“That bald fat fuck just zinged me as his exit line,” she says. “We can’t stand for that. Shoot him, Kim. I know it will wake the baby, but it’ll be worth it.”
Though I reminded him before he left, Jeffers doesn’t hold the cowbell as he exits the diner and its brassy clanging wakes Carla and the baby.
“What do you think we should do, John?” Kim asks. “I know Chip is a classic overreactor, but . . . do you think this could be something?”
“Could it be what he thinks it is?” LeAnn asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. The fact that he threw the pages away might be a good sign. But I think we have to look into it—even if there’s the slightest chance it could be true.”
They both nod.
“I agree,” Kim says.
“All we have to lose is a little time,” LeAnn says. “Maybe a little beauty sleep. And the downside is too deep for doing nothing.”
“The question is—what?” Kim says.
“It’s not a lot to go on,” LeAnn says, “and we don’t want to run this risk of targeting the wrong kid and ruining his life.”
I nod. “We certainly don’t. Why don’t we do this . . . First, have you notified the principal?”
They nod.
“I’m assuming he notified teachers and staff to be on alert,” I say.
“He did,” Kim says. “He handled it very well.”
“He does such a good job,” LeAnn says, “and everyone responded well. You can tell a difference in how things are being done.”
“Okay,” I say. “Good. So . . . we’ve got at least two things to go on—the content of the notes and the handwriting itself. Very quietly . . . without telling anyone . . . why don’t you two make a list of the most likely students, but do it independently so we can compare your lists—see if anyone is on both. And keep your eyes open for suspicious behavior or absences of anyone you suspect. Once we have the list, we can ask their English teacher for a sample of their writing to compare to the notes.”
“I’ve already made my list,” Kim says.
“Me too,” LeAnn says, nodding. “And we’ve already compared them.”
“Excellent,” I say. “You’re way ahead of me.”
“You have no idea,” LeAnn says, leaning into me and pulling another folder out of her purse. “Here’s our lists and a little info on each kid.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Don’t be too impressed,” Kim says. “We didn’t even think about getting samples of their handwriting.”
“You would have,” I say.
“Yes we would,” LeAnn says.
“This is great work,” I say, opening the folder and glancing at its contents.
“You didn’t think we were just another pair of pretty faces, did you?” LeAnn asks with a wide smile.
I nod at the folder. “I’ll look over this tonight.”
“First thing tomorrow we’ll get samples of their handwriting,” Kim says.
“See if you can do it without singling out the individual kids,” I say.
“How?”
“Get an assignment from the entire class, not just a few students.”
“As guidance counselor,” LeAnn says, “I’m in and out of classes having the kids fill out forms all the time. It wouldn’t raise any suspicions if I went in and had them fill out a survey about vocational interests.”
“Even better,” I say. “That’s perfect. Great thinking.”
She points to her large, heavily and brightly made-up face. “Told you. I’m far more than just this.”
“You certainly are.”
“So,” Kim says. “You study our lists and the information about the students from an outside perspective. LeAnn will collect the samples. What do I do?”
LeAnn smiles. “Somebody has to report back to Super Cop Chip. That can be your job.”
265
To all you pathetic people of Pottersville, I hope each and every one of you read this! I hope they print it on the front page of the paper and post it everywhere on the internet. I know you don’t give a good goddamn about me being dead, but you want to know why I took so many of your kids with me? I’ll tell you why. You each and every one of you have made my fuckin’ life a living hell. How could you raise your kids to be such horrible people? How can you all hate anyone who isn’t just like you?
I look down at the good-natured little baby boy with the enormous brown eyes who just a few short months ago was going to be my son, and feel, as I always do, a complex mix of sadness and joy, regret, longing, and love.
Sliding my hands behind him and easing him out of his car seat, I say, “Let’s let your mama sleep a little more. Whatta you say?”
I lift him to me, kissing his forehead and gently placing his head on my shoulder, rocking him in my arms and patting his back.
I couldn’t love him anymore if he were my own son.
“You’re so good with him,” Carla says. “I feel so guilty for not . . . for keeping him.”
I look away so she can’t see me, pretending to be adjusting John Paul in my arms, and blink my stinging eyes.
“There’s no world,” I say when I can, “in which you should feel guilty for keeping your own child. Please let that go. You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. You did nothing wrong. You did everything right.”
I mean what I’m saying. She did nothing wrong. And of course, she should keep her baby. But that doesn’t change the fact that the entire experience has been complicated and painful for me and for Anna. For months before he was born, we thought he was going to be ours. We rushed Carla to the hospital, worried the baby was coming too early, concerned for his and her safety, believing he was ours. We stayed with him in the hospital for weeks, taking care of him in his vulnerable, premature condition and helping his mom physically and emotionally, believing he was ours.
For months we believed we had another child. It didn’t matter to us whether he was a boy or a girl, we were just happy to welcome another child into our home. It didn’t matter that he was a boy, but it was significant. Years and years ago I had a dream of being at the beach with my little boy. A dream I truly believed had finally come true.
Anna and I had something we were no longer able to have on our own—a baby, a child together. And then Carla changed her mind. It would have been difficult under any circumstances, but for us to have him, care for him, receive him into our family only to have him snatched away, taken from us, had been only slightly less emotionally devastating than if he had been kidnapped or succumbed to SIDS.
“I’m sorry for getting your hopes up and . . .”
“You didn’t,” I lie. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Our family is complete. It’s not like Anna or I feel like we have to have a son or that we’re incomplete without a boy somehow. It’s not the case. Not at all. We love our girls and they are more than enough. We feel like the luckiest parents in the world. We were going to take him because you asked us to, because you needed us to, and we would have loved him like our own—we still do—but we weren’t actively looking for another child. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She gives me a sleepy smile. “You’re almost convincing.”
“Even if you thought you got our hopes up and that we were disappointed when we didn’t get him, you have nothing to feel guilty for. He’s your baby. You made the right decision.”
“I feel guilty . . . I feel guilty because y’all could give him a better life than I can,” she says.
I shake my head. “Absolutely not. No one can give him a better life than you can. And we’re going to help you—as much as you’ll let us—give him the best life you possibly can.”
So far she has been unwilling to let us do much of anything for him or for her, and I think I know why.
“You really think he’s better off with me?”
“His own mother?” I say. “Of course. Absolutely.”
“And you’re not mad at me?”
“Of course not
,” I say. “We love you. We want you in our lives. Want you to let us do more for you and your baby.”
She nods and gives me something between a smile and a frown.
“Are you not letting us help because of the guilt you mentioned?” I ask. “Or because you think we might try to take him from you?”
Tears appear in her eyes. “I’d never think you guys would try to take my baby from me,” she says, “but . . . y’all are so good with him, with your girls, and I fuckin’ suck as a mother, and . . . it just points out how good y’all are and how bad I am and how selfish I’m being not to let y’all raise him.”
“Oh, Carla,” I say. “You’re a great mother and you’re not being selfish. He’s your child. You can’t be selfish with your child. Something would be wrong if you didn’t want him.”
“I knew you wouldn’t try to take him, but I did think that others would see how much better y’all are than me and report it to Children and Family Services and they’d take him away from me and give him to you.”
“Would never happen,” I say. “Not in a million years. You have nothing to worry about. And nobody thinks you’re a bad mom or that we would be better. No one. And there wouldn’t be anything to compare. It wouldn’t be like we’d have him and then you’d have him and someone could compare the two. We’re just wanting to help you with him. We’d be doing it together.”
She starts crying. “I . . . that sounds so good. I . . . could really use some help. I feel like I’m going crazy. I’m so tired all the time and I’m having some crazy ass thoughts.”
“Like DCF taking your baby and giving him to us?” I say.
She laughs. “Yeah, like that.”
“Come home with me tonight,” I say. “Stay with us until we can get you your own place. Let us help you get some sleep, some rest. Let us help you with your baby. You’re his parent. And I promise you Anna and I will never try to be. But you could let us be your parents and his grandparents. How about that? That could work, couldn’t it?”
266
I will kill every fucking one of you motherfuckers. That’s a promise. I’m the real pirate of Pottersville. It’s going to be Columbine all over again. Only better. Harris and Klebold had it right. Blow the whole fucking school up then blow yourself the fuck away. God, how I wish I would have had the chance to meet them. Maybe I will someday. Maybe there’s a special place in hell for people like us. But then again, maybe I’m not ready to go out just yet. Maybe I’ll go underground afterwards, travel the earth like fucking Kung-fu and help other outcast kids kill their fucking foes. Keep this revolution going or start a new one. Keep fighting until they bring you down in a volley of bullets. Mark my words, Columbine was just the beginning and soon they’ll say Pottersville the way they do Columbine or Parkland or Sandy Hook.
Driving back to Wewa, Carla sound asleep in the seat beside me, John Paul just as soundly asleep in his carseat in the back, I call Sam Michaels.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Sorry to call so late. Did I wake you?”
“No. It’s good to hear from you. Why are you whispering?”
I tell her.
Sam Michaels is an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who I have worked with over the years and who had actually lived with Anna and me for a time while she was recovering from a gunshot wound. She and her husband, Daniel Davis, had moved back to Tallahassee recently, and we missed them terribly. Because of her brain injury, Sam is no longer physically able to be a field agent, so instead she’s becoming one of the keenest investigative minds I know. I often call her for advice.
“What can you tell me about school shootings?” I ask.
“Some,” she says. “Kids who do it have so little to love that everything seems meaningless to them, and yet they’re out for revenge—it’s the one thing that seems reasonable and valuable to them. Makes them both suicidal and homicidal. I can tell you that school rampage shootings are acts of random terrorism without an ideology. Those who perpetrate them often cobble together some sort of ideological justification, but it’s usually just some bullshit mashup of Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, shock rock, and pop culture glamorizing of violence. Why?”
“Trying to prevent one from happening.”
“Really?” she says. “That’s interesting. In every case I know of there were plenty of warning signs—clues if someone were looking for them. Most adult mass murderers operate in isolation, but adolescent ones inevitably share their plan with one or more friends. How incredible would it be to stop one before it happened? But what makes you think there’s potentially going to be one somewhere?”
I tell her.
As I do, I realize that I owe Chip Jeffers more respect and credit than I give him, and that if it weren’t for him, none of the rest of us would be doing this.
“Fascinating,” she says. “How long you got?”
“Just the drive from Pottersville to Wewa, I’m afraid.”
“Then I’ll talk fast and give you a little to start with and you can call me when you have more time.”
“Perfect.”
“School shootings are a pretty recent and nearly exclusively American phenomenon,” she says. “What we think of as school shootings, what we mean when we reference them, began in 1996 with a fourteen-year-old kid somewhere in Washington—Moses Lake, I think—named Barry Loukaitis, who walked into Frontier Middle School dressed in a black duster carrying two handguns, seventy-eight rounds of ammunition, and a hunting rifle. He killed two students and wounded a third before shooting his algebra teacher. But the one everyone references, the one that inspires nearly all of them now, is Columbine. Harris and Klebold created a script that now nearly everyone follows.”
I think about the K and H from the note the janitor found at Potter High.
“Three years after Loukaitis, in April of 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold created a blueprint for mass rampage shootings schoolhouse style with what they did in Littleton. They made it a media event—first by creating media themselves, the videos and short films and basement tapes recordings, but then by the way the media covered it and the ones that’ve followed. Harris said he wanted to start a revolution and in a way he did. The attention and sensationalism and rock star-like coverage feeds the phenomenon—inspires, triggers, instructs the troubled and bullied and mentally and emotionally ill kids who’ve come after them. I’d be willing to bet when you find who you’re looking for you’re going to find references to Eric and Dylan and probably even similar videos or journal entries.”
I tell her about the K and H referenced in one of the note fragments.
“See?” she says. “Guarantee it’s Klebold and Harris. And it probably means you really are looking for a school shooter and might be able to actually prevent a school shooting from happening.”
“What should I look for?”
“In almost all cases, the kids tell other kids about it,” she says. “It may seem like they’re joking at the time. They’ll say, Oh that’s just Joe. He’s crazy. He says shit like that all the time. They’ll be obsessed with guns and gun culture. Be huge fans of the movie Natural Born Killers and other films like it. Very dark music. Disturbing internet activity. Obsessive-compulsive behavior in general. Big into first-person shooter games. Probably been bullied by other kids at school. Rejected and embarrassed by a girl. He or they will have journals and audio or video recordings of rants. He’s probably shown his guns to other students—or at least bragged about them. Maybe even taken them shooting. He’ll be into explosives—building bombs. This is all evolving, so some of it is changing. But more than likely there will be clues, warning signs, something or several things to let you know you’re on the right scent.”
“Thanks, Sam,” I say. “I really appreciate your help and all the great info.”
“Most of these kids make a goodbye video,” she says. “Justify and explain themselves. Say their parents aren’t responsible, didn’t know anything about it. They then pose with the gun, pointing it at
the screen, then their own temple—because this is almost always murder-suicide—then at the end they wave goodbye.”
“Interesting.”
“Got to do what Eric and Dylan did,” she says.
I think about that as I pull into our driveway.
“And John, the kid you’re looking for may not be very fringe at all—not a complete loner, no black trench coat, no outlandish behavior, could be just a quiet, sort of shy boy that nobody really even notices. But there’ll be real rage right behind his eyes.”
I let her know we’re here, thank her again, and tell her to tell Daniel I said hello.
“Be careful with this one, John,” she says. “Case like this is far more dangerous than most—and with more potential pitfalls. And don’t for one second be fooled by their juvenile appearance. He may look like a kid, but he’s a vicious, merciless, calculating coldblooded killer intent on shedding as much blood as quickly as possible.”
267
You know what? I went to three different high schools growing up and in none of them did I for one moment feel safe. Not one. High school was horrifying. And you want to know why? I’ll tell you. It was the casual cruelty of the popular kids and the indifference to the rest of us by the coaches and teachers who adored them that made it a ticking time bomb ready to explode.
Anna stirs when I ease into our bed.
“Hey,” she whispers sleepily.
“Hey.”
“Missed you. How’d it go?”
“Missed you more,” I say. “I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow. Go back to sleep. But before you do, guess who’s sleeping in our guest room?”
“Somebody from the class of eighty-six?”
“Carla and John.”
She pushes herself up on her side, leaning on her elbow, instantly awake.
“They’re going to stay with us until her apartment comes through.”
“Really? Wow. Why the change?”
True Crime Fiction Page 105
