“We want to close these cases, Mr. Donaldson.” The shorter one. “If you cooperate, we can talk about reducing your sentence. Maybe you can even get life, instead of the death penalty.”
Donaldson closed his eyes. They tried to talk to him for a few more minutes, and when he didn’t reply, they left.
Donaldson didn’t sleep well.
He dreamt of being dragged behind the car, reliving all of the pain and the horror and the fear in slow-motion. His arm breaking, then breaking again, and again, and again, each new snap loud as a gunshot. His legs and ass being stripped of skin as the pavement ate through his pants. Lucy giggling at him, holding a squirt bottle of lemon juice, gleefully spritzing his open wounds. Donaldson’s father watching the scene, standing over him with that constant look of disgust.
“I always knew you were a bad seed, boy.” Dad took off his belt, bounced the heavy, brass buckle off his palm. “Let’s see if I can’t whup the fear of God into you.”
Donaldson woke up, woozy from the pain meds, convinced his father was standing next to the bed. But it couldn’t have been his father, because he was too pale, his hair too long and dark.
“Who’s there?” Donaldson whispered into his dark room.
No one answered.
But Donaldson felt eyes on him. He sat up, wondering if Lucy had somehow gotten to him, feeling a sick spike of fear jab right into his heart.
Donaldson fumbled for the light switch.
Squinted as it came on.
He was alone in the room.
“Serves you right, having nightmares.” The guard outside the door nodded at Donaldson all-knowingly. “Things you done, you should be haunted forever.”
Donaldson flipped off the light. He closed his eyes.
You got it wrong, pig. I’m not haunted.
I’m the one that does the haunting.
But when Donaldson fell asleep, the nightmare started all over.
It was two in the morning. Donaldson was in pain.
He knew there was more pain to come. Much more.
While they didn’t handcuff him to his bed, the authorities had been very careful with him, just like the hick sheriff promised. Donaldson ate with a plastic spoon on paper plates. The metal bedpan was taken away as soon as he finished. Anything in his room that could be considered a weapon—even the TV and the drawers from the dresser—had been removed. That prick Lanz and those goddamn Feds had even taken away his IV. Cruel and unusual punishment, no doubt. If Donaldson went to trial, it would be something for his lawyer to protest.
But Donaldson wasn’t going to trial. He was getting the hell out of there.
He glanced at the cop outside the door, his ass molded to a chair, his back to Donaldson. There was a TV in the nurse’s station that the cop had been watching, but he hadn’t moved in over twenty minutes. Donaldson guessed he was asleep.
The nurse on duty made her rounds every half an hour. She was a painfully thin woman named Winslow, and she wasn’t due back until two-thirty.
Donaldson closed his eyes, focusing on his remaining ear, trying to tune into the sounds around him. The ward was quiet. Best as Donaldson could tell, about half the rooms on this wing were empty.
Slow week at the country hospital.
That would change in just a few minutes.
Donaldson eyed the brace holding his shattered arm together. Winslow had called the contraption an external fixation. Made of heavy gauge surgical steel, it ran from his shoulder to his wrist, four metal rods surrounding the limb. They were attached to four large squares that encircled his arm. In each square were several screws. These screws pierced Donaldson’s skin and held his bones in place as they healed.
He counted nine screws in all. Each had a tiny, flat knob on the end to manually adjust the tension. It sort of looked like the scaffolding employed to hold dinosaur bones together in museums. But shinier.
Shinier, and very heavy.
Okay. Here we go…
Donaldson wadded up a corner of his blanket and shoved it into his mouth, tasting fabric softener. Biting down hard, he tentatively reached for the first screw.
Touching it brought a spark of agony, and he immediately withdrew his hand. Sweat popped out in fat beads on Donaldson’s forehead. He let out a deep breath through his nostrils, blowing snot like a horse.
Do it.
Just do it.
It’s the only way.
Donaldson pinched the screw head again.
Then he twisted.
The pain was akin to having a tooth drilled. Deep nerve pain. Bone pain. A pointed, foreign object, sticking deep in the marrow, prompting a guttural moan that the blanket didn’t entirely muffle.
Donaldson glanced frantically over at the cop, hoping his outburst hadn’t woken him.
The cop didn’t budge.
Blinking away tears, Donaldson twisted the screw again, and this time the burst of pain was so acute, so otherworldly, his whole body began to shake.
Withdrawing his quivering hand, Donaldson immediately realized what had happened.
Damn it, you idiot!
It’s supposed to be righty-tighty, lefty-loosey!
He’d been inadvertently driving the screw in deeper.
Screaming curses in his head, he forced himself to grip the screw once again, turning it the correct direction this time, not stopping until the pointed barb tugged free of his skin. The hole it had been nestled in oozed dark blood, the pinpoint of suffering replaced by a duller, but equally unbearable throb.
Done.
Only eight screws to go.
The next two were hell.
The one after that made him redefine what hell actually was. Tears streaking down his cheeks, biting the blanket so hard his jaw ached and his gums bled, Donaldson fumbled with the screw holding the top bit of his shattered ulna in place. But the screw was lodged in the bone so tightly that Donaldson felt his ulna twist as he turned it. He could even see the bone wiggle underneath the skin, as if a mouse had burrowed into his flesh and was trying to escape.
Donaldson’s hand shook so badly he couldn’t get a firm grip. His face felt cold and clammy, and he recognized he was going into shock—something he’d witnessed many times in his victims.
Fight it. This is your only chance.
Donaldson turned the screw.
The broken bit of ulna turned sideways, almost perpendicular to his forearm.
He shuddered in agony, and then passed out.
Donaldson awoke trembling and confused, his face so drenched with sweat he looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower. He cast a frantic glance at the cop—still sleeping—and then the clock.
2:20.
Only ten minutes until Nurse Winslow made her rounds.
He had to hurry. There were still five screws remaining.
Donaldson hadn’t cried since he was a child. He remembered being ten years old, his father’s belt drawing blood on his ass, his thighs, his back; whipping him for killing a neighbor’s dog, whipping him so hard and for so long that Donaldson missed an entire week of school.
That was the last time he’d ever cried. His father had whipped him many times since, but Donaldson had vowed to himself he’d never show weakness again. He’d internalize the pain. Keep it inside.
It was a vow he’d kept for over forty years. A vow he now broke as sobs shook his body and mucus streamed down over his blubbering lips.
The screw seemed to twitch with his pulse, vibrating just a bit, the bone beneath the skin so obviously out of place it was almost funny.
Donaldson tried not to hesitate. But twisting was unbearable. It would cause him to pass out again.
So he took a deep, stuttering breath, gripped the screw head, and yanked.
The screw popped free, tearing out a thread of flesh, the blood spurting rather than oozing.
Wailing like a baby now, Donaldson attacked the next screw. The pain became the only thing he knew. His entire world. He twisted and pulled and pried at his tortured arm, blinded by tears, thrashing his legs and feeling the skin grafts tear, shaking his head side to side and actually bending the metal brace that held his neck immobile.