The Cell

I shouldn't be telling you this, but there are some things a man just can't keep on his chest. I always thought I was a tough man. A man with a firm grip on his beliefs. You can't work in the corrections system without a steel spine.

The soft ones wind up dead, and the cruel ones too. I had to walk the razor's edge between authority and comradery just to survive my nine to five. For twenty years I punched my card, collected my pistol from a metal cubby, and starched my collars for the Nevada State Prison.

I was tasked with overseeing D-Block. I had 120 men under my direct supervision at any given time. Sometimes there were more, but never less than 120. I worked with a revolving door of youngsters just cutting their teeth on the uniform.

The warden always sent me greenhorns. He wanted to see if they had the stomach required to hack it at this job. Most didn't, but the ones that did learned how to handle the roughest men D-Block had to offer.

We'd pace like guard dogs along the walks, counting off inmates for role-call, searching cells for contraband, moving bodies to the mess hall, then to the rec yard and back. I can still smell the chemical cleaner they used to mop the concrete with.

I've met my fare share of men who weren't right with the man upstairs, but none of them could hold a candle to Wendell Murdoch. You'd never know it to look at him, but Satan lived behind those dead, grey eyes and that's the Lord's truth.

Wendell was a geeky thing, slight framed, and a head shorter than most of the boys I oversaw. His thick glasses hid too-small eyes that peaked out from sunken sockets. The constant mumbling and grumbling that hummed from his thin lips was a mess of hate and vitriol that would make a demon shudder. He was at the prison before me, and he stayed long after I retired.

Mr. Murdoch was serving three life sentences consecutively with no opportunity of parole. Judge Wriggins made sure he'd rot there until the devil came to take his stagnant soul to the brimstone. I worked there for five years before I ever even knew what he done. It was the sort of thing that could only be retold over a hard glass of whiskey and the smoke of a cigar.

The seventh generation of the Ford Thunderbird had just come out, so it must have been in '77 or somewhere thereabouts. My CO was a mountain of a man named O'Halleran. He always had two days worth of five O'clock shadow, and his black hair greased back. That irishman would chew on a cigar butt from startin' time till clock out and only light it once he stepped out the main gate. He once said it let him know he'd survived the day.

Anyway, he invited me to Pattie's Pub for a nightcap and I obliged, still eager to win over the boss. The day was hotter 'an hell and my uniform was sticking to me. Thick smoke hung like canonfire in the bar, making the barkeeper look hazy from only a few feet away.

Men will tell you that if you get a guy a few glasses into the good stuff he'll spill his whole life story. The entire time we were sat there swapping war stories I could tell something was off. He kept rubbing the thick hairs on the back of his neck and tugging at the collar of his uniform. I'd seen this man defuse a riot with nothing but a left hook and Irish luck, and go back to eating his lunch without so much as gettin' the shakes. He was a legend among the guards, so seeing him rattled was unnerving to say the least.

When I asked him what was up he took a deep breath and clenched his shot glass as though it was his lifeline. "That twisted son-of-a-bitch Murdoch." With one flick of his wrist the liquid courage was down his gullet and he let out a rough sigh. "Bastard shivved Carter on the way to the showers."

I scrunched my brows at him in confusion. Inmates attacking inmates was almost a daily occurance. I couldn't wrap my head around why something like that would have O'Halleran frazzled.

"D'you know what for?" I asked him. O'Halleran chuffed and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Jesus, Frank, does a cat need a reason to kill a canary?" Sausage-like fingers ran through his hair and his eye slipped back to the bartop. "There was blood everywhere. Took my eyes off 'em for a split second. Next thing I know Carter's on the ground hollerin' and trying to hold his guts in while Murdoch's using the poor bastard's blood to paint pictures on the wall." He related this news to me with a shudder and flagged the barkeeper for another shot.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked down at my neglected glass of bourbon. Suddenly my mouth felt dryer than the mojave, and it wasn't the sort of itch that water alone could scratch. I took a swig and felt the fiery beverage slip down my throat and into my stomach. A long silence hung between us before I gathered the gumption to pipe up.

"What did he paint?" I asked curiously.

"Christ, if I know!" O'Halleran bellowed. I could have sworn the whole bar stopped for a heartbeat and stared at his booming outburst. "Bunch of shapes and circles. Didn't care to try to decipher that batshit crazy scribblin'!" He fell silent for a moment and got the look. There's a time when a man can't do nuthin' but give a fifty-yard stare. What follows that look is usually a tale to make your blood run cold. I'd seen my Daddy make that face as he told me about D-Day over my first beer.

"D'you know what that animal is in for?" The way his brassy voice got real low made it seem like he was whispering a secret. Shocked into silence, I shook my head in response. With a curt nod O'Halleran buckled into his resolve and seemed to speak even quieter as he leaned towards me.

"I remember readin' about him in the paper. It was all over the news. They called him a 'family annihilator' or some other psychobabble bullshit like that." O'Halleran breathed through his nostrils like a bull fixin to charge into an uncomfortable situation. "There ain't no four dollar word in the paper that could sum up what he was. I saw the crime scene photos. Looked like a pack of wild animals killed those families. If it wasn't for the markin's on the wall you'd think some kind of blood bomb just went off."

The more O'Halleran said, the more uneasy I felt. My CO shook his head and stared at the bartop with a look like he'd lost all faith in the world. "That's not even the worst of it."

As I imagined his words in my mind's eye I shuddered to think what could be darker. What could make the legend of the jailhouse go green about the gills?

"He killed the parents first... made the kids watch... and the way he left 'em..." The words caught in his throat and I could have sworn his eyes were misty. "Their broken little bodies were thrown on the floor lookin' like butcher's scraps."

I felt my stomach turn and the blood drain from my face. I'd dealt with my fair share of murderers, but men who could do something like that... The don't come about every day. To think that I'd been supervising one for five years, and never knew it, was a shock. A man in my line of work relies on his ability to read people. I had believed up to that point that I had that unattainable gift to discern a killer in a crowd of common thieves. I thought, stupidly, that I was in control; that I could spot a threat.

I cannot put into words how that realization terrified me.