The Ballad of Elmer Crowder

*** Author’s Note ***

 *** This is fiction, pure and simple, it’s just a story from a guy who worked homicide cases for a living. If it gives you a look at where some “shooters” come from, that’s fine…just remember it’s an opinion, not a case study ****

Elmer Crowder died last Tuesday. Elmer grew up in a little town in northern Illinois, it wasn’t much of a town, just a wide spot in the road where a narrow blacktop crossed the CB&Q railroad tracks. His father, on the rare occasions he was around, was a day laborer, a drunk who settled most things at home with the back of his hand, or a belt. His mother, usually in long sleeves to cover the bruises, was quiet, kind of reclusive, she didn’t say much to Elmer, but she always smiled at him with a painful, almost apologetic smile. Through his grade school years, Elmer developed a keen interest, some might say an obsession with geography. On his dilapidated old bicycle, he explored the county and drew detailed maps of the roads, trails, cow paths, rivers, bridges, and railroad tracks. While the other kids were doing math or English, Elmer was buried in a geography book, an atlas or a map. This drew the ire of his teacher, Mrs. McClary, a large, scowling woman perpetually dressed in a gray smock, who ruled the classroom like a prison guard. Mrs. McClary seldom missed the opportunity, in front of the class, to tell Elmer he’d never amount to much because he didn’t follow the rules. While Elmer couldn’t physically confront this menacing gray presence, he learned to give the bare minimum of required attention, and let his thoughts wander to a safer place. On some days, when she’d berated him in front of the class, he’d stare at her, picturing her getting run over by one of the trains on the CB&Q.  He resented her, more and more, he wasn’t bothering anyone with his geography studies, so why did she feel the need to control what he was doing? He was in the 7th grade, when, one evening, his mother put on her coat, walked out the back door and never came back. It didn’t change Elmer’s life much, because for all practical purposes, he’d raised himself for as long as he could remember. His father would stop by once or twice a week, leave him a few bucks for groceries and to keep the power and phone on. Shy and introverted, Elmer developed keen survival instincts, and a loner’s knack for watching and listening, seldom missing anything around him. Over the years, he’d became comfortable in his solitary world, he didn’t bother anyone, and he didn’t expect anyone to bother him. He’d never fought authority, or convention, he simply ignored them. Short and pudgy with a baby face, usually in clothes that were patched, out of fashion and mismatching, he was the butt of jokes, and routinely bullied. His primary tormentor in grade school was Darren Cunningham. Darren was a big athletic kid whose father owned a couple of local banks. Darren’s favorite game was making Elmer’s life a living hell because he was different. One afternoon in front of a crowd on the playground, for no reason, he punched Elmer in the face, giving him a bloody nose. Elmer didn’t try to fight back against the bigger kid, he just walked away to the jeers and cat calls, shoved a bunch of toilet paper up his nose to stop the bleeding and walked away. Through his observation and study of the townspeople, Elmer knew that every evening after dark, Darren rode his shiny new Schwinn ten speed bike around town and peeked in windows. On his nightly trips, Darren never failed to ride down an alley behind the small local grocery store that would have closed for the evening. Elmer walked to the lumber yard at the local grain elevator, carefully selected a 2x4 about four feet long, walked to the dark alley and waited at a place he’d scouted. When Darren came cruising down the alley, Elmer stepped out, swung the 2x4 like a baseball bat, as hard as he could, hitting Darren directly in the face, breaking his nose and knocking out his front teeth. As his tormentor lay on the ground holding both hands to his face and sobbing,  Elmer calmly walked over, wiped the bloody spot on the 2x4 on Darren’s shirt and said, “I’m sorry you fell off your bicycle, but if you keep saying mean things to me, or tell anybody what happened here, I’ll kill you,” then calmly walked off to return the 2x4 back to the lumber yard- he hadn’t paid for it and it’d be wrong to keep it. Elmer noticed when Darren came back to school three days later, he lisped when he talked because he was missing his front teeth. Darren was a changed person, no longer the school bully, and when he saw Elmer, Darren lowered his eyes and moved away. Elmer filed this away. Perhaps, he told himself, sometimes direct action is the best course. Graduating to high school, where cliques, dating and social life are the norm, he felt even more disconnected. If asked about him, a classmate would have probably responded, “…a little pudgy guy, keeps to himself, seems nice, but weird, kind of off in his own world…” Elmer clearly didn’t fit in and could have cared less, he was far happier alone with his thoughts, making his own decisions. Turning sixteen with his father seldom, if ever around, Elmer bought an old pickup truck from a local farmer, which allowed him to explore and map new areas. Around the same time, his first computer brought a new obsession- politics and he approached it with the same intensity he’d studied local geography. Safe in the privacy and autonomy of online, he read every evening until late, occasionally chatted with kindred spirits, all the while shielded from bullying, ridicule, and rejection. His thoughts and musings became darker and more adversarial. Over time, already distrustful of the outside world, he began to accept the idea of confrontation and radical measures against the Darren’s of the world, their money, their power, their bullying, the world would be a better place without them. He’d become fixated on one presidential candidate, wealthy, brash, prone to name calling, bullying and threatening. The more Elmer read about the candidate online and watched him on television, the more intense his feelings became- he’d become convinced of the threat he posed. After two sleepless nights in front of the computer, Elmer fell asleep from exhaustion on the third night and had a vivid dream that confirmed what he needed to do. The candidate would be holding a campaign in two days, just thirty miles away at a fairground, it was as if the candidate was coming that close to personally taunt him. He’d never been interested in firearms, but knew his father had an AR15 rifle in the bedroom closet. Using a YouTube video, he disassembled the rifle, carefully cleaned, oiled and reassembled it. With the same attention to detail, he removed the 556mm ammo from the 30-round magazine, wiped it down with a lightly oiled cloth and reloaded the magazine. He spent the rest of the day watching videos on operating an AR15 rifle and basic marksmanship. Elmer didn’t bother researching the location, he knew it well from his mapping expeditions. Knowing every back road, farm road and deer path, he was confident he could get into close proximity to the candidate. Elmer Crowder died at 3:12PM the next day after he fired a four-round burst at the candidate from his father’s AR15 rifle, one of the shots grazing the candidate’s ear. Approximately three seconds later, Elmer was hit in the center of the forehead by a ballistic tip 300 Winchester Magnum cartridge travelling at about 3,200 feet a second, fired by a Secret Service Counter Sniper rifleman….