Colin studied Melissa’s open, wide-eyed face. He attempted to identify her expression on his own for six seconds before he gave in and consulted his cheat sheet. Melissa appeared SHY. He pondered the meaning of this in silence.
“No,” Colin said in a flat monotone. “I don’t eat cake.”
“Oh.”
Melissa had known Colin long enough not to be surprised by his brusqueness. Still, the corners of her mouth turned down slightly and a thin furrow appeared along the length of her brow. EXASPERATED.
“It can’t be because you’re counting calories,” she continued. “I’d kill to have your metabolism.”
Colin raised an eyebrow. Curious. Melissa’s body was lean and athletic. As far as he could tell, her metabolism was enviably speedy.
“It’s not the sugar that’s the problem; it’s the texture. Cake is slimy and mushy, and I dislike foods that are mushy.” Colin indicated the apple, pretzels, carrots, and celery arrayed in front of him. They were arranged by color according to their position on the spectrum. “I enjoy crunchy foods.”
“Uh, yeah,” Melissa said. She pursed her lips. It was hard for Colin to decide what this meant. He pursed his own lips back at her, hoping this would invite a clue.
“Maybe next time I’ll get you some peanut brittle.” She smiled. FRIENDLY.
Colin perked up. “I like peanut brittle.”
“Thought so,” Melissa chirped, then turned to rejoin the impromptu party. As Colin tracked the graceful movement of her hips, he realized he rather enjoyed watching Melissa walk away. An unfamiliar, though not altogether unpleasant, flush of warmth bloomed through the skin of his cheeks.
To Colin’s surprise, Melissa made a sudden detour toward a table occupied by Josh and Sundeep—two academically inclined boys toward whom she had been friendly in middle school. The boys were obviously of lower social status than the students at the table with the cake, yet Melissa took time to speak to them. “That is very interesting,” Colin said to no one in particular, and opened his Notebook to record the moment.
The complexities of social groupings at West Valley High School were even more daunting than they had been at middle school, and Colin pondered strategies for untangling them. Perhaps, he thought, he could print out photos of the students from the school website and social networking sites, then pin them up on the cork board in his bedroom in a sort of social map—much like the ones the FBI used to understand the inner workings of drug syndicates and Mafia families. It would be very useful because over time he could add to the map and make changes as appropriate.
Colin began to sketch a very rough version of what such a social map might look like based on the people he saw in the cafeteria. He arranged the groups horizontally, with the vertical axis representing the person or group’s relative position in the school’s pecking order. The higher on the chart, the more popular that person was. Colin smiled at his solution. He prided himself on making charts that were intuitive and easy to read.
Colin started toward the bottom left of the page, writing Josh and Sundeep’s names under the heading “Nerds.”
In the “Jocks” column near the top of the page, Colin immediately wrote Stan and Eddie’s names. He hesitated before adding Cooper, though, recalling that the tall, olive-skinned boy had a surprising talent for math. In fourth grade, Colin and Cooper shared a classroom, and Cooper consistently came in third or second in the room’s weekly “math minute” contest. Colin, who won every week, had once attempted to compliment Cooper for his math skills, but the other boy had muttered, “Go away, spaz,” and stopped speaking to Colin for the rest of the school year.
Emma the ace water polo player also went into the “Jocks” column. Beside it, Colin created a “Queen Bees” category to capture girls who seemed to have no talent or interests beyond the maintenance of their own popularity—a heading he took from the title of a bestselling book on the social anthropology of American high school girls. Abby went into that category. So did Sandy, with Colin drawing a line between her and Eddie to denote their intimate relationship (making a note to use color-coded yarn when constructing the board at home).
Melissa, Colin realized, would be a problem assigning to one group. As a cross-country runner and exceptionally intelligent student whose company was now seemingly in high demand, she had a foot in several different camps. Colin opted to table the Melissa question and moved on to Rudy Moore, whom he placed by himself at the top of the page.
Despite his presence in all the honors classes, Rudy was the only boy Colin knew who suffered none of the social demerits that accompanied extreme intelligence. Rudy had been popular for as long as Colin had known him. Colin wondered idly if there were some connection between Rudy’s popularity and his penchant for cruelty. The ability to inspire fear was common among alpha members of any social species. Yet Melissa, too, was now popular, and she seemed to show as much kindness as ever.
Colin frowned and held the Notebook at a distance away from his face. Perhaps he wasn’t designing this chart as well as he thought he had. As Colin pondered switching the X and Y axes or otherwise altering the chart, Emma and Abby suddenly thundered across the cafeteria, shrieking over each other in voices so high and so loud he cringed from the physical pain of listening to them.
“Melissa!” they shouted in unison. They looked at Josh and Sundeep the way a person might look at a friend’s very ugly pet. “Wayne Connelly is eating your cake! You have to stop him!”
Melissa shrugged. She raised her brows, rolled her eyes, and finally allowed herself to be pulled back to the center table.
Colin turned his attention across the cafeteria toward Melissa. Wayne indeed stood at her table, grinning as he cut himself a huge slice of cake with a plastic knife. Her friends looked outraged, uselessly pounding Wayne with their fists, but Melissa just looked SAD. Colin rose from his seat, barely able to hear Melissa as she asked in a quiet voice, “What’s your problem, Wayne?”
“No problem, Missy,” said Wayne.
“Melissa.” They stood there a moment, staring at one another. There was an odd stillness Colin could not identify. “Whatever. Just take your cake. Take it and go.”
Wayne didn’t move. They kept staring. Colin felt his heart rate accelerate and his breathing grow rapid and shallow. Without knowing it, he’d balled his hands into fists. Colin marveled at his body’s reaction as he realized something strange: He wanted to fight Wayne Connelly. This was odd because he had never wanted to fight anyone.
Before he could further analyze or act on this odd new impulse, Wayne finally broke eye contact and turned away from Melissa. “Where’s the love, huh?”
Wayne sauntered away with his prize. He settled in at his own table, where he made a big production out of tucking into the piece of cake and carefully disassembling it layer by layer before eating it in surprisingly small, dainty bites. Colin watched, fascinated, the urge to do battle forgotten. Indeed, he found the incongruity of Wayne’s fastidious eating so interesting he looked around the cafeteria to see how others ate.
Melissa darted at her piece like a hummingbird—small bites, methodically consumed. Rudy took a slice for himself but dumped it into the trash when he thought no one was looking at him. Sandy, still clad in Eddie’s overly large Notre Dame jacket, folded a piece with a generous frosting rose into a large cloth napkin with the skill and delicacy of an origami artist, then gently deposited it into her large faux Juicy Couture handbag.
Colin’s observations were interrupted by sudden movement across his peripheral vision, accompanied by rough male shouting. He whipped his head around, giving the impression of an owl spotting a mouse running across the undergrowth. His big eyes locked onto Stan, who—unwisely, Colin decided—clamped his hand down on Wayne’s arm. He dug his thumb into Wayne’s bicep, and Wayne winced in pain.
“This party doesn’t accept food stamps,” Stan said.
Colin puzzled for a moment: Why would a party accept food stamps? He abandoned this line of exploration
as the fight escalated. Stan wrestled the piece of cake away from Wayne. Then Wayne regained his footing and shoved Stan into two of his friends, nearly toppling them. Colin flipped open his Notebook and uncapped his pen.
Wayne Connelly has the strength of three high school freshmen. Diet and exercise? Investigate.
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.
PART TWO:
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 Fischer Page 5