Columbine (15 page)

Dave held on for hours in Science Room 3. Then the kids and teachers were evacuated, and none knew whether he'd made it. It would be a few days before the family would fully understand what had transpired in that room. It would take years to resolve why he'd lain there for over three hours, and who was to blame.

All Dave's family knew was that he had failed to call. He must be trapped inside the building, they thought. That wasn't good. Linda hoped he wasn't a hostage. She assumed he was hiding. He would be safe; he was not a risk taker.

The family monitored the TV and took turns answering calls. The phone rang incessantly, but it was never Dave. Linda called his business line repeatedly. Nobody picked up.

Linda was an athletic woman in her late forties, but she had a fragile psyche. Her smile was warm but tentative, as if she could shatter from a harsh word or gesture. Dave had found great satisfaction in protecting her. In his absence, her daughters and sister stepped in. Every call was fraught, so her family made sure to screen. In midafternoon, she got the urge to answer a call herself. "It was a woman," she said later. "And she said she was from the
Denver Post
and my husband had been shot--Do I have a comment? I screamed, I threw the phone. I have no idea what happened from then on."

____

Robyn Anderson was scared. Her prom date was a mass murderer. She had apparently armed him.

To her knowledge, only three people had known about the gun deal, and the other two were dead. Had they told anyone? Were guns traceable? She had not signed anything. Would the cops know? Should she keep her mouth shut?

The cops did not know. Robyn had been debriefed in Clement Park and had played it totally cool. She told the detective where she had been and what she had seen. She told the truth, but not the whole truth. She didn't know for sure who had been shooting, so she didn't mention that she knew them. She certainly didn't mention the guns. Should she? The guilt began eating her up.

Robyn talked to Zack Heckler on the phone that afternoon. She kept her mouth shut about the weapons. He didn't. He was clueless about the guns, thank God, but he knew the guys had been making pipe bombs. Bombs? Really? That astounded Robyn. Yes, really, Zack said. And he wasn't surprised at all. Zack didn't have quite the innocent picture of Dylan that Robyn did. It sounded just like those guys to run down the halls laughing while they killed people, he said.

Zack did not tell Robyn that he had helped Eric and Dylan make any pipe bombs. She wondered. Did he? Was he mixed up in this? More than her?

Zack was scared, too. They all were--anybody close to the killers. Zack wasn't volunteering information to the cops. He'd omitted mentioning the pipe bombs during his debriefing.

Chris Morris went the opposite route. He'd called the cops in the first hour, as soon as he suspected that his friends were involved. He was handcuffed in Clement Park and spirited away on national television. He kept talking at the police station. He described Eric's interest in Nazis, a crack about jocks, and some scary recent suggestions: cutting power to the school and setting PVC bombs at the exits with screws for shrapnel.

If Chris's story was legit, it suggested the killers had been leaking information about their plans--a classic characteristic of young assailants. If Eric and Dylan had leaked to Chris, chances were they had tipped off others as well.

Chris's dad was called. He contacted a lawyer. At 7:43
P.M.
, the three sat down with detectives for a formal interview. Chris and his father signed a form waiving their rights. The cops found Chris highly cooperative. He described the killers' obsessions with explosives and volunteered all sorts of details. Dylan had brought a pipe bomb to work once, but Chris ordered him to get it out of there. Chris knew the guys had gotten their hands on guns. It had been an open secret around Blackjack several months ago that Eric and Dylan were looking for hardware. They'd never told Chris directly, but he had heard it from several people.

Chris had a hunch who had come through for them: a kid named Phil Duran. Duran used to work at Blackjack, then moved to Chicago for a high-tech job. Before he'd left, Duran told Chris he had gone shooting with Eric and Dylan. Something about bowling pins and maybe an AK-47. Duran never said he had bought the guns, but Chris figured it was him.

It sounded staggering, how much Chris had known. He swore he had not taken it seriously. He agreed to turn over the clothes he was wearing and allow detectives to search his room. Everyone agreed to rendezvous at his house. Chris's mom met the cops at the front door, handed them his PC, and showed them upstairs. Then his brother arrived with Chris's clothes in a paper bag. He said Chris was afraid to come home. Mobs of media were already staking out the street.

The cops found nothing of obvious value, but gathered up piles of material. They left at 11:15.

____

Robyn needed company. She couldn't handle the stress alone. Her best friend, Kelli, came over around 7:30 on Tuesday evening. They went to Robyn's room. Kelli knew the boys well, too, especially Dylan. She had been part of the prom group. There was something Kelli didn't know, Robyn told her.
Remember that favor she had done Eric and Dylan last November?
Kelli remembered. It had been a big secret. Robyn had told Kelli repeatedly about this big favor she had done the guys, but she never would divulge what it was. Now she had to tell someone. It had been a gun show. The Tanner Gun Show in Denver. Eric and Dylan had called her on a Sunday, if she remembered right. They had checked the show out on Saturday, seen these sweet-looking shotguns. But they'd gotten carded; they were both underage then. They needed an eighteen-year-old with them. Robyn was eighteen. She really liked Dylan. So she went.

It was their money. Robyn made sure not to sign any papers. But she was the one who bought the three guns. The boys each got a shotgun. One had some kind of pump thing on it. Eric went for a rifle, too--a semi-automatic that looked like a giant paintball gun. Robyn felt so guilty, Kelli said later. How could she have imagined this?

Robyn didn't tell Kelli everything. She came clean with the main secret, but held back on a detail. She told Kelli she didn't know it was Eric and Dylan killing people until she heard it announced on TV that night. Kelli didn't buy it. Robyn had never received a B in high school--she could have put that mystery together. When she heard about the trench coats, she had to have known.

____

The Klebolds spent the afternoon and evening on their porch. Waiting. They were no longer allowed inside. At 8:10
P.M.
, a deputy arrived with instructions. Their home was now a crime scene. They had to go. Tom and Sue Klebold told friends they felt hit by a hurricane. Hurricanes don't hit the Rockies. They'd never seen it coming.

"We ran for our lives," Sue said later. "We didn't know what had happened. We couldn't grieve for our child."

Officers escorted Tom in to gather clothes for the next couple of days. Then Sue went in to take care of the pets. She fetched two cats, two birds, and their food bowls and litter boxes. At 9:00
P.M.
, they drove away.

They talked to a lawyer that night. He related a sobering thought. "Dylan isn't here anymore for people to hate," he said. "So people are going to hate you."

18. Last Bus

T
he buses kept arriving at Leawood Elementary, delivering discouragement as well as joy. It was great if your kid got off, but the odds kept dropping as the remaining parents dwindled. "I was getting envious of parents who were finding their kids and screaming out their names," Doreen Tomlin recalled. She found it harder and harder to get up. Her husband kept the faith, but hers played out. Buses arrived, and she stayed in her seat, silently chastising herself. "I thought,
Why aren't you getting up and looking? All these other parents are pinned to the stage, and you're just sitting here
."

Brian Rohrbough had given up even earlier. By 2:00
P.M.
, while Leawood was packed with hopeful parents, Brian had accepted Danny's fate. "I knew he was gone," he said. "I assume it was God telling me, preparing me. I hoped I was wrong. We waited for busloads of kids, but I knew he wasn't going to be on it. I told Sue, 'You know he's gone.'"

But his ex-wife was hopeful. In the public library, Misty Bernall was, too. Her son, Chris, had turned up, but Cassie was still missing.
She is alive!
Misty told herself fiercely. Nothing could dampen Misty's resolve, or her perseverance.

"Her mom came up to me every two minutes and asked if I'd seen Cassie," a friend of her daughter said. "I told her, 'I'm sure there are a lot of people unaccounted for.'" Not what Misty wanted to hear.

Prayer helped. "Please, God, just give me my baby back," she prayed. "Please, God, where is she?"

Misty gave up on the public library. She made her way through Clement Park and discovered the buses being loaded. She scurried from one to the next. A friend of Cassie's reached out to grab her hand.

"Have you seen Cass?" Misty cried.

"No."

Misty returned to the library. Brad and Chris met her there. Then everyone was sent to Leawood. That was a huge relief for the parents waiting there: more families, better odds.

The buses kept coming, every ten to twenty minutes for a while. Then arrivals slowed. Around four o'clock, they stopped. One more bus was promised. Parents looked around. Whose kids would it be?

The wait went on endlessly. At five o'clock, it still wasn't there. Siblings wandered out to watch for it, hoping to run inside with the news. Doreen Tomlin had not gotten up in a long time, but she was still praying her boy would be on it. "We were clinging to that hope," she said.

At dinnertime, President Clinton held a press conference in the West Wing to discuss the attack. "Hillary and I are profoundly shocked and saddened by the tragedy today in Littleton," he said. He passed on the hope of a Jeffco official, who had just told him: "Perhaps now America would wake up to the dimensions of this challenge, if it could happen in a place like Littleton."

Clinton sent a federal crisis response team and urged reporters to resist jumping to conclusions. "What I would like to do is take a couple of days because we don't know what the facts are here," he said. "And keeping in mind, the community is an open wound right now."

At Leawood, even the resilient families were faltering. Nothing had changed: no buses, no word, for hours on end. District attorney Dave Thomas tried to comfort the families. He knew which ones would need it. He had thirteen names in his breast pocket. Ten students had been identified in the library, and two more outside, based on their clothing and appearance. One teacher lay in Science Room 3. All deceased. It was a solid list, but not definitive. Thomas kept it to himself. He told the parents not to worry.

At eight o'clock, they were moved to another room. Sheriff Stone introduced the coroner. She handed out forms asking for descriptions of their kids' clothing and other physical details. That's when John Tomlin realized the truth. The coroner asked them to retrieve their kids' dental records. That went over unevenly. Many took it gravely; others perked up. They had a task, finally, and hope for resolution.

A woman leapt up. "Where is that other bus!" she demanded.

There was no bus. "There was never another bus," Doreen Tomlin said later. "It was like a false hope they gave you." Many parents felt betrayed. Brian Rohrbough later accused the school officials of lying; Misty Bernall also felt deceived. "Not intentionally, perhaps, but deceived nonetheless," she wrote. "And so bitterly that it almost choked me."

Sheriff Stone told them that most of the dead kids had been in the library. "John always went to the library," Doreen said. "I felt like I was going to pass out. I felt sick."

She felt sadness but not surprise. Doreen was an Evangelical Christian, and believed the Lord had been preparing her for the news all afternoon. Most of the Evangelicals reacted differently than the other parents. The press had been cleared from the area, but Lynn Duff was assisting the families as a Red Cross volunteer. A liberal Jew from San Francisco, she was taken aback by what she saw.

"The way that those families reacted was markedly different," she said. "It was like a hundred and eighty degrees from where everybody else was. They were singing; they were praying; they were comforting the other parents, especially the parents of Isaiah Shoels [the only African American killed]. They were thinking a lot about the other parents, the other families, and responding a lot to other people's needs. They were definitely in pain, and you could see the pain in their eyes, but they were very confident of where their kids were. They were at peace with it. It was like they were a living example of their faith."

But not all the Evangelicals reacted the same way. Misty Bernall was defiant. She was sure Cassie was alive.

____

Mr. D stayed with the families. He was doing his best to console them, and waiting for word on a close friend. He had known Dave Sanders for twenty years. They had coached three sports together, shared hundreds of beers, and Frank had attended Dave's wedding. Frank had been hearing rumors about Dave all afternoon.