[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 16: REALLY SCARY PEOPLE


I have prosecuted men who beat their wives to death. Men who shook infants until their brains were jelly in their skulls. A woman who stood over her sleeping husband and fired a .38 until she ran out of bullets, re-loaded and emptied her pistol again before calling the security officer.
I have prosecuted three teenagers – two 18-year-old guys and a 16-year-old girl -who took two couples they’d met at a club out into a wooded area, shot the guys, bangd their dates, shot the women, then dumped the bodies in a shallow grave, poured kerosene over them and set the bodies on fire.
I have prosecuted a husband who strangled his wife in her sleep, arranged a gasoline leak, set their house ablaze and managed to barely escape with his life, mourning the loss of his beloved spouse.
I have prosecuted three assholes who robbed a KFC, then walked the two employees on duty into the back, forced them to kneel and forced one to watch the other being shot in the head, then killed the lone witness while she begged for her life.
I prosecuted the Welaka cannibal, who told me he had cut a man’s eye out and left the other eye intact so he could witness the cannibal douse it with hot sauce and pop it in his mouth. Before dissecting the rest of his body carefully so the victim would live as long as possible.
I have seen and heard terrible things that haunt my sleep and my dreams. So why do I have such a bad feeling about a beautiful housewife and Realtor who’s never done anything more terrible than cheat on her husband, and screw two men in an attempt to spring her husband from jail?
OCTOBER 10, 2005 -- MONDAY - NOON
Buzz Holloway was the lieutenant on duty and he met me at the entrance to the jail, then led me through the maze back to the single cell where Paul Donnally was lying on his bunk. Tucker must have bought out a used book store. There were at least 30 paperbacks scattered around his cell. He looked up as I walked in.

“Maitland?”

“Hello, Paul, how are you doing?”

He put down the tattered paperback he had been reading. It was ‘Horseman, Ride By.” This was getting downright spooky. Six Degrees of Separation horseshit. There were too many connections. I decided to ignore it.
“Alright, I guess. I haven’t taken a week off work without Paula in 20 years. We’ve always been together so, it’s been a little strange. On the other hand, I


haven’t had to stare into her lying slut eyes for a week, so that’s the good part. Even the food isn’t too bad. Thank you for letting Gil come in to talk to me.”
“He’s a good friend?” “Better than I deserve.”
“I know the feeling. Look, Paul, we need to talk. I need YOU to talk to ME. To be honest, I get the feeling there are a lot of secrets that you’re holding back.”
“Everybody has secrets.”
“Can you stop for just a minute with that damned Zen crap? Things are happening - things involving your wife and you - things that are screwing up other people’s lives. Things that are hurting people who don’t deserve to be hurt because you and your wife royally screwed up your lives. Can you just for a few minutes talk to me like another human being?”
“What are you talking about?”
He rolled to his feet but didn’t get off the cot.
I looked at Holloway and then glanced around the cell and walkway. There were recording devices and I wasn’t sure he could, even if he wanted to, turn them off.
“I need to speak to him privately. Can you get us someplace where we can talk, without a recording?”
He thought about it for a moment.
Ten minutes later he and another guard had Donnally cuffed behind his back with the cuffs attached to leg manacles. They walked beside us as he shuffled along the walkway to a back elevator and then up to a third floor. They led us to a room with two doors, a microwave, a refrigerator, a table, two chairs and a couch that looked like it folded out.
“This is the staff room,” Holloway said. “Sometimes when things get really hectic, people will sack out or get a nap here. It’s even been known as a place where persons of the opposite sex can. meet.”

“Say no more. So this has NO taping.” “None.”

“I’ll rap on the door when we’re through. Okay?”

When they had left and Donnally was sitting back uncomfortably on the couch, I sat beside him.
“A friend of mine is facing the end of his marriage. He’s going to lose his wife and his kids unless I agree to drop the charges against you and let you walk. But, I’ve seen what you can do. I don’t know what the hell you are, but I know you could be deadly, and you’ve already come within a whisper of killing your wife - strangling her with your bare hands.
“So, if I don’t let you go, I’m going to be responsible for the destruction of a friend’s life. If I let you go, I’m afraid you’re going to go apeshit on me and kill


your wife. Then, I think, you’re going to kill yourself and you will leave two orphans behind. I’ll have to go through the rest of my life seeing the photos of your wife with her eyes popped out and her face blood red from all the ruptured capillaries. I’ve seen photos of people who’ve been strangled - it’s not pretty. I’ll dream about her, and you. I’ve been able to live with my dreams and I’ve seen some ugly things but, I don’t want to live with these new dreams. Please talk to me.”
“You said I’ve got a lot of secrets. You’re right. You have no idea, Maitland.” “Tell me a secret.”
“My grandfather died in an insane asylum, a facility for the criminally insane.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s not...I don’t believe in that crap about an insanity gene. He had problems with what we’d call anger issues today. He beat two men to death outside a bar one night up in Massachusetts. It was....he had what I’ve got. It’s nothing supernatural. They—the doctors at the facility where I spent some time - called it enhanced tendon strength. A doctor that did some research said that there’s some belief among researchers that it played a part in the legend of the Viking Berzerkers. Rage was one part, but having the strength to rip people apart was another big element. Tendon strength, like anything else, follows a Bell curve. You have people with very weak tendon strength at the bottom, then people like me at the top of the curve. If you have it, you can do some pretty incredible things, but it’s natural, just rare, the doctors tell me.”
“You must wow them at parties. How come Gil didn’t know anything about it? Also your wife didn’t know better than to piss off a guy with that kind of strength?”
He leaned forward and rested his chin on his linked hands, staring down at the floor.
“When I was young, a teenager, I did something, something very bad.”
He was silent for so long I thought he had turned off. Gone back into some world only he could enter.
“I was in therapy for a long time. I’d inherited my grandfather’s tendon strength and his anger. They taught me how to control it, and I did. I pushed it down. I pushed it so far back, back inside me, that it seemed like it went away, except that it never did, of course. It was there, waiting.
“It was there when I met Paula in college. God, I loved her. I kept everything inside, good and bad. She.....she was like a wildfire. Everything was more real, more colorful, more alive, when I was with her.”
He looked up at me.
“You were in love, so you know what it was like except, you weren’t crazy, you didn’t have to hide what you were. I couldn’t....I couldn’t let her  know

what I was.  see what I was. She wouldn’t have loved me, no one could.
“Somehow - somehow she fell in love with who, or what, she thought I was. We married, had children and made a life. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way - Gil told me - some man, a big Hispanic guy, came along and found what she really wanted. He took her away from me without me even knowing.”
He took deep breaths, as if trying to calm himself and the hair on the back of my neck rose, as if I were a kid again facing that big, mean dog by myself.
“So I lived with a woman who didn’t love me anymore; I didn’t know who she was and she didn’t know who I was. Kind of funny, actually, until - I found out. Then, all I wanted was to get away from her. It was the damnedest thing; she didn’t love me, she couldn’t love me, but she wouldn’t leave me alone - she wouldn’t leave me alone!
“She finally cornered me in our house and it came out - I had my hands around her neck before I knew it. It would have been so easy but, we were standing in front of pictures of our children. She was clawing at my hands, my face, but it was like she wasn’t there. They were there. They were looking at me. I couldn’t do it.
“That’s the story, Mr. Maitland. That’s who I am, what I am and why I can’t see Paula again, because I’ll kill her the next time, I know it. You can’t let me out.”