Black Swan Rising

by Lisa Brackmann

  The irony of this, that so much more trouble had come from her own house, seemed to escape her.

  The dark brown trim on Helen’s house had started to fade and peel. The lawn was mostly crispy grass and weeds, but neatly trimmed. There were odd, red splotches on the grass and dirt near the front door. “I had a couple cute dog statues there,” Helen Scott explained. “But somebody tossed red paint on them. I cleaned it all up as best as I could and put the dogs in the backyard.” She said all this without much emotion.

  “Let’s make sure to get some B-roll of that,” Rose said to Diego in a low voice.

  Diego nodded. Panasonic on his shoulder, he panned around the yard.

  This was okay, Casey thought.

  She realized that it had only just now occurred to her how normal this felt, being out in the field with Diego and Rose. She wasn’t nervous like yesterday in the park, wasn’t panicked; she was just taking it all in, looking for good angles.

  Now that she’d had the thought, she’d stepped outside herself again, was watching her own actions, gauging her responses, feeling the muscles between her shoulder blades twitch.

  But for a while she’d been in that familiar flow state, that groove she loved.

  If I can feel it at all, I can feel it some more. She smiled briefly, the thought warming her.

  “Ms. Scott, thank you so much for opening your home to us,” she said.

  Helen shrugged. “I don’t think you’ll find anything very interesting.”

  On the surface, she was right.

  Like the exterior, the inside of the house was slightly shabby, tidy, and bland. Nothing stood out, Casey thought. Not the industrial fabric couch, not the faded beige carpet worn down by a decade or two of use, not the framed blue dog poster on the wall to the left of the flat-screen TV.

  Not a lot to shoot here.

  They set up the interview with Helen and Casey on the couch, knees angled forward so Diego could get them in a two-shot now and again as well as separate shots of them both without a lot of movement. Mostly he’d focus on Helen Scott. Too bad they couldn’t have two photographers, but that would blow the budget. Casey knew her real-time reaction shots weren’t so important anyway, as long as they got her looking concerned enough times to intercut as needed, and she knew how to cheat her angle to make things easier on Diego.

  She could hear the dogs in the backyard, the jingling of their collars, an occasional playful growl. We should get some footage of the dogs, she thought.

  “Can you tell us a little about Alan? What was he like?” Casey kept her voice soft, as though she actually had some sympathy for the little asshole monster.

  “He was … quiet. I guess a little shy.” Helen Scott sat stiffly, her hands rigid on her thighs, like she didn’t know where else to put them.

  “Did he have many friends?”

  “Oh, sure, he had friends. High school friends, and a couple from the community college.”

  “What kinds of things did they like to do together?”

  “They … ” Her eyes flicked back and forth, like she was scanning the room for answers. “They just went out sometimes. To movies. Played video games. He spent a lot of time chatting to them on his computer.”

  She doesn’t really know, Casey thought.

  “Maybe when we’re done, you could give us a few of their names? We’d love to talk to them too.” She leaned forward, her best earnest pose. “We’re trying to understand what Alan was like, Ms. Scott. What might have driven him to do what he did. With stories like this … a lot of times the person gets lost. We just see the crime.”

  Helen nodded rapidly. Stared at her hands.

  “What was Alan like as a young child, Ms. Scott?”

  “Shy, I guess you could say. He was always shy. Things scared him.” She smiled a little. “He liked to stick close to me. It was hard for him at first, when he went off to school. But a lot of kids are like that, right?”

  “Right. It’s a normal thing, not wanting to leave your mom.” Of course, Casey had been one of those kids who couldn’t wait to go to school, but no need to mention that. “Did Alan enjoy school? Did he have any favorite subjects?”

  Helen sighed. “He was up and down with it. He had a hard time paying attention sometimes. He liked to draw, so I tried to get him in art classes when I could, but you know how it is with the schools—all those tests the kids are always taking, and he didn’t always do so well on those.”

  “He was going to community college, wasn’t he?”

  She shrugged. “You know, off and on. Mostly he was working these days.”

  “At Highsmith’s, right?” Highsmith’s handled estates sales. They had a two-story warehouse down on Morena. “Looks like a giant thrift store,” Rose had said.

  On their go-to list.

  “Right. He seemed to enjoy it. That’s what he told me, anyway.”

  “And … was he seeing anyone? Dating at all?”

  “Not recently. Not that he told me about anyway. He did keep some things to himself.” She laughed, one hard chuckle. “Obviously.”

  “But … he did date? At one time? Because some of the things he said, on Twitter, about women … ”

  If a man rapes a slut in the forest and nobody sees it, does she make a sound? Hahah, joke, you can’t rape a slut!

  Casey kept her voice soft. Gentle. “It sounded like he wanted something from them that he wasn’t getting.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Helen said, her voice sharp. “I never saw anything like that. I just thought, he’s shy. He didn’t seem that interested. You know, not everybody cares so much about it. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “It” meant something to him, obviously, Casey thought. But was there any point in saying that?

  “What about his father?” Casey asked. “Did Alan—?”

  “Wasn’t in the picture,” Helen snapped.

  Well, that door sure slammed shut in a hurry. No one had been able to find out much about David Chastain, just that he’d worked in construction and had died of an opiate and alcohol overdose two years ago in Oklahoma City.

  How to get Helen Scott to open up again?

  A loud, raspy meow, almost a screech. Casey flinched. Another meow. A long-haired black and orange calico cat padded into the living room from the hallway, heading straight to the couch. The cat sat down on her haunches at Casey’s feet and looked up at her. Loudly meowed again.

  Helen smiled a little. “That’s Cleo.”

  Cleo stood, stretched, and wound around Casey’s ankles. Casey extended her hand. The cat sniffed, then rubbed its head against her fingers.

  “She’s very friendly,” Casey said. To prove the point, the cat jumped up on the couch.

  “She didn’t used to like strangers, but now she’s old, and anybody who pays attention to her is her friend.”

  Petting her, Casey could feel the cat’s backbone, disguised by the thick fur.

  “Alan loved that cat,” Helen said. “I guess that makes sense, they practically grew up together. Cleo’s seventeen. I found her in a dumpster when she was a kitten. So Alan would have been six or so.”

  Casey snuck a glance at Helen Scott. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

  I should say something, she thought, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She continued to pet the cat, and it suddenly occurred to her, he petted this cat. He touched the fur I’m touching.

  “He liked the dogs too. But the cat was special. He … the night before … ”

  Casey felt the room grow still. She knew that Rose and Diego felt it too, that they were all connected, suspended in this moment. Keep petting the cat, she told herself. Just let her talk.

  “It was just … ” The older woman drew in a breath. “Alan had Cleo on his lap, and he sat there for a long time, petting
her. And then he just picked her up all of a sudden, and put her down on the couch next to him, and he said, ‘She’s old. She’s not gonna be around much longer.’ And then he told me goodnight and went to bed.”

  Helen swept her fingers across her eyes. “I guess that was him saying good-bye.”

  It wasn’t that weird that a twenty-three-year-old would live with his mom these days, especially not in Southern California, where housing was expensive. Casey’s youngest sister had been out of college for a year and still lived with their parents.

  Of course her youngest sister was just a little spoiled and annoying, as opposed to being a mass murderer.

  “There’s nothing much to see.” Helen gestured toward a closed door on the side of the short hall. Casey knew how these houses were organized: one or two bedrooms on the side, the master bedroom at the end. Funny, she thought, how little privacy there was in these old tract houses. Everyone was so close together. Like the first house she remembered from when she was a little kid, before her parents made enough money to upgrade. She’d been in high school by the time they did, grateful for the extra space, which meant she could sometimes sneak a boyfriend into her bedroom when her parents were at work, without her little sisters finding out.

  Somehow, Alan Chastain had stockpiled weapons here. Had planned a massacre without his mother having a clue.

  That is, if you believed her.

  Helen opened the bedroom door and switched on the light. Casey stepped inside. Diego followed her, camera on his shoulder.

  The bedroom was painfully neat. A twin bed with a plain dark blue quilt. Not much on the walls, one framed painting and a few posters, also framed. Bookcases, a desk and bureau, all made out of old, solid wood, mismatched and scarred in places.

  Probably got them from his job at the estate sale store, Casey thought.

  The police had to have been here. She looked for the signs. Was that fingerprint powder, on the corner of the desk?

  The surface of the desk was devoid of clutter—just a blotter and a coffee cup holding pens and pencils. No computer.

  “You mentioned that Alan liked to chat with his friends on his computer,” Casey said. “Is it in a different part of the house, or did the police—?”

  “It was a laptop. I don’t know what happened to it. He took it with him sometimes. They think … I don’t know, that he must have gotten rid of it, before.”

  “Did the police take anything, Ms. Scott?”

  “Not much. A couple sketchbooks. Some clothes out of the closet. Some … ” She seemed to shake herself. “There were some things in the closet. Some … ammo and … accessories.”

  “And you never noticed any of those things? You didn’t know he had an interest in guns?” She kept her voice soft. As much as she wanted to accuse, to scream, she kept the bite out of it.

  “He liked guns the way everybody likes guns,” Helen said. “I knew he’d gone out and plinked some cans before with friends. I didn’t know he owned all of that. He was twenty-three years old, I wasn’t going to come in here and spy on him.” Her arm swept up in a sharp, jerky wave. “Art. That’s what I knew he liked to do.”

  She was gesturing at the painting that hung above the desk. “That’s one of his. I framed it and put it up, after. He wouldn’t have put up one of his own paintings. He would have been embarrassed.”

  Casey took a few slow steps over to the desk. Leaned on her cane and studied the painting.

  A watercolor, she thought. Of some docks at sunset, with sailboats moored at them, the harbor and the downtown city skyscape behind them, orange and yellow light from the sunset reflecting off the glassy towers.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Helen said.

  It was nice, Casey thought. Even beautiful. Too dramatic to be precisely peaceful, but still …

  Casey nodded. She ran her fingers along the surface of the desk, feeling the old wood’s slightly uneven finish. “He was very talented,” she said.

  “Otherwise I just fixed the room back the way it was before the police came,” Helen said behind her. “He liked things neat.”

  Diego would want a clear shot of that painting, Casey thought. Rose was probably whispering in his ear about it right now.

  She slowly moved away from the desk. She was getting tired, waves of pain radiating from her side down her leg and up into her shoulder. Just a little bit longer, she told herself. Just pretend you feel okay. Then go home and lie down.

  At the end of the desk was one of the bookcases. Casey had always loved snooping among people’s books. You could find out a lot about a person, and nobody questioned your doing it. Not like going into bathrooms and checking out their medicine cabinets. Which she’d also done on occasion.

  Action figures. Mostly anime characters. Never her thing, so she couldn’t say who or what they were supposed to be. A row of smaller metal figurines: Painted soldiers. Vikings. A couple were Nazis.

  Color me not surprised, Casey thought.

  Some manga on the shelves, along with other American comics collections. A bunch of smaller paperbacks—something called Men At Arms. Casey opened one. A series of paintings of American Revolutionary War soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He had a couple dozen of them, everything from Ancient Macedonian Fighting Men to Irregular Armies of the Modern Middle East.

  “He used those for some of his drawings,” Helen said.

  Casey continued to look at the books. Photography books of landscapes and cities. Animals. The kinds of references that would be useful for an artist, she guessed. A few novels: fantasy stuff, mostly. One title caught her eye.

  True Men Will Rise. Another graphic novel from the size. She pulled it out.

  Definitely a graphic novel. On the cover was a tall, silhouetted figure in a long coat, standing on the crest of a steep hill, staring down its flank, the lights of a big city below and in the distance. To his left, something burning atop a tall pole: not a cross, but a circle with two crossed lines inside of it, a starburst in its center.

  At the bottom of the hill, shadowed men, maybe a dozen, some shouldering rifles, others carrying pistols, were starting to climb up it.

  To attack him?

  No, Casey thought. To join him.

  True Men Will Rise. Created by George Drake.

  “Huh,” Diego said. Casey was aware of the camera’s lens focusing on her, on the graphic novel she held.

  Rose peered over from the doorway. “Let’s get a shot of that on the desk,” she said in a low voice.

  Casey wondered why. She placed the graphic novel on the desk and stepped back to give Diego room. Waited a moment to ask her question. Diego would want to get Helen’s reaction, if she had something interesting to say about it.

  “Do you know anything about this book, Ms. Scott?”

  She just shrugged. “He loved comics, ever since we went to Comic-Con when he was a little kid. He used to like to draw them. I think he hoped to get into that business at one time.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened with everything he did.” Helen sounded suddenly, impossibly weary. “He just … gave up.”

  “I loved that guy, before he went nuts,” Diego said.

  “George Drake?” Rose asked.

  “Yeah.”

  They were in the Highlander on the way back to Casey’s condo. It was after eight, and she was ready to crawl into bed. But it had been a good shoot, she thought. While a part of her hated to humanize the little motherfucker, she had to admit she could allow for a tiny drop of sympathy, especially for his mom. Helen Scott didn’t seem like a bad person. Just somebody who’d been knocked around by life and who still kept trudging forward. Maybe with blinders on—how else could you keep going sometimes? But she hadn’t seen what was happening with her own son, in her own house.

  “What’s the deal with the comic book?” Cas
ey asked.

  “You haven’t heard of George Drake? Really talented writer/illustrator, but he went off the deep end. The stuff he writes now, he’s practically endorsing fascism.”

  Diego snorted. “Practically?”

  “Okay, wait, you guys are both nerds?”

  “I’m more of a geek,” Diego said.

  Not a surprise Alan Chastain would have something like that comic, then. What was more surprising was how little else there was. No overtly extremist literature beyond the graphic novel, if that even counted. No laptop. No hint of what he’d planned on his Facebook page. If he’d been on Reddit or 4Chan, she hadn’t been able to find him. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything—he could have used different user names, and besides, there were so many dark corners of the internet where he could have hidden.

  He’d left a few clues on Twitter, before the rampage: Tweets about bitches and sluts, about “ghetto” attitudes ruining the country. About hating himself and feeling useless. About feeling trapped—if I was a rat I could chew my leg off and get away.

  You went by the number of people saying things like that on the internet, you’d be tripping over dead bodies on the street.

  Maybe there was no answer. Maybe there was no “why.” Just the Big Empty, calling one of its own home.

  “You okay, Case?” Diego asked. “You got quiet all of a sudden.”

  “You saying I talk a lot?” she said lightly. She knew that she generally did. Something to remember when she needed to show she was okay. Smile, and make small talk.

  “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  11

  From: Casey Cheng

  To: Rose Armitage

  What about this for series title, or is it too corny?

  “The Shooters Among Us—A News 9 Special Report”

  Also, pulled this bite from a network package from May, can we arrange to use?