Checkmate

DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW 01

Dr. Alistair Crabtree

Former Senior Investigative Analyst, Office of Special

Communications

Undisclosed Location

October 3, 2045

The recording begins before Dr. Crabtree is aware.

He sits behind a conical band of light, adjusting the cuffs of a dark blue shirt. He eyes someone outside of the frame.

CRABTREE: Are we beginning with his work or with the allegations?

INTERVIEWER: His work.

CRABTREE: His published work?

INTERVIEWER: To begin with.

Crabtree settles back.

He's in is late sixties. His hair is silver and carefully arranged. Crabtree's British accent lays his words folded and creased. Inspection ready.

"Three...two...."

CRABTREE: Kristen Keenon Fisher was not considered an important writer during his lifetime.

..................

CRABTREE: That sounded crueler than intended.

INTERVIEWER: Is it inaccurate?

CRABTREE: No.

He smiles reflexively.

CRABTREE: Fisher had readers. Devoted ones, in some cases. But devotion and recognition pay two separate landlords. He published strange little books, speculative stories, poems, social satires. A mixture of psychological horror and spiritual philosophy, depending on which reviewer had been inconvenienced by him that week.

INTERVIEWER: Inconvenienced?

CRABTREE: He had a habit of making an argument then removing the chair beneath it.

(Folds his hands.)

CRABTREE: One moment, he appeared to be writing about masculinity. The next, femeninity. Then surveillance abuse. Then childhood innocence. Then consumer culture. Then God. Then Satanism. Then freedom. Then bondage. Then purity. Then sexual depravity. Critics found this confusing and undisciplined.

INTERVIEWER: Did you?

CRABTREE: At first?

He considers the question.

CRABTREE: I thought the writings he published were, you know, cute.

............

CRABTREE: Fantasy driven exaggerations. Somewhat clever.

INTERVIEWER: You reviewed his work professionally?

Crabtree looks down at his hands.

CRABTREE: We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

............

CRABTREE: Fisher's public reputation was largely built around his eccentricities. That is to say, his tie was brighter than his pen, you see.

A photograph appears on-screen.

Fisher stands beside a brick wall, dressed in black. Looking away from the camera.

CRABTREE: He wrote in hotel rooms. Cafes. Break rooms. Public libraries. On buses. His notes were scattered across paper, obsolete phones, cloud accounts, voice recordings.

INTERVIEWER: Was he a bit chaotic?

CRABTREE: Yes and no. Fisher's organization was more thematic.

INTERVIEWER: Thematic?

CRABTREE: A poem he wrote one day might answer open questions from a story he wrote the month prior. A character perspective from one unpublished story might reappear as an object in another. Several unconnected written works, might be a connected sequence of events in terms of their meaning.

INTERVIEWER: Sounds quite deliberate, no?

CRABTREE: Some think so.

INTERVIEWER: Was Fisher considered mentally ill?

CRABTREE: By his family? Friends? Critics? The three courts. Yes I'm afraid so. He was described as paranoid. Suspicious. Grandiose. At times, withdrawn. People close to him said he believed ordinary events could contain private messages. That strangers repeated phrases he had written down and collected. That fake accounts were created to imitate people he knew. That conversations were being staged around him.

INTERVIEWER: And he documented these beliefs?

CRABTREE: Compulsively.

INTERVIEWER: .....Did he believe he was in some sort of danger?

CRABTREE: When you look at his private writings from the period of around 2020 to 2027 I believe so. In fact there's one piece he wrote in 2026 where he depicts himself playing a game of chess with Death. And Death receives a phone call from someone who wants to place a hit on Fisher.

INTERVIEWER: Wants Death to take Fisher out?

CRABTREE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And what does Death respond?

CRABTREE: "Hold, please."

Crabtree grins.

CRABTREE: Death places the caller on hold, covers the receiver, and looks across the chessboard to Fisher. Fisher asks whether it was anyone important. Death says, "Not particularly." And then the two of them proceed to have a laugh about it.

INTERVIEWER: Was there any evidence to validate his suspicion?

Crabtree shrugs slowly.

CRABTREE: During his lifetime the evidence appeared fragmented. Strange screenshots without context. Messages from accounts that vanished. Photographs of vehicles. Lists of names. Dates underlined three or four times.

INTERVIEWER: After his death?

CRABTREE: Well after his death the term evidence grew legs.

(Audible sound beyond the room)

INTERVIEWER: Why?

Crabtree looks toward the direction of the noise.

CRABTREE: Because a living man who claims he is being watched is paranoid.

He leans back in his chair.

CRABTREE: A dead man with thirty years of corresponding records, is a writer who finally got out of the way of his work.

........

INTERVIEWER: What exactly did Fisher believe was happening to him?

CRABTREE: Which version?

INTERVIEWER: His.

CRABTREE: Fisher did not have one version. That was part of the difficulty.

Crabtree raises his hand and counts against his thumb.

CRABTREE: At various points, he believed he had been switched at birth. He believed certain relatives were not related to him. He believed people associated with his family were monitoring his movements. He believed false messages had been sent in the names of people he trusted. He believed events from his childhood had been concealed from him.

....

CRABTREE: He also believed that some of his stories were not inventions.

INTERVIEWER: What were they?

CRABTREE: Visions.

Another photograph appears.

Fisher is seated at a table covered in notebooks. On the wall behind him, several handwritten pages have been taped together. At the center is a drawing of an eye surrounded by vertical lines and circles.

INTERVIEWER: Critics often refer to Fisher's "witness perspective." Could you speak about that? Please.

CRABTREE: It is a polite term invented after his death. For his habit of writing from perspectives a person could not physically occupy.

INTERVIEWER: Such as?

CRABTREE: A fly on a wall. A firearm. A mobile telephone receiving a message its owner never sees. A ceiling corner above a deathbed.

INTERVIEWER: And during his lifetime these varying perspectives were treated as literary devices?

CRABTREE: Yes. The difficulty arose when Fisher began describing specific details about actual events he should not have known.

INTERVIEWER: And this is why his reputation changed.

CRABTREE: His reputation changed because, eleven months after his death, a storage account was opened using a recovery key no one knew existed.

INTERVIEWER: What was in it?

Crabtree exhales through his nostrils.

CRABTREE: The writings he published were curious.

He creates space with his hands. He looks toward someone behind the camera.

CRABTREE: The writings unearthed from his private collection were bloody fascinating.

INTERVIEWER: How many were there?

CRABTREE: Four hundred and forty-four complete documents. Several thousand fragments. Audio recordings. Lists. Images. Coded passages. Accounts of dreams and memories.

INTERVIEWER: Did it support any of his claims?

CRABTREE: The least extraordinary ones. Impersonation. Account intrusion. Coordinated messaging. Attempts to convince third parties that Fisher had sad or written things he had not.

INTERVIEWER: And the more extraordinary ones?

CRABTREE: Those required us to examine the stories.

INTERVIEWER: Why?

CRABTREE: Because the stories appeared to contain source material.

INTERVIEWER: Source material for what?

CRABTREE: Crimes.

A photograph of a motel appears.

The bed is unmade. A lamp lies on the floor. Above the headboard hangs a framed print that has been turned to face the wall.

CRABTREE: The first document assigned to me was called What a Sight to Sea. Twenty-seven pages. Written from the perspective of a framed painting in a motel room.

INTERVIEWER: One of Fisher's inanimate narrators.

CRABTREE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: What happens in it?

CRABTREE: A woman enters the room with a man she knows. They argue. The painting cannot hear every word because the air conditioning unit is running near it. The man leaves, returns later, and kills her.

INTERVIEWER: How?

CRABTREE: Fisher obscures that part. He was detailed about everything surrounding the act. The room. The sounds from the corridor. The weather. The television programme playing next door. The exact words the man spoke afterward.

Crabtree gestures toward the photograph.

CRABTREE: At the end of the story, the man notices the seascape above the bed. He stares at it for some time, then turns it toward the wall before leaving.

INTERVIEWER: And that matched a real crime?

CRABTREE: A woman named Chloe Ortiz was found dead in a motel outside Lexington in 2011. The case remained unsolved.

INTERVIEWER: Was the painting turned around?

CRABTREE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Was that detail public?

CRABTREE: No.

INTERVIEWER: Could Fisher have learned it from someone close to the investigation?

CRABTREE: We considered that. There was no known connection to the victim, the motel, the local police, or the journalists covering the case.

INTERVIEWER: When did he write the story?

CRABTREE: The earliest authenticated version was created in 2014.

INTERVIEWER: Three years after the murder.

CRABTREE: Yes. The painting was not the only detail.

The photograph enlarges.

On the bedside table sits a clock radio. Its red digits display 3:33.

CRABTREE: The story mentions that the radio had been tuned between stations. Specifically. Positioned between frequencies so that it produced static.

INTERVIEWER: Was that a match?

CRABTREE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Also withheld?

CRABTREE: Yes.

The image shifts toward the bottom of the bed. A pair of shoes are positioned beneath it, facing opposite directions.

CRABTREE: Fisher described the victim's shoes beneath the bed. Toes facing opposite directions.

INTERVIEWER: Another withheld detail.

CRABTREE: Correct.

INTERVIEWER: Three details.

CRABTREE: Five.

INTERVIEWER: What are the others?

CRABTREE: They remain restricted.

INTERVIEWER: After all this time?

CRABTREE: The case is technically still open.

INTERVIEWER: Did you believe Fisher killed Chloe Ortiz?

CRABTREE: That possibility was examined.

INTERVIEWER: And?

CRABTREE: Fisher was working two hundred a forty miles away on the night she died. Employment records confirm it. So do security recordings.

INTERVIEWER: Did Fisher identify the man in the story?

CRABTREE: Not by name.

INTERVIEWER: No identifying mark or...code?

CRABTREE: Fisher left everything in codes.

INTERVIEWER: How many stories matched real cases?

CRABTREE: That depends on the standard you apply.

INTERVIEWER: Yours.

CRABTREE: Twenty or Thirty contained information specific enough to warrant formal review. Seven were connected to known crimes. More remain disputed.

INTERVIEWER: Disputed in what sense?

CRABTREE: We could not determine whether the events occurred.

INTERVIEWER: Or whether they had occurred yet?

Crabtree looks down at his hands.

CRABTREE: That question was raised.

INTERVIEWER: Were there any stories found to be written before the corresponding crimes?

CRABTREE: One.

The ticking in the room stops.

INTERVIEWER: One story predicted a murder?

CRABTREE: I did not say that.

INTERVIEWER: What did you say?

CRABTREE: The authenticated document predated the crime.

INTERVIEWER: By how long?

CRABTREE: Eight months.

(clears throat)

CRABTREE: At first, I assumed someone was supplying him with confidential information.

INTERVIEWER: To what purpose?

CRABTREE: To frighten him. Recruit him. Compromise him. Perhaps observe what he would do with it.

A quote appears:

Tell the truth plainly and they examine you.

Tell it strangely and they examine the story.

Kristen Keenon Fisher

INTERVIEWER: Was every crime in the writings connected to strangers?

CRABTREE: No.

A handwritten page appears on the screen. The paper is creased through the center.

CRABTREE: One private account concerned his mother shortly before her death. She had a rare form of skin cancer. Fisher described seeing her bedridden in a downstairs room.

INTERVIEWER: Was he with her?

CRABTREE: Not physically. He wrote that he was hovering near the ceiling.

INTERVIEWER: Another vision.

CRABTREE: Yes. He describes watching a family member enter the room, carrying a cup of water. Fisher watched this individual drop something in the glass before handing it to his mother.

INTERVIEWER: Poison?

CRABTREE: Fisher never used the word.

INTERVIEWER: What happened next?

CRABTREE: He described moving through the ceiling and up the staircase.

He entered a bedroom and found himself asleep.

INTERVIEWER: Himself?

CRABTREE: A younger version of himself. He tried to wake the boy. Shouted. Pulled at him. But his hands passed through the body.

INTERVIEWER: And what was his mother's official cause of death?

CRABTREE: Complications from her illness.

INTERVIEWER: But Fisher didn't believe that.

CRABTREE: No.

INTERVIEWER: Did he identify the family member?

CRABTREE: I'll answer that with what he wrote beneath the account.

Crabtree joins his hands.

CRABTREE: "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came sneering after."

INTERVIEWER: Mmm...that is not how the rhyme ends.

CRABTREE: Fisher rarely altered anything accidentally.

The page disappears.

INTERVIEWER: Was there any evidence that anyone had harmed his mother?

CRABTREE: No evidence sufficient to reopen the medical inquiry.

INTERVIEWER: That wasn't the question.

Crabtree works his jaw.

CRABTREE: There were inconsistencies.

INTERVIEWER: What kind?

CRABTREE: Medication records. Conflicting family statements. A missing hospital document.

INTERVIEWER: And the relative?

CRABTREE: Still living.

INTERVIEWER: Is that why you won't name them?

CRABTREE: It is one reason.

(low pulse)

INTERVIEWER: Earlier you mentioned unexplained telephone activity.

CRABTREE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: What did you find?

CRABTREE: Fisher's devices had received repeated Type 0 messages. Silent SMS communications. Theses messages give no receipt to the recipient. But the network records acknowledgements.

INTERVIEWER: Someone was checking whether his phone was active?

CRABTREE: Among other possibilities.

INTERVIEWER: How often?

CRABTREE: The activity increased around particular events. Visits to certain areas. Attempts to contact certain individuals. The publication of certain information.

INTERVIEWER: Who sent them?

CRABTREE: The originating records were incomplete.

INTERVIEWER: Incomplete or restricted?

Crabtree momentarily looks off.

CRABTREE: Both.

INTERVIEWER: Yet critics continued to describe him as paranoid.

CRABTREE: Critics are not investigators.

INTERVIEWER: Neither were all the people who called him mad.

CRABTREE: No.

INTERVIEWER: Were they wrong?

Crabtree inhales deep.

CRABTREE: Fisher was not easy to defend. He contradicted himself. He exaggerated. He followed patterns beyond the point where most people would stop. He could turn a coincidence into a philosophy on life.

INTERVIEWER: That sounds like madness.

CRABTREE: It can be.

INTERVIEWER: And when the pattern is real?

CRABTREE: Then madness becomes an unwanted auditor.

.......................

A montage appears. Fisher reading at a small podium; a stack of self-published books; an empty hotel room; online articles with sensational headlines.

CRABTREE: After his death, everyone found a Fisher they could use.

INTERVIEWER: Explain.

CRABTREE: Literary critics called him a mishandled visionary. Psychologists called the storage account an extraordinary record of persecutory delusion. Crime enthusiasts treated him as a suspect. Others claimed he had been an intelligence asset, willing or otherwise.

INTERVIEWER: And his fans.

CRABTREE: They called him a witness.

INTERVIEWER: Some say madman. Some say prophet. Some say criminal.

CRABTREE: People prefer their nouns. They keep the dead from asking for better wages.

INTERVIEWER: What word would you use?

CRABTREE: Writer.

INTERVIEWER: Seems a bit evasive, no?

CRABTREE: It is the most accurate word available. Fisher took whatever spoke to him and gave it another form. Fear became satire. Suspicion became mythology. Evidence became fiction. And here we are, still discussing him.

INTERVIEWER: Was Kristen Keenon Fisher mad?

CRABTREE: Almost certainly.

INTERVIEWER: And was he telling the truth?

.........

CRABTREE: His versions.

.........

INTERVIEWER: What do you believe he wanted from the storage account? His trove of writings and evidence?

CRABTREE: He wanted someone to believe him.

INTERVIEWER: Do you?

Crabtree tilts his body and looks beyond the camera.

CRABTREE: I believe someone worked very hard to ensure that I wouldn't.