We’ll Never Get the Answers

Dearest Rachel –

This past Thursday, Daniel and I stayed quite a bit later at the folks’ house after dinner than we normally do. Often, we’ll stick around and watch a bit of the news with them until the first commercial, at which point, we’ll bundle up their trash and roll the bins out to the curb (since Friday is their garbage collection day in this part of town). This time around, the news had us all transfixed; and it wasn’t just a case of being captured by the enchanted box or anything.

Long story short – because this story will disappear into the ether in fairly short order, despite being barely a week old – a fellow burst into a study session at an Ivy League college in Rhode Island, shot a dozen or so students (killing two and injuring at least nine – and there have been some claims that one or the other of the victims was a specific target) before disappearing into the mists. Somehow, he managed to avoid getting captured on the school’s security cameras, despite there being something on the order of a thousand-plus of them on campus – as the story goes, very few of them were either on or plugged into the feed at headquarters, all of which makes the school look very incompetent at best, which it another reason why this story will disappear quickly – before making his way to Massachusetts, where he gunned down an M.I.T. professor who was supposedly one of the leading lights in fusion research. Finally, after some actual police work by a homeless guy living on the university campus (wow, such security at this school! But it turns out to be a good thing he was there), this shooter was tracked down to a self-storage business in New Hampshire.

It was the stakeout that we found ourselves staring at after Thursday night’s meal, before the police made their way into the storage facility. All those aerial shots and the interviews with various experts in police procedure and criminal psychology; despite the horrific activity that had led to this (as well as, it would turn out, the grisly find that would eventually conclude it), there’s no denying that, in the moment, it was fascinating; enough so that we stayed for the entire hour of the broadcast, rather than leaving at a quarter after the hour, like we usually do. For the record, we still took out the trash for the folks; after a meal such as the one Mom prepared, it’s the least we could do.

We might have stayed longer, in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that the interviewees indicated that the police weren’t going to be making some kind of dramatic burst into the facility they had surrounded, guns blazing. There was no need for that, after all, as the suspect (who even then, wasn’t confirmed to be the shooter, or even to be there – it was acknowledged that he could have slipped out of the building, although the storage place had more functional cameras on it, and they never caught him exiting after entering) was presumably trapped inside, and it would be best to keep any collateral damage to a minimum. The decision had been made to wait him out, so this was not going to be resolved in an hour’s time. In theory, we would find out more in the morning.

Which we did; apparently overnight, after casing each storage unit methodically for booby traps and the like, they found the gunman – or what was left of him, as he’d saved them the trouble of taking him out. So we have a name – not that I can remember it at the moment, and as you’re not likely to see him on your side, there’s no point in mentioning it – a face… and that’s about it. No motive, no rationale… and so many other questions that we’ll never get the answers to.

The university, in particular, has a lot to answer for. Beyond the fact that, evidently, few of their cameras were either working or being watched, there’s the fact that they posted the location of them online, giving anyone who wanted to do something nefarious clues as to where to avoid their (not-so) all-seeing eyes. And during the course of the manhunt, the faculty scrubbed the webpage of one of their graduate student assistants; it turned out that he was not the shooter, but the individual has disappeared from the campus, both literally and virtually, as if he never existed. Needless to say, that only raises more questions, but considering that the university president and other representative have been tight-lipped about it and every other subject at press conferences (which begs the question; why even have a press conference if you’re going the plead either ignorance or the fifth? It only serves to make you look ignorant, incompetent or complicit), it’s clear that nothing is going to come of that angle, either.

Especially now that the shooter has supposedly been identified and neutralized; despite the fact that identifying and disseminating his particulars might have saved the M.I.T. professor, the attitude seems to be one of “what has happened, has happened” and there’s nothing to be done about it. At least the general public is safe – although that was being said in the middle of the manhunt, too, which is also strange. Did the authorities know who was being targeted, and that this killer wouldn’t strike someone at random? If so, how did they know that, despite having tracked down several red herrings beforehand (including a person of interest that they released hours after the initial shooting, as well as the student assistant mentioned earlier who the university ‘unpersoned’)? If it weren’t for the loss of life, they would make the Keystone Kops look like Sherlock Holmes.

The thing is, honey, I meant to make this into a prologue of how many things in life frustrate me, because I’ll never get the answers to any of the questions I’ve already brought up. To be sure, from halfway across the country, it’s not as if I need to know the answers to this, personally – although the families of the students (who you may have met, by the way, judging from their biographies) deserve as much – but it’s just one more example of what will never be understood. I get that there are things that we aren’t meant to know – that we couldn’t be trusted with the understanding – but when understanding what went wrong could help prevent something like this in the future, why wouldn’t we want to know? And why shouldn’t we find out? And why not let the world know, since this isn’t likely to take place in the same place next time (and you know that, now that it’s happened once, someone might get it into their head that, with a little more planning, they could do it better, meaning that there will be a next time)? I didn’t mean to turn this into a rant, but that seems to be where we are.

This is why I try not to talk about the news or politics in these letters, generally; even when the situation resolves, it isn’t really resolved all that well. And while it’s understood that life doesn’t come wrapped in a neat little bow like a Christmas present, the fact that every answer comes with so many more questions, like a rhetorical hydra, strikes me as grotesquely fascinating. It’s the sort of thing we would talk about together for some time, if you’ll recall, and I appreciate your indulging me as I send this off to you. I just wish I could hear your side of the subject; especially since you’re on the side where, presumably, you actually have the answers.

IN the meantime, honey, I’d appreciate it if you’d just keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.