A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,12

an angry mirror.

A second ambulance pulls up. A police step van right behind it. A sergeant has appeared from somewhere and some of us gather around him as the cop with the towel fills him in. The paramedics climb out of the second unit and approach, watching us, watching the wounded suspect, watching the guns still unholstered.

“Got a guy needs attention here, Sarge,” the first medic says, and it is not a question. The sergeant raises one finger to silence him.

“We’re securing the scene, doc,” he says.

We all watch as the sergeant looks around at the high windows of the darkened buildings around us. He walks slowly over to the sidewalk, scans the area and then walks back to his squad car. He is the ranking officer on the scene. Everyone else is silent as we watch him reach into his car and come out with a plastic evidence bag. He is in no hurry, and even the paramedics seem to be unable to speak. We all watch him walk back toward the suspect and past him to the chrome handgun. He stares at it a full minute and then bends to pick it up and place it carefully in the bag.

He stands and seals it.

“OK. Secure,” he says, pointing at the group of officers, “Put him in the van.”

All four of us walk over to the black man and grab a piece. I’m left with the bloodied shoulder but I don’t care. When we pull him off the curb a low keening of pain rises in his throat and he is heavy and nearly limp. Someone grabs his belt and we drag him across the street to the open van doors and the keening becomes a wail. A cop up inside reaches out and takes a fistful of dreadlocks and yanks as we all boost him into the truck and someone gives him a final shove with a boot to his haunch. The doors slam shut and when I bang my palm on the side panel I turn and see that both the paramedics and the sergeant have turned their backs to the scene. The van pulls away in the direction of the hospital. Towel man catches my eye and then tracks down my arm. I look down to see the blood smear on my hand from the black man’s wound and the cop carefully folds the towel with Danny Riley’s blood and walks away.

When I wake up the shack is still and the cool night air has drifted in and pushed out the heat but I am still sweating and I know there will be no more sleep this night.

I pull on a pair of jeans. In the swamp outside it’s the dead-zone time, a strange biological warp that shrouds this place long after midnight but far from dawn. It’s a time when the insects stop their chirping. The night predators have given up. And the early hunters and daytime foragers are still asleep. The quiet is like a pressure on the ears. I interrupt it with the hiss of propane and light the portable stove to heat my coffee.

That night in Philadelphia, Danny Riley would die and the shooter would find ignominious celebrity in the years to follow. He would claim innocence and racism. The courts would end up on trial. The wounded man, the one who knew the truth, would never speak it.

I poured a cup of coffee and stepped out onto the landing to sip it. I stared into the canopy and remembered the scene in the emergency room waiting area that had filled with cops and wives and reporters and camera crews. When the police chief came out surrounded by his captains he made a terse and tearful statement, announcing that Riley had succumbed to his wounds. There was an almost group exhalation, a beat of mutual pain that was interrupted by the blonde radio news reporter who asked the first question:

“Chief, what do you say to the reports that your officers took an inordinate amount of time to transport the wounded suspect and that they beat him before tossing him bodily into the paddy wagon?”

Everyone in earshot turned to look at her and when I did I saw my father, out of uniform, standing near the wall with two of his precinct friends. He was staring at me, nodding his head and smirking with an unfamiliar “atta boy” that he rarely had cause to waste on me.

I’d gone through the coffee by the