Last Day on Earth (10 page)

He’s eligible now to buy a gun. September marked five years out of the mental health system, so it won’t show up anymore. He applies for his FOID card in December, gets it January 19, 2007.

He’s anxious about his future, about what he’s going to do for work. On Valentine’s Day 2007, he lets Jim know he’s passed his correctional officer testing. He bombed the LSAT in the fall, taking it too soon after his mother’s death. The thing about grad school in social work, or an academic future in criminology, or a position as a correctional officer, is that these were never his fields. They’re Jim’s influence, the influence of a good teacher. Steve wanted to go into political science, so he’s thinking again about public administration, still thinking he might try to run a city someday. Or law school if he retakes the LSAT and does better. But really, he has no idea.

He stops going to his classes. He doesn’t need them anyway, since he’ll be transferring to the new grad program at U of I and the course-work won’t transfer over. He buys a Glock .45 caliber handgun on February 19, a powerful weapon. He buys a shotgun and another handgun the next month. Goes to the shooting range instead of school. He’ll get Fs in his classes, but who cares.

Then Seung-Hui Cho kills thirty-two at Virginia Tech. April 16, 2007. Steve’s excited. He’s firing off emails. “Crazy,” he tells Jessica, and sends her Cho’s writings. He’s all over this with Mark, studying
everything. The writings, where Cho bought his guns, his mental health history, the photos, the planning, the timing, even his favorite song, “Shine” by Collective Soul, and “Mr. Brownstone” by Guns N’ Roses, which Cho writes a short play about. Steve’s been reading other books on mass murderers, serial killers, terrorists, and he and Mark have been discussing all of it, but Cho takes front and center.

“I think it was mostly a sociological interest,” Mark 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 Mark that Cho “obviously planned it out well,” admires how he thought to chain the doors. All the careful planning, like Columbine. Just thrilling, all of it.

The truth is that Cho’s actions could not have been planned. He shot and killed his first two victims in a coed residence hall on the Virginia Tech campus at about 7:15 a.m. Then he walked back to his dorm room next door. At this point, he must have been surprised that no one was after him yet. He spent the next two hours changing out of his clothes, putting together a media package for NBC news (mailed at 9:01 a.m.), and arming himself for another round. This was not a plan. It was an improvisation after there were no consequences from the first round. No one killed him, he wasn’t trapped into suicide, and he was mentally ill, ready to continue killing, but this is not the same as “planning” or “success.” The fact that Steve could find this scene exciting rather than pathetic and tragic shows that he was mentally ill. The fact that Mark still thinks in terms of “success” and still describes a killer’s actions as “methodology” shows that he’s mentally ill as well. That’s one problem with the concept of “warning signs.” What if all of a mass murderer’s closest friends are a little bit crazy too? Steve had two email addresses that contained the word “Glock,” but his friends thought that was normal.

Cho’s next round starts with chaining the three main entrance doors to Norris Hall, then he peeks in a classroom twice, which is a myth that will be told later about Steve, transferred over from Cho’s story. Then Cho just shoots people. Two semiautomatic handguns, firing 174 rounds in nine minutes. Everyone trapped at close range in
classrooms, like shooting fish in a barrel. He was allowed to buy nineteen clips to fill with ammo ahead of time, 10 or 15 rounds each, buying from the same online supplier Steve will use, so reloading takes only an instant. Steve will choose one of the same guns, too, the Glock 19, and in both shootings, this will be the most deadly weapon (used also in the 2011 Giffords shooting and others).

How much have things really changed since Charles Whitman, the Texas tower sniper, bought an arsenal one day in 1966 and lugged it up the tower in a metal footlocker? While I was in DeKalb, the Illinois state legislature tried to pass a law that would have limited handgun purchases to one handgun per person per month, meaning a person could still buy a dozen pistols a year, just not all at once, but that effort was struck down, voted against by DeKalb’s own representative.

Cho killed thirty-two people, wounded another twenty-three, then killed himself before police arrived. The deadliest rampage by a single gunman in U.S. history, and the whole thing was just stupid. There’s nothing cool or interesting about Cho’s “methodology.” Buy a Glock 19, buy some extra clips, walk up to a classroom and shoot people. We still have nothing in place to stop anyone from doing this. It’s an American right.

TWO MONTHS AFTER
the Virginia Tech massacre, in June 2007, Steve and Jessica move to Champaign, 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. He feels awkward bringing other women over because Jessica gets jealous, but they save on rent, they can share books, and she’s a good 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. 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 checks himself in to McKinley Health Center on campus at the U of I. He’s worried about confidentiality. He doesn’t want this on his record. And he’s not going to tell them much. He doesn’t mention the mood swings. Or the suicide attempts. Or Prozac. Or the group home, or lying to his psychiatrists or hating therapy. He doesn’t tell them much of anything. Just some anxiety, insomnia, checking behaviors. He says he’s interested in medications, worried about weight gain. Doesn’t mention his bulimia, though Jessica knows. She’s noticed the cuts on his finger from stuffing it down his throat.

The next day, he realizes McKinley was a big mistake. It really will go on his FOID card, even with the way he’s downplayed his history. He won’t be able to buy guns anymore. He drives to Tony’s Guns and Ammo, which is just Tony’s house. Tony’s black, which makes Steve uncomfortable, but he seems alright. Steve trades in his Glock .45, which is too big a caliber, too hard to handle if you want to get off a lot of shots and actually hit something. He also trades in his .22 caliber pistol, which is far too small (Cho used one, but it wasn’t as effective as the other pistol), and his 20-gauge shotgun, which is wimpy compared to the 12-gauge shotgun he’ll end up using. He buys a Sig-Sauer .380, one of the guns he’ll later use in Cole Hall. It’s powerful enough, but more importantly, it’s reliable. It won’t jam, he probably thinks. It’s also fast. It’s a police weapon.

He tells Jessica, “One day I might just disappear and nobody will ever find me.” He’s already told her, “If anything happens, don’t tell anyone about me.” If she weren’t mentally ill herself, she might make some connections at this point. The spooky comments, the obsession over guns and killers, the time spent at the shooting range, the mental health problems. What does a mass murderer have to do to get noticed?

Steve debates returning to McKinley two days later, on August 6, but he really is falling apart, so he goes, tells a psychiatrist about all his “checking behaviors,” how threes speak to him, guide him. He talks a lot about social anxiety. The move to a new school was a terrible idea.

“Steve shows elements of both social anxiety and obsessive/compulsive disorder,” records the doctor who sees him. “My working diagnosis is Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder with the DSM-IV code 303.3. My plan is to start Prozac 10 mg each morning with breakfast.” The doctor doesn’t ask whether Steve owns a gun.

This is the first time Steve’s been on Prozac in six and a half years.

But it’s still not enough. Because now he’s getting panic attacks. As he’s sitting in one of his classes, 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. His heart is still pounding, his breath still fast, but he’s able to get up, gets out of there. No one will know. He’s had panic attacks since high school, not very often, but they scare the shit out of him.

So now there’s this on top of all the stomach problems. He has diarrhea, feels bloated, can’t seem to get his stomach under control, and over-the-counter meds don’t do much. His mother always said he had a nervous stomach.

He’s also fighting with 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 they have one good talk on the phone. He tells her, “I think I might be gay.” She’s gay, and perhaps he’s reaching out to her. But peace between them never lasts long. The first of three tense and aggressive emails to her is on September 3, 2007:

“Susan, Just because Jessica and I aren’t dating doesn’t mean I don’t care about her as a friend. Decisions that I make often impact her since we are roommates, and she has expressed interest in going to Florida in November, (although I am going alone to visit my father). Sometimes, it is very frustrating talking to you because you sometimes seem blinded by your personal outlook on life, relationships, and even family. If you are going to judge me and threaten to hang up on me when we talk on the phone, then don’t bother calling. I don’t need the additional stress/abuse in my life. The only people who I’ve ever known who were like this was my mother, and yourself. She used to hang up on me as well at times, (when I called from Chicago), and I don’t need you to pull the same bullshit. You seem to get angry at the most petty things. If you want to know the real reason that I don’t often want to hang out with you, it is because I often feel that you judge me and others, (i.e. my interest in working at a prison rather than finishing school, my relationships at times, etc.), and then you get incredibly mad at me for a decision that I own, and one that doesn’t affect your life in the least. While this may be your function at work, it shouldn’t be that way with family, especially your own brother. I’m not trying to quarrel with you, but this is something that I had to say.”

Steve returns to McKinley the next day, on 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, hypertension, and a recent stroke.

Steve is 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 did this at NIU, too. 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 from 10 to 50 milligrams a day and add Xanax, 0.5 milligrams a couple times a day as needed for anxiety. He’s on Ambien, also.

He goes to dinner with Susan on 9-11, their mother’s birthday. Susan thinks he’s manic, paranoid, because he won’t use his credit card. Someone could steal the number. So they fight again.

Steve wants to have sex. Right now, and with a lot of different partners. Is it because he hates his life? Is it because he doesn’t want to be gay? Is it because of the medications? Prozac can reduce sex drive, but in a few people, it can intensify sex drive into radical promiscuity. Whatever the reason, Steve checks out Craigslist, posts an ad in Casual Encounters. “Katie” responds. She has 44Ds and is ten years older, thirty-seven, with “cushin for the pushin.” He blows it, though. Makes some stupid half-joke about asking whether she’s a cop. That gets her all paranoid, and she’s put off.

It doesn’t matter. There are plenty of others on Craigslist.

Steve starts his new job September 14, 2007, working as a correctional officer at Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana. He’s dropped 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 870 12-gauge shotgun, the same model he’ll use in Cole Hall. He has to take a test detailing how to load and unload it. He’s fast at loading it. But he wanted to help people in this job, and instead he’s just moving the inmates around from place to place. He has to hide his education from most of his coworkers, too. Being in a master’s program is a kind of stigma here.

On September 25, he’s hanging out with two of his coworkers, Nancy Hu and Samantha Hack-Ritzo, and tells them it’s the anniversary of his mother’s death. He’s just thinking about her. But because he sounds so oddly detached, Samantha tells him he should go to therapy, which he doesn’t appreciate. He’s taken himself off Prozac, because it’s given him acne all over his face, neck, and back. Going off Prozac is worse than being on it, though. He’s really anxious, and he’s checking everything, all day and night, can hardly get out of the parking lot in the morning, has to check so many times that his car door is locked. And he’s getting paranoid. His homemade sword tattoo on his forearm looks like a prison tattoo. So he has it covered by a skull with a dagger. The guy Jason who does it is good, has already covered Steve’s old rose tattoo with a skull and flames.