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

So Tony shows him some skeet guns, tells police later that Steve buys a Sportsman Model 48. This is what Tony puts on all the forms, and he says he has to show Steve how to load the gun, tells police “it did not seem like Steven was knowledgeable about guns.” But like other gun dealers, Tony is hiding things. Steve has traded in his old guns, for instance, and Tony doesn’t report this to police. He will end up having to voluntarily shut down his business before the police make him shut it down. I think it’s possible he lies about the model of the shotgun, too, falsely records it as a Sportsman model. The first ATF reports, and all the witness reports, are consistent with a pump shotgun, the Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun that Steve was trained on at Rockville. He even took a written test detailing how to load it, and in Cole Hall he will be very fast at reloading. The Sportsman 48 isn’t a pump. Later, the ATF will change their story to say it was the Sportsman. Is this to avoid having to talk about how all the gun forms could go through with the wrong model listed?

Whichever model of Remington 12-gauge shotgun it is, this will be the one he uses first in Cole Hall, for shock and awe, for theatrical effect, to create confusion and chaos. He knows he’s going back to NIU. He makes a reservation for 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 needs to plan everything carefully. No screw-ups like at Columbine. No bombs that don’t go off.

He wants to have sex, but for some reason not with Kelly. He checks Craigslist, the Erotic Services section, for prostitutes, and he posts his own ad there, too.

Just before midnight, Wednesday, February 6, “Katie” responds. She responded to his ad back in September, too, but they never hooked up. She’s the one with 44Ds and “cushin for the pushin,” ten years older than him and looks “more like the woman next door.” He’s not letting her get away this time, so he tells her, “I don’t mind donating or what not.” He offers to drive out immediately, with hot coffee and roses. He can be there by 1:00 a.m.

She can’t do it right now, though. Her ten-year-old son is at her house. He’ll be with daddy for the weekend, so Friday night would work.

“I’m just really horny right now,” Steve emails. He could drive over right now and they could cruise around the block. He’d offer something extra tonight.

“So you want me to blow you in the car?:)” she asks. “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you think would be ‘worth my while’?”

“I don’t know the going rate,” he writes back. He’s careful not to actually break the law in writing, and he’s frustrated, because he can’t quite get this to happen for some reason. Why won’t she just meet? They talk on the phone, but this is frustrating. She has a sexy voice, but she keeps putting him off.

He’s tired for class the next day, Thursday February 7. He argues with Sandra Thompson, one of his classmates. He finds her annoying, and he tries to put her in her place for a few minutes, but the others take her side and tell him to shut up. He’s not really focused, anyway. He feels paranoid again. They really are telling him to shut up, but he also has this sense of them all ganging up against him, and this is probably the paranoia. At his next class, in the evening, Sandra’s there again, but this time he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t participate at all. Why is he even here? None of it’s going to matter after next week, after Valentine’s Day. He’s just going through the motions so that no one will suspect anything unusual.

He’s pissed off and frustrated that he can’t see Katie yet, so he finds “Megan,” also in the Erotic Services section of Craigslist. They meet that night at the corner of Prospect and Bloomington in Champaign, just off the highway, the same crack and ho neighborhood where he met Heather in the fall. He hates places like this because they remind him of all the shitty places he lived in Chicago with Thresholds, but at least Megan shows up. She’s with her friend “Elyse,” who doesn’t look bad, either. He’ll have to give her a call afterward. Megan gets into his car, a white Honda, and they drive around for a while, then park behind a building near the Econo Lodge where he had sex with Heather. He and Megan have sex in the car, with Steve on top. She’s nasty, but that’s fine, and they’re parked for about half an hour, then he drives her back to where Elyse is waiting.

The next day, Friday, February 8, he writes a check to himself for cash: $4,600, then changes that to $4,601. It might not track that way. He buys stamps for the packages he’s planning. He talks with Katie and finally gets her address in Seymour, Illinois. He arrives that night wearing his dark stocking cap. She’s lit candles. He’s brought cash. He doesn’t feel like talking. They have sex, and afterward, he tells her he’s going out of town.

He calls Elyse afterward, after midnight, calls Megan at 2:48 a.m. Does he meet both of them for sex? Has he been with three women that night? Has he also been with Jessica?

On Sunday, February 10, four days before the shooting, Steve talks with his father on the phone. He talks with his godfather, also, makes plans for the next weekend. He’ll visit. They’ll play chess. But this is just a cover, a lie. He needs an alibi. He tells Jessica he’s leaving tomorrow, Monday, to visit his godfather for the week, because his godfather’s health is poor.

He meets again with Megan that night at Walgreen’s. He drives behind a hotel and they do it in the car again. They’re back and forth eighteen times on the phone that night, dirty talk, and Steve also calls Elyse, which Megan doesn’t know about. Something about the secrecy is exciting. No one knows what he’s up to. He’s free to do whatever he wants, like Nietzsche’s superman. Except that he feels like shit, hates himself, is ashamed, has diarrhea, has to check five times that the car door is locked. He wants to die. He can’t sleep. Sends an email to Kelly, jokes “Hey, isn’t it black history month, and shouldn’t you be out celebrating?;-) For my celebration, I’m watching Beverly Hills Cop 2 on Spike TV while I doze off.”

In the morning, about 10:00 a.m., 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. If she knew this was the last time they’d be together, she’d stay.

“You can write a book about me someday,” he says.

“Why would I want to write a book about you?” she asks.

“I can be your case study,” he says.

And then she’s gone. He’ll never see her again. Does he cry? She was his confessor. At Thanksgiving, he showed her all his mental health records before destroying them, insisted she read them. He told her about Craigslist. There was a time when he wanted her to know everything, but not now.

In their apartment, he saws off the barrel of the shotgun with a hacksaw. The guitar case, the hacksaw, the two new pistols, 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 figure out. He puts the Remington 12-gauge inside, loaded. Picks up the case and it’s not too heavy. It’s strong. It’ll work fine. He leaves his old shotgun in the closet. It’s for skeet or birds, not designed for killing people, not a pump.

He’s bought longer ammo clips for the pistols. They hold thirty-three rounds each. He won’t have to reload. 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 Mark’s theory from their discussions about Columbine. “Personally, myself, I was very infatuated with Columbine,” Mark says, “just because of the whole process of how people did it, how they pulled it off, all that stuff. It’s more of a curiosity for me. Me and Steve have talked about it.” The word “infatuated” is interesting in relation to a mass murder. Is killing people sexy? Do we fall in love with mass murderers?