Media Platforms Design Team
Originally published in the August 2008 issue
By the end, there is no night or day. No sleep. Just time, waiting.
He sits on the end of his bed in a broken-down Travelodge. Smokes a Newport. Stale smell of old cigarettes, of all the lives that have passed through this room. Across his lap, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, the barrel sawed off. His hands on it, one on the stock, one on the barrel. He can't sit still, though. Always fidgeting.
Waiting. He's been in this room for almost three days, calling people, e-mailing, saying goodbye. The room is cluttered with soap, moisturizer, deodorant. Cotton balls. Empty cans of Red Bull.
Beside him, laid out carefully, a Glock 9mm, Sig Sauer .380, Hi-Point .380. He picks up the Glock, checks the clip. Makes sure it's full. Checks it again. Checks it again. Threes have always spoken to him, shown him what to do. Three pistols. Three shells in the shotgun.
The Glock doesn't seem real. Looks like plastic, feels like plastic. A toy gun, almost.
Sets the pistol down. Picks up the next, and the next, checks each clip three times. Checks the extra clips. A bullet is so small, so heavy for its size.
Turns his right forearm up a bit, pushes up the sleeve, looks at his tattoo again. A $700 reminder in black and red.
He lays the shotgun in its guitar case. He closes the latches, tucks all three pistols into his holsters, everything hidden by his coat. Checks himself in the mirror, walks to the door, then has to go back to check again, just to make sure. Always checking.
Turns right out of the motel lot, just a white Honda Civic, nothing you'd notice. Left on Carroll Avenue. Left into the guest parking lot.
Parks a couple hundred feet from Cole Hall. A cold, overcast day. Snow. Listens to a CD the police will find in his stereo. He's titled it "Final CD." Waits for the last song, Marilyn Manson's "The Last Day on Earth." Class will be over soon. He'll have to go soon. One last song. I know they want me dead. / I know it's the last day on earth.
"I've been shot."
This was the voice mail Steve Kazmierczak's best friend Kevin left for Steve when he heard about the shooting on campus. Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Six dead. Eighteen wounded. He didn't know that Steve was the shooter. Called Steve's cell; straight to voice mail. "I've been shot!" he laughed. "Give me a call back."
This was their sense of humor. They'd joked about the shirt Steve wore to the shooting, a black T-shirt with TERRORIST in white letters and a red graphic of an AK-47 assault rifle. The joke was about showing up at an airport with that shirt. Steve had another shirt of a rifleman that said, "I Love a Parade," about JFK's assassination.
"I thought it was the funniest shirt," Kevin says. "But it's just an example of our humor. It was nothing harmful, as far as that goes."
They'd discussed Columbine and Virginia Tech in detail, gone over the "methodology," choice of weapons and such. Steve admired how Cho thought to chain the doors, how Dylan and Eric planned to create confusion with the propane-tank bombs.
Kevin tries Steve again and again. Straight to voice mail each time.
At ten o'clock that night, after details on the news make it seem Steve is likely the shooter, Kevin sends a text message to Steve's roommate and sometime girlfriend, Jessica Baty. "Is Steve okay?"
A detective calls him at two in the morning. "Oh, it's Steve," Kevin says. There's no denying anymore what he already knows.
When Jessica arrives home that evening, police officers are waiting for her. They won't tell her what's wrong, and she isn't allowed to enter her apartment. Instead she's taken away in a patrol car. She starts to cry, asks if something has happened to Steve. They won't tell her anything, though. A long interview at the police station, and she consents to a search of her apartment, so after midnight it's back in the patrol car. "Did Steve kill himself?"
Yes, they tell her finally, and they search all of Steve's things, all of her things, their life together. Her parents arrive to help her. She escapes to a hotel room. But the media's already here, a news truck out front, everyone asking about warning signs.
Over and over, she goes over the smallest details in her head. The trips to the gun range. The guns themselves. The box of coal he gave to his sister for Christmas. For Halloween, he dressed up as Jigsaw from the Saw movies.
"No, no way, Steve would never do such a thing," she tells CNN. Steve was sweet, a near-perfect student, winner of the Deans' Award. Her voice is a baby voice, her face open and midwestern, revealing only her sadness at this inexplicable event. She's wearing an orange sweatshirt, holds a love note from Steve she received the day of the shooting, along with some books, a new cell phone, a wedding ring. He'd asked her ring size just days ago.
"He was probably the nicest, most caring person ever... He was just under a lot of stress from school. He didn't have a job, so he felt bad about that -- he wasn't erratic, he wasn't psychotic, he wasn't delusional, he was Steve. He was normal."
Jessica was Steve's confessor. He told her everything -- his long mental-health history, his anxiety, his family turmoil, his recent hunger for sex with women he met through the Internet, with a male professor.
He told everyone else almost nothing.
Steve grew up watching horror movies with his mother. Fleshy, enormous, laid out beside him on the couch. Middle of the day, and all shades are drawn. Dark. She's protective, doesn't want Steve to go outside. Won't let him play much with other children. She's not mentally right, according to Steve's godfather, but what can he do? A family feud.
Horror movies and the Bible, those are what animate this living room, those are Steve's inheritance. A close fit, the plagues, the tortures of Job. God's sadistic games, teaching his flock to appreciate the value and meaning of their lives. The flesh of no consequence. Late night, his mother can't sleep. An insomniac with anxiety problems. A history of depression on his father's side, Steve's grandfather an alcoholic. So they continue on, still watching.
At school, Steve is an average student. "Steve appears very impulsive and does not want to go back and check his work, therefore there are a lot of errors. At our conference we can discuss ways to help Steve work up to his potential," writes his third-grade teacher, Ms. Moser. A few years later, Iowa test score 58th percentile. By now he's looking for places to hide, tries to find something like the living room, finds it at last in the band-practice rooms of Grove Junior High. Plays tenor sax, has a friend, Adam Holzer, skinny and geeky with a nervous smile and round glasses far too large for his face. Long straight hair hanging slack, parted in the middle. Steve no looker himself. Face too skinny at the bottom, almost no mouth or chin. Whenever he focuses on work, the back of his wrist against his forehead, hand hanging out limply. Kids call him fag because of the hand. He and Adam get notes to leave class as often as possible, especially gym class, whenever a concert or performance of any kind is on the schedule.
After school, they go home to Steve's in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. A small tract house abutting a four-lane road, one story, three small bedrooms. If it weren't for the living room extending a few extra feet, the house would be a perfect rectangle, same as a double-wide. His mother is a secretary now, his father a letter carrier. They won't be home for hours.
Steve goes straight for the pellet gun, walks outside to the shed. Perfect cover. Pumps the gun, building up air pressure, slides in a small pellet, and closes the bolt.
He can hear his dog breathing, though, up close. A pug with breathing problems. He picks it up by its hind legs and hurls it, hard, against the wall. That's how Adam remembers it.
Now Steve can focus.
The cars are going fast, and they're in view for only a couple car lengths. And the pellet is slow. So he holds the gun aimed to the right, and when a car flashes in from the left, he pulls the trigger. The gun spits, and Steve and Adam hang for a moment, waiting for the sound of a pellet hitting metal. They squeal if they hear it, their joy as compressed as the air in the gun.
Even better than the pellet gun, though, are Drano bombs. Pete Rachowsky, a kid Steve knows from school, teaches other kids how to make them. Steve and one of his few friends, Joe Russo, decide to try it. Maybe it's a way to cement the friendship with Joe. Steve is very protective of his friends, recalls Adam. There aren't many who will have him.
They wait until after dinner. A Saturday night, eighth grade. They find a house that's dark. Well kept with an indented porch. They sneak up on tiptoe, crouch down. Steve pulls out the two-liter bottle he's brought from home, and they fill it just how Pete taught. Nothing happens for a while. Then it blows, an explosion louder than they could have hoped. Glorious. They run back through the forest, hyped up on adrenaline and joy, laughing.
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Five days later, Pete's mother finds two-liter bottles and the ingredients for Drano bombs in her son's backpack. She tells the police, the police haul Pete in for questioning, and he eventually gives up Steve and Joe.
The detectives call Steve's parents, and they bring Steve in for questioning. "We spoke to Steven's parents, and they related that Steven was very nervous and scared about being at the police station and he realized that what he had done was a mistake," reads the police report from February 10, 1994. "They advised that they would discipline him and would like us to speak to Steven to scare him in order that he would not make any bombs in the future."
Steve is remorseful. He gives the police names of other students who know how to make the bombs. He vows he'll never do something like this again. He loses friends. He loses more, later, when he's caught talking behind Adam's back.
It takes time, unbearable time, all of ninth grade and into tenth grade, to patch together his friendships. By then, Steve's a Goth. This is what he and his friends become in high school. Just beyond the school grounds is a parking lot where they all gather and smoke. Long black trench coats, black leather boots, chains and spikes. He's still an outsider, though, even among his friends.
Yet somehow the miraculous happens. Beth King likes him for some reason, and suddenly Steve has a girlfriend. She's cute, too, looks like Liv Tyler, wears a black choker. Then, in the winter, she dumps him, tells everyone he has a small penis, can't satisfy her in bed. Steve's older sister, Susan, is no help. She's always had an easier time. The two of them are night and day.
So Steve goes for the lowest common denominator, Kim, "a girl your parents wouldn't want you to date," says Adam. Secret sex for that entire summer after tenth grade. No one is supposed to know, except Steve's friends. At his friend Rich's house, a foam lounger that reclines. They call it the Flip 'n' Fuck. They do it on the ottoman, too, in Rich's living room late at night, just a moving sheet with two bodies underneath.
Steve spends almost no time at home. He lives at his friends' houses the fall of eleventh grade. He's better friends now with Julie Creamer, who's on meds for bipolar, same as Steve. The hangout is the Tubes. A short walk to the forest preserve, hop a fence, and slog through mud and wet grass past the federal nursery, rows of trees. In the next field, almost a dozen leftover concrete sewer pipes six feet in diameter, tall enough to stand inside.
Most of the time, at least half a dozen of their friends are here. They light chemicals on fire, blow shit up, shoot pellet guns, make out, smoke pot, sneak away to the porno stash in the trees. Whenever they shoot, Steve brags he has a membership with the NRA.
Adam and Steve are friends again, sort of, and they bring white spray paint one day for tagging. Steve tags a white swastika on the front of one of the pipes. "You're doing your swastika wrong," Adam says to him.
"No I'm not."
"Remember how you used to put 'Hi Ho Hitler' instead of 'Heil Hitler'?"
"Shut up. I'll show you what's real." And Steve gives Adam a business card from the KKK. Then he tags "blows" under "Metallica," even though he loves Metallica.
On colder nights, they hang out in one of the bathrooms. Twenty by twenty feet, stand-alone cinder-block huts in the wilderness. Their own concrete chalets. They're used, also, by gay cruisers. If you back into a parking space here, you're asking for a visit.
Steve has been with a man before. He'll admit this to Jessica years later. But his friends in high school don't know. Secret sex, like his summer with Kim.
By the end of the semester, as it gets colder, Steve has become odd, even for him, and antisocial. He doesn't feel like himself. He's anxious all the time.
"Is something going on at home?" Julie asks him.
"Nothing," he says. "I don't want to talk about it."
Steve decides to commit suicide, plans it ahead of time, holds a sale first to get rid of all his stuff. His friend Jason gets his guitar. His friend Lee gets his video games. "He sold all his shit," Adam says.
December 14, 1996, Steve overdoses on Tylenol and calls Beth King. His parents throw him into Rush University Medical Center for a week, but it doesn't help. Nothing does. He's anxious all the time, depressed, unable to sleep. He blows up on the meds, goes from skinny to obese, three hundred pounds, in just a couple months. Rich can't understand what's happened. Steve is like a zombie, with a faraway stare. "It's like the personality was just sucked out of him," he says.
Julie tries to talk with him, and most of the time he's just glassy-eyed, so out of it he won't even look at her. In one clear moment, he stands at the mirror with her, at her house. He has terrible acne, one of the side effects. "You don't need makeup," he tells her. "You look beautiful. I look like shit. Look at me. This is horrible."
People talk about him at school that winter. He's sitting in the cafeteria, an enormous and open room right off the main hall, a place you can't hide. He's with Julie, and a couple jocks come up to him. They know his sister, Susan, and they know Joe Russo's older brother and sister. They know all about him. "Hey, Suicide Steve, what's up?" one of them asks. "Uh-oh, don't say that, Crazy Mierczak might off himself," the other says. Then the first one flips Steve's tray onto the floor, all his food.
Steve walks out to the Goth lot and Julie follows him. "Who cares about them," she says.
"Just back off," he says, and he won't say anything more the rest of the day.
The next day, though, he tells her, "I love school because I love working. But I hate school because of everyone in my classes. I hate everyone."
"You can't hate everyone," she tells him. "You don't hate me."
"No."
"So the others?"
"I do. Some people I wanna hurt."
The slide accelerates.
April 8, 1997, Elk Grove High School denies a request by Steve's parents to have a case-study evaluation. They give his parents a handbook on dealing with students with disabilities.
April 13, Steve overdoses on forty Ambien and slits his wrists. Hospitalized at Rush.
November 4, the fall of his senior year, he tells his mother he doesn't want to go to school anymore. They fight, he says he's not going, and then, at eleven o'clock, he takes fifty Depakote, an entire bottle, and goes to sleep. He's surprised to wake up in the morning. He's able to get dressed, go to school, but his first teacher notices right away how drowsy he is, and he's taken to the nurse's office. According to the hospital report, he tells the nurse, "I want to die. Life sucks." This time he's taken to Alexian Brothers hospital. They keep him for three days.
January 10, 1998, two months later, he's at Alexian again for suicidal thoughts.
Four days earlier, the cops stop him, along with Pete Rachowsky, after a neighbor reports they were smoking marijuana. No one will leave them alone.
February 7 to 11, he's back in Alexian again.
February 9, his father walks into the police station and tells them Pete Rachowsky "is selling acid, fake acid, marijuana, and some other unknown substance that he can't remember." The information is from his son, Steve. Steve's father wants Pete and two other high-school-dropout drug dealers, Martin and Andy, kept away from his son.
February 11, Steve gets out of Alexian but goes back the next day, for suicidal thoughts and violent mood swings. He's up and down on all the meds, all over the place, a mess, and maybe he's scared, also, about what will happen with Pete. He takes 120 doses of Depakote, enough that he really should be dead, but even that doesn't work.
March 2, Steve's father talks with the police again. He has more information now: Pete sells in Lions Park, near the high school, and keeps his drugs in the battery compartment of his Walkman. The police bust Pete for marijuana possession.
The next week, on March 10, after dinner, Steve fights with his mother about Pete. She doesn't want him hanging out with Pete anymore. He storms out at seven o'clock, and she calls the police to file a missing-juvenile report. "He suffers from depression," she tells them. "He didn't take his last two doses of medication."
Two days later Steve is home, goes back to his part-time job at the public library, where a lot of his friends work. Steve is a page, restacking books. But the next week, Pete Rachowsky comes in. He knows how he got busted.
Pete corners Steve in the library. It's eight o'clock. The library has mostly cleared out. Pete is tall, reddish-brown hair, on fire. "For less than an ounce, I could get people to take care of you," he says, according to a complaint Steve files with the police. He's scared of Pete, wants this all on record.
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"Leave me alone," he says. Pete steps closer, backs him against a wall. "I could have your house burned down. Easy enough to throw a brick through your window."
At the end of his senior year, Steve's parents don't include his baby picture and a congratulatory note from the family in his yearbook. Joe Russo's parents do this, and Adam's parents, etc., but Steve's parents stopped filling in his "School Days" scrapbook years ago. They're afraid of their son.
In June, he graduates. And what he graduates to is a group home.
The Mary Hill Residence is a narrow three-story brownstone, like the side tower on a castle with no castle attached. The street is narrow, lined with cars that have been dented up and beaten. There's an urban park across the street, chain-link fence and playground structures.
Before Steve moves in, he takes a tour and has a thorough evaluation:
"Description of Member: Steve is a 17 y.o. Caucasian male who appears his stated age. He is tall and overweight. During his tour, Steve was very quiet and did not ask many questions. His thought form appeared normal and his affect flat. He did not exhibit any bizarre or inappropriate behaviors during his tour -- .
"Medications: Steve is currently taking Prozac 20 mg in the a.m., Zyprexa 10 mg at hs and Depakote 500 mg in the a.m. and 1,000 mg at hs. Past medication includes Paxil, Cogentin, Risperdal, Lithium and Cylert.
"Symptoms: Steve stated that when symptomatic he becomes anxious, depressed and unable to sleep. He reports losing interest in all leisure activities...has suicidal thoughts and feels worthless -- ."
They wake Steve up early here. They monitor his medications so he can't overdose. They make him keep everything clean. They make him work in the kitchen. He's washing dishes. Then it's off to therapy. Group problem-solving therapy, Mondays and Wednesdays. Vocational-skills training on Fridays. Then all the one-on-one sessions.
Rather than getting better, his symptoms get worse. He's oversedated, overweight, doesn't want to take his meds. He has special powers, though, he tells his psychiatrist. He can see his old girlfriend, Beth. And he can read minds. He's been able to do this all his life, but the power is stronger now, for some reason. He knows what they think of him here, how they underestimate him. The other residents so slow you can actually see them think, see each twitch of a thought, the forming of each word on their lips.
He crawls through the days, through the months, the longest time of his life. Through the fall, through winter, every day unbearable, every day the same. He escapes several times, makes his way home to Elk Grove Village, to his parents' house, begs them to take him back. Every time they drive him back to Mary Hill. Steve blames his mom, calls her a whore, a bitch, a slut.
The following February, Thresholds, the agency that runs Mary Hill, decides to transition Steve out of the residential program into an SRO, a single-room occupancy. He has his own room now in a broke-down building, and they all share a bathroom. This is an even worse neighborhood. "His first night in the SRO was rough," says Jessica. "I remember him telling me about how he heard gunshots and someone was pounding on his door, thinking that Steven was the previous occupant. Steven said that he put furniture in front of the door."
They place him in a job at Walgreens, but he's fired after a month, in April, for poor attendance. He's hired at Osco pharmacy in June, but fired six weeks later. The next stop is Kmart in September. He thinks people are following him, that they're against him, ganging up. He gets in arguments with his coworkers, anxious and emotional. He's on Seroquel and Clozaril.
"Steve has two concerns which are not likely related to meds -- has vivid thoughts of the past when he falls asleep; and still feels people hassle him at work -- says he's overly sensitive to teasing," reports his psychiatrist in October. He has to check doors over and over, and touch things. The physical world has become a kind of torture of meaning. Threes speak to him, almost prophetically, tell him what to do.
A few weeks later, Steve feels another resident has insulted him, so he bumps him in the smoking area. The guy hits Steve in the face. Steve breaks his hand hitting the guy several times in the head.
Then one morning he wakes up and he's wet the bed. This freaks him out, so he tries to hide it. It happens again, and again, six or seven times. He's a bed wetter now, on top of everything else. They reduce the Clozaril, and that helps. He chooses more Seroquel and less Clozaril, even though it will make him sleepier. He can't be a bed wetter. He'd rather be a zombie.
A few weeks later he visits his sister at University of Illinois. Maybe it's seeing people his age who are happy. People his age who aren't drugged out all the time. But at this point something seems to click in Steve.
They've broken him with all the meds, and he's just smart enough to know. He needs to get off these drugs. He needs to get himself normal. He wants to go to school and do something with his life.
Come January he enrolls in a couple courses at Truman, a two-year community college. His therapists warn him that getting overinvolved in school and ignoring his mental-health issues will lead to a hard "crash" that will wreck everything he's accomplished. But Steve is determined.
He also begins weaning himself off the meds. He has to do this. He knows he can.
And he does.
He hides this fact for five months. They believe he's still taking the pills. He even reports nonexistent side effects, begins living a double life. They think they still have him, but he's on his way out. He quits seeing his therapist, shaves his head. Tattoos "FTW," for "Fuck the world," on his skin. He complains about noise and sleeping.
When he breaks the news, his case manager points out that over the previous five and a half months without meds, Steve has "held one job for three and a half weeks only, quit school without earning credit, and has created very visible homemade tattoos on his finger and over the length of his forearm. He has a very limited social network and has rejected or quit therapy, job club, and his college support program." But he also says something else: He suggests they expedite Steve's discharge, since he's not willing to work with them anymore. Steve wants out of Thresholds, and now they want him to go.
Steve becomes the Chicago Department of Public Health's problem, and they decide they can't handle him and that his family can afford private services. But Steve fixes the problem. He enlists in the Army on September 5, 2001.
Steve needs this.
He checks "no" on his Army application for suicide attempts. No, also, for "evaluated or treated for a mental condition," "used illegal drugs or abused prescription drugs," "depression or excessive worry," "received counseling of any type," "frequent trouble sleeping," and "anxiety or panic attacks." They give him a $4,000 cash bonus and sign him up for the Army College Fund. He's shipped off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for basic.
Steve doesn't get along with his bunkmate, but he loves everything else about the Army. All this structure, all the order. How great a relief it must be from his OCD. No more insomnia. No more struggle to get up. No more worry about what to do with the day. Every minute is planned for him. He runs and runs and runs.
Every one of them a maggot, every one of them the same. No more worry about what others will think. No minds to read, because their minds are beaten flat. He keeps his locker neat, checks everything three times, wins praise for this.
They train him how to shoot, how to kill. No emotional or psychological response, that's what they're looking for, and he can do this. He tells Jessica and Kevin about it, even years later. A point of pride.
The land is flat here, endless in all directions, and the inside of his mind feels like this for the first time, open, stretching on and on, a kind of wind that's blown all the anxiety away.
On December 1, he's notified he'll be stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, in the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade.
And then something happens.
It's unclear exactly what triggers it -- maybe Steve loses his temper. Maybe the Army is just late in processing his full background check. But they find out that Steve has been hospitalized in the past for psychotic episodes and suicide attempts. Steve is flagged.
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They pull him in for a psych exam. He's worried. What do they know? Is this normal, to be tested like this? He tries to get the doctor to tell him what's up, but he won't say anything.
According to his military file, three days later Steve is carted off to William Beaumont Army Medical Center. They throw him in the Army psych ward as a precaution against any suicide attempts. They tell him he's possibly a danger to himself or others. He asks them what this is about, and they don't tell him until the next day. They've discovered he lied on his application, concealed his mental-health history, his suicide attempts, and his psychotic episodes, including hearing voices and hallucinations. They tell him it's a fraudulent enlistment, because he did it for monetary gain, for the cash bonus and the Army College Fund. They give him an uncharacterized discharge, an entry-level status separation.
On February 13, 2002, they drop him off in his hometown, Elk Grove Village. Steve is crushed about being kicked out. He'll talk about it over and over with friends in years to come. He could have spent his life in the military. But he does understand that a kind of minor miracle has happened: He's been off meds for a year now.
August 2002.
Strange Steve, that's what they call him in the dorm. He knows they call him this, and it's because of his roommate, Aaron Stack. Aaron tells everyone Steve's a psycho.
They're in a suite with three other guys in Stevenson Towers, a dorm complex on the NIU campus. It's been six months since Steve left the Army and moved home to apply for school. Steve takes his food from the cafeteria, goes up to the room, sits at his desk, and eats alone. He watches the news on CNN, but all he can think about is goddamn Sallie Mae. He's not going to have the money in time to pay his tuition.
He's busting his ass, every single day. He knows if he doesn't make it now, it's straight back to the SRO in Chicago. This is his one chance. No meds. No more Suicide Steve. But everyone's against him. Even Sallie Mae.
Aaron comes back from dinner, so Steve fires up the Xbox, puts in the earphones, plays Halo. He likes the sniper rifle best. Zoom in five times, or ten times, one shot, one kill, clear across the canyon.
Aaron tries to get Steve off Xbox, tries to get him out, but he refuses. Steve doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, won't leave the room except to eat, Aaron tells the police later.
At midnight, Steve takes a shower. He wears long sleeves every day, even when it's muggy and hot. He doesn't want anyone to see his tattoos, the homemade sword on his forearm. He showers when no one will see, keeps the light turned off, likes the darkness.
He can't sleep, though. He goes over everything in his head, every midterm, every final coming up, every paper. It all has weight, heft, a physical presence pressing in on him, his mind a flatland still but the horizon building up, coming closer.
Aaron's alarm goes off, and Aaron doesn't wake up. He has some sort of "condition" -- you can yell at him or even shake him, and he won't wake up. But he still sets the alarm, a little gift for Steve.
So Steve hucks tennis balls at his head, hard, and this finally wakes him up. Aaron is upset, has the nerve to complain. Steve turns on CNN, loud.
Steve has class that day in Cole Hall, Room 100, a big auditorium. Three sections of seats for several hundred, two aisles between. The seats go right up to the wall in the side sections, a kind of trap. The two aisles the only way out. The professor is up on a stage. Music 220 -- Intro to Music. Steve listens.
Back at the dorm, Steve runs into Phillip, one of his suitemates. Aaron isn't around. Steve speaks quietly, but he's hurrying, tripping over his words, telling Phillip about Ted Bundy, about Jeffrey Dahmer, about Hitler. "He would talk about them as if he idolized them," Phillip will later write in his statement to police. "He was intrigued as to how they committed their murders, and he would tell their stories to others over and over again."
Phillip is good to talk to. He listens. But then he says he has homework to do, breaks off the conversation just as they're really getting into Hitler, and then there's dinner, and Steve is eating alone again, watching CNN. Always some killing somewhere, some disaster. And the control. The facade of two parties, masking the real power brokers. But Steve can see. He's going to major in political science.
Later, he talks with Phillip again, getting back to their conversation about Hitler. "I told him to stop because I had already heard him tell me their stories too many times, and I was tired of hearing them," recalls Phillip.
Steve must think Aaron has gotten to Phillip. "Strange Steve." So fuck them all. He'll move out, get a single. This is unbearable.
The next fall, 2003, things are much better. He has his own room. Studying all the time, almost every waking hour. Things finally seem to be falling into place.
He's taking Intro to Sociology in Cole Hall 100 with Professor Jim Thomas. Thomas is an old guy, tall with wild white hair. He asks questions. He challenges his own authority. "How can you subvert the power of the professor?" he asks. "If you're not happy with this power relationship, what can you do to affect it?" He's into "crim," which is criminology, studies prisons.
Steve realizes prisons are a way into understanding America. The average stay is only a couple of years, but the country believes they can lock people away, toss the key. Thomas wants people rehabilitated, believes in rehab, doesn't ask questions about Steve's past.
Steve takes two classes with Jim, drops by his office, feels uncomfortable calling him Jim, but Jim insists, as he does with all his students, breaking down the barriers, questioning power. He lets his students have the run of the place, and Steve wants in, but he worries about offending, always feels like he's intruding. "In the first year or so, he was always apologetic, extremely deferential, and seemed sheepish about taking up my time," says Thomas. "He always asked: 'Is this okay if I...?' I'd respond with something like, 'Steve, it's as much your office as mine -- just don't turn off the Unix servers.' "
In the fall of 2004, Steve meets Kevin, who has a half-burned Bush/Cheney American flag on his door. Steve is excited. "I could never do that," he tells Kevin. Too worried what others think of him. Steve has an anti-Bush sticker, but a half-burned flag?
Kevin is someone he can talk to, finally, about all of it -- the methodology of Columbine, going through weapons choices, the plan, each step, what they could have done differently. Kevin is a fast talker, smart as hell, quiet and calm but well versed in all this stuff. Randy
Weaver, The Turner Diaries, Waco, Oklahoma. The federal government. There's a new angle here. Before it was Bundy, Dahmer, Hitler, and he read about the occult and conspiracy on the side, but the two can be brought together.
Libertarians, that's what Tim Neubeck says they are. Another new friend. Steve convinces him to switch his major to political science. They talk about the individual. Steve's favorite author is Nietzsche. The superman, above moral code. Only the weak let themselves be ruled by morality. They talk about Firearm Owner's ID cards. "It's back to the days of the Hitler regime," Steve says. "The government is trying to track us."
Because of Jim Thomas's influence, Steve's academic focus has begun to shift toward sociology and criminology. He helps found the NIU chapter of the American Correctional Association on campus and becomes its treasurer and later VP. He gets Kevin to join. He tells Thomas, "I've been focusing on academics so that I can have something to show for myself since getting out of the group home."
He also has a new girlfriend -- an eccentric art student, Deyana. So now he's doing better socially as well.
Senior year, he aces his statistics course, toughest course out there, ends up number three out of ninety.
Steve asks the professor, Charles Cappell, to write him a letter for grad school. "[Steve] is extremely patient and calm when tutoring students who are stressed out about statistics and the high standards imposed on them. He has the highest ethical and academic standards, he thinks abstractly and analytically, and relates at an emotional and empathetic level with others."
Imagine him in the sociology lab where he tutored. Carefully groomed, long-sleeved shirt, normal. No tattoos showing, no black trench coat. No slurred speech from meds. His breathing is regular, his body feels okay, his head is clear. They come to him stressed out, but he's able to show them how to work the problems, able to calm them, inspires several of them, even, to apply for grad school. He affects their lives in a positive way, and they love him for it.
One of the students is a cute brunette, Jessica Baty. She first met him in class a few semesters back. "He would make me so frustrated in class because every time that I wanted to say something, [he] would always say it first. During lectures, I remember sitting across the room from him and just wondering about him."
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Now she's wondering even more. She writes him an anonymous e-mail: What does a girl have to do to get your attention? Steve jokes at first. He tells her that he has a girlfriend. Yet they keep writing e-mails. Eventually Steve puts the pieces together -- figures out it's Jessica. And soon Steve breaks up with Deyana.
Their first date is at a local DeKalb bar for a drink. "Steven told me how pretty I was and he made me laugh," says Jessica. "After a few drinks, we walked to a twenty-four-hour diner. We laughed as we stumbled down the street to the restaurant. It was so easy to talk to him, and there was no tension or pretending to be someone else."
Steve wraps his arms around her, and it's like the rest of the world doesn't matter anymore. Their own little island.
They graduate together in May 2006 and make plans to attend NIU for graduate school in the fall. And then the impossible happens -- more impossible than being off meds for five years straight. More impossible than finding an amazing girlfriend.
Steve wins a Deans' Award. It is the highest honor given to undergraduates.
"I only got it because of everything Jim has done and said for me," he tells Jessica, but she knows he's proud.
The unwinding starts slow. His mother's death. A battle with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, a battle he didn't see much of. She dies in September 2006. He hasn't been close to her in years. Thinks she hated him, was afraid of him. So he hated her, and now this. No time to make anything up.
He doesn't show emotion or tell people about his mother's death. He doesn't take time off school and won't let Jessica go to the wake, but he calls her and tells her he wishes she was here.
Then more change. He's just started grad classes, and now it looks like he isn't going to be able to stay at NIU. The university has cut half the faculty from its sociology department through attrition, stripped the advanced courses, especially in criminology. Jim writes a recommendation letter, and Steve and Jessica apply to the grad program in social work at the University of Illinois, three hours south in Champaign. A smart move academically, a necessary move. But Steve hates the idea of having to move to a new place, having to make new friends.
Things are falling apart with Jessica, too. Messy breakups for everyone to see. On again. Off again. The most recent one, she came teary-eyed to class, embarrassing him. It's his fault, but he doesn't want everyone to see.
He's also freaking out about jobs now. His future. He mastered college, but what next? He bombed the LSAT in the fall, taking it too soon after his mother's death. So law school is out. And social work, or becoming a corrections officer? They're Jim's influence, the influence of a good teacher. Is that enough? Does he really want to spend his whole life in that field? Maybe he should focus on political science or public administration. But really, he has no idea.
He stops going to his grad classes at NIU. He doesn't need them anyway, since his course work won't transfer to U. of I. He gets interested in buying guns. He applies for his firearms permit in December and receives it in January. He's been out of the mental-health system for five years now, so he's eligible. (In the fall he'll write a paper titled "(No) Crazies with Guns!" questioning whether people on antipsychotics should be allowed to buy firearms.) In February he buys a Glock .45-caliber handgun, a powerful weapon. He buys a shotgun and another handgun the next month. Goes to the shooting range instead of school. He'll get F's in his classes, but doesn't seem to care.
Then Seung-Hui Cho kills thirty-two at Virginia Tech. April 16, 2007. Steve's excited. He's firing off e-mails. "Crazy," he tells Jessica, and sends her Cho's writings. He's all over this with Kevin, studying everything. The writings, where Cho bought his guns, his mental-health history, the photos, the planning, the timing, even his favorite songs.
"I think it was mostly a sociological interest," Kevin says. "He was interested in what was going on in the mind of Cho, and why it was so successful, and how someone could do it, how they could pull it off." Steve tells Kevin that Cho "obviously planned it out well," and he mentions chaining the doors. Creating chaos. All the careful planning, like Columbine.
He and Jessica move to Champaign in June, rent an apartment together. Separate bedrooms. They're not a couple anymore. Relationships just don't work out for him. And renting an apartment with her is probably a bad idea, but it saves on rent, they can share books, and she's his closest friend.
He's falling apart, though. He knows it, and Jessica knows it. He checks five times to make sure the car is locked, three times for the apartment door, checks the stove. He and Jessica drive somewhere, but he has to turn around, drive back to check again that the door is locked. He washes his hands twenty times a day, has to wash the remote for the TV if anyone else touches it, has to wash if Jessica's cat touches him, hates all the hair everywhere. He can't sleep, gets up to check again that he's paid all his bills, checks the alarm clock three times. He's anxious and worried about everything, paranoid. He doesn't feel safe. He misses his friends at NIU, misses Jim's office, misses the sociology lab. He has these mood swings, totally out of control, and he gets really irritable, picks fights with Jessica.
"You have to see someone," she tells him. "You need a mood stabilizer."
August 3, 2007, he makes an appointment for himself at McKinley Health Center on campus at U. of I. The social worker notes that Steve is very worried about confidentiality. Doesn't want this on his record. Steve doesn't mention the mood swings. Or the suicide attempts. He doesn't tell them much of anything. He says he's interested in medications, worried about weight gain. She makes him an appointment with a psychiatrist three days later.
That same day he decides to buy guns. Perhaps it's just a whim. Or maybe he's concerned that his visit to the hospital will go on his mental-health record and his gun license will be revoked. He drives to Tony's Guns & Ammo, which is just Tony's house. Steve trades in his Glock .45 caliber, his .22-caliber pistol, and his 20-gauge shotgun. He buys a Sig Sauer .380.
He debates returning to McKinley. He doesn't want to go, but he really is falling apart. He knows this. So he goes.
"Steve shows elements of both social anxiety and obsessive/compulsive disorder," records the doctor who sees him. "The working diagnosis is Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder with the DSM-IV code 300.3. My plan is to start Prozac 10 mg each morning with breakfast."
The first time he's been on Prozac in six and a half years.
But it's still not enough. As he's sitting in one of his classes at U. of I., his heart starts beating fast and hard. It's like a fist in there, balled up. He looks around, but no one seems to notice. He's short of breath, getting dizzy, disoriented. He's going to pass out, right here in front of everyone. He holds on to the desk, though, gets through the moment, gets out of there.
A month later he's back at McKinley, September 4, says his mother's death was a traumatic experience, still is. The doctor notes it in his evaluation. Steve worries, also, about his father, who has diabetes and hypertension and recently had a stroke. He's anxious all the time in this new place, feels judged, worries what people think of him. He's hiding all the time, still doing well in his schoolwork, so no one would suspect. He's good at hiding. The doctor asks him whether he's planning to kill himself or anyone else. He says no. They up his Prozac to 50 milligrams a day and add Xanax, 0.5 milligrams a couple times a day as needed for anxiety.
Around this time, he calls his sister, Susan. Their relationship has always been rough. She resented all the attention he sucked in high school, and he resented how perfect she seemed. But today he's feeling okay, he wants to talk. He tells her that he thinks he might be gay.
They go to dinner, a chance to talk and reconcile. But Susan thinks he's being paranoid, because he won't use his credit card. They could steal the number. And just like that, he's back to hating her. Susan's just like his mother -- only sees him as a fuckup, he thinks.
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He starts his new job as a correctional officer at Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana the following week. He's stopped going to classes for this job, and isn't tutoring, either, or working as a research assistant. He's made sacrifices, and the job isn't what he expected. He enjoys parts of the training. They teach him how to use a Remington 12-gauge shotgun. He has to take a test detailing how to load and unload it. But according to Jessica, he took this job to help people, and instead he feels like he's only going to be moving the inmates around from place to place.
Then something stupid happens, something maddening. He's driving to work, early in the morning, talking with Jessica on the phone, passing endless farmland, cornfields, barns, and he misses his turn, drives past. This job is ridiculously inflexible. If you're late even one minute, you have to restart your training from scratch.
So he turns around and speeds back, eighty-four miles an hour in a fifty-five zone, and then sees the flashing lights. So that's it. Why shouldn't everything in his life fall apart?
He drives to Nick Eblen's house -- Nick is a training officer and has been letting him crash there some nights to shorten the commute -- and clears out all his stuff. He leaves a two-page apology note, over the top. "I sincerely apologize for any embarrassment or shame that I may have caused by my stupid actions." What he can't quite put into words, though, is how he's just doomed. "I may have graduated at the top of my college class, but I now understand that book smarts don't translate into common sense. In college, and by past girlfriends, I was often told that I was too smart for my own good. I now understand what was meant by this comment."
A couple days later, he fights with his former NIU friends on WebBoard. It's an online discussion forum he still has access to. They're talking about sex offenders. There's a gay grad student at NIU who works with them, and this is a guy Steve respected. But one day Jessica is looking around online, because she works in rehabilitating juvenile sex offenders, and she finds this guy on the list. He's a former sex offender himself.
On WebBoard Steve exposes him for the hypocrite he thinks he is. Disgusting, a horrible, horrible person. Steve is vicious, relentless in his attacks. So vicious that Jim Thomas and Steve's friends are shocked by the whole exchange. This isn't the Steve they know. They can't make any sense of it.
What they don't know is that Steve has gone off his Prozac because it was causing acne. They didn't even know he was on Prozac in the first place.
He goes back on meds a few days later, but around this time something primal kicks in. First it's the guns. Now it's sex. He begins surfing the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist.
He tries to hook up with "Katie," with her 44D's, but that doesn't work out, so he moves on. Meets a male biochemistry professor from U. of I. They give each other blowjobs.
Then he meets Kelly, an undergrad. In introduction he describes himself as "very gentleman like and respectful in person, but have a wild side." She says meeting in a public place first "isn't absolutely necessary as long as you don't plan to chop me up and store me in my freezer. So -- don't do that. :)" He reassures her, "I'm not a serial killer/psycho or anything." Then he seals the deal: "Just so you know, I am very oral, and love to give it -- True story: I have a particularly strong tongue, as I used to play the Tenor Saxophone when I was younger."
He drives to her apartment for sex on October 23. Long blond hair, round and busty and wholesome, a bit of a redneck. They have a similar dark sense of humor, love the macabre. They're both excited about Saw IV coming out on Friday. He has a great time with her, fun sex, and they spend a lot of time e-mailing and on the phone over the next few weeks.
She e-mails him on October 27. Calls him "oh-so-old-and-wise-one." He feels understood and looked up to. He confesses to her: "I mention family when I talk with others and say that they are doing fine, but the truth is I really don't have much of a family. My justification is that I don't want to ever let people know this about me so they don't think I'm strange. It's rare that I even see members of my family. I'm not sure why I'm telling you all of this, but it's 4:45 a.m., so -- let me rant about how fantastic Saw IV is!"
But not even Kelly is enough to satisfy his appetite now. Steve sets up a meeting with "Tracy" the next night at a bar in Champaign called the Phoenix. According to police testimony, they go to a hotel, the Econo Lodge. It's right off the freeway, the crack-and-ho section of town. They have sex. In the morning he's a gentleman, buys coffee and cigarettes.
A few nights later he drives to where "Tracy" lives, in Mattoon, Illinois, brings a dozen roses and a couple movies. Snakes on a Plane and Mr. Brooks, about an upstanding father who's actually a killer.
But it doesn't help. He can't control himself and he knows it.
He confesses everything to Jessica. He calls her at work, tells her he's not gay. She comes home to find him a puddle of tears on the carpet. He's sobbing that she was here all along. Why couldn't he see that?
Halloween 2007.
Steve stands in his bedroom dressed all in black, with white gloves. He takes the Jigsaw mask down from his bookcase, carefully holds it to his left side, face turned toward him, a puppet, a piece of himself, his alter ego. White face, red-target cheeks, the sadistic killer-narrator from Saw. He and Jessica aren't going anywhere tonight. She's busy with work, and there's no love after his night away with "Tracy."
Everything has fallen apart this fall, everything. His job at Rockville. Jim Thomas and his NIU friends on WebBoard. Jessica. Susan. The panic attack. Prozac and side effects. Craigslist.
But Steve dresses up anyway, puts the mask on. He's Jigsaw now. He gets Jessica to take photos of him, arms outstretched, coming to get you, holding a mallet cocked back, ready to swing.
He e-mails the photos to friends. Look at me. One of his classmates, Poppy Ann Graham, says later that she thought it was "creepy -- like there were two sides to Steve."
Two days later, November 2, Steve has Jigsaw tattooed over his entire right forearm. He's not covering up an old tattoo, like he's done in the past. This is something he wants. He pays $700 for it. Jigsaw riding a tricycle through a pool of blood, with bloody cuts across Steve's forearm as background. He's a cutter, and he needs to help himself, needs to learn the value of his life. Every time Steve looks down, Jigsaw will be there, reminding him.
Thanksgiving 2007.
Steve shows Jessica all his mental-health records before destroying them, insists she read them. He wants her to know everything.
They're in Lakeland, Florida, to help his father, who has gone into diabetic shock after a car accident. Steve has long talks with his father, their best visit in years. They talk about Susan. They talk about his mother. It's good for Steve. But it also enrages Steve. He writes Susan afterward that he now knows "Mom never truly forgave me for being a 'bad/delinquent' teenager and she never trusted me . . . even after I spent four years in college earning near perfect grades." This is why Susan must hate him so much, as well. "Sometimes," he writes, "I cannot believe that we share the same blood."
Christmas 2007.
Steve's father is in town and they go to dinner with Jessica. They need to drop his dad off at Susan's, but Steve's vowed never to see her again. Something like, "Just walk my father to the door and bring her her present," he says to Jessica. It's a box of coal. Jessica laughed when he first told her, but she doesn't think it's funny now. He actually has a box of coal for Susan, wrapped in Christmas paper. She's going to flip.
Jessica carries the present to the door.
After the shootings, Susan tells the police she's surprised he didn't come to kill her.
Two days after Christmas, Steve goes to Tony's Guns & Ammo, buys a Hi-Point .380 and a 12-gauge shotgun.
By New Year's, Steve has begun to isolate himself from his friends. Joe Russo tries to contact him, doesn't hear back until February 13.
January 7, 2008, he goes with Jessica to get a new tattoo -- a pentagram, sign of the devil.
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A few days later he's back in touch with Kelly by e-mail. It's been some time since they spoke. He said he needed separation. But now he's back. He sends her an e-mail about three T-shirts he's bought from the Bounty Hunter Web site, including the one that says "Terrorist" with an AK-47.
On the twentieth, Jessica is away, so he invites Kelly over for sex. Kelly offers her place instead. She sends him an e-mail later joking that her job is driving her to the brink of mass murder. Steve's been playing Call of Duty 4, a first-person shooter game. He responds that "practicing with virtual weapons translates into ?" and doesn't say more.
He contacts the Navy recruiter in Champaign on January 29 and says he'd like to enlist. They discuss his previous discharge and use of Prozac in the past, and it seems that nothing will actually prohibit Steve from reenlisting. He thinks he'll have to pass a psychiatric exam, though. And he can't be on meds, which he's been on since August.
Perhaps this is a way out. The daily structure. The discipline.
He stops taking the Prozac, and just like when he went off it in the fall, everything gets worse. His obsessive-compulsive disorder, his checking behaviors, his anxiety. Jessica recalls him sitting secretively on the couch during this period. He keeps his laptop screen facing away from her, closes it if she gets too close. Sometimes she's talking, and he doesn't even realize she's been talking. She tells him he's acting strange, she won't get off his case until finally he admits he's off his meds and tells her why. She thinks the military is a stupid waste of his education and intelligence. Steve disagrees.
January 31, he sends Kelly a link to the V-Tech Rampage shooting video game.
February 3, Steve buys extra magazines for his Hi-Point .380 pistol.
February 4, Kelly asks Steve about his weekend. "Email me back if you're not busy. :)."
"No, I'm not too busy," Steve writes back. "Just plotting world domination and all. Did you hear about the 'man in black' at Lane Bryant? Crazy World!" Steve is referring to the armed robber who shot and killed five people execution-style two days before in a botched robbery of a clothing store in suburban Chicago.
The next day, he buys gear from Bounty Hunter and Top Gun Supply and writes a check to himself for $3,000 cash, then changes it to $3,001. Perhaps it's harder to track that way. He also buys a spring-assisted knife.
February 5, he keeps buying. Two 9mm magazines and holsters from Able Ammo. He pays extra shipping costs for second-day air and goes to a Marilyn Manson concert that night with Jessica.
He describes the Manson concert in an e-mail to Kelly: "Manson was AMAZING live. Probably the best part was him burning a bible on stage. On a hilarious side note, some of the audience members were Neo-Nazi party members and held up a 3rd Reich (Nazi) flag throughout most of the concert."
The next day, it's back to Tony's Guns & Ammo. He buys a Glock 9mm and a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a model similar to the one they trained him on at Rockville. He makes a reservation for a room in a Best Western hotel in DeKalb. He takes a cash advance against his Bank of America Visa for $5,000. He buys a Gator GC-Dread hard-shell guitar case for the shotgun, requests next-day delivery.
He goes to class on Thursday, February 7. He argues with Sandra Thompson, one of his classmates. He thinks she's annoying, tries to put her in her place for a few minutes, but the others take her side and tell him to shut up. They're all ganging up against him, he thinks.
He's back on Craigslist after class, compulsively now, checking the Erotic Services section. He posts his own ad, too.
He meets "Megan" that night at the corner of North Prospect and Bloomington in Champaign, just off the highway, the same crack-and-ho neighborhood where he had sex with "Tracy" in the fall. She's with her friend "Elyse," who doesn't look bad either. "Megan" gets into his car. They park behind a building near the Econo Lodge. Steve on top, she tells the police later.
The next day, Friday the eighth, he writes a check to himself for cash, $4,600, then changes that to $4,601. He buys stamps for the packages he's planning to send to Jessica. He talks with "Katie." Drives to her place. She's lit candles. He doesn't feel like talking. They have sex, and afterward, he tells her he's going out of town.
On Sunday, February 10, Steve talks with his father on the phone. He also talks with his godfather, Richard Grafer, makes plans for the next weekend. He'll visit. They'll play chess.
He tells Jessica he's leaving tomorrow, Monday, to visit his godfather, because he's in poor health.
He meets again with "Megan" that night at Walgreens. They have sex in the car again. They're back and forth eighteen times on the phone that night, dirty talk, and Steve also calls "Elyse."
In the morning, about 10:00, he tells Jessica not to go to work.
"Just stay. Just hang out with me today."
"I have to go to work," she says.
She doesn't know, and he can't tell her.
In their apartment, he saws off the barrel of the shotgun. The guitar case, the two new guns, the extra magazines and holsters -- he's hidden these things from her. He duct-tapes half of the inside of the guitar case, black tape -- a riddle the police will never quite figure out. He puts the Remington 12-gauge inside, loaded. Picks up the case and it's not too heavy. He leaves his old shotgun in the closet. It's for skeet or birds, not designed for killing people.
He's bought longer ammo clips for the pistols. They hold thirty-three rounds each. But the problem is they're so long, he'll have to carry the pistols in his hands. He won't be able to use the holsters and hide everything under his coat. And he wants to use the shotgun first, to create confusion. And for theatrical effect. That's Kevin's theory in hindsight.
So he leaves the long clips, leaves a lot of the extra ammo, too. He's not going to have more than a couple minutes. After Virginia Tech, the police will come quickly. They're not going to screw up like that again and let someone walk around from place to place for hours.
He makes his bed, crisp, and gathers everything. He puts the pistols and ammo in a duffel bag.
He leaves in the afternoon, drives almost three hours to DeKalb, checks into the Best Western hotel. Uses his Chase Visa and goes to his room, number 134, then calls the front desk on his cell phone after five minutes and checks out after ten minutes. Something is wrong. Maybe it's the credit card. He could be tracked.
The Travelodge has a big black tarp out front covering the empty pool, chain-link fence all around. The place is a dump. Steve pays in cash.
He goes to his room, sends Kelly an e-mail. Tells her he's watching MSNBC and listening to Manson's "Coma White." He tells her he's going to close his e-mail account soon because of spam, asks her to call him later.
Later, Jessica calls. It's a short conversation, seven and a half minutes. He tells her, "I'm sorry things did not turn out differently for us. Thank you for not holding anything against me. I appreciate what you have done for me. I love you."
He never says, "I love you." She thinks this is odd. She thinks he's getting depressed.
He gets a call from Kelly and talks with her for half an hour. She asks what he's doing for Valentine's Day, and he says he isn't going to be around. He also says he wishes he'd met her before things "got so fucked up."
The next day, Tuesday, February 12, he buys books for Jessica on Amazon, all to help her with her studies. He includes the gift message, "You are the best Jessica! You've done so much for me, and I truly do love you. You will make an excellent psychologist or social worker someday! Don't forget about me! Love, Steven Kazmierczak."
He also buys her an iPhone and memory sticks, a purse, sterling-silver peace earrings, data cables, and CDs, and he wants to buy her a wedding ring. He calls her in the afternoon, but she's at work.
Jessica calls him back and they talk for a little more than ten minutes. He asks her what her ring size is and what finger a woman wears her wedding ring on. He tells her she'll be receiving a package in the mail from him. She can't open it until Valentine's Day or it won't make any sense.
He talks to his father for about fifteen minutes. Then he gets a call from the Navy recruiter, Nole Scoville, and puts him off, says he's too busy to come in to the office. A last chance to go another direction.
He goes straight back onto Amazon.
He orders Jessica a platinum ArtCarved Montclair six-millimeter ring for $1,400. They speak three times that evening. He tells her everything is going well with his godfather.
He talks with Kevin that evening, too, for a little more than half an hour, and it's a normal conversation. He doesn't sense anything wrong with Steve, maybe a bit formal on the final goodbye is all. Steve talks with Joe Russo, too, and Joe doesn't think anything is wrong. The conversation ends as usual, with "Talk to you later."
Kelly sends him an e-mail, asking to get together, perhaps karaoke or a B-movie video night. He answers her the next morning, Wednesday, February 13, tells her, "Friday may work, but I'll have to see what's going on."
He goes to the post office and sends Jessica a package with a return address of 1074 Stevenson C, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, his dorm address at NIU. He puts down the sender as Robert Paulson, one of the army of maggots in Fight Club who gains a name only after death.
Steve's last call to Jessica is just before midnight on February 13, wishing her Happy Valentine's Day, promising he'll see her tomorrow. "Goodbye, Jessica," he says.
He closes all his e-mail accounts, erases the mail. Takes the SIM card out of his phone, the hard drive out of his laptop, and hides them where they will never be found.
Valentine's Day. 3:04 p.m. Cole Hall Room 100. The end of class. Intro to Ocean Science. Many of the students are gone, since they had a test two days before.
The stage door behind the screen bursts open. Steve walks abruptly onto the stage. He stands for the briefest of moments just looking at the class, then he raises the shotgun.
He fires into the front row of students.
Chaos. Multiple students hit, everyone rising to run. But students farther back in the class still think it might be some kind of joke. Confusion.
Joe Peterson, the instructor, takes a few steps back to a stage door like the one Steve entered. He pulls on the door, but it's locked. He pulls again and again, trying to open it as Steve fires his shotgun two more times into the students. They're running away from him down the aisle.
"He's reloading!" someone yells. And now others are running.
The auditorium has three sections of seats separated by two aisles, and these aisles are the only way out. Most of the students happen to be on the same side of the classroom Steve is on, so he has a clear shot straight down the aisle.
Joe is hiding behind his podium, up on stage with Steve. The stage is large, and he's at the other end. "I could hear the click of the plastic shotgun shells as he was reloading," Joe says.
Steve has been trained by the Indiana prison system how to use a 12-gauge. He stands in one place, not panicking, not rushing.
Steve fires the shotgun three more times, shooting students in the back as they bunch up in the aisle, trying to escape. At this distance, the pellets are spraying wide, hitting many with each shot, wounding and not killing. That eerie quiet again between each round.
"I had two thoughts during his second reloading," Joe says. "I remembered that girl at Columbine hiding under her desk who got shot at point-blank range. I also thought, I just got married. I'm not going to do this to my wife."
He takes off, jumps down from the stage toward the aisle to escape, except there are students on the floor everywhere, so he has to use his hands to spider-walk over bodies. "I was keeping my eyes on him as I went," says Joe. "I knew not to turn my back on him. I was halfway up the aisle when he turned and looked right at me. He had just reloaded the shotgun, but he dropped it. I didn't see him reach for the Glock. It was so fast, he just suddenly had it, and he fired at me. There was no change of expression, not even excitement. It was like if you're repainting a room at home, painting the walls, and you realize you missed a few spots, it was that mechanical."
This is Steve's first of forty-eight shots with his pistols, after six with the shotgun.
"I felt something like a strong flick on my left arm. I was wearing three layers, so the bullet snagged. I felt something hot and round fall out of my sweater and hit my knuckle. I just thought, I'm really lucky. And I also thought, I'm going to get out of here."
Brian Karpes, Joe's teaching assistant, initially chased after Joe, but he couldn't get far. Aisles too packed. So he dove behind the podium from which Joe had just fled.
"I tried to peer around the podium to get a look at him, but the minute I saw him, he turned and saw me. He turned and fired, and he pulled the trigger of the Glock multiple times. He just kept shooting me. I got hit right in the head. It felt like getting hit with a bat. As I fell to the floor face-first, all I could think was, 'I got shot and I'm dead.' I hit the floor with my eyes closed and a ringing sound in my ear, and I thought this was literally the sound of my dying, going into the darkness."
Bullets that miss are exploding against the concrete and tearing up Brian's side with shrapnel.
"After a while, though, he moved on to others, and I realized I was still breathing and not dead, and I realized I should just play dead."
Steve walks calmly up the aisle, shooting students with his pistol as he goes. Aiming carefully. "It would be quiet for a few moments," Brian says. "All I remember is just unbelievable quiet -- then a few more shots. Every time he'd shoot, I'd jump, and every time I'd jolt like this, I was yelling to myself, You've gotta lay still."
Dan Parmenter is visiting the class to be with his girlfriend, Lauren Debrauwere, on Valentine's Day. He's a jock, a good-looking guy. He's in the front row, tries to shield Lauren, and Steve shoots him five times, kills him. Then shoots Lauren. Then the girl next to her.
It's only a couple minutes, but it seems to stretch on forever.
Gina Jaquez, a student, is lying on the floor in the fourth or fifth row with her friend Cathy -- Catalina Garcia -- and classmate Maria Ruiz-Santana. She hears several students scream for Steve to stop shooting. But he keeps shooting. He walks up and down the aisle, works his way along the rows. He walks closer to her. She can see his shoes under the seats, only five or ten feet away.
He keeps shooting, a few rounds at a time. Five dead. Eighteen injured. She's right there next to him, waiting, terrified.
Then he walks away, hops back onto the stage. He's shot forty-seven bullets.
One more shot. Then silence. Gina waits. Waits a bit longer. Finally, she taps her friend Cathy on the back. "Let's go, Cathy," she says. But then she sees blood on the floor near Cathy's hip, and Cathy isn't moving. She shakes her, and then she tries to get Maria off the ground. Tries to pick her up, but she won't move, either.
"I've decided that I have some questions that might seem odd," Jessica writes to Kevin a month later. "I want to know exactly where he shot himself. Is that bad? When I picture him, I see him shooting himself in the temple. Does that seem right? He doesn't seem like a gun-in-mouth person. Sorry if this is disturbing."
"So we decided he's not a gun-in-the-mouth type of person," Kevin says. "He's just not. She thought that, and I felt the same way. Probably the temple."
"I had to look up pictures of what people look like after shooting themselves like he did," Jessica writes later. "I probably shouldn't have done that, because I've been having nightmares since I looked it up, but it just reaffirms my feeling that he was someone else that day. It wasn't really Steve."
She still sleeps in his shirts. Has her new apartment decorated with pictures of them together.
She beats herself up about warning signs, and also about the last day she saw him, February 11, three days before the shooting.
"You can write a book about me someday," he told her.
"Why would I want to write a book about you?" she asked him.
"I can be your case study," he said.
On the way to the Marilyn Manson concert the week before, he asked her, "What do you think happens when you die?"
A few months earlier, he told her, "One day I might just disappear and you will never find me. Nobody will ever find me."
A few months before that, he told her, "If anything happens, don't tell anyone about me."
Some names of people incidental to Steve Kazmierczak's story have been changed to protect their privacy.
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