by S. B. Cody
Classes on Thursday had come to a close and Connor sat at his desk reviewing assignments from the week. He had thought better than to jump right back into reading The Chocolate War. Something about school violence seemed far from appropriate. Instead, he had shifted his classes towards creative writing, wanting to give the students a chance to express themselves. As he went through some rough drafts to give feedback, Connor heard something that sounded like arguing come from the halls. Someone seemed on the verge of yelling but kept trying to hold back. Connor headed towards the hall to see what it was.
“Why? Why the fuck did you do it?” the first voice demanded.
“I didn’t. I swear to God,” the other pleaded.
“Don’t fucking lie to me. Everyone knows you’re a little freak. Just tell me why you killed her. Natalie never did shit to you!” A metallic clang punctuated this.
“Please. I’m telling you the truth.” Connor rounded the doorway and for a moment assumed his eyes were playing tricks. He saw Richard with his hands gripping the collar of Dennis’s shirt and holding him up against the lockers. Dennis stood there flinching for a hit he kept assuming would come. His feet wriggled on the ground, ready to take off running the moment he had been set free.
“What the hell is going on?” Connor asked. The question wasn’t entirely rhetorical either. He almost assumed the two must have been rehearsing a scene for a play or something, because right now he saw a side to Richard he didn’t think existed. He’d known the kid for four years and as far as Connor knew, he’d never even been tardy. Both boys whipped their heads around to look at their teacher. In the process, Richard loosened his grip ever so slightly which gave Dennis the chance that he needed. He slipped away and took off running, not looking back once. Richard started, ready to go after him but thought better of it.
“Hey, Mr. Sullivan,” he said with a casual nod. He began walking away down the hall.
“Hey!” Connor yelled after him. “Get your ass in here, right now!” A sharp point of his finger directed the young man into his classroom. Richard threw his arms up as though he couldn’t understand what the problem was. Still, he walked in all the same.
“Take a seat,” Connor told Richard as he walked in.
“I’ll stand,” Richard said in defiance.
“Suit yourself.” Connor walked right by him and hoisted himself onto his desk. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Nothing.”
“You looked like you were about ready to kill him.”
Richard raised his eyebrows as if to say, “So what?”
“Really? Is that all I get? I want an explanation.”
Richard still said nothing, but his eyes began to water up.
“Fine. You can go and I’ll just get this written up. You’re probably looking at a couple days out of school suspension.” Connor hopped off his desk and walked around to go to his computer.
“What?!” Richard burst out. “That’s bullshit!”
“Excuse me?” Connor’s voice went up a couple octaves.
“I barely touched him!”
“You assaulted a student and threatened him. And I find it hard to believe that Dennis did a damn thing to you.”
“Didn’t do anything?! He killed Natalie. He killed all of them.”
“Don’t give me that. You don’t have any idea who was responsible. No one does.”
“Oh come on! Everyone knows it was him. Kid is a fucking freak. And it’s all over school that the cops are looking at him. Put two and two together.”
“I don’t want to hear it. First of all, I can tell you right now that that kid doesn’t have it in him to do anything resembling what happened here. Second, even if you saw him do it with your own eyes, you don’t get to go around attacking people. And with all of this happening on campus, you haven’t really left me much choice.”
“You can’t do this.” Richard’s voice cracked, making him sound ten years younger.
“Why not?” Connor’s voice softened.
“I don’t even know who I am lately. It’s just that since Natalie died, nothing makes sense. We hadn’t been together long, but I felt like… She and I were the real thing. I wanted to marry that girl.”
“Richard, I can understand that, but it doesn’t change what just happened.”
“I know. I acted like an asshole. And I’ll apologize to him myself tomorrow. I swear to God, I will. But I can’t get suspended. I’m looking into Princeton, and if I have something like that on my record, it isn’t going to look good.” Richard dug his fingers into his scalp. He gave off loud sobs and gasps. Lines of spit dangled from his lips. His legs began to tremble, looking like he might crumble at any second.
Connor looked on, once again seeing someone that didn’t resemble the student he knew, but in a different way this time. He had brought up the discipline form on his computer, and as he looked at it, he found he couldn’t bring himself to type anything. Kid had lost his girlfriend. Did he really want to pile it on now? What good would that do? Plenty of people had died, and he’d be damned if he contributed to killing this kid’s spirit.
“Fine,” Connor said. “I’ll look the other way. But I’m gonna check to see that you actually apologize. And if I see anything resembling that crap you just pulled, I won’t be so nice next time. You understand?”
Richard nodded his head as he wiped his eyes. “Thanks,” he croaked as he shuffled towards the door. Connor watched every step, and the moment that Richard was out of sight, Connor brought his head down onto the desk. It wasn’t just Richard that had changed. There was nothing of this school that he recognized anymore. Nothing of this town that he recognized anymore. And he knew that if things ever went back to normal, it wouldn’t be for quite some time.
27
While tensions simply simmered at the school, they were ready to boil over out in town. After the incident at the SSPA and the fight at the school board, a number of small protests began to crop up all over the downtown area. Around ten or fifteen would gather outside City Hall or in the park demanding that the racist attacks end.
Typically, the police would never comment on the status of an open investigation, but found it in the town’s best interest to do so this time. Captain Barron conducted a press conference where he called for peace and made it clear that no connection had been found between the Stanford shooting and the SSPA or Black Lives Matter. But at that point the damage had already been done. Tragedies have the ability to bring out the worst in people, and that’s what it had done here. People around town had become convinced of the SSPA’s involvement and now their own ignorance wouldn’t allow them to believe anything else. Long, festering prejudices had been laid bare. For many, they had been given an excuse to do things that they had always wanted to do. So while the protests ended after Barron’s announcements, the attacks only intensified.
First, more racial slurs would be hurled out on the streets. From there the assaults began. On three separate occasions, as young black women walked the streets, someone would jump out, shove them to the ground, while screaming at them. One of them even got kicked in the head and put in the hospital. The house of a black family, who had had the temerity to move into a predominantly white neighborhood, had a brick thrown through their front window.
With that, Sharon Handel had decided that the time had come for another rally. She wanted to send a message to Stanford’s black community that they had friends in town. It had been scheduled for Saturday, November 9.
The next day a crowd of over 200 gathered at Howard Park. The sight of everyone here made Sharon’s heart swell. Her apprehensions began to slip away as she felt filled with hope. This many people would go a long way to sending a clear message to everyone. And with the rally being held on a Saturday this time, she needn’t worry about anything else happening at the schools. Sharon headed up onto the small stage and went to the microphone. Despite her joy at the turnout, she suppressed her smile, knowing this whole rally
to not be a cause for celebration. The crowd broke into cheers and applause as Sharon got ready to begin her speech. She held up her hand, motioning for them to quiet down, which they eventually did.
“Good morning, everyone,” Sharon began. “Thank you for coming. I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I am with today’s turnout. However, I am heartbroken over the mere fact that any of us need to gather at all, but with recent events, we have been left with no other choice. I don’t need to recount to you the different hate crimes that have been committed over the past couple weeks. Now nothing can undo the hurt and pain caused by those crimes. And try as we might, we can’t make sure that they never happen again. But we gather here today in order to send a message. To send a message that no matter what the monsters of this world do, no matter how much they hurt us, they will never make us cower in fear. They will never break our spirit. No, all they will do is bring us closer together. And it is together that we are at our strongest!”
The crowd erupted into applause again, and this time Sharon allowed herself a small smile. Granted, if she knew what waited for them she wouldn’t have smiled at all. And not a person would be cheering. In fact, not a single person in attendance would have been there. And when it was all over, all would wish they hadn’t been.
Julie stood towards the back of the crowd not believing that she had to be back at another one of these. She looked on at everyone raising their signs and heard them shout out support. All of it sounded like white noise to her, her mind still back at home thinking about Terry. All week it seemed that no matter what she did, he was the only thing on her mind. She drove around on patrol, but she couldn’t even notice anyone speeding. Her radio would go off, and she would need to ask for the message to be repeated. Yesterday, she had been off work and had used the opportunity to look around his room again. If Terry had really done what she feared, there had to have been something lying around to prove it. She’d been at her share of crime scenes and even the smartest criminals left a trace of some sort. So she did another search, looking in his closet, between his mattress and box spring. Each time she looked somewhere, she would hold her breath, terrified of what she might find. News clippings of the shooting? A mapped-out plan? But after an hour of it, there was nothing. She went right to her bed where she laid down and cried. She cried tears of joy that her worst fears hadn’t been realized. She cried tears of shame for what she had just done. She cried tears of terror because she still didn’t feel convinced.
Once the speeches concluded, the march towards City Hall began. The crowd moved as one appearing like a flock of birds. They hoisted signs in the air, and began their cheers and chants. Julie followed, attached to the crowd’s hip the entire time.
As they made their way down the street, the sun had begun to dip below the horizon. A shade was pulled over the sky. As she walked along, she kept waiting for her radio to announce some emergency, convinced that lightning would strike twice. Of course, her worries should have been placed on what waited for them down the street.
Julie looked out onto the pack as they progressed down Main Street. Less than 100 yards remained before the final stop of City Hall, and that was where it all began.
One of the buildings along the march route had office space which had been vacated for over a year. This made it the perfect spot for Toby Henlon to lay in wait. Watching the reaction to his art show at the SSPA had been the most exhilarating experience for him. To see all those damn coons go on and on about how they’d been wronged. Their cries were music to his ears. Except it hadn’t been enough. By the next day, they’d already covered up his message. So now he would need to send a stronger one. One that no one could ignore. One that would have a lasting impact. This gathering below him served his purpose. A whole crowd of insects asking to be snuffed out.
Around his feet was a collection of Molotov cocktails and a complete arsenal of guns. He picked up a pistol and readied it, taking a moment to caress the cold steel. From within his pants, Toby could feel himself harden at the anticipation of what was to come.
The first pop came. Initially, it sounded like nothing more than a car backfire, so no one thought anything of it. That was until one of the crowd became disentangled from the rest and went face down into the street. From there another pop. And another. And another. By that point it had become clear to all that those pops were gunfire. The crowd scattered like ants under a spotlight. One person after another bumped into Julie as her head darted around like a bird. She looked for the gunfire’s origin, but in the midst of downtown the sound echoed, making this impossible. Bodies got knocked over like bowling pins, specks of blood splattering up, some of it sprinkling Julie’s face.
“Get down! Get down!” Julie screamed into the mayhem, but she could barely even hear herself. The chants of the crowd had now turned to mindless screams. She had her gun drawn but knew not where to fire. With the ever descending night, the likelihood of seeing the attackers seemed slim. But then a sliver of red and yellow appeared in the air. Julie looked up to see a flaming bottle spinning end over end. The Molotov cocktail hit the street, the shattering of the glass being heard over the shouts. Fire erupted in its place. Another twirled through the air after that. And one more after that, the third actually hitting someone, turning them into a flaming pillar. Julie looked up, finally able to see the window from where the bottles were spit out. She raised her gun and began to let off shot after shot hoping she may hit her mark. Later on, she would realize that this would be the first time she had ever actually discharged her weapon while on duty.
The slide on the gun slid back signaling an empty chamber. Julie reached down and fumbled on her belt for another clip. It would only have taken her but a moment, a few seconds. But with the rapidity of it all, that proved to be too much time. As she went to jam in another clip she felt a sledgehammer against her chest as a bullet found its mark, hitting dead center of her vest. She could swear she could actually feel her ribs fracture. The force of the shot forced her gun from her hand. Instinctively, she went to grab her chest when another bullet hit home. This one got in her side, just underneath the Kevlar. Julie went to the ground, dropping as though she had been yanked down. Clutching her side, her hand became beet red. Then the crowds, the flames, all faded, leaving only the sound of the screams and gunfire. Soon that would fade too.
When the smoke had cleared, three people had lost their lives. Seven more were injured, including one man who would never feel anything below the waist again. And as much as he would have liked to look down on his masterpiece, Toby had slipped out into an alley once he had shot his wad of weapons. For the next two days, Toby had taken to his basement room where he watched the aftermath of what he considered to be his masterpiece. He laughed and even shed a few tears of joy. Upstairs, his mother went about her business none the wiser about what had gone down. And if Toby had given a bit more forethought to what he had been doing, he may have been able to live out his days being the only one knowing that he had been behind it all. However, across from where Toby made his exit, the security camera of a bank had picked him up. And he had failed to wear gloves, so his fingerprints covered every inch of his nest, as well as the remnants of the bottles that he threw. Two days later, the arrest warrant for Toby came in.
A battering ram smashed down the door, nearly giving the eighty-year-old Ms. Henlon a heart attack. SWAT members scoured every inch of the home. In his cave, Toby heard it all happen and attempted to run out the basement door, not knowing that the SWAT team had created a ring around his home, and he ran right into the arms of several officers who wasted no time in tossing him to the ground and throwing cuffs around his wrists.
Even with Toby’s arrest, the damage had been done. Chaos had descended on the town of Stanford, the ugliness of it all being laid bare. The investigation into the Stanford Massacre, the impetus for all this grotesqueness, would soon come to its conclusion. When it all came to an end, people around town would breathe a sigh of relief. However, the fear
that gripped the town would not relinquish it for quite some time.
While his mother was taking a bullet, Terry had found some alone time and was using it to his advantage. Johnny had been harassing him lately about getting him the addresses for some of the cops around town. With his mother hovering over him as of late, he’d had little opportunity, but now he finally did.
He scoured his mother’s room, figuring that somewhere in the midst of all her shit must be something that would get him what he needed. He went to her computer where he began guessing at her password. Terrance, Brian… none of them worked. She changed it so often, that it could be just about anything. Finally, he gave up on that, dubious as to whether he’d find anything there anyway.
Next, he went over to her dresser. He avoided the top drawer, having made that mistake once before looking for cash a few years ago and had only found her underwear instead. He did not need to see that again. The rest of the drawers held only clothes. Finally, he came to her nightstand where he found an address book sitting inside. Jesus, Mom. Who still uses an address book? Get with the times, he thought to himself.
Outside, Brian pulled up to the house. He’d been shopping when he got the call that a bullet had landed Julie in the hospital. He abandoned his cart, and rushed home. He almost joined his wife in the hospital a couple of times by getting into an accident as he tried to navigate around his tears. He stumbled out of his car, leaving the door open as he went to fetch his son.
Upstairs, Terry flipped through the book waiting to see a name that he knew. Enough cops had been around the house over the years that he figured he’d recognize at least a few of them. It just now occurred to him how half-baked this whole plan was. Who knew if he’d be able to find anything? Hell, Johnny still hadn’t clued him entirely into what would happen once they did have them. Johnny spoke a big game about how they’d send a message to “the pigs in this town,” and how they’d catch the eye of the SSPA. In all that time, he never gave a hint of just what any of that really meant. He knew how Johnny’s mind worked, and it could be just about anything. His pulse quickened as it all swam through his head. After getting called in to give a hair sample, Terry once again told Johnny that they needed to slow things down, but Johnny wouldn’t hear of it. Having had those pigs touch him only spurred him on even more. Terry grabbed a pen and pad of paper and started writing down some names and addresses.