(Sam Michaels / Daniel Davis Novels)
Burnt Offerings
Blood Oath
Cold Blood
Blood Shot
(Love Stories)
Carrie’s Gift
(Short Story Collections)
North Florida Noir
Florida Heat Wave
Delta Blues
Another Quiet Night in Desperation
(The Meaning Series)
Meaning Every Moment
The Meaning of Life in Movies
Dedication
For all the victims of school rampage shootings and their family and friends, teachers and coaches, principals and custodians.
Reader’s Guide
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Thank you
Thank you for your invaluable help and support with this book:
Dawn Lister, Aaron Bearden, Tim Flanagan, Mike Harrison, Terry Lewis, Debra Ake, and Micah Lister.
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Introduction
Some crimes are so incomprehensible as to not seem possible. School rampage shootings are just such crimes—acts so inhumane they may as well have been perpetrated by a different species.
I am haunted by school shootings, their cold, arbitrary evil, their pitiless brutality, their indiscriminate injury, and fatality.
As a student of human nature, a seeker of truth, an asker of questions, I find the massacres taking place at our schools as perplexing as it is disturbing.
In Bloodshed, I attempt to explore the phenomena of school rampage shootings with care and respect, while also writing what I hope is a fast-paced and entertaining mystery thriller. In doing so, I honestly have no agenda, no message, no ax to grind—only the need to examine and express. That is, after all, what art is for.
For me, there’s no better way to delve into a subject than through a detective novel, no better way to investigate an area of interest than through the moral maze of a mystery novel.
While writing Bloodshed, I’ve kept school shooting victims and survivors and their families and friends in my heart and mind. This work seeks to honor and memorialize them. I have often thought of Kelly Fleming, the sixteen-year-old Columbine student who wanted to grow up to be a published author, and felt like I was undertaking this with and for her.
As always, I attempted to write a truly engaging, suspenseful, exciting story with the goal of entertaining and inspiring while also handling the delicate subject matter and the fragility of humanity with care and compassion. That’s the goal. Whether it succeeds or not can only be answered by each individual reader. My sincerest hope is that it succeeds for you.
This is a particularly devastating case for John. It had to be given the weight of what he’s dealing with. He will forever be changed, adding new wounds to the fine, fibrous scar tissue already present. No one survives a school shooting unscathed.
In preparation for writing this novel, I invested a lot of time in study and research. In that process, I found these three books particularly helpful: Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser, Ceremonial Violence by Jonathan Fast, and Columbine by Dave Cullen. I highly recommend them all.
At the beginning of each chapter are fictionalized quotes based on actual, similar sayings surrounding school shootings—by students, teachers, parents, cops, gunmen, media reports, pundits, and engaged citizens. I have rewritten and fictionalized them but they were taken directly from those far more involved in this epidemic than they ever thought they’d be.
Thank you for taking this journey with me and John. I hope you are the better for it, and that the experience is both entertaining and enlightening.
—Michael Lister
July 2018
You, in the schoolyard I am ready to kill
and no one here knows of my loneliness.
—White Flesh by Rammstein
BLOODSHED
263
Dear Mom and Dad, by the time you read this it’ll be too late to do anything. I’ll already be gone. I just wanted you to know that it was too late long before now and there was nothing you could have ever done to stop this. I know you would if you could. You guys always tried your best for me. If anyone doesn’t believe that or tries to blame you, show them this. It wasn’t you. It was me. I’m not right. Never have been. I don’t think I could ever really explain any of this, but I’ve never been happy and I genuinely and truly believe I will never be. How can I keep living when I know that every day of my life will be miserable? What’s the point?
“What if you could’ve prevented Columbine or Sandy Hook or Parkland?” Chip Jeffers asks.
It’s late.
We’re sitting at a booth in the back of Rudy’s Diner. As if in an Edward Hopper painting, we’re the only customers in the dim, lonely all-night establishment.
The night is dark and quiet, the rural highway out front empty, the lone streetlamp reflecting off the asphalt, damp from a brief early evening rain.
“You would have, right?” he adds. “Don’t know a cop in the entire world who wouldn’t. Well, we have something none of them ever had—an actual chance to stop one of these things.”
Chip Jeffers, the Potter County deputy sitting across from me, is a middle-aged white man with a thick, wiry mustache, large, black plastic-framed glasses, and a pale, dome-shaped balding head haloed by brown-going-gray hair.
“Somebody could’ve stopped all those school shootings from happening,” he says. “So, I guess they had a chance. A parent, a teacher, a coach, a cop, another student. Somebody heard something, saw something, knew something that they chose not to act on. We can’t afford to do that. Guarantee if any of them could go back, they’d do it differently, they’d’ve stopped them. We don’t want to be in that same position, standing over the dead bodies of kids knowing we’re responsible for their deaths.”
Jeffers has been a deputy for a long time—going back to when Dad was sheriff here. In fact, it was Dad he had asked to speak with. But because the clandestine meeting had to be late at night, because Chip Jeffers has always been a bit of an alarmist, and because of the politics involved, Dad asked me to meet with him.
Since I take every opportunity I can to see little John Paul Pearson and check on his mother, I said yes.
I glance over toward mother and child.
Carla is sleeping on one of the barstools at the front counter, her head lying on her outstretched arm on the faded Formica countertop, her baby boy asleep in a car seat next to her. Like his mother, he is sleeping sitting up—something his mother has spent most of her life doing. Perhaps she is training him to do the same or perhaps she is preparing him to do something she never could—ride out of this town and never return.
Looking at them sleeping rough like that causes a certain slippage inside me as if something at my core is sinking a little, shifting around a bit—and not in any kind of good way.
“You okay?” Jeffers asks. “What is it?”
I nod. “Go ahead with your story,” I say. “You sayin’ we have a chance to stop a school shooting?”
“Think about it,” he says. “We always come in after a crime has been committed, after it’s too late for anything but picking up a bunch of broken pieces and arresting some poor, sad, shot-out bastard who would take it back if he could but he can’t, so . . . But what if we could stop it from ever happening? I think it would not only prevent loss of life in this particular situation but inspire other agencies to do the same—make them more proactive and all. Like us. What if we started a moveme
nt that transitioned from law enforcement to crime prevention? Serious crime prevention—like school shootings and . . . things like that.”
Ignoring his grandiose plans to transform police work, I say, “You think there’s going to be a school shooting? Here? In Pottersville?”
He nods. “I know it.”
His certainty is as hollow and annoying as his visions of grandeur.
He frowns. “I can tell by your expression that you don’t believe me. Your dad used to give me that same look.”
“I don’t not believe you,” I say. “Tell me why you think there’s going to be a school shooting here and why you’re telling me and not the new sheriff.”
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” he says. “Kim and LeAnn will be here in a minute with evidence.”
Kim Miller and LeAnn Dunne are the school resource officer and the guidance counselor of Potter High.
“And as far as Glenn . . . I did take it to him. He didn’t take it seriously. Like everything else I’ve ever taken to him. But he told me I could look into it, just keep Kim in the loop. Dismissive like. Giving me busy work the way you would a kid.”
Hugh Glenn, the current sheriff, is the former deputy and detective who beat Dad in a closely contested general election, handing Dad his first defeat. Ever. Glenn had been a lazy deputy and investigator and is now a lazy sheriff—far more politician and administrator than law enforcement officer.
Headlight beams sweep across the dim diner, and I turn to see Kim and LeAnn pulling into the parking lot in Kim’s cruiser.
I jump up and quietly step out to greet them so I can keep the cowbell above the door from clanging when they come in.
I reach their car just as they’re getting out.
“John Jordan,” Kim says. “Been too long since we’ve seen your handsome face around here.”
“Hey Kimmy,” I say, and hug her.
Kim Miller is a petite woman with a pretty, pale face and big, brown eyes, and longish, silky black hair she almost always wears in a ponytail. There is the slightest hint of something Asian in her features that, if it’s there at all, must come from her mother’s side.
Though it’s late and she’s off duty, she’s in uniform.
“Wow,” she says. “Haven’t been called that in a while.”
LeAnn walks up with a big smile and says, “Class of eighty-six. Where you at?”
“Hey LeAnn,” I say as I hug her. “How are you?”
LeAnn Dunne is a large, solid woman with smallish blue eyes and curly, blond babydoll hair. Nearly my height, muscular with no hips and very few curves, she has the build of a slightly above average man.
“I’m good. Real good. Don’t know if you heard but I figured out I was a lesbian since that last time I saw you. Life got a lot better after that.”
I hug her again and tell her how happy I am that her life is better.
Both LeAnn and Kim were in my graduating class, and though we weren’t extremely close, it was a small class in a small school in a small town. We knew each other well and liked and respected each other, and we shared the bond of having survived high school together.
“I’m still straight,” Kim says, “but that’s no picnic, lemme tell you. Think I could get another hug?”
We pull her in, and the three of us hug in what resembles a small football huddle.
When we release each other, I tell them about Carla and the baby being asleep.
“And here I am thinking you rushed out here ’cause you couldn’t wait to see us,” LeAnn says.
“Poor things,” Kim says.
“We had heard you and Anna were going to adopt the little fella,” LeAnn says.
I frown and nod. “We were.”
“What happened?” Kim asks.
“What so often does,” I say. “Carla changed her mind after she held him.”
“I get it,” LeAnn says. “I changed my mind after holding a man too—but to quit them, not keep them. But I know you’ve got to be disappointed, John. I’m sorry.”
She pats me on the shoulder without having to reach up to do so.
“Me too,” Kim says. “So sorry to hear that. How is Anna?”
“We’re both sad and disappointed, but . . . we’re okay. Getting used to the idea.”
“So,” LeAnn says, “instead of being safe at home in bed with you and Anna watching over him, he spends his nights inside Rudy’s disgusting diner.”
“We’re working on that,” I say.
Their eyes widen and they perk up. “On getting him?” Kim asks.
“No no, nothing like that. On making it so Carla doesn’t have to be here with him. It’s just taking a little time. Trying to get her low-income housing and some assistance.”
“Oh.”
“We’ve offered for them to stay with us, but . . . she won’t take us up on it. I think she feels . . . I don’t know . . . guilty or something for changing her mind. We’ve tried and tried to reassure her, but . . .”
They nod and give me sympathetic looks.
We are all quiet for an awkward beat.
“Well,” I say finally, “shall we go in and hear what Chip has to say about starting the crime prevention revolution?”
They laugh and the awkwardness is instantly gone.
I ease open the door and hold the old cowbell that dangles above it while Kim and LeAnn come in, and, after a brief pause for us to look at little John Paul, we make our way over to where Chip is waiting.
264
I’ve always tried to make an extra special effort for those students who are most vulnerable or stressed. I’ve done that my entire career. And I’m not the only teacher to do it. Several of us do our best to stop bullying and to make sure every student feels safe and cared for and even loved. That’s as much a part of teaching as reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’ve taken so many students aside and reassured them, bragged on them, let them know that it will get better. And I don’t just mean school, but life. I tell them their lives will get better. I promise them that. It catches most of them completely by surprise. And I’ve seen many of them actually blink back tears.
“What took so long out there?” Jeffers says. “I just got a call. I’ve got to go in a minute.”
“Sorry,” Kim says, “we were just catching up. Haven’t seen John in a while.”
We slide into the booth—LeAnn on my side, Kim on Jeffers’.
“Well, let’s go over everything real quick so I can go,” he says. “Show him the letter.”
LeAnn reaches into her enormous purse, leaning into me as she does, and withdraws a manila file folder. Opening it, she hands me a sheet of copy paper. On it are copied fragments of handwritten notes that appear to have been ripped from a lined journal.
I read them as quickly as I can, which isn’t very quickly since cyphering the handwriting is challenging.
Swear to God I will kill every fucking one of them. Every asshole that ever tortured a poor soul just trying to make it through the goddamn day. We’ve had enough and we’re not going to take it another motherfucking second.
Mom, I’m so sorry about all this. I wish I could have told you what I was dealing with. I tried a few times. But you couldn’t understand and even if you could there was nothing you could do about it. None of this is your fault. I know you will get blamed and that’s the only regret I have, but this is not your fault. Show the bastards this and tell them I said there was nothing you could do and that you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s them and the horrible human beings they’re raising. It’s them and their kids. Not you. NOT YOU!
K and H had it right. Time to continue the revolution. Blow the fucking lid off the whole thing, then go down in a blaze of glory. Unless. What if there was a way to keep doing it? Strike fear, keep it burning, be there to watch it? I’m a goddamn genius. Revolution 2.0.
I look up from the paper. “K and H?” I ask.
Kim shrugs.
“Harris and Klebold,” Jeffers says, the pitch
of his voice rising. “Columbine.”
I look from Kim to LeAnn. “Could be, I guess,” she says. “But we can’t be sure.”
“Yes we can,” Jeffers says. “In the context of the notes it can’t be anything else.”
“Where’d you get these?” I ask.
“Janitor saw them in the boys’ bathroom trash,” LeAnn says. “Brought them to me. Chip was filling in for Kim that day. I shared them with him. Here we are.”
“The original notes are on journal paper,” Kim says. “Like they had been ripped out of someone’s diary. It was a few different pages—some wadded up, others just laying in there.”
“Any ideas on who may have written it?” I ask, looking from Kim to LeAnn and back.
LeAnn says, “Got some good candidates.”
Kim nods. “I can think of a few that fit the Harris-Klebold profile.”
“We need to identify them and stop this from happening,” Jeffers says.
His radio sounds again, louder this time, and I glance over toward Carla and John.
“I gotta go,” he says.
Kim stands and lets him out of the booth, then sits back down.
“You guys talk some more and see what you come up with,” he says. “Report back to me and let’s get together again tomorrow. Or I’ll swing by later to see if you’re still here.”
“We won’t be,” LeAnn says. “Mama needs her beauty sleep.”
“Your level of commitment to saving lives is inspiring,” he says, and turns and leaves.
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