...more on Doc

His given name is unimportant but his nickname was “Doc” and he was pretty much covered with tattoos. He had been arrested for murder, a drug deal gone very bad, after which he and his girlfriend had tried hiding in the juniper woods north of town for a day or so before they were apprehended. This decision was about as bad as the rest of the decisions Doc had made in life because north of Prescott there is pretty much no food, water, or survival options, and in the winter and spring it is damned cold. To hide out there, on foot, was a very bad plan. Then again, I don’t believe he had planned anything that happened during the day of the murderous drug deal. Sociopaths often get caught without a plan.

Doc was my first murderer, my first Sociopath: a person with no conscience, a person who knows right from wrong but really does not care as long as what he is doing makes him feel good. Aside from his dirty, bloodstained fingers and clothes, his plethora of bizarre tattoos and the missing lobe of his right ear (bitten off in a prison fight) he really didn’t look like a killer. Then again, who is to say what a killer looks like?

He was a really handsome guy, in a somewhat Charlie Manson kind of way. What I mean by this is he had long hair, was slight of build and his dark eyes could pierce holes into your heart. His features were incredibly youthful, however, almost “pretty”, and his smile was quick, bright, and totally delightful. He was quite the ladies’ man and would have made a fine catch for any lovely, young lady if he hadn’t been quite so deadly.

He truly believed he was a ladies man, though. The charm oozed out of him like mustard from a hot dog bun. He could discuss almost anything, from tying your shoes to rocket science, and he seemed to know what he was talking about all the time. He even told me, as I awkwardly rolled his fingerprints, what I should do to get the best set possible. He explained his whorls and arches and how the FBI uses those to match prints and why we should always have our arrestees rub lotion into their skin before taking prints. Preferably Corn Huskers Lotion, Doc told me, rather like a father directing a child. It softens the skin and makes cleaner prints.

I really wasn’t listening all that much. I was shaking too hard and was determined to get the fingerprints right the first time. It wasn’t easy, what with the Sergeant standing over my shoulder and the blood stains on Doc’s hands, not to mention that two days in the woods had added another unique and interesting aroma to his entire being. I also kept wondering what the headless woman tattooed on his shoulder meant (was he afraid of headless women?), who was the person who had bitten off his ear lobe, and what had prompted the fight that caused it. And why had he been in prison that time?

Curiously, Doc did not seem too concerned about the whole procedure. He was very amicable and informative, including his interesting play-by-play report on how the shooting went down and how he could see right through the guy; the hole was so big! Of course, all of that was way more information than any of us officers cared to know. No one wants to hear a suspect rambling on about the killing he committed three days earlier, not that it wasn’t extremely interesting, but being privy to such chatter will inevitably wind you up in the witness chair at his trial. Doc was rather proud of his recent notoriety and how it had taken two whole days for the cops to find them and all he had really done was rid the world of one more drug dealer, after all. He should get an award, not a prison term. The fact that his drug dealer victim was a 70-year-old man didn’t seem to make much difference to him.

Looking back, I believe Doc had the distinction of spending the longest time in the Yavapai County jail waiting to go to trial of anyone I can recall. It was almost two and a half years. His girlfriend was in a separate part of the jail and spent her days trying desperately to contact him. Meanwhile Doc was keeping up a running correspondence with half a dozen women on the outside, swearing to each of them his undying love, faithfulness, and the desire to father their children. After his mug shot was published in the local paper as part of the news story, several lovesick girls began to write him and it mushroomed from there. Doc was the only guy I ever knew in the jail whose mug shot came out looking really good. Most people, no matter how minor their crime may be, look like insane serial killers in their mug shots, including the officers and civilian employees who have to be photographed for their files. Anyway, on the front page of the newspaper Doc looked almost heroic. He was a combination of Johnny Depp and Batman with a little Psycho thrown in for good measure. As I mentioned earlier, Doc was a good-looking guy and for some young women and girls the excitement of his bad-boy image was just too much to pass up.

It got to the point, finally, when two or three of his “women” on the outside showed up at the same time for visitation. The fur began to fly. It happened on several occasions during the time he was in our jail but it didn’t worry Doc at all. The women always seemed to forgive him and continue to stay in contact. Even his girlfriend in the female dorm (who eventually knew about all of it) found it in her heart to forgive him and to stand by her man. For Doc there were always more women on the string, so if he lost one or two along the way to a jealous rage, what did it matter? For the life of me I still do not know how he kept finding so many girls to fall at his jail-bound feet! I believe he really enjoyed the catfights and squabbles; they made him feel special, in a sociopathic kind of way.