It's when morning comes, after a restless night cocooned on a two-inch foam pad upon a concrete floor, that Larry Robert Veeder realizes his paralyzing sadness likely saved him from a jailhouse beating.

A man only feet from him on the floor was pummeled during the night. Veeder knew the beating was coming when he heard tennis shoes squeaking across the floor.

Veeder tried to shut out the sobs and wails, to escape into the mental closet he’d constructed during his days of solitary suicide watch, but the man’s agony was too profound, and simply too damn loud to ignore.

Veeder pretended to sleep, wondering if he would be next. He was well known by his fellow incarcerated men; his face had been on TV for days, as had the faces of the six people he’d killed.

When he’d first entered the cave

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