Joe (16 page)

And that is the only time I can recall
that my gift has ever
saved
me from heartache. My mother has her issues,
but I’m glad that that tree hadn’t crushed her underneath it.

There were other things I needed to be
concentrating on at the moment, however.  I turned away from the sliding
glass doors of my apartment balcony and returned to my desk in the corner. I
was just firing up my laptop when a knock sounded on my door. My heart skipped
a beat. I left my bedroom, crossed my small living room and opened the door.

“Joe,” Mr. Landry said.

I released a breath I hadn’t realized
I’d been holding. “Yes, sir?” I asked.

Mr. Landry stared at me for a moment,
and a look I couldn’t interpret came over his face. It was gone a second later,
and he shook his head a little, as if shoving unwanted thoughts away. “Should
we be headed underground?” he asked, shooting an uneasy glance at the gray
sky.    

For a moment, I didn’t know how to
answer this. “Uh…no. No, I th-think it’ll muh-miss us this time, sir,” I said,
and as if to call me a liar, the warning sirens went off in the streets, loud
and smug and obnoxious.

Mr. Landry glanced around at the sound
and then settled his gaze back on me, raising an eyebrow and smirking a little
at the timing of the sirens. I gave a slanted smile and shrugged once.

“Good enough for me,” he said, and
headed back into his apartment.

I shut my door and sat back down in
front of my computer, trying to think of where to start, but instead thinking
of Mr. Landry. He was certainly a strange old man, if the pot can call the
kettle black. Thinking of Mr. Landry reminded me of Michael. I wondered if he
was going to actually show up on Sunday morning to help unload Mr. Landry’s
shipment at his store. I decided it didn’t matter, as long as he kept up his
end of the bargain and skipped school on Monday. If he did, I may have saved
someone from the gunman already. Now there were just fifteen thousand other
students and a couple thousand UMMS employees to save. Piece of cake.

Luckily, the power didn’t go out, so I
searched the Internet for the next six hours. By the time my eyes were watering
with exhaustion and my back cramping from staying seated for so long, I thought
I was beginning to understand my adversary, and I didn’t like what I was
learning.

I’d started with the school shooting
that was the most prominent in my mind: Columbine High School. The abundance of
information on this topic was staggering. There were interviews with friends of
victims, psychiatric reports profiling the two shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold. There were police reports and journals and poetry and lists and
dedications and videos—videos straight from the school’s security cameras of
the shooting that took place in the high school cafeteria. Aside from the Eric
Harris’s personal diary, the videos of the event were the hardest to take.

I made myself read every word and watch
every moment. When I came across collected excerpts from Eric Harris’s diary, I
began to feel nauseated. He had written down all of his plans, made lists of
the things he had to do to carry those plans out. One particularly long list
was titled “Things I hate”, and everything under the sun was on this disturbing
list. The hate and anger poured from the pages with such force that I began to
feel cold, despite the stagnant, warm air of my apartment, and it didn’t help
that it was literally a dark and stormy night.

But, I was learning. Oh, yes, I was
learning a great deal, and doing
something
, no matter how unpleasant,
was better than doing nothing at all.

It was probably safe to assume that the
gunman I would be facing was a man, based on statistics that I found showing
that the vast majority of school shooters were male. So, eliminate the half of
the student population that were females at UMMS, and I was down to somewhere
between seven thousand and eight thousand potential suspects. Next—and this was
a leap, but I was grasping at straws anyhow—I figured that the shooter was more
than likely a
white
male. I made this deduction based on the fact that
the majority of the cases I came across (there were several websites listing
every school shooting in the history of the country) involved white male
shooters. I wasn’t counting the inner city school statistics that claimed gang
violence the reason for the shootings. That brought the suspect pool down to
about five thousand.

Then I put what I knew from my sketch
together with what I’d learned from the Internet, and I came back to two cases that
seemed to apply to my current predicament. The first one was the Columbine
shootings. The second was the Virginia Tech shootings. And then I began to dig
deeper and find out just how impossible my task really was.

These two incidents stood out for both
similar and different reasons. The Virginia tech shooting was the worst school
shooting massacre in the history of America, ending with over thirty people
shot dead. Also, Virginia Tech was a
college
shooting, so it bore even
more relevance. Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman, was of Asian descent. There went my
white male theory. With Columbine, the second largest school shooting massacre,
there were two gunman, both white males by the names of Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold. The body count here totaled thirteen. I removed my sketch from the
pocket of my notebook and counted the bodies I could see lying at the gunman’s
feet. There were at least fifteen definite dead. In the background, the lawn
and sidewalks of the Quad were littered with nondescript granite-colored humps.
There was no way to be sure, but I had a feeling these gray humps were also
victims. Worse yet, I had a feeling that there were many more beyond the scope
of my clairvoyant camera. I rubbed my head, a headache touching my temples. I
certainly had my work cut out for me.

And here was the point: In these two
cases the shooters had surely gone through extensive planning. The shooters had
not been small thinkers. No, they had wanted to take out as many as possible.
They wanted recognition and infamy. They were some kind of psychopaths. Big
dreamers. The Shadow Man in my sketch, with the shadow guns clutched in his
hands, was also a big dreamer. He was planning for a large body count.

Harris, Klebold and Cho all left things
behind as well: diaries, journals, poetry. The Columbine shooters even left
notes about the plans they were making. They talked about the bombs they had
built using the library and the Internet as a resource. They talked about whom
they would kill, which amounted to just about anyone who crossed their path.
And then there was Harris’s list of things he hated from his disturbing diary.

I hate the god damn world, too much god
damn fuckers in it
…. 

My belief is that if I say something, it
goes. I am the law, if you don’t like it, you die…

I can’t wait till I can kill you people.
I’ll just go to some downtown area in some big ass city and blow up and shoot
everything I can. Feel no remorse. No sense of shame…

From now on I don’t give a fuck about
what any of you mutha fuckas have to say…You all better hide in your houses
because I am coming for everyone soon, and I WILL be armed to the fuckin’ teeth
and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL fucking KILL EVERYTHING! No, I am not
crazy, crazy is just a word. To me it has no meaning…I say fuck you and die. If
you got a problem with my thoughts, come and tell me and I’ll kill you,
because…godamnit, DEAD PEOPLE DON’T ARGUE!

Yes, wonderful thing, this research.
Very encouraging.
This
was the kind of guy I was planning to go after?
Well, if crazy is just a word, I thought it would probably apply to me, too.

Seung-Hui Cho sent video diaries to the
press prior to his shooting. They basically said things like: “You backed me
into a corner,” “You didn’t have to do this,” “You thought it was just one
boy’s heart you were destroying,” and on and on and on. If he was going for
sympathy, I don’t think he got it.

After I’d had about all of this nonsense
that I could take, I ended my research by looking up two definitions. This is
what it all boiled down to.

A sociopath is usually extremely
unorganized, lives on the fringes of society and cannot maintain normal
relationships. The violence they exhibit tends to be unplanned and erratic.
They usually cannot hold a job. They are easily identifiable because they leave
many clues behind in their crimes. Disregard for social laws. Unable to feel
remorse or regret.

A psychopath is usually obsessive about
organization. They can keep normal relationships; marriage, children, friends.
Tend to be successful in their careers. They understand emotions, but are
unable to experience them. Masters of manipulation. Delusions of grandeur. They
take their time planning acts of violence and revenge. Nearly impossible to
identify. Their meticulous planning does not give away many clues. Most go
undetected for a long time or forever. Disregard for social laws. Unable to
feel remorse or regret.

I hadn’t known there was a difference
between these terms, but after everything I’d just learned, I figured the only
sure thing was that I was looking for a psychopath. I shut down the computer
and climbed into bed, taking my sketch with me. Shadow Man was no sociopath.
The damage depicted on this paper was proof enough. A shooting of this scale
took planning. And what’s worse was that the Internet was basically telling me
I had no hope of identifying him before the time came.

Outside, the storm rolled on. I crawled
under my covers and shut my eyes tight. Simple Joe versus the Shadow Man
psychopath. I could think of one or two good arguments about the unfairness of
that match up.

But, dead people don’t argue.

True, Mr. Harris, but what the hell
makes you think you get to decide?

Chapter
Twenty-six

The
Decider

Danny
sat at his desk in his bedroom. On top of the desk was a black journal, a black
pen and Danny’s forearms. The hour of a new day had just struck. It was
officially Saturday morning. Two days left. He felt anxious to get to it, but
also nervous about the fact that go-time was approaching. It was not his
resolve that was faltering, not in the least. He just hoped like hell
everything went as planned. As always, he had been meticulous in his
preparations.

His hand was cold and dry, gripping the
fine-tipped pen poised just above the blank white page of his journal. People
were going to read what he put here. He would make sure of that. Monday
morning, before the fun began, he would leave his journal, along with a few
other little gems, for the benefit of the fuck-face media and public, in a box
near the dumpsters at the Channel Five News station. Danny had scoped out the
place and he knew the station’s janitor took the trash out twice a day: once at
noon and again at five o’clock. The beauty of it was that at about the time
good ole Mr. Janitor was dumping the station’s unwanted shit, and subsequently
stumbling across the box Danny was going to leave there, the Quad at UMMS would
be filling up to capacity with unsuspecting fools, and the fireworks would
begin.

So this was important.
Very
important.
His legacy would be written here. When crack-pot psychologists wrote profiles
of him, they would use this journal to support their claims. When people
Googled school shooters his name would pop up, and this journal along with it.
The words he set here would be examined and debated for years and years to
come. This was how he was going to be remembered. What to write, then. What to
write.

Saturday, April 18
^th
2012

The world will end in two days. I will
watch as it falls to its knees before me. I will sanitize this earth of the
unworthy, and they will beg me mercy, but they will NOT have it. The men with
their suits and guard dogs, cowering behind the walls of their castle, will
feel the soil under their feet tremble, and I will bathe in the hot stench of
their fear. Their stone walls will crumble around them, their dogs will desert
them, and mothers will cry. Sitting on the top of the castle, it must be easy
to think that you are bad, but I got something for ya, boys, and I’ll show you
who’s bad. And to the rest of you, you dogs and whores and followers, I will
see to it that you get your just desserts. I’ll feed you fuckers well. Believe
it.

Danny paused, removed a neatly folded,
white handkerchief from his pocket, and dabbed it across his brow. This was
good shit.
Genius
shit. His best writing ever, by far. His
legacy
.
He slipped the handkerchief back into his pressed khakis, bent forward and
continued on.

No one deserves mercy, and no one will
have it. You have placed yourselves on false pedestals, and you have placed
them too high up. Your fall will be long and ruthless and terrifying, your
screams rebel cries of death. God will not hear your cries. He will not
intervene. I have Decided, and will choose the souls I wish to take. Your blood
will run in pulsing, wide rivers of deep red, and I will stand in the middle of
it and drink until I am too drunk to stand. I will see it pool around me and I
will hear your screams and see your last breaths, and I will say, “OH, HOW THE
MIGHTY DO FALL!” And my name will fall upon the lips of all, spoken in whispers
and dark places. And respect and awe will underline the tones. Your reign has
gone on too long. Your persecution will be suffered no longer. You brought this
on yourselves. So, Run, castle men and whores and followers. RUN! You
DIRTYSTINKINGMOTHERFUCKING PILES OF SHIT! CUZ I’M COMIN FOR YOU!

Come Monday, I am coming for you.

Danny read his entry aloud once,
savoring the sounds of the words, and shut the journal, positioning it in the center
of his desk. It was nearing one-thirty in the morning, and he had better get
some sleep for tomorrow. There were still plenty of things to be done.

He went into his bathroom, flipped on
the light and brushed his teeth, humming the tune of a Jimmy Buffett song
around the sides of his toothbrush. He removed his clothing, folded it, and
placed it in the hamper beside his bathroom door. After putting on his
nightclothes, he combed his hair. Then he made sure the door and windows of his
apartment were locked, and climbed into bed.

Sleep came quickly and easily. He had no
silly raven dreams. The castle was close now. He could see it on the horizon
and in two days’ time, he would be at its gates. And everything would be all
right.

Scratch that. Everything would be
fucking great.

He was just a bad guy.