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In the grueling days and weeks that will follow, the professional machinery of the justice system will begin its work. Detectives in windbreakers will methodically trace the trajectories of the bullet paths through the drywall and furniture. Technicians will labor over grainy doorbell camera footage, and analysts will reconstruct the timeline of the tragedy second by agonizing second. They will count the shell casings, document the entry points, and categorize the carnage. But for the people of this Stockton neighborhood, the forensic details are a secondary concern. For them, the damage is already permanent, carved into the collective memory of the block with a cruelty that time will struggle to erode.
