May 3
Thomas S. Stoll Memorial Park
Johnson County Park & Recreation District
12500 West 119th Street
Overland Park, Kansas
2:17 P.M. CDT / 3:17 P.M. EDT
They sat on the fieldstone wall that overlooked a quiet pond, their feet brushing the tangle of reeds that grew in wild profusion at the shore’s margin.
Across the water, half a hundred yards distant, a man and a younger child—a girl, perhaps six years of age—stood with casting poles in their hands: the man’s, full sized; the girl’s, a foreshortened version, little more than a toy, with a bright pink, plastic reel.
Brian Fisker watched the pair. Their fisherman’s luck thus far was apparently running thin. But they appeared suitably patient, presumably hopeful, both qualities a prerequisite for any who cast a line into dark waters.
Fisker was being patient too, for much the same reason.
Beside him, Trish Halvorsen also stared at the father-daughter anglers.
She was silent, as she had been during the drive from her home to here, in the Overland Park squad car he had signed out for this now-on-duty business; as silent as she had been during most of the quarter hour they had spent sitting on the flat stone of the retaining wall. In the squad car, she had mainly stared out the side window, responding to the detective’s attempts at conversation only with muttered monosyllables, and scarcely enough of those to qualify as dialogue. Fisker had suggested a stroll to the pond, and still Trish Halvorsen had been silent.
Waste of time, he told himself.
He forced himself not to scratch at his chest, at the maddening itch where the diminutive digital recorder he had also signed out was taped, now recording only the rasp of the gently swaying reeds.
They sat, wordlessly gazing out across the lightly rippling waters.
Finally, the detective spoke.
“You ever fish, Trish?”
It was an idle question, a space-filling aside, and Fisker did not expect a response.
For that reason alone, he was surprised when the girl answered in actual words.
“When we lived in St. Louis. We used to go to Forest Park there.”
“Your folks and you?”
“When I was a kid. I had a fishing pole like that one. Mine had a Minnie Mouse decal on the reel.”
“Mine had Popeye the Sailor Man on it,” Fisker said. “I loved that fishing pole. Wish I still had it. I’d give it to my son.”
Trish glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
“You have a kid?”
“He’s nine. Plays lacrosse, thinks he’s all grown up already.”
“What’s his name?”
“Josh. He’s a good kid. You’d probably like him.”
“You don’t wear a ring.”
“Divorced. Josh lives with me.”
“She screw around on you?”
Fisker was startled at the sudden twist in the discussion, even more at the sudden bitterness in the girl’s voice.
“There are always lots of reasons why people break up, Trish.”
“That means she did.” The voice turned defiant. “My father did. Screw around, I mean. Some goddamn bitch at his office. That’s why we had to move to this fucking place last year. She could have left him, but no—she wanted to ‘keep the family together.’ That’s the bullshit ultimatum she gave him. What a fucking joke.”
“Maybe your mother just wanted to—”
“People just want to fuck. Don’t you want to fuck me? Isn’t that why you brought me out here?” She turned to face him, and a shaken Fisker realized that it was the first time she had fully met his eyes.
“I’ll fuck you,” she offered. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“Trish, that’s not—I mean, look … I’m old enough to be—”
“I’ve screwed men before, older than you. You think Chaz was my first time? I was fucking men in St. Louis, before he dragged us out here. He could fuck around, I could do it too…”
“Trish, I’m not your father. I’m nothing like your father.”
“Maybe that’s why I’d fuck you. I saw what you thought about him in your office. You wanted to hit him, didn’t you? I wish you had. It made me hot, all wet inside, how you told him to shut up. It’s making me wet right now.”
“You don’t like your father. I know that.”
“I hate him,” Trish said. “I wish Chaz had shot him first. I told him, when I gave him the—”
Her lips clamped tight.
Fisker stared at Trish Halvorsen, aged sixteen but infinitely older.
St. Louis, Fisker realized. A drunk named ‘Buster.’ A gun, missing for a year or more, that showed up here in the hand of an easily led teenager…
“It was your pistol, Trish,” he said, quietly. “Wasn’t it? You brought it from St. Louis; you gave it to Chaz. You wanted him to use it on your father, didn’t you?”
“What if I did? What if that’s maybe what I want you to do for me? Would you?”
“Shoot your father?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m just joking. You make me feel like I can say anything to you. Like we could do anything if we wanted. If you wanted. Anything at all.”
Something passed across her eyes, and her lips twitched into what might otherwise have passed for a smile. “So … your name is ‘Brian,’ right? Do you want to fuck me now, Brian? I know you do. Just this one time, like our secret, Brian. Any way you want. Right here, if you want to…”
• • •
“You need new bait, honey,” he said. “Maybe a big fresh worm will do the trick, huh?”
“Okay, Daddy. Can you put it on the hook for me?”
He fingered out a juicy one, a fat Red Wiggler, from the slick-glistening, moving mass in the Ziploc bag.
Across the lake, he saw two figures rise, a couple.
One, the man, stepped close to the other, a young woman. As the fisherman watched, the male took the female by the shoulders, almost tenderly. He turned her around, bent her forward slightly, seemed to press close to her back.
Jeez, the fisherman thought, his face a disgusted grimace. Right out in the open?
He opened his mouth to shout a protest, to remind the pair that there were children here, for God’s sake…
There was the glint of sunlight on steel, and for the first time he saw the handcuffs.
He watched as the pair walked away, toward what looked like a police car.
“Daddy?” his daughter said, tugging at his arm. “Please? I want to catch my fish.”