Rant

were well aware of Chester Casey’s comings and goings, and we can confirm that both he and Echo Lawrence were in the suspect’s apartment, together, for a period of time with the landlord, Lewis Terry.
    Lew Terry: The father guy touches a spot on the apartment wall, tapping the paint, and he says, “Look here.” It’s one of those hash bumps.
    The father guy reaches inside the chest pocket of his bib overalls and brings out a jackknife; he snaps the blade open and stabs it into the plaster.
    And I tell him to just hold on. The damage deposit won’t cover him carving up the walls.
    With the knife still sunk into the plaster, he’s wiggling the blade, saying, “But the money you stole should cover it…” I didn’t steal any money. I tell you. I told him, I did not steal anything from this apartment.
    “Let’s ask the coin dealer over on Grinson Street,” the father guy says, and he draws the jackknife blade out of the wall. Where he stabbed and dug, he picks with two fingers. He slides out something and wipes the white plaster dust from it. A gold coin. And he says, “This look familiar?”
    Officer Romie Mills: What’s less clear is why Echo Lawrence apparently invited the suspect’s father to her home, after that meeting. And why she allowed Chester Casey to take up residence in her apartment.
    At that point, we had no solid leads on the whereabouts of Buster Casey.
    Irene Casey: When I saw Chet onto that airplane, he must’ve been scared he was going to die. The poor man, he told me, “Reen, you’ve had a difficult time of this life.” He said he was sorry about everything, but that he loved me, he would always love me. The last time he looked at me, from the doorway of going on that plane, Chet said, “You were a wonderful mother.”
    Shot Dunyun: Boy oh boy, Rant’s dad rolls into town certifiably, bona-fide, bat-shit crazy. He shacks up with Echo. Calls that pestcontrol place to ask for Rant’s old job. The first time I meet him, this middle-aged doofus, he grabs my neck with one hand. He gropes me, plants his mouth over mine, and says, “Miss me?”
    How weird is that shit?
    When I said “mine,” I meant my mouth.
    Lew Terry: Me and that crippled girl, we watch while the dead kid’s father goes around the room. Everywhere there’s a soft black lump, he stabs in his knife and digs out a gold coin. Looking at the girl, the father guy says, “In your apartment, when you fell asleep, the last night you and Buster were together, he pasted lumps of his snot around your walls.”
    The cripple, she says, “Rant wiped boogers on my walls?”
    Everywhere she finds a lump of snot, the father says, Rant was leaving her some treasure. She says, “I still don’t understand.”
    He says, “Don’t bother getting tested for rabies, just start your treatments.” This girl, she says, “You’re not really a policeman, are you?”
    30–In Mourning
    Lynn Coffey ( Journalist): On the first day after Rant Casey died—an apparent suicide witnessed by thousands of people, millions if you count the television rebroadcast of his car exploding—on the very next day, a curfew officer named Daniel Hammish, age forty-seven, a nineteen-year veteran of curfew patrol, was making his evening sweep when he assaulted a passerby. Hammish bit this stranger, with his teeth, in an unprovoked attack, on the exposed skin of her neck. Responding emergency medical technicians found Hammish delirious and seemingly hallucinating, before he lost consciousness and subsequently died.
    Todd Rutz ( Coin Dealer): The police come into my store, show me a mug shot of the kid who’s been selling me his coins, that’s the first I know the kid’s name is Buster Casey. They tell me he’s died in some car wreck, was on the news. Ask, what did I know about the kid, this Casey kid? They ask stuff like, did he ever exhibit violent tendencies? Did the kid ever kiss me? Or bite? Crazy questions.
    Lynn Coffey: In my opinion, there was something a little stagy about Casey’s death. First, he was careful to drive the largest, brightest car that night, literally heaping that car with lights, drenching it with gasoline, and driving zigzag through the playing field to attract as many taggers as possible. Plus, the television newscopters and the way he called the radio station and kept talking until he’d burned. Even the way Casey ran that red traffic light, smack dab in front of some cops, seems calculated to give him a full