The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb
reuniting with their families there. I threw some food into the dogs’ bowls and grabbed my keys. Elise’s message had come midway through the sequence, which meant she’d left it hours earlier. It was late. Most, if not all, of the kids would have been picked up by now. But maybe, for some reason, Maureen was still there. Or, if not, maybe someone knew where she was. I’d start at Leawood, then drive from hospital to hospital if I had to. Be there, I kept saying. Please be there, Mo. Please be all right.
The eight or nine cars leading up to the school were parked helter skelter, a few on the sidewalk, one abandoned in the middle of the street. Parents must have pulled up, thrown open their car doors, and run for their kids. A cop was posted at the entrance. “Yes, sir, can I help you?”
I blurted that I’d been away, that I was trying to find my wife.
“Are you a parent of one of the Columbine students, sir?”
“I teach there,” I said. “My wife’s one of the school nurses. Do you know if there were shots fired anywhere near the medical clinic?”
He said he’d heard all kinds of rumors about the boys’ movement inside the school, but that that was all they were: rumors. He took my driver’s license and wrote down my information on his clipboard. “It was bedlam here earlier,” he said. “It’s quiet now, though. Too quiet. Looks bad for the families still waiting. There’s eleven or twelve still unaccounted for, and there’s bodies inside the school, so it’s a matter of matching them up. ’Course, some of the kids may show up yet. If you’re sitting there waiting, you gotta hang onto some hope, I guess. You have kids?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither. The wife and I wanted kids, but it just never happened. You can go ahead in. They’re in the gym, all the way down past the showcase. There’s lists posted on the wall.”
“Lists?”
“Of the survivors.”
I walked warily down the hallway, my footsteps slowing as I neared the gym. Let her be here, let her be here. Let her be on that list….
She was seated by herself, cross-legged on a gym mat, a blanket around her shoulders, a pile of Styrofoam coffee cup spirals in front of her. “Hey,” I said. She looked up at me, emotionless for several seconds, as if she didn’t quite recognize me. Then her face contorted. I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around her. Rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She was here, not dead, not shot. Her hair smelled smoky, and faintly of gasoline. Her whole body sobbed. She cried herself limp.
“I wrote you a note,” she said. “On the wood inside the cabinet.”
“What cabinet, Mo? I don’t—”
“Velvet’s dead.”
At first, it didn’t register. “Velvet?” Then I remembered: she was going to meet Maureen at school that morning, to talk about reenrolling.
“I went to call you, to see how things were going, and then there was this explosion and the whole library—”
“Oh, Jesus! You were in the library?”
She flinched. Made fists. “The coroner was here earlier,” she said. “She passed out forms. She wanted names and addresses, descriptions of their clothing, distinguishing marks or features, whether or not they had drivers’ licenses. Because of the fingerprints, I guess.” Her crew cut, I thought. Her tattoo. “She said she might need dental records, too. Dental records: that’s when we knew.”
“Knew?”
“That they were dead. And I couldn’t even…I couldn’t…” She began to cry again. “She called me Mom, and I couldn’t even give them her address.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let me take you home.”
“I can’t go home!” she snapped. “I’m her mom!”
I opened my mouth to argue the point, then shut it again. I took her hands in mine and squeezed them. She didn’t squeeze back.
A short time later, a middle-aged man with a droopy mustache entered the gym. “That’s the district attorney,” Maureen said. “He was here before, when the coroner was here.” He mounted the stage, and the thirty or forty of us, scattered throughout the gym, approached.
He said he understood that waiting was pure hell—his heart went out to each and every one there because he had teenagers, too. But he wanted us to know that, for safety reasons, the building had been secured for the night and the exhausted investigation teams had been sent home to get a few hours’ sleep. “We’ve made the decision to resume at six thirty a.m.,” he said. “And at that point we’ll continue with the identification of—”
“The hell with that!” someone shouted. “Our kids are in there!”
“Sir, I know, but there are still live explosives inside the school. How many, and where, we just can’t say yet. A short while ago, a bomb detonated as the technicians were removing it from the building. Now, no one was hurt, but it’s been a very long, very difficult day for all of us. Nerves are frazzled, people are dog-tired. We just don’t want that fatigue to turn into more tragedy.”
“I need to get to my daughter,” a woman wailed. “Dead or alive, she needs to know she’s not alone in that place.”
“Ma’am, I understand what you’re saying, but the entire school is a crime scene,” the D.A. said. “Evidence has to be gathered and labeled, procedures have to be followed. Victims have to be identified, bodies removed and autopsied before they can be released to their families. Those of you who’ve followed the JonBenet Ramsey case can appreciate that when evidence is compromised—”
“We don’t care about evidence!” a man retorted. “We care about getting our kids the hell out of there! And don’t give me that ‘I’ve got kids, too’ bullshit, because your kids are safe at home tonight, and ours…” His reprimand broke down into sobs that echoed through the cavernous gym.
A woman announced fiercely that until she saw her son’s body, she refused to give up hope. We should prepare ourselves for miracles, she advised. No one responded. Someone asked when the names of the dead would be released.
“As soon as the coroner feels she’s gotten absolutely positive IDs for the twelve that are still in the library,” the D.A. said.
“Does that number include the two little bastards that did this?”
The D.A. nodded. “I’m guessing midday tomorrow we’ll have the final list. We’ll release it to you folks first, of course, and then to the press. And while I’m on the subject of the press, I want to advise you that talking to them at this point in time might not be in your own or the children’s best interests. Now you’re welcome to stay the night here, and if you do, I’m sure the volunteers will make you as comfortable as possible. But if I could, I’d like to suggest—since nothing more’s going to be released until late morning at the earliest—that you all go home, say some prayers if you’re so inclined, and try to get some sleep. Let’s meet back here at noon, and I think I can promise you by then that I’ll have the names for you. And I also want to promise you…” He faltered, struggled to regain his composure. “I want to promise…promise you that…we are going to treat your children like they are our own.”
Maureen slumped against me. “Take me home,” she said.
It was a brutal night. She wandered from room to room, cried, cursed the killers. She couldn’t tell me about it yet, she said, but she kept seeing it, over and over. Seeing what, I wondered, but I didn’t push her. In bed, she needed the light on. She kept bolting upright. “What was that?”
Somewhere after three in the morning, I convinced her to drink a glass of wine and swallow a couple of Tylenol PMs. They knocked her out, but her sleep was fitful. She kept clenching, whimpering. I finally dozed off myself, awakening from a leaden sleep at dawn. Maureen’s side of the bed was empty. I