I heard the noise first: a rush of footsteps in the hall, the scratch of heavy-duty fabric—an unusual combination of sounds in our normally quiet 100-year-old loft building. It was the middle of the pandemic's first summer, when hospitals were packed and restaurants were empty, and the entire City of Chicago, along with the world, was holding its collective breath. No one knew quite what was happening, or quite how to feel, and the traffic on the streets had vanished, and the stores had closed, and life had settled into a quietness that was both calming and unsettling.
When I opened the door to the hallway to see what was happening, I was head-level with a gun, an M4 assault rifle, all black and all business, cradled in the hands of an officer of one of the city's tactical units. We locked eyes for a second before I slammed the...
