Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [96]
Two nerdy boys show up for a pool party at the home of a snooty preppy girl named Buffy. She shuts the door in their faces.
They return, however, this time dressed in black suit jackets, white shirts, black ties, black fedoras, and of course dark glasses, exactly like the Blues Brothers as portrayed by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, except that in place of black slacks the boys wear gaudy swim trunks. One boy solemnly opens a briefcase. His friend reaches in and pulls out the Super Soaker. “Oh, Buffeeee,” he calls in a mocking, nasal voice. She turns. He fires. Buffy is so shocked she spills her glass of punch over her face and torso.
The punch, of course, is dark red.
It was this lesson, above all, that Nicholas Elliot absorbed: when all else fails, maybe a gun can solve your problem.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NICHOLAS
TWO DIFFERENT TEACHERS TOLD LORA FARLEY that her mother, Karen, was either tending to a wounded teacher or comforting a teacher who had been chased. Both scenarios seemed plausible to her. That’s the kind of woman her mother was, always giving and always getting involved. “I was like, ‘Well, that sounds right too. I can see her doing both of them, but I don’t know how she could do it at the same time.’ ”
Soon afterward, a teacher asked Will and Lora to come out into the hall.
“And one of my teachers was standing there and she was staring off … like out into where all the trailers were. She like gave me a hug and then they said, ‘Take them back in the auditorium.’
“So we went back in the auditorium, and then about ten or twenty minutes later, they came and got us and they took us into Pastor Sweet’s office, and my pastor was there.” (The Farleys were members of a different church but sent their kids to Atlantic Shores.) “They never said that, you know, your mom has been shot or your mom is dead. They just—my pastor was crying, and then, I mean, we just sort of knew what had happened.”
Sweet was at the hospital waiting as Sam Marino underwent emergency surgery. One of his assistants telephoned him there. “George, you need to get back here right away.”
“Why?”
“They found Karen Farley and she’s dead.”
“She came at you?” Det. Donald Adams asked Nicholas as their conversation proceeded.
Nicholas nodded.
“Did she say something to you about the gun?”
“She did say something, but I didn’t really hear her.”
“Then what did you do? You didn’t want her to take the gun, so what did you do?”
“It went off again.”
“Do you know how many times?”
“Once, I think. I’m pretty sure once.”
Adams spent the next few moments trying to pin Nicholas down on exactly what had occurred and in what order. Periodically his mother inserted questions and urged Nicholas to tell the truth.
“I know I went in there and she wanted the gun,” Nicholas said. “… She was saying something, but I didn’t hear her. She was coming at me and the gun went off.”
Mrs. Elliot asked impatiently, “You didn’t hear what she was saying?”
“I’m not deaf,” Nicholas said.
But he could not remember.
Bill Farley learned of his wife’s death about two o’clock that afternoon from his pastor, who arrived accompanied by a female police officer. The Virginia Beach police had not found Mrs. Farley until ninety minutes after the shootings when the head count determined she alone was missing. A teacher saw her through the window in her trailer, but could not reach her because the door was locked. One of the Virginia Beach officers rushed over and broke the glass with his baton.
“It was unbelievable,” Farley said, recalling his reaction. “Nobody gets shot at a Christian school. It’s in