In Strictest Confidence: A Novel

By Michael J. Canzoniero Ph.D.

Disgruntled Detective William Hael had prayed for an interesting case which would bring him out of the depression he had been in since a drunk driver killed his wife and son. He wasnt sure getting the case of a brutally crucified bisexual school teacher was the answer to his prayer.

Was it a hate crime? Does his friend, the psychologist who has treated all the suspects, really know who the killer is? Will the psychologist be killed next? Is the killer the paranoid schizophrenic? Is he the patient with the antisocial personality disorder? Is the killer the one concealing multiple personalities?

In Strictest Confidence blends a thriller with the psychological study of abused children. In this taut detective tale, the backstories of the suspects and the revelation of Haels own difficult childhood elucidate the horrors of child abuse. This novel examines the evolution of emotional disorders in adults who were abused children. Importantly, it discloses how attempts to handle those problems can lead to constructive resolution or to self-destruction.

This psychological thriller brings to mind David Pelzers A Child Called It, extending that narrative showing abused children as adults with deeply disturbing emotional disorders. While all the characters in this story are fictitious, it is a sad truth that abused children grow into adulthood with a greater likelihood of having mental health disorders. They are more apt to become alcoholics and drug addicts, more at risk for intimate partner violence and, because they are frequently depressed, more disposed to make suicide attempts. All these issues are seen in the characters who enliven this drama.

Reading In Strictest Confidence may evoke the authors quandary: should being able to understand why someone acts in evil ways make their actions excusable?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480848856

Michael J. Canzoniero Ph.D.

As a young man living in the Bronx, I witnessed several friends wind their way down the road to drug addition. To help them, I decided to become a psychologist. I earned my doctorate from St. John's University in Queens, New York. As a licensed psychologist, I have expertise in the field of substance abuse. I have worked not only with the adults whose lives were ruined by drugs and alcohol, but also with the children who were physically and/or sexually abused by them. I am passionate about helping people become aware they can break free of their childhood roles, resolve their issues, and liberate themselves to enjoy healthy lives. My wife, Dianne, and I have been married for forty-seven years. We live in Shoreham, on Long Island. I’m the proud father of four adult children, and the happy Papa to my eleven grandchildren. I scuba dive, take photos, play golf, and love the Yankees.

Book preview

THE ARTIST

September 20, 1991

9:17 p.m.

L ike an artist intoxicated by the brilliance of a just completed masterpiece, he was giddy. Exhilaration was pounding in his heart; excitement flew inside him like a sparrow loose inside a house. In his feverishness, he took a hurried step back, then another. The second backward step caused him to stumble over the claw hammer he had used moments before to nail his work of art to the salmon-colored wall. As he recovered his balance, he cursed the tool.

He knew he needed to calm down, to get control of the bird. He froze his position, then he whiffed deeply the fine claret mist that enveloped his creation. He slowly blew out and smacked his thin, crimsoned lips.

The bird in his heart was calmer. Now his breaths came in long relaxed inhalations that caused him to loosen his grip on the paring knife he used to cut and carve his wall hanging. He stood erect and examined the macabre sculpture he had completed. From a distance of three feet, the view was satisfying. His cold creation brought an eerie, demonic smile to his face.

Look at all that beautiful blood! he bellowed. The empty room seemed to shudder. Wow! The way it’s dripping, it looks like his shitty little life is just trickling away!

A serene look overtook his smooth face. He inhaled deeply then gave a gut-emptying exhalation. In mock grief the fiend groaned, How sad! Then he smiled and said in triumph, One less cock-sucking bastard in this world! One more piece of scum sent straight to hell!

As he gazed at the corpse of the man whose throat he had just slit, and whose arms and legs he had nailed to the living room wall, he was suddenly seized by the urge to embrace the lifeless form.

He grasped the dead man’s waist with his arms and buried his brow into his chest. His mortally wounded victim’s still wet, still dripping blood covered his face and hands. He felt it moistening his cheeks and fell to his knees.

You bastards make me sick! he screamed as he glared at his sculpture. You know me! I said I’d make you all pay!

He turned from the corpse and stared at the couch to the right of his creation. He spoke to the man he saw in his mind’s eye, the man who was the focus of his rage. Dr. Franz, you’re next! You may have tricked others into thinking you care, but you haven’t fooled me. YOU’RE NEXT!

Slowly his triumphant grin began to slip away. His expression turned fretful. He recognized he was shouting and knew he needed to collect himself again. He took a deep breath then whispered into the empty room, He’s the most dangerous! This is what’s in store for that fucking shrink!

A RUDE AWAKENING

September 20, 1991

11:45 p.m.

T he first night William Hael spent with Kathy changed the meaning of nighttime. With Kathy, William Hael felt peaceful when darkness descended. From that night, it meant comfort; it was no longer the harbinger of abuse. In the years they were together, night promised the embrace of a loving woman; in the years of his childhood, the hours of darkness meant his alcoholic father would be coming home to revile and assault him.

Now he dreaded nighttime again. He dreaded the lonely nights without Kathy. Even more than the loneliness, he dreaded the beautiful dream that often came with the night. The dream always teased him, forcing him to see with his mind’s eye the pleasure he had always wanted but now could never have. Throughout the years of their marriage he had squandered many chances to satisfy what was now an impossible yearning. For too many nights in the last ten months he had the pleasant dream that, in its impossibility, racked him with sadness and guilt when he awoke.

This night, William Hael’s tiredness was overwhelming him. It was the fatigue that welled up, not from the body’s soreness, but from the psyche’s anguish. It was the kind of exhaustion that was more emotional than physical.

It had been another long, boring, unproductive day. He prayed for God to send the squad an interesting case. He didn’t want tomorrow to be another day of sorting through cold cases. At this moment in the darkness he didn’t want to worry about tomorrow; all he wanted to do was settle into bed and hope the dream wouldn’t invade his psyche.

He laughed at himself for hoping. This night dreaming of Kathy felt inevitable. He knew tonight would be one of the nights the dream would come as he rested in the arms of Morpheus. The only question was when it would come. On the nights when it came as soon as he lost consciousness, his guilt always awoke him and the self–loathing that followed would make returning to sleep and getting much needed rest impossible. However, on some nights, before the dream played out, he got in a restful first round of sleep. On those nights the dream would unfold in the second round, the one that usually started after he got out of bed to pee and then returned to his bed to sleep some more.

He shut his eyes. The air inside the house was cool. He could hear the furnace pumping away to produce heat; the unseasonably chilly weather had cooled his house. Outside, the gentle mist had stopped falling. A car backfired. All was still until a neighbor’s dog howled at the moon. It quieted when the dog was let in the house. Some people were laughing as they sang the song playing on a car radio. The neighbor with the dog told them to turn down the music and to get on home. It had been quiet for a while when his grandfather clock struck twelve times. Consciousness was fading.

He awoke to the clock chiming three times. Three o’clock and no Kathy! Was this going to be a dreamless night after all? Hael was hopeful as he made his way out of bed and into the bathroom.

After his trip to the bathroom, he was back in bed lying on his side of the half-empty queen-sized bed. As the minutes passed, his hope of a dreamless night dimmed. He thought about staying awake rather than risk having the dream but his tiredness returned and he settled further into the bed. He shut his eyes. Through the partially open window, he could hear the silence outside. His throat was dry and he wished he had drunk some water before returning to his bed.

He was gulping a bottle of water on the Fisheye, his favorite dive boat. He felt a hand on the small of his back. Kathy spoke to him. She said, I’m ready.

She lifted herself from the bench inside the cabin and faced him. He was fixing her scuba gear; his hands were going through her BC’s straps and cinching her weight belt. With her hand in his, they moved through the cabin. At the stern, a few divers were talking. He felt a gentle tapping on his tank. He did a back roll into the sea. He was bobbing on the surface waiting for Kathy to reach him. They descended the anchor line. Moving along the coral finger, he was smiling as he pointed to the different corals. Kathy was busy looking for anemones and a queen angelfish. He was happy to be showing his wife the joy of scuba diving.

There was a shrill ringing in his ear. Had he descended too fast? Had he—

A ringing phone woke Hael.

Detective Sergeant William Hael speaking. His voice was raspy from the inactivity sleeping produces. He coughed and cleared his lungs. After listening, he said, Yeah, I heard you. I know it’s only five-thirty. Go on, Flo.

Detective Joseph Florio was Hael’s partner on the homicide squad. Flo told him he had gotten a call from Sully that an old man had been found with his throat slit. There’s more.

Flo proceeded to explain the man’s body was found mutilated and nailed to a wall.

Where’d this happen?

On Soundview Drive, over in Ridge, said Flo.

Yeah, I know the area. Pick me up in fifteen minutes.

As he returned the receiver to its cradle, Hael thought he felt Kathy’s hand rubbing the small of his back. For an instant, he thought he heard her ask, in her sweet soprano voice, if he had to go, if someone had been killed. He even felt himself brush the strands of her fine blonde hair from her pale, white forehead. He could see his two big hands caress her little face as he kissed her softly on her lips. He had to choke back his tears and the urge to say, Go back to sleep, Hon. I’ll tell you all about it tonight.

Kathy no longer shared her husband’s bed. For the past ten months Kathy’s body slept in a simple maple casket enclosed in a steel box. Atop her casket lay the one holding the body of their eight-year-old son, Billy. The drunk driver who had killed them slept in the Suffolk County Jail.

As he prepared himself for Flo’s pickup and the trip to the murder scene, he couldn’t get contrite thoughts of his wife out of his mind. He was in and out of the cold shower like a cat. He toweled off and walked naked into the kitchen for the cup of coffee he would guzzle as he dressed.

Since Kathy’s death he scheduled the coffee machine to begin brewing at 6:15 a.m. This was a full hour later than the older setting when he and Kathy shared a cup of java before he left for the job. Now, as he gulped down his cup, he recalled the morning, years ago, when, over sips of her coffee, Kathy first suggested she would like to overcome her fear of diving to become his dive buddy. He had quickly and happily promised to make the arrangements for her to take the scuba course. After you’re certified, we’ll explore the Cayman reefs together, he had said. Hael always smiled at the thought that in Kathy he would have a dive buddy he could comfortably entrust with his life.

He never made the arrangements, and now he regretted always thinking he was too busy to do so. Was it to punish himself that in the beautiful but haunting dream he saw what could have been? Damn it, he thought as he put on his pants. Why was I so stupid? Why didn’t I get her certified?

If he had followed through on his promise, Hael would have been Kathy’s buddy on her first dive at his favorite wall dive, the Sand Chute. He loved the site because it was where the famous Cayman wall ran from a coral encrusted drop off, awash with brilliant red, yellow, and orange reef colors, to a sandy decline eighty feet below. His enthusiasm for the site had clearly rubbed off on her through the stories he told. He remembered how amazed Kathy had been when he told her about feeding Cheez-Whiz to a queen angelfish on the sandy slope. She couldn’t believe that he squirted the cheese right into the fish’s mouth. She was equally excited when he told her about seeing a pair of blue gobies on the sand, their bodies brilliantly silhouetted in the morning light. He smiled as he told her the tiny fish worked like seeing-eye dogs for sightless shrimp with which they share their burrows. He said the shrimp kept the burrow clean by sifting and bulldozing for food.

After listening to the goby story, Kathy laughed and said, It reminds me of our relationship: You watch out for me, I do the cleaning. Oh, Bill! I can’t wait to dive with you! One day I want to see the site’s beauty for myself. More than anything, I want to see the borrow of the goby and the shrimp!

If Hael had seen to her certification, he would have been able to share the aquatic art gallery with the woman he loved. He had convinced himself their first dive at Sand Chute would have been one where Kathy would have been mesmerized as she passed through the pelagic zoo to the sandy bottom. He would have been thrilled to be the one showing everything to her.

Because he never took her diving, Kathy never saw the different colored sponges that lined the wall, nor did she ever see a parade of majestic purple tangs floating over the reef. She never held a brittle starfish nor ever spotted a milky, pink-tipped anemone swaying in the current. And, saddest of all, she never visited the sandy borrow of the goby and the shrimp.

I was such a bastard. He groaned while tucking his shirt into his pants. If I had only—

The phone rang again. It was Flo.

You’re five out? Told you what? … Cut off his dingus? What kind of sickie would do that? I know I told you we needed an interesting case but this sounds. . . I’ll be waiting in the driveway.

When he finished dressing he went into his kitchen. He stared at a cheese Danish on the kitchen counter. He had bought the pastry the night before so he would have a bite to eat for breakfast. Now the thought of feeding himself the cheese tart reminded him that Kathy never fed cheese to a queen angelfish.

Damn it! Damn it, he screamed.

The stinging recognition that Kathy’s goal of diving had never been attained because of his egotism stoked his already heated self-loathing. He angrily swung a massive paw out and swept the cheese pastry off the counter and into the garbage. Hael dispiritedly shook his head. He stared at the Danish in the trash for another moment. He slowly turned his eyes upwards. I’m so sorry, Kathy, he choked out. I should have taken you to feed the queen. Forgive me … please!

AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

September 21

6:02 a.m.

W ill you look at this! The freaking sun ain’t even out yet! Geez, I was just having my first dream when Sully called to get on over here, Flo groused. Why can’t they kill people at lunch time? Why do they always off them at night and ruin my sleep?

He turned the police car onto the azalea-lined narrow driveway at 6 Soundview Drive. The weather-beaten old, black Plymouth Fury, like a decrepit cow, coughed and sputtered as Flo parked it behind the 1987 blue Honda Civic in the small bungalow’s driveway. The Civic belonged to the dead man, Armand Esposito.

Ignoring his partner, Hael unloosened himself from the squad car’s seatbelt he had reflexively buckled when Flo had picked him up on the way to the murder scene. He spied a four-foot high, silver-grey propane gas tank next to the side door of the house. This building was another of the old summer cottages that had been transformed cheaply into a year-round home. This area of Ridge, fifteen minutes from the sixth precinct in Coram, counted many old, winterized cottages in its census. Esposito had bought it twenty-five years ago for $6,000. With winterization and renovations, it would probably bring in $110,000 today.

Flo was now out of the car stretching his pudgy little body. Hael sat a moment before lifting his tall, trim body from the passenger’s seat. Heal shook his head. He hated what was happening to his Long Island. It was changing, but not for the better. It was no longer the land of simple potato farmers and baymen. It was no longer a retreat from the fears and anxieties that were ever-present sixty miles away in New York City. He wasn’t naïve; he knew the City’s crime was contagious. Over the years he had seen brutal, slimy murders slowly seeping into Nassau County. Now they were occurring right in his Suffolk County backyard.

As he stretched his arms over his head, Flo noticed the similar Plymouth parked by the street. He pointed to it and said, Sully and Donato are still here.

So were the ME, the paramedics, the crime lab boys and two carloads of uniformed cops. Hael knew that S and D, as he liked to refer to Sully and Donato, would be careful not to disturb anything but he couldn’t vouch for the professionalism of the uniforms. He knew they were titillated by seeing stiffs, especially stiffs with their dicks cut off.

The police had been called to the scene by a neighbor who said he had heard a ruckus coming from inside Mr. Esposito’s usually quiet bungalow. Hael knew 911 calls from neighbors came in every night but only a handful of them ever turned out to be legit. Early on the job he had learned many disturbance calls came from harpies who had nothing better to do than call the police at the first sound of a baby’s cry or a loud stereo. Sometimes the caller was a vindictive ex-girlfriend harassing her former boyfriend by saying he was using or dealing drugs. This time the neighbor had checked out clean; no prior calls and no relation to the victim. The police, finding the bungalow door unlocked, walked in and found the body.

After six years in homicide, Hael knew the chilling murder statistics. He knew eighty percent of the time murders were committed by relatives or acquaintances impulsively in the heat of an argument. Angry male perps tended to use guns, females, knives. Their killings were done short, quick, and without ceremony. Mr. Armand Esposito, a sixty-five-year-old former special education teacher, wasn’t your usual victim. Esposito’s murder had been neither short, nor quick, and it certainly seemed to have been done ceremoniously: a sort of crucifixion had taken place.

God, I’m getting to hate this shit, Hael said as he emerged from the black car. This is getting to be like Brooklyn or the Bronx.

Hey! Watch what you say about the Bronx. The Bronx is my old stomping grounds!

Hael, at six foot, considerably taller than his paunchy, balding partner, delighted in teasing Flo. You probably brought all this shit out from the Bronx with you, Flo. When I was growing up out here the only things that didn’t die of natural causes were the raccoons you city drivers squashed with your cars.

Well, excuuuse meeeee! I’m sooooo sorry I ruined your frontier, Daniel Boone! Flo shot back. Come on! You going to spend the day crying over what used to be, or you going to get that big fat ass of yours in gear?

Hael, however, was already working. In the wet grass he noted footsteps running every which way. If it was worth checking, the uniformed cops have blown the perp’s trail, he thought. Looking again at the grass, he saw something else. Flo, isn’t this the first day of fall? he asked his best friend.

You’re asking me when fall starts? Without my first cup of coffee, I can’t even tell what month we’re in! Flo shot back.

It was the first day of fall, and the weather had been cool for nearly a month. That meant the grass was growing slower and most people weren’t mowing regularly any more. As he surveyed the front yard, he had noticed Esposito’s lawn looked recently mowed. Fresh mums had been planted beneath the front windows alongside two humongous rhododendron bushes. The screens were also already removed from the windows and the front storm door now wore a glass pane. A hint of brown showing under the grey around the doorframe suggested the small house had recently been painted its new slate color. Hael guessed it had been painted over the summer.

Esposito must have been a pretty neat, pretty methodical guy, Hael thought. Wish my father would keep his place looking this good.

Hael’s father was about the same age as the victim and, like Esposito, he had retired some time ago. The significant difference was that his father, a tough, crusty, former cop, until recently spent all his free time, and all his money, drinking down at the local saloon. A year ago, after Hael had solved the Greta Broz case - a case of an alcoholic father killing his own daughter - the old man had gotten religion. He had stopped drinking and joined AA. Now he spent all his free time at meetings. It was too late for the old cop’s house. It stood in stark contrast to Esposito’s neat home.

As he entered the front door Hael paused to inspect the bloody handle. Sully, I hope nobody’s touched this doorknob, he said as he looked over to the spot where the big cop was working.

The front door opened directly into the living room and Hael could see the chalked outline of Esposito’s body on the pink wall. The bloodstains on the wall now seemed to be falling from the chalk lines; the whole scene looked like a modern artist’s conception of faceless death. The retired teacher’s body, a shroud in clear plastic, lay on a black body bag on the floor at the base of the wall. Rigor mortis had set in, and the ME was having a devil of a time trying to fit it into the bag.

No, Bill. I been watching it like a hawk. I think we’ll get some decent prints off it and this mess over here, Sully replied.

Sully, Jerry Sullivan, was bent over the pool of coagulated blood underneath the chalked outline. Sully was a bear of a man with a winning smile. A huge, barrel-chested, thirty-year-old, Sully had been part of Hael’s homicide squad for the past two years. He was the conscientious sort, not unlike Hael himself, determined not to live the rest of his life on detective’s pay; he had his sights set on the Chief of Detective’s office. So he was slow but thorough.

Shit, get into the bag, you bastard! commanded the medical examiner.

Turning to the perspiring ME, Hael said, Charlie, let me look at the poor guy before you shut him up.

The ME stopped cursing at the corpse, stood, and stepped aside. Be my guest, Bill. This SOB ain’t cooperating anyway. Charlie Simon, the portly, cigar-chomping ME, wiped sweat from his brow. I’m getting too old for this. It’s only four hundred and thirty-seven days ‘til I retire. But who’s counting?

Hael snorted. He bent low over the body and removed the clear plastic from around Esposito. The victim’s chubby, closely shaved face still smelled of after shave. His face was spotted with blood that had squirted up and onto it when his neck was slit. Hael felt the crown of Esposito’s head. It was cool to his touch. Though the top of his head was as bare as a baby’s bottom, huge tufts of grey hair grew around the sides. It gave him an odd resemblance to Harpo Marx. A look of abject terror was frozen on his face. His visage was in contrast to his ridiculous outfit: the retired man was dressed as if he were on his way to a luau in a Hawaiian sport shirt awash with gaudy green and blue parrots. The birds too were spotted red with blood. Khaki-colored safari trousers and open-toed sandals completed the bizarre tropical look.

Armand Esposito had been scared shitless. The nauseating stench of his feces-laden pants was overwhelming. There was a melon-sized bloodstain on the front of his trousers, formed when his tormentor cut off his member. Now his organ hung like a shriveled, little sausage on the bloodstained wall.

Whew! Somebody cover that poor guy up before I get sick! Flo yelled as he looked over Hael’s shoulder. Man, I’m going outside for some fresh air. I’ll check the grounds while I’m out there, Bill. Flo turned quickly and dashed out the front door, all the while clutching his throat and muttering, I’m going to be sick! I’m going to be sick!

Sully, what’s your take on this? Hael stood facing his subordinate and holding his handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

Rained last night, so we’re lucky, Sully began, because there appears to be just one set of wet footprints in the carpet that don’t belong to Esposito. Bigger than the old man’s. The crime scene investigators say they also got a partial footprint in the blood near the wall. They think it’s from a large, well-worn sneaker. They got good sets of fingerprints from the knife and the inside doorknob too. They’ve taken fiber, hair, and tissue samples from here and around the rest of the house. Not going to find anything anywhere else though. Ask me, all the action took place in this one room. I figure we’re looking for just one man who came, saw and conquered the poor bastard. I’d say our Mr. Esposito here knew whoever offed him. There was no forced entry, no signs of a struggle. I figure Esposito turned his back to the guy, maybe to get something, and the perp grabs him around the neck from behind, slits his throat clear down to the vocal cords. Did it right here, where you see this smaller pool of blood on the carpet. Then he carried him over to the wall there and began nailing him to it. Poor Esposito was still alive but unable to scream when the perp crucified him and cut off his dingus… Poor bastard must have been in some kind of pain!

Any signs of anything missing? Hael asked.

Sully shook his head. And I got no idea why anyone would kill an old man like this. Donato’s going around the house looking. So far … diddlysquat. He’s in the bedroom if you want to ask him yourself.

Sully pointed to the door to the left of the hall into which the living room funneled. To the right was the kitchen. At this moment it was filled with three of the uniforms laughing and joking about the smelly corpse.

The laughter ignited a fury in Hael. Instead of going into the bedroom, Hael steamed into the kitchen. You guys find this funny? None of the uniformed cops responded. They each shifted their positions nervously. Get the hell out of here! Go outside and keep any early joggers from getting too nosy.

When they were all outside, he went into the bedroom. Donato, back to him, was checking out the bureau drawers. Like every other piece of furniture in the house, the dresser looked like it was at least a hundred years old. Some would have guessed that Armand Esposito was a collector of antiques; others, that he was prudent. Antique collectors always struck Hael as silly for buying somebody else’s garbage. Hael chose to think the old man was cheap or trying to make his pension dollars last.

Get anything, D?

I think this guy must have worked for a condom company! Every draw in his dresser is loaded with condoms. All kinds. I myself prefer the phosphorescent green ones, the rippled kind with the extra length. You like the short stubby ones, I suppose?

Seeing Hael wasn’t amused, Donato’s tone turned serious as he continued, Otherwise, nada, Bill. Not even the usual dust balls under the bed. And nothing seems missing. The guy had nearly three hundred bucks in the bureau’s top drawer. Lots of cheap jewelry here, too. If the perp took something, it was out front or it didn’t have much monetary value. I’ll tell you, though … Donato said as he looked up at Hael, something about this guy’s not kosher. Look at the bed. It’s so neat you’d swear no one ever slept in it. And his dresser here … everything neatly folded, shirts, sweaters, even his socks. Get this, when I looked in the closet there, he had all his shoes paired up and the laces were tied together! Guy was a bit of a tightass. Probably would have made a good detective sergeant, don’t you think?

Hael smiled. Keep looking. We’ll talk back at the office.

Donato was tweaking Hael’s nose. Everyone in homicide knew how hard Hael tried to overcome his own rigidity.

Hael walked out of the blue bedroom, through the hallway with its colonial flower-print wallpaper, and back into the living room. The ME and paramedics had pushed the two green silk wingback chairs out of the way. They were removing Esposito’s body. One bloody hand stuck out of the body bag.

As he trailed behind the ME, Hael found himself hoping that a substantial lead would come from the bloody fingerprints found on the knife and the doorknob. Armand, who’d want to crucify you? he pondered.

DAVID

September 21

11:29 a.m.

T he young man rose slowly from his bed. Horrifying nightmares had interrupted his sleep all night long. His arms ached and his back was sore, reminders of the tossing and turning that had been traded for sleep. As he reflected on the cruel night’s mental fare, he wondered again if he was slowly but surely losing his mind. Were they right, all those specialists who said he was crazy and dangerous?

David Ulster had been told he was not right since he was a child. His violent behavior got him put into special education classes in first grade. He remained in them until he started middle school. From the age of twelve doctors and teachers had said he was emotionally disturbed, that he was too angry and too suspicious. His teachers were aware his intelligence was in the near genius range so they labeled him a brilliant but deeply troubled kid. The cops called him a walking time bomb. The clinicians used a more foreboding word to describe him though, as professionals, they were always careful not to wave the word in his face; that