Colin Fischer (9 page)
Authors: Ashley Edward Miller,Zack Stentz
Despite his strength advantage, Wayne was still outnumbered. Stan and his friends advanced on the bigger boy.
“I am so gonna enjoy watching Eddie make you piss your pants,” Stan said.
“Wow,” Wayne said, his fierce expression unchanged. “I haven’t been so scared since I saw your mom naked. Which would be…last night.”
Colin understood that statement. Wayne was suggesting that he had had sex with Stan’s mother, a vile insult and provocation across nearly every human culture and language. Stan responded with a snarl and shove, backed up by his friends.
Colin tensed. It looked as if a real high school fight was about to break out. Not a balletic exchange of punches, but a messy, chaotic rugby scrum. Thrown elbows, shoves, curses, and yelling. Lots of yelling. A crowd was gathering, encouraging the melee. Colin started to put his hands over his ears to shut it all out, just as Melissa’s clear alto voice rose above the growing din. She was shouting. “All of you, just stop!”
“You’re ruining everything!” Abby screamed. A split second later, one of the combatants—Colin couldn’t see who—tripped into a chair and sent all four boys crashing into the table. Their tumbling bodies knocked over Melissa, Abby, Sandy, several other girls whose names Colin didn’t know…and the cake.
If Colin had been a zebra, or a deer, or nearly any other mammal, he would have done the wise thing and moved away. However, Colin was a primate. Instead of moving wisely, he went for a better look.
Colin started forward just in time to see a flash of light accompanied by a loud, explosive
bang
that left his ears ringing.
The cafeteria filled with screams and shouts. Every student ran for the exits—every student except for
Colin, his fear of the noise overridden by his curiosity. He approached the scene of the fight, the smell of burned cordite and squashed mustard packets filling his nostrils. He looked down at the floor, noting smashed remains of half-eaten lunches, abandoned pencils and backpacks, a science-fiction novel, comic books, a tube of shiny melon lipstick and other make-up items, and…
A nine-millimeter handgun.
Its black metal barrel was still smoking slightly, rubber grip smeared with white chocolate and pink frosting. Colin’s parents didn’t keep firearms in the house, so this was the closest he had ever seen a gun outside a police officer’s holster. Colin crouched down next to it, careful not to touch anything.
“This is very interesting,” he said.
5
Colin attempted to verify his father’s claim, although he never conclusively identified the origin of the term. To the best of his knowledge, it probably referred to Wild Bill Hickock, who famously preferred to sit in the most defensible position in any public location. Hickock himself demonstrated the wisdom of this policy when he accepted a seat in the middle of a saloon and was shot in the back for his indiscretion.
6
Blushing is the result of increased blood flow through the facial region, which has a higher concentration of capillaries and wider blood vessels in the skin than elsewhere on the body. Some pseudo-scientific racists once argued that the ability to blush was a signifier of membership in the pure white race. This is not correct. It is a universal physiological response to emotion exhibited by all ethnic groups.
THE FOOL AND THE FREAK
CHAPTER SIX:
EYEWITNESS INTERVIEWS
Modern forensic science is barely a century old, but the detective has existed far longer. Most scholars consider history’s first detective story to be “Oedipus Tyrannus,” by the Greek playwright Sophocles.
To end a plague, Oedipus must solve the murder of the previous king of Thebes. Oedipus’s job would have been easier if he had had access to the tools of modern forensic science. Unfortunately, there were no DNA analyses or fingerprint databases in ancient Greece. I believe these would have been very useful, but they also would have made the play very short and far less interesting.
Without them, Oedipus was forced to rely on a tool that did not depend on technology: the eyewitness interview. He spoke to a Theban
shepherd who had seen the old king killed in a roadside brawl. Through patient questioning, Oedipus discovered that same shepherd had many years earlier handed the king’s infant son over to be raised by a stranger in Corinth. That infant grew up to be Oedipus.
This illustrates a key aspect of the eyewitness interview. Sometimes, you get answers to questions you never thought to ask. And sometimes, the answers make you wish you hadn’t asked the questions in the first place.
Colin stepped
into the nurse’s office. It was decorated with antidrug posters, a picture of the USDA’s food pyramid (which Colin noted was still ridiculously biased toward grains and dairy products), and colorful posters of the male and female reproductive systems. However, instead of the school nurse, two policemen stood in front of a cluttered desk. One was young, with a shaved head and a neatly trimmed moustache. He wore the dark blue uniform of the Los Angeles Police Department. The other man was a Latino in his thirties, wearing a leather jacket and baggy jeans. Colin knew he was with the police because an LAPD detective’s shield hung on a lanyard around his neck.
“Are you Colin Fischer?” the detective asked.
“Yes,” Colin answered. “Am I a suspect?”
The detective made a quick head-bobbing motion
Marie called a “double take.” This typically denoted
SURPRISE
. “Now what would make you think you’re a suspect?”
“It’s only natural to suspect the person who was found standing closest to the gun,” Colin said. “Also, I stayed in the cafeteria when the other students fled—this is an anomaly, and therefore very interesting. Combined with developmental issues the school safety officer will no doubt be familiar with”—he indicated the uniformed officer, who was indeed holding a folder marked
FISCHER, C.
—“all of this makes me an obvious choice.”
The detective looked at Colin in silence for several seconds, scratching his neck. Colin noticed a faint trace of blue ink where he scratched, a faded spiderweb tattoo pattern that had been removed by laser at some point in the past. “You’re not a suspect, Colin,” the detective finally said, “but since you were very close to the gun when it went off, you’re a potentially valuable witness.”
“I understand,” Colin replied.
The safety officer looked down at a sheet of paper. “You told the assistant principal that you didn’t see who had the gun before it went off,” he said, reading ahead. His lips moved slightly. “Is there anything you didn’t tell him?”
“No, I was very thorough.”
“Because it’s safe to tell us if you did,” the detective added. “So. If there’s anything you want to add…”
“Yes,” Colin declared. The officers leaned in unconsciously, as though they could hear him better that way.
“I neglected to tell Mr. Moton the pistol was a Barretta 92F, the same model used by Mel Gibson’s character Martin Riggs in the
Lethal Weapon
movies. I see you carry a Sig Sauer, Officer, though I assume the detective uses something smaller and more concealable. A Glock 23 is standard issue.” Colin focused his attention on the detective. “Those are very popular with gang-intervention officers.”
The detective froze. “I didn’t tell you I was with gang intervention.”
“You used to have a spiderweb tattoo on your neck, which symbolizes a struggle to turn your life around. I assume you succeeded, since you had it removed and joined the LAPD. Yet your knowledge of and contact with the criminal underworld perfectly suit you to work on gang-related cases. Also, you thought someone may be intimidating me, which means you suspect a gang connection to the shooting.”
There was another very long silence from both police officers.
“I see,” the detective replied.
“I didn’t see any gang members in the cafeteria before the shooting,” Colin offered sadly. “But I haven’t finished mapping the school’s overlapping social networks, so I suppose it’s possible. Would you like me to show you my chart when I’m finished?”
“That won’t be necessary,” the uniformed officer said. He looked at the detective, who shrugged in a way that reminded Colin of his father. “I think we’re good here.”
Dinnertime
at the Fischer house was considered sacrosanct.
Mrs. Fischer had insisted for as long as Colin could remember that dinner wasn’t just a time to eat, but a time to communicate. She seemed unimpressed by Colin’s insistence that speaking and eating at the same time made both take longer, although she conceded that at no time would anyone be required to speak with his mouth full. This seemed to placate him and partly explained why Colin chewed slowly, carefully, and constantly. The rest was explained by Colin’s insistence that it was good for digestion.
As a result, Colin communicated very little during meals. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend the entire time dishing large helpings of food onto his plate (divided into their own sectors, which weren’t allowed to touch) and say little more than “please,” “thank you,” or “excuse me.” Tonight was no different.
What was very different was the tension in the air as Colin tucked into a plate of lemon chicken and savory rice. Dinner was on the table early that night. An emergency community meeting had been called at West Valley High School so Dr. Doran could address
what she called “the crisis.” Colin’s father wasn’t even home yet.
Danny was buzzing with the news of the day. To him, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened anywhere. “I heard it was a point forty-four magnum,” he chirped, “and that some dude was shooting at the lunch lady—”
“Enough,” his mother snapped. Danny fell quiet. Colin could see she was
WORRIED
. Usually, his mother attempted to disguise emotions she thought might upset her sons. The fact that she wasn’t even trying in this case was very interesting.
Colin was chewing his last bite of chicken and carrying his plate to the sink when his father appeared at the back door. Mr. Fischer didn’t look
WORRIED
, but
ANGRY
. Then he saw Colin and smiled. It took Colin a moment to identify his father’s
RELIEF
.
