Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun

^{CHAPTER SIX} NICHOLAS

NICHOLAS DID COME ACROSS BILLY CUTTER on Friday morning, and true to form Cutter again called him a name. Nicholas went into a bathroom and took his Cobray from his backpack. He left both there, however, and exited the room. What he did next is not entirely clear. According to his own statement, made to Det. Donald Adams, the lead homicide investigator, he wandered into the band room and, at one point, helped a man with the very apt name of Mike Lucky.

At some point between ten-twenty and ten twenty-two that morning, Nicholas walked into one of the trailers—the relocation modular units—that had been partitioned into classrooms. The room, called T108, was small, one of three classrooms built from a large trailer akin to those that serve as field offices at large construction sites. Each classroom had windows, its own door, and a stairway down to the central courtyard of the school. Other similarly divided trailers were positioned around the courtyard. Room T108 was occupied at that moment by a single individual, Sam Marino, who taught French and English at the school.

Nicholas, who that semester was taking Marino’s sixth-period French I class, asked Marino if he could help him practice dialogue. Nicholas offered to go to his locker and bring back a tape recorder he claimed to have brought with him that morning. It might help with the practice, he told Marino. Could he go and get it?

Marino said he would be glad to help, but not right then. He knew Nicholas was scheduled to be in the Bible class just getting under way in the trailer across the courtyard, taught by M. Hutchinson Matteson—“Hutch”—a popular teacher and the church’s youth pastor. “I told Nicholas he should be getting to his other class,” Marino recalled. He told the boy to come back later.

Just as Nicholas left the trailer, another teacher, Susan Allen, walked in. Her next period was free, and she customarily came to T108 to take a break, grade papers, and prepare for her next classes. She and Marino chatted a bit as Marino gathered his books under his arm and braced himself for the bitterly cold walk to his next class. Allen was now sitting at the desk; Marino was standing with his back to the door.

He felt the frigid blast of outside air, then heard something thud to the floor. The impact undoubtedly was caused when Nicholas let his backpack fall from his grasp. Marino did not turn around, however. He and Allen continued talking for another thirty seconds, maybe another minute. “All of a sudden,” Marino said, “I heard a real, real loud noise.”

He whirled toward the sound. “At first I thought it was like an M80—like a big, big firecracker—real loud. I didn’t know what it was, and so I turned around and looked.”

He saw Nicholas and saw too that he was holding something. There was nothing unusual about his appearance or his expression, Marino later testified. Nicholas was, as always, “Mr. Serious,” Marino said. Although Nicholas often walked around with a smile, he somehow managed at the same time to seem very sober and earnest. “He wanted to show me something,” Marino said. “He was intent on showing me something.”

Nicholas held what appeared to be a toy. It was black and sharply angled. Whatever it was, it had the shape of a gun, but the idea it might be a real firearm had not settled in Marino’s mind. “In a situation like that, I’m a very positive individual,” Marino said. “You want to think it’s not what you really thought you saw or heard.”

He believed it might be one of those hyperrealistic water guns that had become so popular. Or a very loud cap gun. Nicholas, wearing his usual Mr. Serious expression, pointed the thing at Marino.

“I’ve got something to show you,” he said. “I have this really neat toy.”

Susan Allen, watching from her desk, remembered thinking her own children had never had a toy like that. She too thought it might be a cap gun, or maybe a water pistol—“one of those big, long water guns; so I really didn’t panic.”

She told Nicholas, “We don’t have toys like that in school. Right now put it up. Better give it to Mr. Marino.”

“No, no,” Nicholas said, “I’ve got to show you. It’s really neat.”

Sam Marino was angry. He did not like being startled that way. Whatever Nicholas had, it did not belong in school. “What is it?” Marino snapped. “A cap gun? A pop gun?”

“You’ll see what I’ve got,” Nicholas said.

Marino moved toward Nicholas, still unaware the toy was in fact a real gun. He demanded Nicholas hand it over.

Nicholas backed away.

“No,” Nicholas said again. “I’ve got to show you. It’s really neat. It works really great.”

As Marino advanced, Nicholas retreated, until he had backed to the far end of the little classroom. Marino now stood roughly three feet away from the boy.

“Give it to me,” Marino commanded.

“Nicholas,” Allen said from behind. “That’s enough. Give it to Mr. Marino.”

Nicholas seemed to relent. “Here it is.”

Allen thought the incident was now over, that Nicholas really did mean to hand the toy to Marino.

But Nicholas stepped back and coolly took aim.

Victims of gunplay hold up articles of all kinds in their last moments in the magical belief that even a sheet of paper might save them.

Marino held up his French I textbook.