Chaingang (2 page)

“The halitosis technique is called ‘breath of death.’ Bizarre, to be sure. Once you become better acquainted with the occupant of Cell Ten, I can assure you that you'll find nothing whatsoever humorous about the possibility of occupant spitting a feces-poisoned dart into your eye—from some eight feet away, I should add—or forcing a column of foul exhaled air into your face when you least expect it, blinding you perhaps for just the half second it takes to head-butt you to death, or sever one of your carotids with his teeth.” He looked into each face for a moment. He was certain he had their attention.

“And now we come to the reason why we've chosen the Cell Ten Observation Room for this initial meeting,” He glanced at the thick gray curtain behind him.

“Let me tell you a story."

The room itself was unthreatening in appearance: brown steel door and steel-rimmed observation port, over which a heavy security curtain had been drawn. Dr. Norman stood in front of the curtain, facing the small room. The men and women stood uncomfortably close, and there was some of the awkwardness one feels in a crowded elevator as one waits for ones floor. Norman, whose disciplines were in the mental sciences, chose his settings with the greatest care.

“An infant, a male Caucasian baby, was found in the garbage dump outside Kansas City, Kansas. The baby, filthy, on the threshold of death, was rushed to a nearby emergency ward. The infant miraculously survived. It was placed into a local orphanage maintained by the state. It suffered neglect, however, and the child was one of several children surviving when the orphanage was investigated and subsequently closed down. The word ‘surviving’ is one we encounter repeatedly in this story.

“The baby boy became a textbook victim of the foster care system. There was a pattern of accidents, some reported and some not. Injuries. Abuse and neglect. Once again the boy was abandoned. Once again the boy survived.

“He was ‘adopted,’ if that is the correct word, by a woman who was in charge of several foster children. Later it was learned that she was a former prostitute with a history of alcoholism and child abuse, and it was while in her brutal hands that the little boy suffered his most traumatic exposure to various forms of sadism.

“Both the child's foster mother and the man who called himself the boy's stepfather kept their charges tied up much of the time. But this child had ways that apparently infuriated them. They kept him in a metal box with a few air holes in it, in a stifling, dark closet, and chained under their homemade bed. He was forced to remain motionless for long periods, usually in total darkness, and to lie in his own urine and fecal matter. When he made a sound he was savagely beaten.

“The man, a known sexual degenerate, began abusing the boy, who was forced to eat and drink from a dog dish, which was also kept under the bed.” The atmosphere in the room had grown extremely oppressive. The correctional guards had become more apprehensive as the doctor spoke, and some of them could imagine body odor smells in the small observation room. Coughs sounded loud as gunshots. There was more movement as the men and women grew tired of standing, and the brown steel and beige concrete, compliments of that uninspired interior decorator—the federal prison system—was becoming increasingly threatening.

“A little dog was also tied there with the child, and the animal became the boy's only friend. As with the boy, whose name was Daniel, the dog was beaten and kicked when it made noise, and so both of these poor creatures learned to be obedient together. The punishment that was meant as humiliation, presumably, was a godsend. The child and the dog helped one another survive.” The doctor had little need of notes. The occupant of Cell Ten had been his pet project for a long time, and he knew the man's history as he knew his own.

“One day when the child and his companion had been locked in the dark punishment closet, the boy could hear a fight—not unusual in this home. The man, whom the boy thought of as “The Snakeman” because of tattoos that he had, was giving the woman one of her frequent beatings.

“The man threatened to throw the dog out the window of the apartment house they were living in, and perhaps the boy as well. He said he was getting rid of the dog and the boy, and the boy heard him and believed him.

“The child snuck down into the basement of the building, where he had once seen acid stored, found the bottle—which proved to be hydrochloric acid—and poured it into the eyes of the man while he slept.

“The child is now nine years old, and once again he is institutionalized. He becomes the target for more abuse in the reform school—a natural victim, one might say. There are older boys, one bully in particular, who continue to make his life a nightmare.

“The child grows taller, bigger, stronger—and at age twelve he has the appearance of a full-grown man. He kills his tormentor, and that is the point where young Daniel Bunkowski is seriously imprisoned. There are two more killings in prison. He escapes. He runs loose—killing at random. Killing for pleasure. He becomes the worst serial killer in American history. Growing bigger and stronger all the time. When he was captured in the sixties, he'd become a giant, huge—over four hundred pounds and nearly six feet eight inches tall. He had the beer belly of a power lifter who has gone to fat, but with legs like cannon barrels.

“At age eighteen he weighed four hundred and fifteen pounds, had a twenty-two-inch neck, and wore a custom-made size 15EEEEE shoe. By that time he was also perhaps the most accomplished killer alive.

“From the time of his earliest reform school incarceration, he'd devoted himself to mastering countless martial techniques, learning all he could about small arms and demolition, toxicology, man-trapping, camouflage—virtually anything that related to what he considered to be ‘the killing arts.'

“He was also a genius. His raw intelligence was such that it could not be accurately tested. His intelligence quotient was so high, it went off every chart—warped every graph. He was technically brilliant beyond measure.

“But his mind did not function in any previously observed manner. He was worse than an animal in some ways, superhuman in others. Clearly he was presentient. He'd developed the ability to sense impending danger. It is his greatest survival instinct. I contended then, as I do now, that he is that rare form of human being called a ‘physical precognate.'

“I came across his case history because the government was looking for individuals who would be emotionally, as well as physically and mentally, suited to be trained for special work in the military—hazardous work involving sanctioned assassinations. We were at war in Southeast Asia at the time, and the work was of a most sensitive nature. To put it simply, the government wanted expendable killers. As distasteful as such a program was, it was necessary for our country's prosecution of the war effort.

“Daniel epitomized the sought-after profile: a proclivity for and incredible proficiency in killing, in tandem with prodigious raw intellect. His hatred for human beings was—and is—absolute. He had a built-in survival system that could withstand blast furnace heat, long periods of claustrophobic isolation, or whatever hardships might inflict themselves. On top of all this he had a defensive mechanism that forewarned him of danger. He was the ultimate killing unit.

“Teaching himself, learning from both his omnivorous reading and hands-on experience, he had already learned how to take lives, and had proved that—serially—he possessed a masterful talent, if that's the word, for committing acts of homicide. But the military would give him something of great value—the technology of combat, and all that went along with it. The government, from his perspective, could turn him into a professional killer.

“Through various drug-induced interview sessions using sodium Pentothal, Amytal, the paradyzines, tri-Kayandaminopropene, other experimental drugs then being tried, we were able to learn ways that such a man might be at least partially controlled. We were able to manipulate him to the extent that he could be inserted into situations where he might slake his thirst for killing and serve the U.S. government at the same time.

“Now—once again—through a complex set of circumstances that do not concern you, we have this human monster of our creation close at hand. Under lock, key, and every restraint at our disposal. Here!” He gestured behind him. It was very still in the room, save for the breathing of the audience listening to Dr. Norman's every word.

“Some of you have heard rumors of a killer who has taken a human life for every pound of his body weight ... of a monster of murder and mutilation. You may think the stories of the killer who eats the hearts of his victims are the work of overactive imaginations. But the rumors you've heard don't begin to describe this living horror.

“You are growing tired of listening to me drone on, standing in this cramped observation room, hearing how dangerous the care and feeding of one convict is, and the extraordinary lengths we must go to for our mutual protection. You may wonder why your government feels that you have a need to know some of the terrible, damning things you've been learning today.

“I ask you now, as absurd as it may sound to each of you, to try as best you can to free your thoughts from malice.” He licked his lips and smiled. “Think of this man with pity, if you can. Think of him kindly—as a fellow human—whose beastly childhood rendered him into something other than one of us. Think of him with respect, great respect always, and remember that whatever you send in his direction may indeed rebound. Treat him in your thoughts, as well as your deeds, as you would be treated were the roles reversed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, steel yourselves and see, for the first time, the occupant of Cell Ten: Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski.” Norman opened the heavy, gray curtain, and the shock wave that engulfed the room was both audible and palpable as they looked down into the pit and met the tiny, black, marble-hard eyes of the massive heart-eater.

WATERTON, MISSOURI

A
t first Mary Perkins thought it sounded like real trouble, a note of seriousness in her husband's warm, friendly tone as he conversed with someone on the telephone. She hadn't been paying attention to what Sam was saying—their phone often rang in the morning, and it was generally something urgent to do with his real estate business. Over the years she'd become used to it. Mary had been sitting at the kitchen table, sipping black coffee as she worked on her grocery coupons and shopping list. But she heard a mild curse and a sharp change in his voice and tilted her head, suddenly aware of what he was saying.

“I know ... huh-uh ... no. I promise you that's not going to happen, Bill ... sure. I'd be concerned too.” She knew it was Bill Pike on the other end of the line, having recognized his voice when he'd called and asked for Sam during what passed for breakfast in the Perkins house.

“No. That isn't the case at all. Here's the deal on that: J. T. Delmar of Southland Growers, John Merriweather, and Wilbur Ferrell are the main guys behind it, Bill. Ocie Upton and the Newcomb brothers are in it too—that's who Maysburg Produce Enterprises is, okay? You know as well as I do that John Merriweather isn't about to stand for something like that. John's daughter and his son-in-law are building about half a mile down from you all. You think John's missus is gonna let him put three hundred migrant workers in a camp right in back of their own daughter?” Mary smiled at her husband laughing into the phone mouthpiece, and he winked at her.

“Yeah. I don't doubt they
would
like to get a hundred and fifty thousand for that ground. They done preemerged it so many times, they cain't get
weeds
to make a crop on it, but that's all right. Let me promise you it's not happening. They're going to put it over yonder on some of the Newcomb boys’ wooded acreage.” He lapsed into Good Ol’ Boy now and then out of habit. It went with your chamber of commerce membership if you did business in Waterton. “That's all right. I don't blame you ... I'd have been worried, too. Okay, Bill, no problem. Talk to you later ... Sure. ‘Bye!” He hung up the kitchen wall phone and sat back down at the table, a funny look on his face.

“Small towns,” he said, shaking his head. “They just kill me.” He reached for his coffee.

“Don't drink that,” she said, getting up and taking his cold cup to the sink, which was filled with dishes.

“That was Bill Pike. Get this: His sister called him. He didn't tell me that, but I know it had to be because Mary Beth works down at the welfare office. Anyway, she calls him and says the Mexicans are here. What Mexicans? he asks. The ones who are going to move out in
back of you!
That's what Mexicans, she says."

Mary poured out the cold ink, and gave him a fresh cup. “Mexicans?"

“At the welfare office to get food stamps, presumably. Anyway, they asked around and found out these were some of the work force Southland Growers brought in to help do the planting. There's six guys in it—calling themselves ‘Maysburg Produce Enterprises.’ I coulda had us a piece of it, but...” He shook his head and jumped over his own thought. He sipped coffee. She was used to his discursive conversations.

“Did you say there were
three hundred
migrant workers?"

“No. I mean—there will be, yeah. When they start putting the crops in. It's about eight hundred acres. It's that ground the Newcomb brothers own across the river.” He meant in Kentucky. “They tried to get that ground in back of Bill, but they couldn't get city water or sewage. I didn't see any point in going into all that—it woulda only worried him more. He's about to have a fit. All he can think about are knife fights and robberies. He says, ‘The property values will drop to nothin’ overnight. But that won't matter none because we'll probably be killed in our sleep anyway.'” He smiled.

“Not all Mexican migrant workers are bad people, you know.” Mary checked off the last item on her list.

“Yeah. I know. But you don't want a seventy-five-unit migrant camp being built next door to you.” He went on explaining the intricacies of the deal to Mary, who tried to feign interest. She adored her smart, successful husband. She'd loved him for so many years—they'd been childhood sweethearts. In many ways they had a dream marriage. Over the years the romance had done what it does in so many marriages, but with that exception, they had it all.