May 1
Overland Park Police Department
12400 Foster Street
Overland Park, Kansas
3:39 P.M. CDT / 4:39 P.M. EDT
She’s kind of pretty, Sergeant Brian Fisker noted, though maybe not in a cheerleader way. Nothing that a shampoo and something other than a hoodie and bad-fitting jeans wouldn’t fix…
“How ’bout it, Patricia? Or would you rather I call you Pat? Maybe Pattie?”
The object of his questions sat silently, head lowered, picking at a cuticle with an intensity that might have been admirable if applied to other pursuits.
“Answer the officer, Pattie.” This, from a tight-lipped man in a chair against the wall; his companion, a woman, twisted a handkerchief but said nothing.
“Trish. My name is Trish.”
An exasperated tone: “Nobody calls you ‘Trish,’ Pattie.”
“You don’t. Won’t. He did.”
“Chaz?” Fisker asked. “Did he?”
She shrugged.
“We need to know about Chaz,” Fisker said. “Six people are dead, Trish. We need to know why he did … what he did.”
The girl shrugged again.
The man in the chair opened his mouth, and Fisker held up a cautionary hand.
“You were his friend, Trish. Am I right?”
A single nod—reluctant, grudging.
“Then you can guess what people are saying about Chaz—and will keep on saying about him, because all they know is what he did. Not why, not the reasons he had. Is that what you want, Trish?”
A third stubborn shrug.
“Goddamit, Pattie—”
“Mr. Halvorsen,” Fisker interrupted, and his voice carried not a hint of request, “this will go a lot easier if you let me—Trish and me—do the talking. Can you do that?”
“I’m her damn father, and I’ll—”
“Karl.” It was the first word that had been spoken by the handkerchief-woman. “Just shut up. Please.”
Her husband stared at her; his mouth opened and closed like a drowning fish, then settled again into the tight-lipped expression.
“Thank you. Trish, Chaz can’t talk for himself anymore. Whatever he was trying to say … well, it’s up to you now. Or you can let him be written off as a lunatic, a pathetic loser who just—”
“He wasn’t a loser! Pathetic? It’s all of you who are pathetic.”
Her eyes were furious now, and she brushed back a wayward strand of lank brown hair.
“He cared, Chaz did; he cared about people, and the shitty way everybody treats everybody else! Yeah, that makes him a loser, doesn’t it? Just ask the douchebags at school, the ones who treat us like shit, who laugh about—”
“Was he bullied, Trish?”
Her laugh broke like a wave of scorn on the beach of cluelessness.
“Oh, no-o-o-o … like, how ’bout every shitty day.”
“About what?”
“Do they need a reason? He was smart … thought about things, like why they are the way that they are, why greedy people walk right over people, take whatever they want, crap on everybody else. So now, suddenly everybody cares? What total bullshit!”
“I do care, Trish. I don’t believe that Chaz just walked into a mall for no reason and—”
“The mall? Chaz hated the mall, everybody like pigs slopping down all kinds of shit, while the rest of the world could just go fuck itself and—”
Her head abruptly twisted to the side, but not before Fisker noted the tears.
“So Chaz would talk with you, Trish? About all this?”
She sniffed hard, challenging.
“Yeah. With me. So what?”
“So good. Everybody needs a friend, Trish. It sounds like Chaz needed you, and you were there for him.”
“I’d listen. Nobody else did, to him or me. He’d come over sometimes, show me stuff on my computer…”
“You were alone with this … this murderer? In my home, Pattie? What in hell were you thinking? What did the two of you do when I wasn’t in the house—”
Fisker silenced him with a look that spoke volumes. “What were his interests, Trish? What kind of stuff?”
“Everything.” Her words may have been directed at Fisker, but her eyes were locked with defiance on the couple seated against the wall, and there was no doubt about which question she had answered.
“Can you be a little more specific, Trish? Political stuff, maybe?”
She turned to face the police officer. “Politics are bullshit. Chaz knows—knew—that. It’s just how people justify doing what they want to do to other people anyway. It’s the people that get shit on all the time that Chaz cares about.”
“Of course. Anybody in particular? The poor or minorities or—”
“All of them. In this stupid country, or like in the Middle East. He showed me some of the pictures of those … those camps they have over there. They have to live like that, in crappy slums, just because some other bunch of people wanted their land. We went into a chat room this one time, a special website, and talked to some of—”
As if a switch had been thrown, she clamped her lips tight. For the first time, Fisker noticed the genetic similarities between two of the people in the interrogation room.
“Go on, Trish. Did Chaz want to help those people?”
But Patricia Halvorsen—Trish to what the policeman suspected was an all-too-select few—was once more intent on her cuticle, and Sergeant Brian Fisker was already mentally ticking off the names of judges he knew with a proven propensity for issuing search warrants promptly, with neither undue delay nor undesired specificity.