He kept saying, “Take me to the cops.” Mark cut the rope and dragged Leo into the field. He knocked him to the ground. Leo grabbed his leg and his arm.
Mark towered over him. “Tell me how she died.”
Leo cried. “No. Just take me to jail.”
Mark rolled him over and began to hit him hard in the face. “Tell me.”
Leo was trying to block the hits but wasn’t doing very well. Mark stopped and pulled the knife again, putting it to his throat. “Tell me how you killed her, and I will make this quick.”
“I strangled her. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Mark cut his throat so deep he felt the knife hit his spine as he went across. Leo grabbed his throat with both hands, trying to keep the blood in. Blood soaked through his fingers and out onto the ground. Leo’s hands slowly fell away. His eyes were fixed, staring straight up. Mark pulled the 9 mm from his waistband and shot Leo three times in the chest.
Mark was so angry and so wrapped up in the revenge of Katie’s death that he didn’t notice the cop walking up behind them in the field. As Mark finished the three shots, the cop yelled “stop” and for him to “drop the weapon.” Mark froze, thinking what to do. The cop screamed again, and Mark turned slightly, still holding the gun.
That was when he heard the shot and felt the burning rip of a bullet go through his shoulder. The gun flew from his hand, and he spun as he went to the ground. The cop was on him in seconds, and he found himself facing Leo as the cop wrenched his shot shoulder behind him to put on the cuffs. Mark looked over one more time, and Leo was still staring blankly into the sky.
One month later, Mark was walking into the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Prisoner number 613850. Serving a life sentence for kidnapping and the murder of Leo Sparks. His shoulder had healed, but he needed to stretch it and work with weights every day to get it back to the strength he had before.
His first week there had been unusual. Mark being a military guy looked like the neo-Nazi type. He had been approached almost immediately by a black guy calling him a racist. Mark said he wasn’t and walked away.
The next day he went to the weights area and tried to get a workout for his shoulder. He was threatened by the group of Nazi guys there and ended up sitting alone on a small wall in the yard. Every group in the prison had some kind of agenda. One hated whites; another hated blacks. Others hated everyone, and a particular group loved everyone. Mark just tried to blend in and disappear. His cellmate was a three-time convicted drug dealer and wouldn’t shut up. Mark would stay in his cell as much as he could and just do push-ups.
The first fight came in the lunchroom from one of the Nazi guys. He was sitting with a handful of nobody guys when the guy approached. He grabbed the bread off Mark’s tray and took a bite. Mark knew enough about prison to know you didn’t let people treat you like a bitch. He picked up his tray and hit the guy straight in the throat. The guy went down fast, and Mark had three guards on him in a flash.
That was his first time in solitary confinement. For Mark, it was a relief. He didn’t mind being alone. His time in combat had taught him to be calm and quiet his mind for long periods of time. He did hundreds of push-ups a day. After three months in jail, he was in better shape than he had ever been. He had dropped twenty pounds and was ripped with muscle. His shoulder was almost back to 100 percent.
The second fight was more serious. He was back out of solitary and back in the cell with the drug dealer. Kyle was his cellmate’s name, and he warned that the neo-Nazi guys were coming for him. Mark would be ready, and he was constantly aware of his surroundings. One afternoon in the yard, he caught a glimpse of three guys moving toward him in a rush. Two had their hands out, but the third had a hand in his pocket. Mark knew that was the guy with the shiv. He turned as three got to him, and he immediately dropped one of them with an all-out punch to the side of his head. The other two paused just long enough for Mark to spin and pull the light jacket off he was wearing. He wrapped his left hand with the jacket and pointed at the guy with the shiv.
“Come on, little boy. Let’s get this over with.”
The guy pulled the shiv out of his pocket and held it in front of him, not really sure of how this would go but nonetheless committed.
The second guy began to move around to Mark’s side. He knew the plan was to get behind him and grab him, locking up his arms, while the other guys stabbed him multiple times in the stomach. Mark waited for the guy to move behind him and then sidestepped hard as he lunged for his back. The guy came right up beside Mark, and he pushed him hard into the guy with the makeshift knife. It happened so fast that the knife plunged deep into the guy’s stomach. He screamed in pain as the shiv holder pulled back, realizing what had happened. Taking his eyes off Mark when he did.
That was all the time he needed. Mark was on the guy in a flash, taking the shiv from him and stabbing him several times as he walked away. He put the jacket back on and headed for the door going back into the main cellblock. The three men lay in a heap all together on the ground. Two were bleeding, and the third was still unconscious from the blow to the head.
Two guards ran past Mark as a siren sounded in the yard. One of the guards stopped Mark at the door. He put the billy club to Mark’s chest. “Hold it right there.”
Mark put his hands up in surrender. “What?”
“What the hell was that about?”
Mark lowered his arms and sighed. “They want me to join their little gang, and I said no. Now they have to try and prove some kind of point. It’s not gonna end well for them.”
“Farmer, don’t let me catch you starting any of that shit with them. I’ll have you back in the hole if you do.”
Mark smiled. “Please tell me what I need to do to go back to solitary. I hate being in this shit out here. I just want to do my time quietly.”
The guard grinned and removed the billy club from his chest. “Go inside and let me go see what kind of damage you did.”
Thirty minutes later, Mark was handcuffed and standing in the warden’s office. The warden was reading the report and looking at the pictures of the three men. Mark stood there at attention, feeling like a private in trouble.
The warden looked up. “Mr. Farmer, you’re not in the military, you don’t have to stand at attention.”
Mark relaxed his stance slightly. “Sorry, feels a bit that way.”
“Why did you fight these men?”
Mark glanced down at the pictures and then back at the warden. “They wanted to kill me.”
The warden closed the file and handed it to the guard standing to his right. “Yet there was no weapon found, but somehow two of these men had stab wounds. What do you know about that?”
Mark shrugged. “They had a shiv, not sure what happened to it. The one guy tried to stab me, he missed, and stabbed his friend. I took the shiv and stabbed him twice. Not lethal but an attention getter. I just want to be left alone. Sir.”
The warden stood and began to walk around the office. His office was decorated tastefully with a large bookcase on one wall. There were law books and prison reform books mixed in with novels of all sorts. The warden paused and stared at the wall of books for a minute. Slowly he reached up and pulled a book off the shelf.
The
