Thirst (16 page)

And there was.

They were both diagnosed with having “severe antisocial personality disorder.” The psychiatrist explained that their brains were not capable of associating right from wrong, good from bad. When they did something bad, not only did they not understand what they did wrong—but also they did not understand why they were being punished. Their twisted, faulty brains released a certain type of endorphin into their body every time they did something wrong—the same endorphin that gets released in normal people when they do something righteous—something like volunteering, or giving unconditionally to a charity. The twins simply were not capable of learning the good from the bad.

What seemed like a situation that could not get any worse, managed to take a terribly tragic turn. The next five years in the Riley home were as bad as bad could possibly be.

I shall spare you the dreadful details, and tell you only what must be told.

Philip and Deborah were exhausted. Philip had gotten a new job as a cook in a kitchen—still waiting for the economy to lift back up so he could return to managing the bank.

Deborah was working as a waitress—at least that is what she told her husband. Deborah was actually working as a stripper at the strip club in the next town over, where no one recognized her.

Without the money she made stripping, the Riley’s would have been living off food stamps.

A once happy and lively woman, Deborah had become depressed and jaded. There were many days that she considered ending her own life—but then she was overwhelmed with the guilt that she would be leaving Philip with three children and a lousy minimum wage kitchen job.

At twelve years old, the Riley twins committed the worst act they would commit in their lives. They had their way with their little sister.

When Vanessa finally told her parents months later, Philip and Deborah were naturally shocked and devastated.

Philip, for the first time in his life, struck his sons. He wanted to kill them—but he knew it was wrong. Instead, he disowned them. He reported the act and had them committed to juvenile hall. The judge considered sending them to an adult prison—but ultimately decided against it, given their diagnosed disorder.

Philip tried his best to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. It took months, but he was eventually able to sleep again, and he was eventually able to look his wife in the eyes without seeing his psychopathic sons.

Philip held onto his life by a thread, but Deborah had given up.

Every day got harder. The idea of sex made her nauseous—which was not helped by the fact she was secretly working as a stripper.

One day, after a dirty old customer refused to leave her a tip, she decided that she had reached her limit.

In the desk drawer, in the manager’s office was a handgun.

When the manager went out for his smoke break, Deborah ended her tragic life.

Receiving the news that your wife has secretly been a stripper for years on the same day you receive the news that she killed herself was a tremendously hard pill to swallow.

Philip’s broken life fell into little pieces, and he was not able to pick them back up. He slipped into a deep depression and started to drink heavily. The liquor helped him forget his pains.

Naturally, the liquor quickly became an addiction, and the addiction quickly turned to hard drugs. Philip knew that he had failed his wife, and all of his children. He could not bear to look his daughter in the eyes.

Philip begged his older sister, who already had a few children of her own, to take Vanessa in.

During a rare moment of sobriety, Philip set up an appointment with Walker Realty, and he met with Andrew’s father and instructed him to sell his house, and give all of the money to his daughter when she turned eighteen.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

IDLE NO MORE

After seeing Kane crying behind the dumpster, The Riley twins held the young, broken and bruised boy down against the pavement, far from the juvy staff. Using a knife they stole from the kitchen, the twins cut Kane repeatedly—Over thirty deep and bloody abrasions.

Kane covered his face during the attack. Before the twins could pull Kane’s hands away, they were pulled to the ground by the juvy guards.

Kane should have been rushed to the hospital, but yet again—he was not. Instead, he spent nearly two weeks in the little facility medical room, with poorly administered stitches to his cuts.

Kane dreaded the thought of returning to his little room, and having to face the horrible delinquents again. He needed to find some way to shed his title of “public punching bag.” He was sick of being used as a way for misguided teenagers to prove their dominance.

He needed to do something big—but he did not have the heart to hurt anyone. He needed to escape.

On the wall, next to the emergency portable defibrillator was a key on a hook. The key opened the medical room, as well as the supply room and the offices. It was not a key he could use to get out of the facility, but he figured that there might be another key in one of the offices—or some sort of tool in the supply room he could use to pick the lock.

Kane took the key and hid it in a little hole in his pocket.

When Kane was released, the facility’s young inmates were already preparing their next attack. As the guard walked Kane towards his cell, the Riley twins smiled at him, letting him know that they were not finished.

Luckily for Kane, the day he was sent back to his cell was the same day the facility received a new intake of young delinquent inmates. Before the testosterone driven criminals made their way to Kane, they needed to make sure the new kids knew their place.

Kane began to plot his escape. Everyday, the guards switched shifts at the end of recess—at five minutes to four. Kane quickly figured out that he had about one minute each day to carry out his getaway. Each day, he quickly searched a different room using the key he stole from the medical room. He started with the offices, but found nothing useful. Then, he tried the storage room, where he was only able to find a screwdriver. Finally, he tried the staff bathroom—which had a small window, but not one that Kane could fit through.

After he had exhausted his luck with the inside rooms, he started to work away at a small corner of the outdoor fence—scraping the metallic wire with the head of the screwdriver. For only a couple of minutes each day, Kane sat, squished in the little hidden corner where the fence met the wall. There was a thorn bush on the other side of the fence, which left sore cuts all over Kane’s hands. It took him about four days to cut through one wire—and he needed to cut about a dozen to be able to make the squeeze. When he finally got through, he would have to push his body through the sharp thorn bush and endure the pain and cuts in order to escape—but it was nothing compared to the pain he received from a beating.

At the end of each sawing session, Kane bent the wires back into place—giving the fence the appearance that no damage or alteration had been done.

Kane was close—very close. His hands were ripped to shreds from the thorns, and he was painfully sick with the flu from sitting on the icy cement every day. Kane was only a single day away from being able to fit through his hole when he saw Tanner and Jacob, the young black brothers for the first time.

Jacob did not take well to the hierarchy in the youth prison. He was quick to defend himself, and he was quick to defend his young brother.

The Riley brothers did not like that the first thing they heard Jacob say was “Stay the fuck away from us.” They were determined to teach Jacob a lesson.

One day, during recess, the sociopathic brothers found Tanner crying behind the same stairwell they found Kane behind just weeks before. With their trusty kitchen knife in hand, they held the young boy down and prepared to leave their marks.

“Jacob!” Tanner screamed for his brother.

Jacob came running before the psychopathic twins could make their first cut into Tanner. Jacob threw Peter violently to the ground, and then began to repeatedly punch Kyle in the face, breaking his nose and his cheekbone.

The fight was happening just around the corner from where Kane was sawing away at the wire fence. As Kane poked his head out, he saw Peter pull himself to his feet and pick up the kitchen knife.

Kane froze—unsure of what to do. Tanner was crying on the ground, and Jacob was completely oblivious to the armed Peter behind him.

Moments later, Peter was stabbing Jacob repeatedly in the back with the kitchen knife. Jacob’s body tensed up and he dropped down hard to his knees. He screamed aloud as pain overtook his young body.

Tanner screamed at the top of his lungs as he watched the final moments of his fifteen-year-old brother’s life.

Kane did not do anything. He did not know what to do. He simply stood motionlessly as the psychotic twins walked away, laughing at the young boy crying over his brother’s limp corpse.

The prison staff pulled Tanner away from his brother and took him to an unused wing of the facility.

Kane suddenly felt torn. Even though he did not know the boy, he did not want to abandon him.

After Kane pried the fence open, he decided to stay and wait for Tanner to be brought back to his cell. Prison staff was holding him in isolation while he grieved over Jacob.

When Tanner was finally brought back to his cell, he looked like a feral cat. Every little sound made him jump and his eyes were glued open wide. He was timid, and scared. The other kids in the facility could smell the fear from a mile away, and were excited to exploit the young boy to improve their twisted social status.

There was no question that Tanner would be killed if Kane did not do something quickly. Even the prison guards were hesitant to leave Tanner alone.

The Riley twins, who were now serving three life sentences, instead of two, were especially excited to make their mark on the young boy.

Peter Riley slipped into Tanner’s cell one evening.

He started by grabbing Tanner’s mouth with his hand, muffling his screams. Then, with his free hand, he tried to grab onto Tanner’s arm with the intention to break it. Tanner was feisty—squirming and thrashing, making it difficult for the older sociopathic child to get a hold on him.

Unfortunately, Tanner was no match for the older child, who was nearly twice his size. Luckily for Tanner, Kane had been keeping a close eye on the young child since he had returned to the cell.

Using a rock that he’d brought in from outside, Kane entered the cell and struck the twin on the top of the head with all of his force, knocking him unconscious in a single blow. The strike cracked Peter’s skull. The old medical supervisor could not stop the child’s bleeding, so, for once, they sent someone to the hospital for immediate medical attention.

Kane told Tanner about his escape plan, and Tanner agreed to leave with him.

Then, Kane’s morality crept back up on him. Another new group of kids arrived at the facility—and some of them were as young and “fresh-faced” as he was. Kane knew he could not help all of them, even if he stayed.

But he had an idea—something that would make life in juvy a little bit easier for everyone.

During recess, Kane used his little key to break into the medical room. He used his shirtsleeve to open the door, so there would not be any fingerprints. Carefully, he put on a pair of rubber gloves and took the portable defibrillator unit, which he snuck back to his cell, and hid it under his pillow.

When everyone was asleep, Tanner carefully picked the lock to his cell, the lock to Kane’s cell, and then the lock to the sleeping Kyle’s cell.

Kane, wearing his rubber gloves, fired up the defibrillator and set it to its highest setting. He stared down at the sociopathic young murderer while he waited for the defibrillator to warm up. He knew that what he was about to do was murder—but he did not care. The demented Kyle needed to be removed from the face of the earth.

Using the defibrillator, Kane killed Kyle while he slept. Kane carefully returned the defibrillator unit to the medical office and disposed of his gloves in his cell toilet. Tanner locked Kane up before returning to his cell.

The official cause of death was “heart attack.” The murder was perfectly executed.

A few nights later, Kane and Tanner made their escape. Tanner picked their cell locks, and the two boys snuck through Kane’s fence hole and made their way to the desolate impound lot where the ‘69 Mustang was being held.