May 2
Overland Park Police Department
12400 Foster Street
Overland Park, Kansas
7:32 A.M. CDT / 8:32 A.M. EDT
Sergeant Brian Fisker taped the photo—actually, a color printout of the screenshot from the confiscated laptop of Trish Halvorsen—on the workroom wall.
It joined six black-framed photos aligned near the top, above more than a baker’s dozen others—one of the latter, a copy of Piper Cameron’s photo ID. All were part of a careful schematic consisting of handwritten captions and explanatory notes, evidence-index references, and a precisely constructed timeline of the previous day’s event.
The dry-marker squeaked as Fisker traced a red line from the new addition to an eight-by-ten photo at the center of the whiteboard: a blurry blow-up of the school yearbook photo of Chaz Campbell. A heavier line already intersected with the photo of the computer’s owner, smaller but taken from the same source.
“‘Solidarity And Fairness Forum.’” The voice was sour, with a flat prairie twang. “What the hell is that, Sergeant?”
Fisker stepped back from the whiteboard, gestured vaguely with the marker he held.
“Kind of a catch-all website, Captain,” he said. “The main site—my kid calls it a ‘home page’—is where people who are big on being against things go. Like racism, or if you’re opposed to anti-gay stuff, or sexism … well, you name it. If you have something to bitch about, this is the place you can go. The Halvorsen girl—or at least her computer—visited it a dozen or so times over the past six months.”
“So?” Captain Roger Fleiss twisted his lips. “My kid probably goes to sites that would make my hair fall out, if I knew about it. What’s the relevance to the mall shootings?”
“During the interview, Trish Halvorsen let it slip that Campbell would come over to her house when her parents were gone. Said they’d get on the computer. Said Campbell showed her some kind of ‘special’ chat room. Something to do with Arabs in camps, refugee camps, over in the Middle East.”
“Okay,” Fleiss said. “Again, so what?”
“She tried to delete it from her computer history. That, plus the fact she shut up tight after she slipped up—well, I wanted to see what and why. Judge Turner signed the warrant yesterday afternoon, late. I started digging, backtracking. Pretty routine, for a kid on the Internet. Lots of Facebook, that kind of stuff, but nothing that you’d think they’d want to hide from a nosy parent. No porn, nothing overtly political.”
Fisker tapped the screenshot, leaving a red dot on the paper.
“Except for this ‘solidarity’ place. It was the only website that didn’t seem to fit her usual pattern. And she only went to it after four o’clock on weekdays—no Saturdays or Sundays. Plus, she never stayed on it after 6 p.m.”
“After school, you mean. Parents?”
“Both work. Get home usually by half past six.”
“You’re thinking that’s when the Campbell kid was there too.”
“The girl made a point of twisting that knife. In her father.”
Fleiss grunted. “Good work, Sergeant. Didn’t know you were so expert with computers.”
Fisker nodded, noncommittally; he hoped his expression looked suitably modest. He already had filled out the requisite legal “chain of evidence” form, and had judiciously decided that the name of a nine-year-old relative would inordinately complicate the bureaucratic process.
Fleiss, intent on the whiteboard, did not notice.
“What about this chat room business?”
“Mostly, this computer’s visits stuck with the main page forum. I’m guessing those visits are the Halvorsen girl herself; she’s pissed off at the world, but kind of in a nonspecific way. If you’re mad about everything in general, the main page gives you the full smorgasbord. Seems like she was satisfied with that. Usually.”
“But?”
“But there are also links from the site’s main page,” Fisker said. “If you have a special interest, you click on one and it takes you to whatever floats your particular boat, solidarity-wise. This computer only visited one of ’em. And only one time, about two weeks ago.”
Fisker stepped back to the whiteboard wall, and under the latest photo red-lettered in a URL.
The police captain frowned.
“What the hell does “Adaala Al Thar” mean?”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Fisker said. “It’s Arabic, Captain. ‘Adaala’ means ‘justice.’ ‘Al thar’ means revenge.”