the grown-up term as he fished a burger out of the bag for his brother.

  “Yeah, D, but these burgers don’t suck, though,” quipped Jesse, following with an infectious giggle.

  “Having some chocolate ice cream for desert wouldn’t suck either,” responded Damon, chuckling before he finished his sentence.

  “Nope, having a million bucks wouldn’t suck either.”

  The boys laughed the whole ride home. They had seen a lot in nine years and knew that so long as they had each other, everything would be fine.

  Chapter Three

  Back at the office, Chuck Argenal, a private eye I used for most cases had made himself comfortable at my desk. “I see reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated,” he said without looking up. “I came by to pick up a check.”

  The initial police reports from the Moore case arrived via email; I sent two copies to the printer. “Lucky for Dunigan the guards arrived when they did. I had him right where I wanted him.”

  “That guy’s big enough to go bear huntin’ with a switch.” Chuck spoke in a southern drawl of movie lines and country idioms. I usually followed most of it. “So, Joseph, what unfounded charge has been levied against your latest innocent client?” he asked, getting up to leave.

  “Only murder.” I handed him a copy of the police reports and settled back into my chair. “Darnell Moore. Drive-by shooting in west Oakland. Apparently, there’s surveillance of his car driving by as shots ring out. Tentative identification. Sounds gang related. I’ll email you the file and get funding.”

  “Once again, unto the breach!” he said, pausing at the door, eyebrows raised in a question.

  “No idea, sorry. Sounds like Shakespeare?”

  “Henry the Fifth,” he called from down the hall.

  Ten minutes later, Andy, my office mate, poked his head in my office with the unwelcome news that his wife wanted to set me up with her friend.

  “Set-ups are a bad idea,” I reminded him for what had to be the six millionth time.

  “That’s what I told her. You’re a mess with women.”

  “Thanks for the support, but here’s why it’s a bad idea. Say we go out and she thinks I’m a jerk. Then she tells Karen and now I’ve got two people who think I’m a jerk.”

  Andy smirked. “I think my wife already knows you’re a jerk but go on.”

  “Worse yet, we hit it off and become a couple. Then inevitably, something goes wrong, and we break up. Now Karen takes her side, of course, and the next thing you know, the two of them are making fun of my annoying habits or my orgasm face or stupid things I said in bed. Then I’m forced into isolation and start drinking too much again.”

  “I could have gone my lifetime without picturing your orgasm face, but this does sound much worse than I imagined,” he said, sounding humored by my neuroses. “And I wasn’t aware that you’d ever stopped drinking too much.”

  “Or say we hit it off then break up, then get back together. Now Karen knows all this stuff about me and now she’s already agreed that I was a loser and apologized for ever setting her up with me. Now her friendship with the woman is ruined. It’s really a lose, lose, lose proposition.”

  Andy shook his head. “Two words, Turner. Seek help.” He retreated to his office. “I’m going to send you her contact info so I can stay on Karen’s good side.”

  Returning to the Moore case file, I braced myself for bad news, a general mindset I’d developed when reading police reports. They were written, after all, by police officers, in order to justify the arrest of the suspect. As a rule, they weren’t filled with evidence of my client’s innocence.

  The police reports had furthered my skepticism that my newest client knew nothing about nothing. Over the last week leading up to the murder, the Cashtown and Iceboyz gangs had engaged in a pitched battle, turning west Oakland into an urban war zone. Just one day prior to the shooting, notorious Cashtown member Bumpy Lampkin had sprayed the Iceboyz town headquarters with bullets.

  Although the reports stopped short of alleging that Moore was a member of the Iceboyz, there were strong indications
that he was on the membership path. In his phone, the police had found photos of him posing with other known gang members while flashing their hand signs. In one, Moore posed with a semi-automatic rifle.

  I opened the file labeled “Firespotter” a technology utilized by the Oakland Police Department for more than a decade. Using acoustic sensors that blanketed the worst neighborhoods in Oakland, the system identified gunshots through artificial intelligence to pinpoint their location within a 50-foot radius and document the exact timing of the shots.

  The Firespotter graphic showed a three-dimensional map of the area surrounding Maybeck and Eighth streets. Twenty-three red circles, each signifying a gunshot, dotted the area just south of the intersection. All of the shots occurred within a five-second span on March 22, beginning at six-seventeen-o-five p.m.

  It appeared that the entire Cash guys gang, or whatever they were called, had been expecting an assault and had returned fire. Even in the age of large capacity magazines, the cluster of shots within such a short span of time meant there were probably several shooters.

  I opened the “photos” file, bracing myself for gory shots of the victim or worse yet, autopsy photographs. The first was a photo of Moore’s car, an olive green 1989 mid-sized sedan seized one day after the shooting when he was arrested. Other photos showed the car’s hood to be a slightly lighter shade of green, and both front hubcaps were missing. The car appeared to have been made from spare parts.

  The driver’s side panel was riddled with bullet holes, the back window, shattered. There were more photos of bullet strike marks inside the car, on the dashboard, and remarkably, on the driver’s side headrest. Moore was obviously lucky to be alive. That is, whoever was driving the car was lucky to be alive, I chastised myself.

  The next photos were of the residence at 454 West Eighth street. A close-up revealed four different bullet holes in the front door. The front bay window of the Victorian had been shot out. The number of shots fired at the house in such a short duration made me wonder if there was more than one shooter in Moore’s car. I didn’t relish the thought of trying to get that information out of my client.

  Wide-angle photos showed orange plastic evidence markers next to gold shell casings, the part of the cartridge ejected from a firearm when fired. There were two groups of markers, one in the middle of Eighth street and another on the sidewalk in front of the house. Closeup photos revealed ten forty-caliber shell casings in the street, presumably ejected from the murderer’s firearm.

  With the dinner hour approaching, I didn’t want to push my luck with any more photographs. I emailed Chuck and put together an investigation list. He worked better with lists. I often lamented one of the many discrepancies which made criminal defense an uphill battle. Apart from the police department’s investigation, the District Attorneys also had inspectors on staff to investigate their cases. They were usually former police detectives with access to all the resources of the Oakland Police Department.

  I had Chuck, a former probation officer, who wasn’t licensed to carry a gun and still used a typewriter. Still, in the very shallow pool of private detectives, I placed him solidly in the upper third. An aging hippie who wore flip flops twelve months a year, his drawl had a way of putting people at ease in every situation, which often led him to valuable information. He also seemingly knew everyone in Oakland, from barbers to cops to waiters. Mainly, though, he was very entertaining, with a country saying or movie line for every occasion.

  I drafted a discovery list for the D.A., which included witness statements, ballistics, and gunshot residue tests on the victim, and Firespotter activity for the area for the forty-eight hours preceding the shooting. I had no definite reason for the last request, but motive seemed to be an important part of the prosecution’s case. Maybe there were other shootings to muddy the motive waters.

  Chuck’s investigation list included an interview with the eyewitness. Tentative eye-witness identifications had a way of becoming much less tentative at trial, and I wanted to speak with the witness before he met with the District Attorney. Because Chuck’s technological comfort zone was yet to include email, I planned to call him later and painstakingly recite the task list which he’d write on the well-worn spiral notepad he used for every case. I reminded myself that his entertainment value was high.

  ****

  I drove home, picking up a burrito for dinner on the way. I lived in the Glenview neighborhood in the Oakland Hills. It was a safe area and an easy walk to shops, restaurants, and Melba’s.

  When I’d bought the place three years ago, aided by a timely inheritance from my favorite uncle, the relentlessly upbeat real estate agent had championed the area’s great “neighborhood vibe.” I’d only met one neighbor, which was fine, and it wasn’t so deep into suburbia that I felt disconnected from the city.

  The three-bedroom craftsman, “old world charm and new world amenities”, was sparsely furnished. An old oak veneered dining room table served as my home office. Organization not being my strong suit, I hadn’t seen the veined surface in months.

  I turned off the alarm and fed Alley, my cat. I’d rescued her three years ago, mainly because I was dating an animal lover, but she generally kept to herself and I’d gotten used to having her around.

  I kept the pantry stocked with cereal and paper plates. While admittedly not a green option, I had found paper products to be the key to a clean kitchen. I grabbed one for my burrito, a beer from the fridge, and settled into the recliner. I had promised myself to replace the unsightly chair from the moment I dragged it from the basement where it had been left by the previous owner. It was an off-putting mustard color and in order to recline properly—while remaining centered in front of the flat screen—it had to be positioned in the middle of the living room. Now, though, since it had survived the jibes of everyone who visited, I’d become stubborn in my attachment.

  Normally, I’d watch a ballgame or a movie, but something about the Moore case stoked my curiosity. First, depending on the strength of the identification, as far as murder cases went, the evidence of guilt was strong but not overwhelming. The Alameda County District Attorney did not often charge an individual with murder unless the evidence was solid. Obviously, they didn’t want an innocent person to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Also, there were quite enough open and shut cases to occupy their time.

  Here, although it was early, so far there didn’t appear to be a confession or video of the actual murder. There didn’t appear to be my client’s DNA on the victim or vice versa. So, while it didn’t exactly look good for young Darnell, he would at least have a fighting chance.

  Also, his mother had made an impression. I wasn’t quite sure why, but her statement that her son didn’t have it in his heart to kill someone rang true. Also, while her son had been far from a model citizen, his lack of prior violent crimes was significant. Over the years, I had noticed that the criminal world was divided between those capable of violence upon another human and those who were not. Of course, it was entirely possible that Darnell just hadn’t been caught committing other violent crimes, but something about his persona seemed consistent with his mom’s statement.

  I slid the surveillance DVD into my laptop and waited for it to load. I continued to be awed by the number of businesses and private residences in Oakland with security cameras. It seemed like eighty percent of the city was blanketed. As had been the trend lately, the footage at Eighth and Maybeck was remarkably clear. Shot from the southwest corner of the intersection, presumably the E&J Market, the video covered the intersection itself but not the residence across the street from the market where the shooting took place.

  With a mouthful of burrito, I fast forwarded the video to 6:16:30 p.m. Within ten seconds a green sedan entered the intersection from the south on Maybeck and made a left on West Eighth. Thirty-five seconds later, at the exact time designated by Firespotter, multiple gunshots were heard just before the same car appeared again, this time racing back through the
intersection from the west, revealing its license plate as it left the scene going east on Eighth Street. All of the windows in the car appeared to be down, but the interior of the vehicle was not visible.

  I closed my laptop and walked to the fridge for another beer, digesting the video. It seemed clear that the fatal shots had come from Moore’s vehicle. When shots were fired the car would have been directly in front of 454 West Eighth—where the victim’s body was found on the sidewalk.

  Also, the car’s initial pass through the intersection was not a good sign. The maneuver was obviously undertaken to ensure the intended victims were loitering in their usual spots, effectively proving the premeditation required for first-degree murder. The car’s path also put the driver’s side closest to the victims, enabling the driver to shoot out of his window.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked it and saw it was Chuck. “Do we have a fighting chance?” I asked.

  “Tough case. Motive, opportunity, maybe an I.D. Looks like he was at least the driver. Maybe plead him to manslaughter if he names the shooter?”

  “Don’t see that happening.”

  “I took a look at his rap sheet. If he’s the shooter, he took a big leap from misdemeanors to the big time. Maybe a jump-in?”

  “Yeah, I thought of that.”

  Chuck was referring to being “jumped in” a gang. Back in the days of the Crips and the Bloods, it had meant the ritual of severely beating a new gang member as an initiation. More recently, the initiation meant the new member committing a violent offense. “What do you need in the short term?” he asked.

  “I’d like to get a statement from the shop owner before the D.A. does.”

  “Sure. You free today?”

  “Yes. Working at home now. Meet at my office at eleven o’clock?”