A reporter who looked half-black and half-Asian tried to keep an ear piece in while he posed in front of what looked like a high school. The graphics underneath him said "High School Slaying Outside of Nashville-Three Known Dead." The reporter got his cue to speak.
"This is Karl Bendorf, in Crawford, Tennessee, where there are reports of a Columbine type assault on Crawford High School. Information continues to come in. Already there is conflicting information about what has occurred. One report is three students dressed in trench coats opened fire on a library filled with students, killing three and wounding several others. There is one confirmed death. A school employee named Elaine
Fogarty was fatally shot in the face. There are other reports that as many as ten students have been killed but the report has not been verified. I repeat, it has not been verified…" Crawford, Tennessee? I didn't even know there was a Crawford, Tennessee. Did somebody get their information twisted and do the wrong crazy terrorist act? Is it just some sort of bizarre coincidence? I had no idea what to think. Almost as if on cue, the phone rang. It was Karl.
"Where the hell are you?"
"I tried leaving messages for Newstrom with my contacts and left word for him to contact me. So far I haven't heard anything yet," Karl said.
"Have you been listening to the news. There's been some sort of shooting at a High school in Crawford, Tennessee."
"What?"
"You heard me." Silence came from the other end of the phone. After a long pause Karl came back on.
"That's a mistake, a coincidence. It just can't be Newstrom."
"How can you tell?"
"It just doesn't fit."
"You know, Karl, a lot of shit doesn't fit."
"Hang on Duffy, I'll be home in an hour, and we'll make a plan then."
He hung up. I looked at Al. He furrowed his brow and lay down to go to sleep. The whole thing didn't seem to make much sense to him either.
I sat around the house waiting for Karl to come back and wondering where the hell he would go to meet the elusive, ghostlike Newstrom. Karl wanted to keep this one to himself. For whatever reason-probably my looming insanity-I respected his wishes.
Around 1:30 he pulled up in the El Dorado.
"Okay, I've given it a lot of thought and it's one of two things," Karl said the second he walked through the door. It was like we were already in mid conversation and with Karl, who knows, he might have been talking to me his whole trip back. Just the same, it confused Al who got excited about a human coming through the door. He began to go into his attack-asgreeting thing, but stopped and spun around three or four times.
"I'm listening," I said.
"Either Newstrom switched plans and is sending us a message by having it in another Crawford or he's trying to confuse us."
"I thought he wanted both of us dead."
"He definitely does, or at least wants us to believe it."
"Why?"
"If nothing else, to remain unpredictable." Karl walked past Al and sat in the sparrow lookout chair. Al raised his eye brows, closed his eyes again.
"So what the hell do we do with our own little McDonough trench coat mafia?"
"We keep our surveillance up," Karl said while he thought of what to confuse me with next, the phone rang. It was Jamal. We exchanged Salam Alekums and Jamal got right to it.
"Duff, I'm probably gettin' as crazy as the paper says you are, but you know those kids your friend was sure were up to something no good?"
"Yeah?"
"All eight of them are out today."
"Is that unusual?"
"Hell yeah," Jamal said.
"Jamal, we followed them the other day and I found some serious assault rifle shell casing near their hang out."
"You what? Never mind-did you tell anyone?"
"I called Kelley and by the time he showed up the casings were gone." I waited while Jamal went silent. He was quiet in the way people are when they're pondering the sanity of the person they're talking to.
"Duff, I don't know what to make of that, but you should know about this next thing 'cause you'll probably hear something about it on the news."
"What are you talking about?"
"The school is in lockdown while it is searched. There was a message scrolled in blood in the second floor boy's bathroom. They're not taking any chances."
"What did it say?"
"You ready for this-it's a bit deep. Here goes: 'Tomorrow the blood will flow from the hypocrite warriors. The true warriors of the city will rain down from the mountain top and they will die.'"
"Jamal-what the hell does all that mean?"
"No one fuckin' knows. Maybe they just have a social studies test they didn't study for."
"Must be one hell of a test," I said.
38
The next morning Karl, Al, and I went to McDonough High at six. There were police on every corner and if you weren't a student or a parent you weren't allowed within two blocks. Police ran wands over every student as they entered the building. The closest we could get was three blocks away.
By the time the bell sounded, it seemed like everything was under control. Police remained at every door and on the four corners surrounding the school. We waited until ten and then drove to the bowling alley to check out their hangout. We parked in the empty bowling alley lot and walked around the corner. No one was there, but as we walked to the center of the area we could see something had been painted on the back wall of the bowling alley building.
The blood will spill down the warrior's mountain. Their Abercrombie and Fitch will be stained forever!
"What the hell does it mean?" Karl said. He squatted down and picked something up. "More shells."
"I'd feel a whole lot better if I knew where these punks were," I said.
"Yeah, I say they hit McDonough after lunch."
"And what do we do?"
"We wait, watch, and pray," Karl said. That was exactly what we did in the El Dorado, after we parked by McDonough. Al kept it interesting by farting a lot and Karl gave me long explanations on UFO's, Bigfoot, and the conspiracy that got Malcolm X killed. We talked about hydrogenated fat, Oreos, and the use of pesticides. We talked about social work, the military and whether or not the Yankees pitching would hold up. Al flipped over on his back, would eventually get restless, clear his intestines of gaseous build up, and flop over again. Elvis did Gospel and then the Elvis is Back album from when he returned from Germany. Nothing happened at lunch and at 1:37 p.m. Jamal spotted us as he walked to his car. I gave him a faint beep and he squinted in our direction. Once he realized it was us, he came over.
"They never came in," Jamal said.
"Everything normal in there?"
"If you call everybody being petrified, cops all over the place, lockers being searched, dogs, and metal detectors normal."
"Jamal, what's your gut tell you about these kids in black."
"I don't know, Duff. I've been doing this a long time. They're goofy white boys who banded together to do goofy white shit your people do-watch Star Trek, laugh at Seinfeld, play Dungeons and Dragons-that shit."
"Could they be killers?"
"I don't know, Duff. Hey, I read Psychology Today. They're angry, dis-en-franchised and their parents aren't around. Shit, describes most of the student body."
"What about the shit written in the bathroom?"
"Don't know. Creepy shit, but whether or not it was just stuff to get out of school or genuine warning I don't know."
"It said something about mountains, warriors and the Gap?"
"Abercrombie and Fitch. C'mon Duff, the cool white kids stopped goin' to the Gap."