The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

night, Sacramento PD paid Baxter a visit, questioned the man extensively, and then took him to the precinct for questioning. They fast-tracked a search warrant after one of the investigating officers unearthed a human skull.

Over the next week, a team of experts exhumed what appeared to be the various parts of more than fifty different bodies. They then located seven more corpses in various stages of decomposition inside a handful of fifty-five-gallon drums situated around his property. The Sacramento native was charged with a whole host of murders. When questioned by the press about the validity of the charges, the spokeswoman for Sac PD simply said, “This will be the easiest case we’ve ever tried, the evidence is that plentiful.”

Days later, when the lead detective paid Baxter a visit in his holding cell, BBK was on the shitter, purportedly mid-dump. In a Twitter post, according to one of the guards who happened to overhear the conversation, Baxter completed that number two then said to the detective, “If you’re looking for Missy Rodriguez, there’s a little bit of her in the toilet right now. Should I flush or will you add ‘destroying evidence’ to my list of charges?” In a follow-up Twitter post, the guard said that BBK started laughing so hard at his own joke that he started squirting piss out everywhere, almost like an excited puppy with an overactive bladder. For a while, #shittingvictims was trending on Twitter, which only fueled Baxter’s notorious status.

Before Atlas was remanded to the state prison for the duration of his life, back when he was still walking around as a free man, he had followed the case of Baxter Kirtman. Everyone wanted this human filth to burn in hell, and by the time Baxter was hauled before a judge and jury, he had earned a reputation as one of the most ruthless serial killers the state ever produced. That wasn’t the end of the story, though. There was more.

During the start of the trial, after a particularly scathing rebuke by the judge over some procedural misstep, Baxter attacked his own counsel. A doctor had to stitch up the side of the court-appointed lawyer’s face where Baxter had taken a bite out of him.

Now, in the sunny state of California, half of everything is either grossly overpriced or free depending on your economic status. For Baxter Kirtman, in his pathetic economic position, a court-appointed lawyer was one of the services he got for free.

“Easy come, easy go,” BBK said to one brave reporter who dared to ask how he felt about his lawyer’s dismissal.

When the judge brought Baxter K. back into the courtroom a week later with a new court-appointed lawyer, Baxter saw that a Plexiglas shield had been erected between him and his counsel. The modern-day cannibal interrupted his own attorney to tell the judge that having a protective shield up was jury tampering because it caused them to be “prejudicial” about him.

The judge simply shook his head and said, “To be clear, Mr. Kirtman, the Plexiglas shield is not considered jury tampering, so it stays. But I’m not a tyrant, so you can either keep the shield or the bailiffs can cuff you to the table. Today, I’m all about choices.”

“The shield will be fine,” Baxter K. said, defeated.

To ensure there were no more violent outbursts, by court order, Baxter was overfed at each and every meal. During the trial, the slight but violent man put on fourteen pounds of fat, and no other lawyers were eaten.

Now, as Atlas was escorted to the chow hall for lunch, he got in line with the inmates awaiting whatever plate of slop the kitchen decided they wanted to serve and call food. As always, Atlas kept to himself. Flying solo was his MO when he first arrived and this was how it had been in the five months since he returned from Ukraine. He was no one’s road dog. He ate alone, showered alone, still had a cell to himself—thank you, COVID—and he spoke to no one but Trigger, his next-door-celly.

Over the months he had endured whispers about himself as well as the occasional taunting, but when he garnered the attention of the shot callers and their enforcers, things started to change, to escalate. At first, their BS wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. But then something happened. In trying to lay low, Atlas had inadvertently become something greater than the sum of his parts. Without even knowing it, he was feeding the legend of “The killer ex-cop,” eventually turning himself into the one thing he never wanted, and that was to become a constant target.

Three times in the last several months, Atlas was nearly killed. Once by a brave but stupid fish who Atlas beat so badly that the man’s jaw still didn’t line up right, and twice by torpedoes—the enforcers for the gangs inside of NorCal State Prison. Atlas had killed both enforcers, the second murder more violent than the first just to prove a point. The shot callers, as the heads of the prison gangs were called, had unleashed their enforcers on him hoping to either pull him into their gang or put him down for good. That didn’t work. As far as Atlas could tell, his only infraction had been refusing to be anyone’s bitch, June bug, or permanent pocket.

“Everyone belongs somewhere,” one of the guards finally told him, a transfer from San Quentin. “Find a home and a family, or you’re going to spend half your life in solitary.”

Doing nothing, Atlas had later learned, was him being a sucker ducker, a guy who was always trying to steer clear of trouble. Trigger, his next-door-celly, said, “The best way to get somewhere bad is to try to be everywhere while being nowhere. I hope I’m being clear on this.”

“You’re not,”