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

Jim Thomas (JT) explains things a bit differently. “I’m not looking for explanation or causes but looking at a story and trying to cast it in some sense-making model.” Jim’s approach is from narrative sociology, and there’s an odd remove to it. He says “I don’t look for value, I look for an account of the outcomes.” But this is similar, I suspect, to the social-scientific remove Steve had in understanding himself through the lenses of Fight Club , Orwell, and Nietzsche, and I suspect is part of why he was able to plan in advance and finally do something so inhuman and cold. In other words, I think we can see something related and close to Steve’s internal thought processes going on now in how his mentor Jim is trying to put together the story. The police, according to Jim, are doing exactly the opposite. “What they’re trying to look for is motive, genesis,” Jim says. “They don’t understand. They’re looking for comfort and predictability.”

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. “Good-bye, Jessica,” he says.

He 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, FEBRUARY 14, 2008.I imagine Steve sitting on the end of his bed in the broken-down Travelodge. Smoking a Newport. Stale smell of old cigarettes, of all the lives that have passed through this room. I know he’s dressed in black shoes, black pants, his black T-shirt with “Terrorist” in white letters above a red AK-47 assault rifle. Black stocking cap above dark eyes, narrow face. Small mouth, almost no chin. His eyebrows are plucked. He’s shaved his pubic hair.

Across his lap, the Remington 12-gauge shotgun, the barrel sawed off. One hand on the stock, one on the barrel. He can’t sit still, though. Always fidgeting.

Beside him, laid out carefully across the bedspread, all pointing the same way, three pistols. Glock 9 mm. 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. He could take out the duck plug, make it five shells. But then it wouldn’t be three.

The Glock doesn’t seem real. Heavy, but looks like plastic, feels like plastic. A toy gun, almost.

He 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.

Waiting. Takes another drink of Red Bull. Pushes up the sleeve on his right forearm, looks at his tattoo again, Jigsaw riding a tricycle through a pool of blood. Cut marks in the background.

He lays the shotgun in its guitar case. Closes the latches, tucks all three pistols into his holsters, along with extra clips in their pouches, everything hidden by his coat. Kenneth Cole. Not a trench coat exactly. Nicer. Checks himself in the mirror, walks to the door, then has to go back to check again, just to make sure. Always checking.

He turns right out of the motel lot, just a white Honda Civic, nothing you’d notice. Left on Carroll Ave. Left into the guest parking lot.

He 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, Manson’s “Last Day On Earth.”

Class will be over soon. He must know that. Has he hesitated? Has he sat there in his car listening to music and considered not going through with it? He’s almost too late. A few more minutes, only a few more, and everyone will be gone. Does it occur to him that what he’s about to do is not inevitable, even for a life like his, so perfectly shaped for mass murder?

One last song. I know it’s the last day on earth. . say goodbye . Then he gets out of the car, grabs the guitar case, puts on a small black backpack to make it look like he’s carrying books for classes, and walks the short distance to the back of Cole Hall. It’s all brick, and there’s a walkway here between the two auditoriums. He’s close to the door that will take him backstage. He drops the backpack, opens the guitar case, picks up the shotgun, checks his pistols.

Joe Peterson is at the end of a lecture on ocean sedimentology. A lot of his 160 students are missing because it’s Valentine’s Day and they just had a test two days before, on Tuesday. Students at the top of the auditorium are getting antsy. Behind them, students arriving early for the next class keep opening the doors and peeking in.

Joe clicks to the second-to-last slide. He glances at his cell phone on the podium, 3:04 p.m., and steps from his podium toward center stage to give the last part of his lecture.

The door behind the screen bursts open. Steve walks abruptly onto the stage. He stands for a moment just looking at the class.

Jerry Santoni, a sociology major with an emphasis in criminology, a member of ACA, the group Steve helped found, has a first thought that “this guy’s lost,” coming in the stage door. But then Steve raises the shotgun.

He fires into the front row of students. Chaos. Multiple students hit, everyone rising to run. Unnum Rahman hears the shot and feels something dripping on her face. She has a shotgun pellet in her forehead. Steve’s using only birdshot. She gets up and runs. But some students still think it might be some kind of joke. Jamika Edwards, for instance, sitting in the fourth row. Even though she’s very close, she thinks this can’t be real. Confusion.

Jerry Santoni is near the back, so he sees only a puff of smoke and a bit of fire. Jeremy Smith, in the very back, starts running after the first shot and is the first one out the doors, the first to escape.

Joe Peterson 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. Jamika says the second shot is fired high into the back rows. She runs with other students down the aisle but ducks into another seating area after just three rows and gets on the floor.

“How quiet it was between the shots is still haunting,” Joe says.

“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, which means everyone has to bunch in together. Most of the students happen to be on the side of the classroom Steve is on, so he has a clear shot with many targets straight down the aisle. Some of the students crawl under the seats to avoid the aisle.

Jerry dives for the floor and hits his forehead, gets a concussion. But he doesn’t even notice, and he’s able to stay conscious. His glasses have fallen down, so he takes a moment to push them back up, then he runs out, but someone trips right in the door, and there’s almost a pileup. The guy behind him is injured and bleeding. “I remember the blood drops hitting the snow and turning it red.”

Jerry is planning to be a police officer, and he thinks fast enough to take an immediate right turn to get behind a wall, then he just keeps running, all the way to the student center. But he feels guilty already. From his pizza delivery job, he knows the girl who was sitting next to him, and he didn’t help her get out of there. She’s on the floor, hiding under someone’s coat.

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. “I remember thinking, ‘How the hell is he reloading so fast?’”