While Battan interviewed the Klebolds, the National Rifle Association convened in Denver. It was a ghastly coincidence. Mayor Wellington Webb begged the group to cancel its annual convention, scheduled long before. Angry barbs had flown back and forth all week. "We don't want you here," Mayor Webb finally said.

Other promoters gave in to similar demands. Marilyn Manson had been incorrectly linked to the killers. He canceled his concert at Red Rocks and the remainder of his national tour. The NRA show went on. Four thousand attended. Three thousand protesters met them. They massed on the capitol steps, marched to the convention site, and formed a human chain around the Adam's Mark Hotel. Many waved "Shame on the NRA" signs. One placard was different. Tom Mauser's said "My son Daniel died at Columbine. He'd expect me to be here today."

Tom was a shy, quiet man. It had been a rough week, and friends weren't sure he was up to public confrontation. "He had a tough, tough day yesterday," one coworker said.

But Tom drew a deep breath, let it out, and addressed the crowd. "Something is wrong in this country when a child can grab a gun so easily and shoot a bullet into the middle of a child's face," he said. He urged them not to let Daniel's death be in vain.

Tom had been struck by another coincidence. In early April, Daniel had taken an interest in gun control and had come to his father with a question: Did Tom know there were loopholes in the Brady Bill? Gun shows were excluded from the mandatory background checks. Two weeks later, Daniel was murdered by a gun acquired at one of those shows.

"Clearly it was a sign to me," Tom explained later.

Critics had already blasted Tom for profiting off his son's murder, or getting duped by gun control activists. "I assure you, I am not being exploited," he told the crowd.

Inside the Adam's Mark, NRA president Charlton Heston opened the show. He went straight at Mayor Webb. The crowd booed. "Get out of our country, Wellington Webb!" someone yelled. Conventioneers were amused.

Heston charged on. "They say, 'Don't come here,'" he said. "I guess what saddens me most is how it suggests complicity. It implies that you and I and eighty million honest gun owners are somehow to blame, that we don't care as much as they, or that we don't deserve to be as shocked and horrified as every other soul in America mourning for the people of Littleton. 'Don't come here.' That's offensive. It's also absurd."

The group observed a moment of silence for the Columbine victims. It then proceeded with the welcome ceremony. Traditionally, the oldest and youngest attendees are officially recognized at that time. The youngest is typically a child. "Given the unusual circumstances," Heston announced that the tradition would be suspended this year.

When the conspiracy evaporated, it left a dangerous vacuum. Dr. Fuselier saw the danger early on. "Once we understood there was no third shooter, I realized that for everyone, it was going to be difficult to get closure," he said. The final act of the killers was among their cruelest: they deprived the survivors of a living perpetrator. They deprived the families of a focus for their anger, and their blame. There would be no cathartic trial for the victims. There was no killer to rebuke in a courtroom, no judge to implore to impose the maximum penalty. South Jeffco was seething with anger, and it would be deprived of a reasonable target. Displaced anger would riddle the community for years.

The crumbling conspiracy eliminated the primary mission of the task force. The all-star team was left to sort out logistical issues: exactly what what had happened, and had happened, and how how. Those were massive investigations, easy to get lost inside. Investigators wanted to retrace every step, reconstruct each moment, place every witness and every buckshot fragment in place and time and context. It was a Herculean effort, and it drew the team's attention from the real objective: Why? Why? The families wanted to know how their children died, of course, but that was nothing compared to the underlying question. The families wanted to know how their children died, of course, but that was nothing compared to the underlying question.

Early on, officials began to say the report would steer clear of conclusions. "We deal with facts," Division Chief Kiekbusch said. "We'll make a diligent effort not to include a bunch of conclusions. Here are the facts: You read it and make your own conclusions."

The families were incredulous. So was the press. Make our own conclusions? Make our own conclusions? How many civilians felt qualified to diagnose mass murderers? Isn't that what homicide detectives were for? The public was under the impression that a hundred of them had been paid for months to perform that service. How many civilians felt qualified to diagnose mass murderers? Isn't that what homicide detectives were for? The public was under the impression that a hundred of them had been paid for months to perform that service.

Of course homicide teams draw conclusions. What Kiekbusch meant was that they avoid discussing discussing those conclusions externally. That's the DA's role. The cops develop the case, but the DA presents it to the jury--and to the public, as necessary. But aside from the gun providers, there was no one to try for the Columbine killings. those conclusions externally. That's the DA's role. The cops develop the case, but the DA presents it to the jury--and to the public, as necessary. But aside from the gun providers, there was no one to try for the Columbine killings.

Sheriff Stone kept talking up the conspiracy theory with the press. He was driving his team nuts. They had all but ruled it out. Every few days, Jeffco spokesmen corrected another misstatement by the sheriff. Several corrections were extreme: arrests were not not imminent, deputies had not blocked the killers from escaping the school, and Stone's descriptions of the cafeteria videos had been pure conjecture--the tapes had not even been analyzed yet. They did not try to correct some of his mischaracterizations, like when he quoted Eric's journal out of context to give the impression that the killers had been planning to hijack a plane when they'd started their attack. He was quickly becoming a laughingstock, yet he was the ultimate ranking authority on the case. imminent, deputies had not blocked the killers from escaping the school, and Stone's descriptions of the cafeteria videos had been pure conjecture--the tapes had not even been analyzed yet. They did not try to correct some of his mischaracterizations, like when he quoted Eric's journal out of context to give the impression that the killers had been planning to hijack a plane when they'd started their attack. He was quickly becoming a laughingstock, yet he was the ultimate ranking authority on the case.

His staff begged him to stop speaking to the press. But how would it look if subordinates spoke about the case while the head man was muzzled? A tacit understanding developed on the team: if Stone kept his mouth shut, they would, too. (Though they continued background interviews with the Rocky Rocky.) For the next five months, until an impromptu interview by lead investigator Kate Battan in September, law enforcement officers would divulge virtually nothing more publicly about their discoveries or conclusions. After that, it would be a slow trickle, and a fight for every scrap of information. Nine days after the shootings, the Jeffco blackout began.

Columbine coverage ended abruptly, too. A string of deadly tornadoes hit Oklahoma, and the national press corps left town in a single afternoon. The school would return periodically to national headlines over the years, but the narrative of what had happened was set.

37. Betrayed

Eric needed professional help. His father made that determination within forty eight hours of his arrest. Wayne picked up the steno pad that had sat idle for nine months and began filling half a dozen pages: "See psychologist," he wrote. "See what's going on. Determine treatment." Wayne gathered names and numbers for several agencies and services and added bulleted items to them: anger management, life management, professional therapist, mental health center, school counselor, juvenile assessment center, and family adolescent team. Wayne documented several conversations with lawyers. He wrote "probation," circled it, and added, "take any chances for reformation or diversion."

Wayne checked out half a dozen candidates for therapist. Their rates varied from $100 to $150 per hour. He settled on Dr. Kevin Albert, a psychiatrist, and made an appointment for February 16.

Wayne logged page after page of calls to cops, lawyers, and prosecutors, working through their options. The juvenile Diversion program sounded ideal: a year of counseling and community service, along with fines, fees, and restitution. If Eric completed it successfully and kept clean for an additional year, the robbery would be expunged from his record. But the DA's office had to accept him.

Eric told Dr. Albert he had anger problems. Depression was an issue. He had contemplated suicide. He apparently did not mention the bombs he took to the park the previous evening. Dr. Albert started him on Zoloft, a prescription antidepressant. Eric continued meeting with him biweekly, and Wayne and Kathy began occasional sessions as well.

At home, the boys received similar punishments. Each was grounded for a month, and forbidden contact with the other. Eric also had his computer access revoked. He went to work on his pipe bombs. He lost one--or perhaps left it as a warning or clue. On February 15, the day before Eric's first appointment with Dr. Albert, someone in the neighborhood stumbled upon his work: a duct-taped PVC pipe in the grass with a red fuse protruding. Kind of an odd sight for a suburban park in Jeffco. The Jeffco cops sent out an investigator from the bomb squad. Sure enough, it was a homemade pipe bomb. Officers didn't find a whole lot of those around here. The investigator defused the bomb and filed a report.

Eric and Dylan hid their arrest from friends. They made excuses about their restrictions. Finally they began to come clean. Eric fessed up to a girl at Blackjack, and word traveled to Nate Dykeman. Nate couldn't believe Dylan had been hiding it from him.

"Is this the reason you can't go out?" Nate asked. Dylan turned red.

"He didn't want to talk about it," Nate said later.

After word leaked, Eric told friends it was the most embarrassing moment of his life.

Both boys were humiliated. And Eric was raging mad. Dylan's response was more complex. Three days after his arrest, Dylan pictured himself on the road to happiness with Harriet. He sketched it out in his journal as a two lane highway with a road sign off one shoulder and a dashed stripe down the center. His road led off to a majestic row of mountains, with a giant heart guiding him onward. "Its so great to love," he wrote. He was a felon now, but he was ecstatic. He filled half the page with drawings and exclamations: "I love her, & she loves me."

Anger boiled up with the ecstasy. Dylan was beginning to see it Eric's way: "the real people (gods) are slaves to the majority of zombies, but we know & love being superior.... either ill commit suicide, or ill get w Harriet & it will be NBK for us. My happiness. her happiness. NOTHING else matters."

Suicide or murder? The pattern solidified: homicidal thoughts occasionally, self-destruction on every page. "If, by love's choice, Harriet didn't love me id slit my wrist & blow up Atlanta strapped to my neck," he wrote. Eric had named one of his pipe bombs Atlanta.

Wayne Harris kept working the phones. By early March, he secured an evaluation with Andrea Sanchez, a counselor with the juvenile Diversion program. Sanchez placed calls to Eric and Dylan to prescreen them. They passed. She sent a dozen forms and set up appointments. Each boy would come to her office with a parent and the stack of paperwork. Both intake sessions would take place on March 19.

For two months, Wayne Harris worked to get his son into Diversion, to keep his record clean. Eric was busy, too. He was detonating his first pipe bombs. He boldly posted the breakthrough on his Web site: "Mother fucker blew BIG. Flipping thing was heart-pounding gut-wrenching brain-twitching ground-moving insanely cool! His brothers haven't found a target yet though."

This time, Eric was producing to kill. Contempt had been the undercurrent in his "I HATE" rants; now he made it explicit. Morons had nerve to judge him, he said. To call him crazy just for envisioning mass murder? Empty, vacuous morons standing in judgment? "if you got a problem with my thoughts, come tell me and ill kill you," he posted. "DEAD PEOPLE DON'T ARGUE! God DAMNIT I AM PISSED!!"

As Eric embraced murder, Dylan retreated. After the arrest, he had the one brief outburst in his journal, and then he dropped all mention of it for nearly a year. Dylan still fretted about "this toilet earth," but his focus shifted dramatically toward love. Love. It had been prominent from the first page of his journal, but now, a year in, it grew overwhelming. He emblazoned entire pages with ten-inch hearts, surrounded by choirs of smaller, fluttering hearts.

Eric had no use for love. Sex, maybe. He shared none of Dylan's desires for truth, beauty, or ethereal love. Eric's only internal struggle concerned which stupid bastard was more deserving of his wrath.

Eric's dreams changed after his arrest. Human extinction was still his aim, but for the first time he made the leap from observer to enforcer. "I will rig up explosives all over a town and detonate each one of them at will after I mow down a whole fucking area full of you snotty ass rich mother fucking high strung godlike attitude having worthless pieces of shit whores," he wrote. He posted this openly on his Web site. "i dont care if I live or die in the shootout," he wrote. "all I want to do is kill and injure as many of you pricks as I can!"

It was too much for Dylan. Kill? Everything? Apparently not. He made a stunning move behind Eric's back. He told. He told the worst possible person: Brooks Brown. Brooks knew about the petty vandalism, and his parents saw Eric as a young criminal, but they had no idea how serious it was.

On the way to class, Dylan handed Brooks a scrap of paper. Just one line was written on it: a Web address.

"I think you should take a look at this tonight," Dylan said.

"OK. Anything special?"

"It's Eric's Web site. You need to see it. And you can't tell Eric I gave it to you."

Brooks pulled up the site that night. Eric was threatening to kill people. He threatened to kill Brooks personally, in three different places.

Dylan leaked the URL to Brooks the day before their admission interviews for the Diversion program. If Brooks told his parents--and Dylan knew he told Judy everything everything--the Browns would go straight to the cops, and Eric would be rejected and imprisoned for a felony. Dylan probably would be, too. He took that chance.

Brooks did tell his mom. Randy and Judy called the cops. Jeffco investigators came out that night. They followed up, they filed reports, but they did not alert the DA's office. Eric and Dylan proceeded into Diversion.

Only one parent was required at the Diversion intake meeting. Tom and Sue Klebold both attended. They considered it important. They filled out an eight-page questionnaire about Dylan, he did the same, and then Andrea Sanchez walked them through the results. The Klebolds were in for a few surprises. Dylan copped to five or six drunken bouts, starting at age fifteen. "Was not aware of it at all--until Andrea Sanchez asked the question a few moments ago," his parents wrote. Apparently they were unaware his nickname was VoDKa.

Dylan claimed he had quit drinking. He didn't like the taste and said it "wasn't worth it." He had tried pot, too, and rejected it for the same reasons. His parents were stunned about marijuana, too.

Tom and Sue were candid; it was the only ethical course. "Dylan is introverted and has grown up isolated," they wrote. "He is often angry or sullen, and behaviors seem disrespectful to and intolerant of others." They wrote a line about disrespecting authority figures, crossed it out, and then said that teachers had reported that he didn't listen or take correction well.

Eric was more cautious. He revealed just enough to appear confessional. He said he had tasted alcohol three times, had never gotten drunk, and had given it up for good. Exactly what a parent wanted to hear. It was vintage Eric--more believable than abstinence and reassuring to boot: he had faced the temptation already and the danger had passed. He understood how his parents thought, and in no time he'd read Andrea Sanchez. In their first meeting, he turned an admission into a virtue. He lied about pot, too. He claimed he had no interest. The alcohol admission gave the claim credence.

Wayne and Kathy both attended their session as well. Their surprise came in the mental health section. On a checklist of thirty potential problem areas, they marked three boxes: anger, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Eric had told them about those three, and he discussed them with Dr. Albert. He was getting help. Everyone agreed the Zoloft was helping, too. It was common for an adolescent to check several boxes. Eric picked fourteen. He marked virtually everything related to distrust or aggression. He checked jealousy, anxiety, suspiciousness, authority figures, temper, racing thoughts, obsessive thoughts, mood swings, and disorganized thoughts. He skipped suicidal thoughts, but he checked homicidal thoughts.

Wayne and Kathy worried about Eric suppressing his anger. They admitted that he would blow up now and then--lashing out verbally or hitting an object. He never tried it in front of his dad, but they'd gotten reports back from work and school. It didn't happen often, but they were concerned. Eric responded well to discipline. They had controlled his behavior, but how could they contain his moods? When he really got mad, Eric said, he would punch a wall. He had thought about suicide, but never seriously, and mostly out of anger. He got angry all the time, he said, at almost anything he didn't like.

Eric was seething as he scrawled out his answers, and he practically told them so on the form. The nerve of these lowlifes judging him. He explained how he hated fools telling him what to do. In the interview, he apparently directed his anger at other other fools. They fell for it. fools. They fell for it.

Eric would howl about it later. The partial confession was his favorite con of all. He could turn over half his cards and still pull off the bluff.

He posted his actual thoughts about the legal system on his Web site at around this same time: "My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don't like it, you die." He described going to some random downtown area in some big city and blowing up and shooting up everything he could. He assured us he would feel no remorse, no sorrow, no shame. Yet there he sat, submitting. He bent to their will; he filled out their degrading form. Laughing on the inside was insufficient. He would make them pay.

Sanchez worried about the boys' failure to accept full responsibility. Eric was sticking to his story that the break-in was Dylan's fault. Dylan thought the whole thing was a little overblown. Sanchez noted her reservations but recommended them for enrollment.

The final decision was up to the court. A week later, on March 25, Eric and Dylan stood before Jeffco Magistrate John DeVita during a joint hearing. Their fathers stood beside them. That impressed DeVita. Most of the juveniles appeared alone, or with just a mom. Dads were a good sign. And these dads appeared to be taking control of the situation. DeVita was also impressed by the punishments they had imposed. "Good for you, Dad," he said. "It sounds to me like you got the circumstances under control."

"This has been a rather traumatic experience," Tom Klebold told him. "I think it's probably good, a good experience, that they got caught the first time."

"He'd tell you if there were any more?"

"Yes, he would actually."

DeVita didn't buy it. "First time out of the box and you get caught?" he asked Eric. "I don't believe it. It's a real rare occurrence when somebody gets caught the first time."

But he was impressed by the way the boys presented themselves: dressed up, well behaved, deferential. Yes, Your Honor Yes, Your Honor and and No, Your Honor. No, Your Honor. They respected the court, and it showed. They respected the court, and it showed.

DeVita pegged Dylan as well. The B's and C's on his report card were a joke. "I bet you're an A student," DeVita said. "If you put the brainpower to the paperwork."

DeVita gave them a lecture; then he approved them for Diversion. This pair was going to do just fine, he thought.

Fourteen months later, after the murders, DeVita lamented how convincing the boys had been. "What's mind-boggling is the amount of deception," he said. "The ease of their deception. The coolness of their deception."

Judy and Randy Brown kept calling the cops. They were sure Brooks was in danger. Their other son was so scared he slept with a baseball bat. After two weeks of their pestering, the case was bumped up to Investigator John Hicks, who met with Judy. On March 31, he sat down with two other investigators, Mike Guerra and Glenn Grove, to discuss it. The situation looked pretty bad--bad enough for Investigator Guerra to type out a two-page affidavit for a search warrant, "duly sworn upon oath."

Guerra did good work. In the affidavit, he dramatically outlined all the crucial elements of the case against this kid. He detailed the specificity of Eric's plans, his methods, and his ordnance. He quoted liberally from Eric's Web site to provide proof. But most important, Guerra drew the connection to physical evidence: a bomb matching those in Eric's descriptions had recently been discovered near his home. The Harris house was to be searched for any literature, notes, or physical material related to the construction of explosives, as well as all e-mail correspondence--presumably to include the Web site.

The affidavit was convincing. It was filed. It was not signed or taken before a judge. It was not acted upon in any way. A plausible explanation for inaction was never provided. Years later, one official said Guerra was drawn away to another case, and when he returned, the affidavit, as written, lacked the timeliness required to take it to a judge.

The Browns said that Investigator Hicks also knew about Eric's arrest for the van break-in. There was no indication that he or anyone from the sheriff's department ever relayed their damning evidence about Eric to the Diversion officers. Magistrate DeVita was provided no indication before he approved them for the program.

Senior officials from the sheriff's department, the DA's office, and the criminal court were unaware of one another's actions concerning Eric. But Eric apparently knew what they were all up to. Eric got wind that the Browns were on to him, so he took his Web site down for a while. There is no indication he ever learned of Dylan's betrayal. There is no sign that he suspected.

Eric was getting serious about his plans now, and he would not risk posting anything about them on the Web again. He pulled out a spiral notebook and began a journal. For the next year, he would record his progress toward the attack and thoroughly explain his motives.

38. Martyr

She's in the martyrs' hall of fame," Cassie's pastor proclaimed at her funeral. That was not hyperbole. A noted religious scholar predicted Cassie could become the first officially designated Protestant martyr since the sixteenth century. "This is really quite extraordinary," he said. "The flames of martyrdom are being fanned by these various preachers, who apparently have embellished the story as they have told it. It takes on a life of its own."

In the Weekly Standard, Weekly Standard, J. Bottum compared her to the third-century martyrs Perpetua and Felicity and "the tales of the thousands of early Christians who went joyously to their deaths in the Roman coliseums." And the response felt like the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, Bottum said. He foresaw a generation of kids rising up to recast our cultural landscape. He later described a national change of heart, "trembling on the cusp of breaking forth.... It's an ever-widening faith that the whole pornographic, violent, anarchic disaster of popular American culture will soon be swept away." J. Bottum compared her to the third-century martyrs Perpetua and Felicity and "the tales of the thousands of early Christians who went joyously to their deaths in the Roman coliseums." And the response felt like the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, Bottum said. He foresaw a generation of kids rising up to recast our cultural landscape. He later described a national change of heart, "trembling on the cusp of breaking forth.... It's an ever-widening faith that the whole pornographic, violent, anarchic disaster of popular American culture will soon be swept away."

It was a great story. It gave Brad and Misty tremendous relief. They were due. The Enemy had taken on their little girl before. And in the first round, The Enemy had won.

It had been possession, pure and simple; that's how Misty saw it. The Enemy had crept into her house a decade earlier, but remained hidden until the winter of 1996. She discovered his presence just before Christmas. She had just quit her job as a financial analyst at Lockheed Martin in order to be a better, full-time mom. It was a tough transition, and Misty went looking for a Bible for inspiration. She found one in Cassie's room, and she also discovered a stack of letters. They were disturbing.

The letters documented a vigorous correspondence between Cassie and a close friend. The friend bitched about a teacher and then suggested, "Want to help me murder her?" The pages were filled with hard-core sex talk, occult imagery, and magic spells. They hammered a persistent refrain: "Kill your parents!... Make those scumbags pay for your suffering.... Murder is the answer to all of your problems."

Misty found only the friend's letters, but they suggested a receptive audience. Blood cocktails and vampires appeared throughout, in descriptions and illustrations. A teacher was shown stabbed with butcher knives, lying in her own blood. Figures labeled Ma and Pa were hung by their intestines. Bloody daggers were lodged in their chests. A gravestone was inscribed "Pa and Ma Bernall."

"My guts are hungry for that weird stuff," one letter said. "I fucking need to kill myself, we need to murder your parents. School is a fucking bitch, kill me with your parents, then kill yourself so you don't go to jail."

Misty called Brad, then the sheriff. They waited for Cassie to come home. First, Cassie tried to downplay the letters. Then she got angry. She hated them, she said. She admitted to writing letters in kind. She screamed. She said she would run away. She threatened to kill herself.

Rev. Dave McPherson, the youth pastor at West Bowles, counseled Brad and Misty to get tough. "Cut her phone, lock the door, pull her out of school," he said. "Don't let her out of the house without supervision." That's what they did. They transferred Cassie to a private school. They let her leave the house only for youth group at the church.

A bitter struggle followed. "She despised us at first," Reverend McPherson said. She would threaten to run away and launch into wild, graphic screaming fits.

"I'm going to kill myself!" Brad recalled her yelling. "Do you want to watch me? I'll do it, just watch. I'll kill myself. I'll put a knife right here, right through my chest."

Cassie cut her wrists and bludgeoned her skull. She would lock herself in the bathroom and bash her head against the sink counter. Alone in her bedroom, she beat it against the wall. With her family, she was sullen and spoke in monosyllables.

"There is no hope for that girl," Reverend McPherson thought. "Not our kind of hope."

Cassie described the ordeal in a notebook her parents found after her death: I cannot explain in words how much I hurt. I didn't know how to deal with this hurt, so I physically hurt myself.... Thoughts of suicide obsessed me for days, but I was too frightened to actually do it, so I "compromised" by scratching my hands and wrists with a sharp metal file until I bled. It only hurt for the first couple minutes, then I went numb. Afterwards, however, it stung very badly, which I thought I deserved anyway.

Suddenly, one night three months later, Cassie shook The Enemy free. It was after sunset, at a youth group praise and worship service in the Rocky Mountains. Cassie got caught up in the music and suddenly broke down crying. She blubbered hysterically to a friend, who couldn't make out half of what she said. When Misty picked her up from the retreat, Cassie rushed up, hugged her, and said, "Mom, I've changed. I've totally changed."

Brad and Misty were skeptical, but the change took. "She left an angry, vengeful, bitter young girl and came back brand-new," Reverend Kirsten said.

After the conversion, Cassie attended youth ministry enthusiastically, sported a WWJD bracelet, and volunteered for a program that helped ex-convicts in Denver. The following fall, Brad and Misty allowed her to transfer to Columbine High. But she struggled with social pressures right up to her last days. She did not attend prom that last weekend. She did not believe that kids liked her. The day before Cassie was killed, the leaders of her youth group gathered for a staff meeting. One of the items on the agenda was "How do we get Cassie to fit in better?"

Brad and Misty Bernall were forthcoming about Cassie's history. A few weeks after the massacre, it was widely reported in the media. By then, two other martyr stories had surfaced. Valeen Schnurr's account was remarkably similar to Cassie's, except for the chronology and the outcome. Val was shot before before her exchange about God. Dylan pointed his shotgun under her table and fired several rapid bursts, killing Lauren Townsend and injuring Val and another girl. Val was riddled with shotgun pellets up and down her arms and torso. Dylan walked away. her exchange about God. Dylan pointed his shotgun under her table and fired several rapid bursts, killing Lauren Townsend and injuring Val and another girl. Val was riddled with shotgun pellets up and down her arms and torso. Dylan walked away.

Val dropped to her knees, then her hands. Blood was streaming out of thirty-four separate wounds. "Oh my God, oh my God, don't let me die," she prayed.

Dylan turned around. This was too rich. "God? Do you believe in God?"

She wavered. Maybe she should keep her mouth shut. No. She would rather say it. "Yes. I believe in God."

"Why?"

"Because I believe. And my parents brought me up that way."

Dylan reloaded, but something distracted him. He walked off. Val crawled for shelter.

Once she made it out, Val was loaded into an ambulance, transported to St. Anthony's, and rushed into surgery. Her parents, Mark and Shari, were waiting for her when she came to. Val started blurting out what had happened almost immediately. She made a full recovery, and her story never varied. Numerous witnesses corroborated her account.