David Vann: Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

I put my finger to my lips to ask Ned to keep this a secret, then ducked into the shed to place the BB gun and ran back inside the house.

The van pulled up, the neighbors pounding at our front door. Did I open the door and talk with them? I remember their yelling, and I remember what they looked like, two older boys in high school, stoners with long hair, and I remember feeling frightened, but I could have been watching through the peephole.

When my mother came home, she believed in my innocence. She wanted to clear my good name. So we drove around to the neighbors and sat in their living room next to that shattered, missing door, and she laid into them for how their sons had frightened me. She was a school counselor, an authority of sorts. But they knew I had shot at their dog, which pissed them off even more than the glass.

My mother then took me to Ned’s house. I remember sitting down with Ned’s parents. Ned had squealed on me already about hiding the BB gun, but his father said something like “we know David’s a good boy,” and Ned’s mother pursed her lips and made it clear she knew that wasn’t true. My mother looked at me then, a curious look, as if I were some new kind of monster.

Then we visited our other neighbors. They reported seeing me on the roof with a pellet gun, said they were tired of me shooting all the doves off the telephone wires. They liked doves, and no doves came here anymore.

My mother called the police. I was still maintaining my innocence, and she wanted the truth. I thought it was bad form, personally, to call the police on your own son, but she cared only about truth and justice, not distracted at all by blood.

I lucked out, though. The cop who arrived was the daughter of “Green,” our neighbor at our previous house, an older woman who became like a grandmother to me and my sister.

The three of us stood at the fence right where I had stood to fire the shot. “Can you trace the angle the BB was shot from, some sort of ballistics?” my mother asked. She seemed ready to pay for the test herself.

“It must have come from up the hill,” I said.

We went into the shed to look at the BB gun. “It’s broken,” I said. “It doesn’t even work. I thought about trying to hide it because I was scared, but then Ned saw me, so I just put it back.”

Green’s daughter tested the gun, and it was indeed broken. My mother didn’t know about the other BB gun. But she told Green’s daughter about my pellet gun stunts and everything we’d learned from the neighbors.

Green’s daughter thought for a while, then said I was a good kid, I got good grades, I shouldn’t be shooting BB guns or pellet guns, but we’d never know what happened to that sliding glass door. It wasn’t possible to figure out the angle of fire with a BB. She said we should just assume I was innocent and let it go.

So nothing happened, and I continued shooting. From Survivalist Magazine I ordered a converter kit for the.300 magnum that allowed me to shoot.32-caliber pistol shells in the rifle. They were much quieter and could be mistaken, even, for firecrackers. They were very accurate through that long barrel, and I could hit streetlights right from my own backyard.

I ordered the converter kit with my mother’s knowledge and blessing. This was the time of nuclear holocaust fears, of The Day After and The Beach , and she liked the idea of squirreling away some food and water. We had long excited talks about how I would be able to hunt and provide for the family in times of Armageddon, and this converter kit was a part of that plan, would allow me to kill small game with a rifle that could also snipe bad guys with its full.300 magnum shells. These discussions put us very close to the Michigan Militia that Steve admired, put us dangerously close to his libertarianism, to the primacy of the individual or small clan over the larger group or society, especially the federal government. It was insanity, but it wasn’t uncommon at the time.

I also tried, like Steve, to make bombs. I filled a small glass apple juice bottle with gasoline and stuffed a rag in the top, set it in the middle of a neighboring street late at night, and lit it on fire, then ran back a hundred feet. Nothing happened. I didn’t know how a Molotov cocktail was supposed to work, didn’t realize it had to be thrown and shattered, that it wasn’t technically a bomb. I couldn’t consult with anyone, because I had realized early on that if you want to commit crimes, you have to do them alone. No one else can be trusted.

I HAVE TO GO BACK TO STEVE’S DOG,the pug, because even though “nothing human is foreign to me,” Steve does things early on that strain that idea.

Adam watches Steve drop the pug numerous times, light it on fire. Its loud breathing just really annoys the shit out of Steve. Then one of Steve’s other friends, Joe Cuzma, comes to tap at his window. This is eighth grade, the same year as the Drano bomb, and they don’t have cell phones yet. They just knock on each other’s windows. But Joe looks in Steve’s window and sees him behind his dog, fucking it. At least this is what he tells everyone at school. “That guy’s messed up,” he says. Joe is tall, excitable, his head waving around and tongue lolling as he holds an imaginary dog and air-fucks it. Everyone laughs. Everyone.

“I was teaching it dominance,” Steve tells Adam and another friend, Rich Johnson. “I was showing it who was alpha dog.” And this isn’t the same as denying it happened.

Steve loses friends, Joe Cuzma and others. He’s very protective of his remaining friends, worries that Adam is spending too much time with Joe Russo and Lee Bode, worries Adam will steal them away and he’ll have no one. So he starts talking about Adam behind his back and doesn’t know that Joe and Lee tell this to Adam.

Adam has another thing Steve wants, a new business with a friend Mike, raising feeder mice and rats for snakes. Steve wants in. So Adam invites him over, a setup. “I arranged a wiretap,” Adam says. He hides a tape recorder, and when Steve arrives, they talk. Steve’s looking at the tanks, figuring his way in, mice scrabbling at the glass, the smell of sawdust and urine. Adam leads with questions to get Steve to admit he doesn’t like certain people, gets him to say bad things about them. Steve’s barely even paying attention, worried about what he has to offer, how he can become a part of this. Adam gets him to admit he stole CD’s and liquor from Joe Russo’s older brother and sister.

Later that week, on Friday afternoon, Steve goes over to Joe Russo’s house, another tract home like his own, but right across from the preserve, away from traffic, on a corner with a larger lawn. Joe, Lee, and Adam are playing a video game on the TV, and this is what Steve fears, Adam taking away his best friends. He tries not to say anything, because Joe’s dad is in the other room. He sits down and then Adam turns off the game. He hits play on a tape recorder, and there it is, for all to hear. What Steve has said about his friends, his admission that he stole from Joe’s sister and brother. He tries to stop it, tries to get to the tape recorder, but Adam stops him, and then Steve starts hitting Adam, screaming.

“He lost all his friends that day,” Adam says.

The next day, Steve challenges Adam to a fight after school. Other kids hear about it. Steve pulls a knife.

“It’s not worth it,” Adam tells him, scared shitless. “All these people, everyone will see. You’ll get in trouble.”

And Steve sees this is true, sees that Adam has cornered him yet again. Then he gets suspended, and Adam only gets detention.

Joe Russo’s older brother is on the football team. He tells all his buddies Steve is bad news, and word gets around. When Steve enters high school as a ninth-grader in the fall, he’s already an outcast.