Being shot by Philbrick

The final shooting of Charles Decker by Captain Frank Philbrick brings the Placerville High School hostage crisis to a violent close, but the event is less a clean resolution than a staged performance that allows Decker to escape the unbearable aftermath of his own actions. After releasing his classmates and finding Ted Jones reduced to a catatonic state, Decker deliberately provokes Philbrick into shooting him, transforming a police takedown into a suicide-by-cop that seals his legal fate as legally insane.

The Setup and the Staged Provocation

After the shades are raised and the hostages file out, Decker is alone in Room 16 with Ted Jones, who sits against the green cinderblock wall with his legs splayed out, drooling and staring into emptiness. Decker removes the crumpled wad of math paper from Ted's mouth and pats his cheek gently, but Ted only shrinks away and makes mewling sounds. When Philbrick comes on the intercom and orders Decker to come out with his hands up, Decker refuses, saying he is "pretty goddamn tired" and that "this psycho business is a hell of a drain on the glands." Philbrick threatens to shoot in gas canisters, but Decker counters that there is still one hostage inside—Ted Jones, whom he describes as having "stubbed his toe." Philbrick is wary and accuses Decker of lying, but Decker insists, then invites Philbrick to come down, claiming the gun is unloaded and in a desk drawer, and suggests they play cribbage so Philbrick can later tell the papers how he did it single-handed and maybe make the cover of Time. Philbrick clicks off the intercom without answering.

The Shooting and Its Immediate Aftermath

When Philbrick steps through the door, he glances down at the drooling Ted and then up at Decker, beginning to ask what in the name of God Decker did. Decker makes as if to grab something behind Mrs. Underwood's desktop row of books and plants, screaming, "Here it comes, you shit cop!" Philbrick shoots him three times. The shooting is the final act of the crisis, and it is immediately followed by the legal proceedings that define Decker's fate. The court document dated August 27, 1976, records that Charles Everett Decker is convicted of the willful murder of Jean Alice Underwood and John Downes Vance, but five state psychiatrists determine that he cannot at that time be held accountable for his actions by reason of insanity. The court remands him to Augusta State Hospital, where he will be held in treatment until he can be certified responsible to answer for his acts—a condition Decker himself interprets as "until shit sticks on the moon, baby."

The Deeper Significance: A Pattern of Provocation and Escape

The shooting is the culmination of a pattern that runs through Decker's life: he provokes authority figures into violent responses that then define him as a victim or a case rather than an agent. Earlier in the novel, Decker recalls how, after his father beat him with a belt in the garage, he picked up a hatchet and threatened to cut his father's head off, and his father backed down. That confrontation ended with Decker getting six stitches in his cheek and lying to his mother about tripping over stove wood. In the classroom, Decker similarly provokes Philbrick by feigning a grab for a weapon, knowing Philbrick will shoot. The shooting thus becomes a way for Decker to exit the situation without having to face the consequences of what he has done—the dead teachers, the traumatized classmates, the ruined Ted Jones. It is a surrender that looks like a takedown, a defeat that feels like a victory, and a final act of control over his own narrative.

The Legal and Institutional Aftermath

The shooting leads directly to Decker's institutionalization, but the legal language of the court document—"cannot at this time be held accountable for his actions, by reason of insanity"—becomes a new cage. Decker is sent to Augusta State Hospital, where he does jigsaw puzzles, eats custard he hates, and keeps a small secret: he pretends to like the custard. The shooting thus completes the transformation of Charles Decker from a student into a legal case, a psychiatric patient, and a figure whose story is now told by others—the newspapers, the psychiatrists, the courts. The final chapter of the novel, written from inside the hospital, shows Decker reflecting on his yearbook, which his mother sent but he has not yet unwrapped. He thinks he might look at the senior pictures soon, once he can make himself believe that there will be no black streaks on their hands, no ink. The shooting, then, is not an ending but a threshold into a new kind of existence—one in which Decker is both imprisoned and protected, both punished and excused, both alive and already dead to the world he left behind.