Last Day on Earth (13 page)

STEVE KEEPS HITTING CRAIGSLIST,
looking for sex. Mark writes to him, “Mysteriously disappearing, also known as Craigslist gone bad,” because Steve is going off the radar.

Steve leads, usually, with that line about his saxophone tongue but settles in one case just for long chatty emails about school, life, etc. He spends a lot of time online with “Lisa,” an undergrad at U of I, from November 6 to 7, 2007. They begin with a misunderstanding. Her ad on Craigslist, using the email name “damaged goods,” apparently mentions a threesome, because he responds, “I’ve always wanted to be in a threesome as well and would be willing to participate as long as you are DD free (as I am) and can provide the 3rd person, (I want to be the one giving you oral).”

“I was just voicing my frustrations and fantasies,” she writes back. “What kind of decent girl hooks up with people from craigslist? . . . if I were you I would stay away from girls soliciting sex on the internet, they generally fall into the category of ‘whores.’ By which I really mean ‘dirty whores.’”

They work things out, though, and Steve ends up revealing a lot about himself, perhaps because he’s pretty sure he’s never going to meet her in person (though he does try). “I only have 2 friends who are male [Joe Russo and Mark], while the rest of my friends/acquaintances are female since it seems easier for me to click with someone of the opposite gender.” He complains about the limited dating options in his program and says women in his field tend to be preachy. He tells her about being in a “state group-home,” his history at NIU, that he spent all his time studying, resented fraternities and sororities, etc. She reveals that she came to U of I to be with someone she loved, which didn’t work out, tells him about all her plans and hopes now, majoring in biology but considering the Peace Corps or the FBI.

It’s in these emails with Lisa that Steve most clearly reveals his confusion about his career, about what he’ll do with his life, and also how he felt about grad school. He details the shift from computer science to political science to sociology to law school to public administration. None of it has worked out for him. “I worked for a city manager as an intern for a few weeks and disliked it, because I could not tolerate working in a system that was so rigid and inflexible.” He tells her about the cuts in criminology in the sociology department at NIU and says he’s happy to have gotten into the social work master’s program at U of I. “The odd thing is that I would have gone to graduate school at UIUC from the beginning if not for a woman that I was dating (an eccentric art teacher [Kim]) at the time who wanted me to stay in the area so we could live happily ever after, or something like that. Obviously, it didn’t work out, so I kicked myself over that one for a while, but at least I’m here now. Okay, so you want to know the truth about graduate school? At NIU for my first year of graduate school, I was a teaching assistant for statistics, and although I enjoyed my teaching assistant position, I absolutely did not enjoy the graduate program. This was mainly due to the lack of quality students.”

These are the same graduate students, his friends, who refuse to say anything negative about him even after he becomes a mass murderer.

Steve tries to meet with Lisa for coffee, but she refuses. “It’s a shame that we didn’t meet under different circumstances,” he writes, “but such is life, I suppose.”

Steve switches back to Prozac from Celexa, though only 20 milligrams instead of 50. The Celexa made him tired. And he looks forward to his Thanksgiving vacation, a chance to get away. He’s going with Jessica, since Heather has dumped him and he’s dumped Kelly.

During this Thanksgiving vacation, Steve shows Jessica all his mental-health records before destroying them. He insists she read them. He wants her to know everything.

They’re in Lakeland, Florida, to help his father, who has gone into diabetic shock after a car accident. Steve writes an email to his sister on November 24:

“Susan I just wanted to let you know that our father is alright and that his accident may have been a bit over exaggerated by the family. I was down there, saw the vehicle, and read various reports (police, medical, etc.), and feel as though this incident should not be used to force our father to make decisions that he does not wish to make. When I spoke with you the other day and you brought up the idea of civil commitment, I was shocked and disappointed that something like this would be brought up, to say the least. Despite his accident, he remains both physically active and mentally competent, and I wish that you would stop trying to force his hand in HIS life decisions. He is a grown man and is entirely capable of deciding what he wants to do in the near future. If you EVER try to have him committed when he is both deemed to be medically and mentally competent by professionals, then I will see to it that you lose that battle, and I am willing to take it to court (hearing) if it gets that far. This is not a threat, but simply a reminder that you cannot force people to do something just because you feel it’s in their best interest. As long as our father can carry out a normally live and is mentally competent, let him enjoy his hard earned retirement. The death of our mother is clouding your judgment, regardless of what you may say to the contrary.

“On another note, I saw that you and our mom acted swiftly (along with Russel) in 2005 to ensure that you had total control of Dad’s decisions when he is unable to, (as well as his financials, etc.). Our father informed me of this when we went to the bank and during subsequent conversations. I do not care about the money or property (which you seem to obsess over, and therefore felt the need to go behind my back to gain control of), but I find it reprehensible that you would conspire with others to ensure that I didn’t have any say in the wishes of our father once he passes. Have you no shame?

“While out in Florida, I had several conversations with Dad and learned that Mom never truly forgave me for being a ‘bad/delinquent’ teenager and that she never trusted me . . . even after I spent 4 years in college earning near perfect grades. Susan, I have had an epiphany while in Florida and now realize why you have so much pent up hatred
again me as well! Punishing people for mistakes they have made in their pasts is shallow and shows a lack of character. I hope that once you obtain control over our father’s property/money, that you get yourself a good therapist to work out these issues. Seriously, I mean that from the depths of my heart. After all, we are bound by blood, regardless of our current relationship (or a seeming lack thereof).

“Additionally, I was disappointed that you didn’t even offer to drive us (Jessica and I) to the airport or offer to watch our cats. Jessica and I spent nearly a week watching your (and Carrie’s) animals and spent our own money (for food and gas) to ensure that they were cared for. This does not even include having to get on my hands and knees to clean up dog crap in the kitchen/dog cage, either. All this, and you never even offered us a dime in return, or even an offer to watch our animals. How ungrateful can you and Carrie be? Obviously, family loyalty means little to you, or perhaps my definition of loyalty was learned somewhere else. Sometimes, I cannot believe that we share the same blood.

“P.S. (In case you’re wondering, I prefer to email you rather than speak with you on the phone, because I have found out over the last few years of speaking with you that you often yell/get angry with me over petty issues; thus, I chose to email you instead). Happy Holidays, Steven Kazmierczak”

On the bright side, Steve’s friend Joe Russo arrives after a couple days and they go with Jessica to Universal Studios. It’s good to see Joe. Steve doesn’t get to see him much anymore. They take goofy pictures, riding a cougar in the Wild West, wearing pigtails. Steve is wearing a black T-shirt that day with a handgun over an American flag. In the photos, he tries on several red, white, and blue hats to go with the shirt, and he also goes down a children’s slide which is the giant skull of a longhorn. Perhaps this is the inspiration for a new tattoo he gets, of a skull with radiation, though Jessica says it was random, picked out by the tattoo artist. He and Jessica and Joe also go to a shooting range. One of his dad’s neighbors, a friend named Joseph Lesek, takes them to Saddle Creek Park Pistol Range in Lakeland and loans them his gun. Lesek will tell police later that Steve “did not act or say anything out of the ordinary,” but the ordinary in this case was
to fire a pistol a bunch of times for fun, and the targets were most likely the outline of the upper body of a person. Lakeland a holdout for the Klan, still under a court order in the late eighties to desegregate their schools.

Steve has written a paper this semester titled “(NO) Crazies with Guns!”: “I have only five words for you: From my cold, dead hands. Those words spoken by Charlton Heston, and immortalized by the popular press, have come to symbolize the pro-gun lobby’s arguably firm and unshakeable ideology with respect to their opposition to anti-gun (whether real of perceived) legislation. With that being said, what if those so-called cold, dead hands happen to not only contain a firearm, but also a half-filled bottle of anti-psychotic drugs?” Steve thinks it’s outrageous he’s able to buy a gun.

In December, Steve is excited about AK-47s, which are more plentiful now in the United States. He seems reluctant, though, to buy a firearm illegally. The AK-47 was Purdy’s choice for the schoolchildren in Stockton, California, on January 17, 1989, the day Ted Bundy was going to be electrocuted. A media stunt, stealing Bundy’s fire. Nearly four hundred children were on the playground when Purdy bent his knees, braced the gun against his hip, and started sweeping back and forth with 7.62-millimeter bullets from a seventy-five-round drum magazine. He killed six-year-olds, eight-year-olds. The bullets had enough velocity to blast clear through the walls of the main school building. “They’re just very cool guns,” Steve tells Jessica. He knows about Purdy, and they have some similarities, including a similar racism and libertarianism, fueled by anger at the federal government. They’re both poor, both obsessive-compulsive, violent in the past, run-ins with police, mental health problems, interested in Hezbollah, in horror movies. The similarities go on and on, actually. Mass murderers study each other, learn tips and tricks, help push each other over the edge. Virginia Tech helped prepare Steve, and then there will be another event, an execution-style murder of five in Chicago, that will provide the final turning point for Steve’s shooting at NIU.

Steve and Jessica buy RockBand as an early apartment Christmas gift. They stay up for five hours one night playing it. Good fun.

Christmas 2007. Steve and Jessica drive to Susan’s house. Cold out, and Steve wants to see his father, who is visiting from Florida, but he’s vowed he’ll never see Susan again. So Jessica walks to the door alone.

They take his father to a restaurant and this goes fine. They talk about school and how they’ve liked moving to Champaign. Then Steve wants to talk about how Susan has been pressuring his dad to sell his house and move back to Illinois. He tells his dad it’s okay to stay in Lakeland. He shouldn’t be pressured. Steve wants him to be happy. Susan shouldn’t be trying to control his life.

The discussion is a bit tense. They switch the subject to Vegas, maybe going there in August. Then they go to Steve and Jessica’s apartment, exchange gifts. They give his dad the first season of
The Sopranos
, watch a couple episodes together. It seems like it all goes well, but afterward, they need to drop his father off at Susan’s.

Steve doesn’t go to the door, but he sends along his present for Susan. It’s a box of coal. Jessica laughed when he first told her, but she doesn’t think it’s funny now. He actually has a box of coal for Susan, wrapped in Christmas paper. After the shootings, Susan will tell police she’s surprised he didn’t come to kill her.

Two days after Christmas, Steve goes to Tony’s Guns and Ammo, buys a Hi-Point .380, which he’ll take to Cole Hall, and a 12-gauge shotgun. It’s possible this is when he decides to do the shootings, though I believe the decision comes later, on February 3. But by Christmas, he’s estranged from his family, and he isolates himself from his friends. Joe Russo tries to contact him around New Year’s and doesn’t hear back until February 12, two days before the shooting. Mark can’t reach him for a couple weeks but receives a response on January 10: “Long time no chat,” Steve writes. “Lot’s been going on. Suppose I owe you an explanation for my disappearance. I had some family issues to deal with over the last few weeks, but I have distanced myself from the drama recently. Family, as you know, is a complex thing, and I’ve never had any kind of healthy relationship with mine. So why bother resolving 20-year issues when I’m out on my own? Not worth it.”

“I never understood the extent of the issues,” Mark says now, “because I didn’t want to pry into his life.”

ON JANUARY 7, 2008,
Steve pays $395 for a tattoo of a pentagram, upside down star, sign of the devil. Jessica will tell police later that it’s not that, it’s just “antiestablishment.” And what does that really mean? Is wanting to topple a real government less dangerous than wanting to align with a fictive being?

On January 11, Steve’s back in touch with Kelly by email. She took the breaking up well in November, said it was a good thing, even:

“It’s basically like we are both standing in a road and there’s . . . oh let’s say . . . a Greyhound bus barreling towards us. You’re the one who looks at the bus coming closer and says ‘Hmm . . . I have been hit by a bus before, and it sucked. I should move.’ Unfortunately, I am the one who ends up standing in the road alone, staring at the bus and saying ‘Well, I have been hit by a bus before, and I don’t want to go through that again. However, maybe this time it won’t hurt so much . . . I’m not sure if I want to take the chance or not.’ So . . . what I’m saying is that in this situation, you had to be the one to shove me out of the road! It’s really better for both of us in the end . . .

“As for CL [Craigslist], I haven’t met anyone since and don’t plan to anymore . . . I’m giving up on all that and have decided to actually let my vagina grow shut, as mentioned in my original rant. :) Too many weirdos. I know you worry about me, as I do also worry about you too (especially when I don’t hear from you in days).”