A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(10)

I remembered aloud that Dylan had asked the year before if I would consider buying him a gun for Christmas. The request was made in passing and came out of the blue. Surprised, I had asked why he wanted a gun, and he’d told me it would be fun to go to a shooting range sometime for target practice. Dylan knew how avidly anti-gun I was, so the request had taken me aback—even though we’d moved to a rural area, where hunting and hanging out at the shooting range were popular pastimes. As alien as it might have been to me personally, guns were an accepted part of the culture where we lived, and many of our neighbors and friends in Colorado were recreational firearm enthusiasts. So while I would never allow a gun under our roof, Dylan’s request for one didn’t set off any special alarm bells.

I’d suggested we search for his old BB gun instead. Dylan rolled his eyes, a teasing smile on his face: Moms. “It’s not the same thing,” he said, and I shook my head decisively. “I can’t imagine why you’d want a gun, and you know how your dad and I feel about them. You’re going to be eighteen shortly, and if you really want one, you can get one for yourself then. But you know I would never, ever buy you a gun.”

Dylan nodded fondly at me, and smiled. “Yeah, I knew you’d say that. I just thought I’d ask.” There was no intensity to the request, and no animosity when I dismissed it. He never mentioned a gun to me again, and I filed it in the same category as the other outlandish Christmas requests he’d made over the years. He hadn’t seriously thought we were going to get him a muscle car or gliding lessons, either.

The detective had another question: Was Dylan interested in explosives? I thought he was asking about firecrackers, and I answered truthfully: Dylan did like those. He’d accepted fireworks as payment when he’d worked at a fireworks display stand, one of his first summer jobs. (It’s legal to sell them in Colorado.) So he had a lot of them, which he kept safely stored in a big rubber bin in the garage. He set the firecrackers off on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed them; the rest of the year, they sat in the bin in the garage, forgotten. Dylan was a collector of a lot of things. I hadn’t heard anything yet about propane tanks or pipe bombs, so I had no idea what the detective was really asking me.

I felt small and frightened in the front seat of the detective’s car, but I was dedicated to answering his questions fully and truthfully. When he asked if I had ever seen any gun catalogs or magazines around the house, his question jarred something loose in my memory. A few catalogs with guns on the cover had arrived in the stacks of unwanted junk mail we received on a daily basis. I hadn’t paid any more attention to them than I had to the catalogs advertising personalized baby clothes or orthopedic devices for the elderly, and had thrown them away without looking at them. Dylan had pulled one of those catalogs out of the trash. He’d been looking for a pair of heavy-duty work boots to fit his large feet, and he found a pair of boots he liked in the catalog. When we learned they didn’t carry his size, I threw the catalog away a second time. He’d eventually found a pair of boots at an army surplus store.

I felt like the detective was looking at me with knowing eyes. Gotcha. Suddenly defensive and self-conscious, I heard myself begin to babble, trying to get this police officer to understand how many catalogs came every day, and why I hadn’t checked the addressee. I thought he’d understand if only I could make myself heard. I had always relied on my aptitude for addressing problems logically, and on my ability to communicate effectively. I did not yet understand—and would not for some time—that my version of reality was the one out of sync.

The detective asked about recent events, and I told him everything I could remember. A few weeks earlier, we’d visited the University of Arizona. Dylan had been accepted, and we wanted him to be able to plant his feet on the ground of his number-one pick to make sure the fit felt right. Just three days before, Dylan, handsome in a tuxedo, had posed with his prom date, smiling awkwardly while we snapped a picture. How could that boy be the one they were accusing?

But there was no answer forthcoming, nor any hope. The interview was over. As I climbed out of the detective’s car, I felt as if I were about to explode into a thousand pieces, bits of me spinning out into the stratosphere.

We still weren’t permitted into the house. Tom and Byron were still pacing the driveway. A police officer told us the investigators were waiting for the bomb squad, a piece of information that only added to our terror and confusion. Were they looking for a bomb? Had our home been booby-trapped by someone Dylan knew? But nobody would answer any of our questions, and we couldn’t tell if this was because they didn’t yet know exactly what had happened, or because we were suspects.

Because we had been standing for so long in our driveway, cut off from any media or news updates, we probably knew less than anyone else in Littleton—or the rest of the world, for that matter—about what was going on. Cell phones were not yet as ubiquitous as they are now; although Tom had one for work, its signal was blocked by the sandstone cliffs surrounding our house. The police had commandeered our home phone. Frightened and bewildered, all we could do was pray for our son.

We waited outside in the sun, perched on concrete steps or leaning against parked cars. Judy approached me. Dropping her voice confidentially, she told me about a violent website Eric had made. Still out of my mind with worry about Dylan, I didn’t understand why she was telling me about it, until I did: she’d known Eric was disturbed and dangerous for a long time.