Sanctuary (19 page)

WE STOOD NEXT
to the car’s hood, two ghosts in the halo cast by the bright headlights. Keith paced, one hand rubbing his cheek, the other holding the note. Neither of us was quick to speak. The boy had passed out, at peace for the moment. We had to think, and the only thing I could think with any amount of clarity was that I had to find a way to end this. How, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t follow the letter’s draconian demands. My life was caving in on itself.

“We can’t cut off one of his fingers,” I said.

“I know.”

“They’ll hurt Danny if we don’t.”

“I know.”

“We can’t go and kill this other person.”

“I know.”

I stood still, desperate to do something, gripped by a dreadful certainty that there was nothing I
could
do.

“Who would
do
something like this?”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Who?” He faced me, jaw fixed. “And why?”

“What do you mean, why? Because someone you put in prison wants the money.”

Keith stared at me and I knew he wasn’t satisfied.

“And because someone’s after Danny,” I added.

“I know that. But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

If he only knew. There was much more, like the fact that Danny had taken the fall for me. Like the fact that Danny wasn’t the only one with enemies. But I wasn’t free to tell Keith that.

“Like you said,” I said. “Randell’s working with someone who wants to hurt Danny using me.”

“And now that person’s demanding we cut off an innocent boy’s finger,” he said.

“We’re can’t do that.”

“And that we kill Randell’s partner to get to his money.”

“We’re not doing that either.”

“I know we aren’t. But we need to know more about the man doing all of this on the outside, and that means I need to know anything you know.”

“I told you, I don’t know Danny’s enemies.” And that was the truth. “A judge, maybe, but even if it is a judge, I don’t have a clue who.”

“Think! There has to be something Danny said. Some mention of someone. Please, Renee, you have to think!”

“I told you, the pedo—” I stopped short, realizing I’d said too much.

“The pedophile? What pedophile?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. Just something he said. Danny has a thing against pedophiles, but who doesn’t?”

“Okay, that’s a start. He killed a pedophile?”

“I told you, I don’t know any specifics. You’d have to ask him.”

“Well, that’s not possible, is it?”

I said what at the time seemed the most obvious thing in the world to me. “So we break him out.”

Keith blinked once. “Crazy. Not a chance. Which pedophile?”

“I don’t
know
, assuming he even killed one.”

Keith lifted one hand shoulder-high in a sign of surrender and turned away. “All right…all right, fine. I accept that. But you do understand what kind of predicament this places us in.”

“The same one we’ve been in since the beginning.”

He glanced sideways at me, face strung with worry. For the first time, he’d been directly threatened by Sicko, and he didn’t like that.

“All right…” He was nodding again, pacing. “All right, let’s just take a deep breath and think this through. The way I see it, we have two days to figure out who’s behind this. We could start with judges. Maybe a judge connected to a pedophile. We could also run through all of Randell’s known associates on the outside, but I’ve already picked through them a dozen times.”

He stared out into the darkness and continued, talking to himself as much as to me. “If we come up with nothing, on Monday we could still go to the address we’re given. Use that as a starting point. Whoever Randell wants us to kill has to know more than where this pile of money is. With any luck, we catch a break with him. One way or another we have to start flushing out names and contacts that might lead us to Sicko.”

I walked from one headlight to the other, then back, eyes on my black boots, which were now coated with a film of dust. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was telling myself I had to polish them the second I got them off. And wash my socks. And my feet. Take a shower. Maybe two.

“Maybe we’re approaching it all wrong,” Keith said.

“How so?”

He stared off into the darkness, then shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “Obviously Randell is only part of the equation, but he’s a piece we actually know about.”

“Okay. And?”

“And Danny’s in the equation too. He has information we need.”

I nodded slowly. “And?”

“And they’re both inside the prison.”

He was rethinking breaking in. Now that he was directly threatened, his horizons were broadening.

“I thought you said breaking in would be impossible. You could figure out how to get us in?”

“I said crazy. Illegal.” He dismissed the idea again with a wave of his hand. “It’s pointless. Even if I could get us in, we’d never make it back out.”

“And what do you call this?” I shoved a finger toward the warehouse. “If we could get to Randell, their leverage would fall apart. You’re right, everything we need’s inside Basal. Randell’s in there. Danny’s in there.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s a federal crime. Like I said, plain crazy.”

“So we do what? Cut off the boy’s finger? Not a chance. I’m sure that fits somewhere in the crazy-federal-crimes thing as well.”

“We take him home to his family,” Keith said.

“Sicko will know.”

“That’s a chance we have to take.”

“And then what? Kill this guy Randell wants us to kill?”

“No.” Keith paused, staring at me. “Not unless we have to.”

His willingness to consider it surprised me. But then it didn’t, not really. It depended on who the guy was, what he’d done, what he would do. For all we knew he was a John Gacy with a dozen bodies in his basement.

Again, what would Danny do?

Danny wouldn’t kill anyone, period. Not anymore.

“If we have to kill anyone, I vote for Randell,” I said. “He’s the man on the inside. Without him Sicko’s leverage goes away, and we can bring in the cops.”

“Randell isn’t controlling this.”

“Then we force a confession from him.”

Keith let out a long breath and began to pace again. “No…We do the only thing we can do: we play along. We buy time. We keep fishing, we keep looking, but short of any new developments, we go to the man’s house and we play Sicko’s game.”

“Fine.” My throat felt frozen.

Keith glanced up at me. “You’re sure?”

You’re sure?

Those two words sliced through my mind. Sure? Sure about what? I wasn’t sure about anything anymore except that I had to do whatever was necessary to save Danny, but even that was getting foggy.

My mind flashed back to a memory of Danny holding my hand, telling me that he’d decided to turn himself in and take the fall for me. His life of violence was over; he’d made a terrible mistake and now he had to pay his debt to society. Me too, I’d said, but he’d flatly refused.

Now I’d been sucked back into that place of desperation and violence. And I hated it.

“Like you said, what alternative do we have? We go to the cops, we’re screwed; we go to the warden, we’re screwed; we go to the media, we’re screwed; we go to the prison, we’re screwed. All that’s left is playing along.”

Keith saw the despair in my eyes. “Renee…”

I turned toward the warehouse door and took two steps, then stopped, smothered by a sense of hopelessness. A knot clogged my throat.

“Renee…” He’d walked up behind me. “I’m sorry, I know how much you care for Danny.”

Images of Danny spun through my mind. Whips and chains and knives and blood. His enemies would hurt him now, I was sure of that. What if they cut off Danny’s arm? Or his foot? What if they cut out his tongue?

Sometimes my mind seemed incapable of turning itself off. Keith put his arm around my shoulder. I know he was trying to comfort me, but I almost resented him for it because really, it should have been Danny standing next to me, not Keith.

He was a good man, the broken cop, but I wanted my broken priest.

What would Danny do?

He would lay down his life if he had to, and that was what scared me most.

I couldn’t break down. Jeremy was waiting. So I swallowed the pain in my throat, took a deep breath, breathed a prayer, and put my hope in Danny, which was the best I could do in that moment.

“Danny’s a strong man,” I finally said. “He might not be as easy to hurt as Randell thinks he is.”

And then I walked into the warehouse to save the boy.

MONDAY

THE INFIRMARY AT
the Basal Institute of Corrections and Rehabilitation was large, considering the size of the prison. Nothing less than a top-notch facility that met the highest standards for professional medical care, in or out of prison. Danny wasn’t a stranger to hospitals. He’d spent time healing in several during the Bosnian War and even more time visiting patients as a priest. The level of sophistication at Basal surprised him. Certainly it was a far cry from the more clinical atmosphere at Ironwood.

He’d awakened in the ward eight hours after taking his beating in the hard yard, his head splitting with pain, still groggy from whatever medications they’d injected into his system, but otherwise sound. His lip was cut and swollen, and his ear had required several stitches, but none of his wounds prohibited his return to the commons.

The warden’s orders, however, did. It was for his own safety, the nurse had informed him. Basal’s policy was to segregate injured members long enough for the warden to stabilize the situation.

The infirmary was laid out like an emergency room, with six spaces separated by drawn blue curtains, each of which contained a hospital bed, an IV stand, and a sealed rolling cart that housed various instruments, none of which were pertinent in Danny’s case. Twelve recovery rooms housed longer-term patients on both sides of the hall outside the primary care facility.

In most prisons, patients who needed critical care were transported to hospitals and then returned upon recovery, but with the high quality of care available at Basal, only members with more serious medical conditions were transferred. It was yet one more way the warden limited his members’ contact with the outside world.

Danny learned that a doctor had inspected him and sewn up his ear, but otherwise the only human contact Danny had was with a male nurse, Garton Kilburn, a large fellow with unflinching eyes, few words, and no evident emotions.

“Looks like you’ll be fine,” the man said after a cursory inspection of Danny’s wounds on the first day. He wore blue scrubs over a white shirt and carried a stethoscope around his neck.

The nurse checked the leather restraints that tethered Danny by the wrists and ankles to the bed’s steel rails, standard operating procedure following a fight.

Danny lifted his right arm as far as the bindings would allow, no more than six inches. “I think it would be best if I moved around a bit, don’t you think? My joints could use some loosening up.”

The man offered him a curt nod and left him without a word, his version of
whatever
. Danny was their property and would be allowed to move around when they determined him either fit or deserving.

In Danny’s case, that was two days later, in the evening, long after his joints had all but frozen in place following his time on the wall and his subsequent beating. During those two days, he’d spoken only to Garton Kilburn and only on three occasions. None of the conversations had proven more inspiring than the first. The man’s function was evidently limited to delivering trays of food three times each day, freeing Danny of all but one restraint so that he could use a commode rolled in twice each day, and changing the bandage on his ear twice before removing it altogether.

Considering the nature of deep meditation, the medical staff likely attended to inmates whose bruising would raise the most eyebrows. They, as much as the correctional officers who knew about deep meditation, would have earned the warden’s trust. Connecting with their patients in a personal way that might test that trust was obviously not part of the program.

Odd, how being property of the state changed a person’s outlook on freedom and identity, Danny thought. Three years earlier, accepting this kind of treatment would have been inconceivable. The war in Bosnia had filled him with a profound need to protect the abused, and that need had extended to protecting his own life. But he’d walked into the hard yard and let Randell hit him without raising a finger to protect himself. Not once but three or four times, with enough power to kill most men.

Why? To what end?

Was he less of a man now than when he’d taken up a gun at age fifteen and avenged his family’s deaths?

Was he weak in the face of Peter’s suffering?

He’d taken a vow of nonviolence and he intended to stand by it. Judge not lest you be judged; turn the other cheek; love your enemy; rather than rebel against the authorities who stripped you of your dignity and slaughtered thousands, bow to them and pay them their tax. These were the precepts that had finally drilled their way into his heart.

But he could not shake the questions that begged him to reconsider.

Was it even possible to follow that way when boys like Peter stood in your path, begging for help?

But, no. No, he couldn’t go down that path again. It was precisely that kind of questioning that had led him to violence in defense of the helpless.

A correctional officer came for him on the second night after dinner. Danny’s muscles still ached, his joints were stiff, a dull ache still hung in his head like an iron weight. Once again he was led through the hub. Once again he climbed the stairs to the second tier in the commons wing. Once again he was ushered into his cell.

There was a change in the others this time, he thought. The member in the hub watched him with more than just mild curiosity. They wore uncertain faces, either confused by or genuinely interested in him, perhaps a little of both. The prisoners along the tier moved back from the railing without being told to.

This didn’t mean they’d found more respect for him. In all likelihood word of his beating solidified his reputation as a weak prisoner. He was prey for the predators, the kind of man who could not stand up and defend himself or his brother. A punk. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t in prison to win approval, only to do his time.

Peter was in the cell with Godfrey, waiting for Danny. This was surprising, considering the danger that he might find in the commons now as a resident of the privileged wing. Clearly, the boy saw him as his savior.

“Danny!” the boy blurted, bolting off the lower bunk. Peter bumped his head on the frame, but the blow didn’t discourage him from stumbling forward and throwing his arms around Danny.

“Hello, Peter.”

“You’re back!”

“I am.”

Danny patted the boy on the back, shifting to maintain his balance. Peter’s tight hug aggravated the pain in Danny’s ribs, and he was thankful when the boy released him of his own accord.

Godfrey grinned, one hand on the bunk, the other in his pocket. “Anybody who can take a beating like that and walk out of the grave three days later is a priest in my book,” Godfrey said.

“It’s been two days.”

“Either way.”

“Simon says you’re a strong man and that I should thank God I have a strong man on my side,” Pete said.

Danny offered the boy a slight smile, but he wanted none of the conversation, not now.

Pete stared at his stitched ear. “Why did you let him beat you up, Danny?”

Once again, Danny was confounded by the irony of innocence held captive in such a brutal environment. The boy was guilty of deviating and was paying his price without really understanding either the rules or the price.

“You crazy, man.” Kearney had walked up behind Danny and leaned on the door, bright eyes twinkling. “And you still walkin’.”

“Not crazy, no. I just don’t like fighting.”

“Don’t worry, Danny,” Peter said, beaming. “It’s not like that in the privileged wing. It’s nice.”

Danny grinned at the boy and rubbed his head. “Well, I’m glad for you. They’re treating you well then?”

“I have chocolate milk in my room. And last night I had a steak. That thick.” He pinched an inch of air with his thumb and forefinger. “It was juicy.”

“Steak,” Godfrey said. “Now there’s something I would be willing to spend a day in the hole for.”

“You can come!” Peter exclaimed, eyes darting between them. “You can both come. If you’re good, you can have all the steak you want. And I have a new friend. His name is Jack.”

“Seriously, why’d you do it, Priest?” Kearney asked.

Danny walked to the sink and turned the water on. “Like I said, I don’t like to fight.”

“Ya, but to git yur butt whooped like that…They sayin’ we got a half-baked priest here.”

He splashed water on his face. There was nothing more that needed saying. Maybe he
was
half-baked. Silence filled the cell behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that they were watching him.

“They take you deep?” Godfrey asked, voice softer now.

Danny grabbed a towel from the top of his locker and shook it open. The warden had made it clear that no discussion about deep meditation was allowed. For all Danny knew, his mention of the experience would find its way back to Pape and all four of them, including Peter, would pay a price.

He shoved his head into the towel and dried his face. “I’m fine. Just a bit tired. What time is it?”

No one responded.

Danny pulled the towel from his face and turned toward the door. Kearney, standing there only a moment ago, was gone. In his place stood Warden Marshall Pape, watching Danny, one hand in his pocket fiddling with keys or coins, the other limp at the bottom of his black suit jacket.

“It’s almost eight, Danny,” the warden said. “Time for Peter to leave us.”

Peter stood still, transfixed by the sight of his greatest oppressor.

The warden stood aside and indicated the walkway with an open palm. “It’s okay, boy. Run along.”

Peter hurried past him, turned down the tier, and was gone.

Pape stepped into the cell. “I hear you took quite a beating,” he said in a gentle voice.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Of that I have no doubt. You’ve proven to be quite a stubborn man, I’ve got to hand it to you.”

The soothing tone of his voice would have come across as disingenuous before their most recent discussion, but now Danny knew the truth about this man. Marshall Pape was just like the rest of them: a wounded man who was doing what he knew to cope with difficult circumstances.

At his core, the warden
was
a gentle man. His motives were as pure as any father who’d suffered the loss of his family. He, like so many well-meaning religious types, truly thought he was doing the right thing.

“You know, at times I worry that some people are too strong,” Pape said. “They refuse to own up to their own inadequacies. It bothers me. But I have to believe that good can come from even the most vile situations. And I think that maybe you’ll show us all a more perfect way, Danny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone face punishment with so much courage. It’s inspiring.”

Danny nodded. “I suppose every man has his limits. I can only pray I never find mine.”

“Well said. I’m sure you’re still sore. The nurse informs me that he neglected to give you any medication before you left the infirmary.” The warden pulled his hand out of his pocket and held out two white capsules. “Normally, we don’t allow narcotics in the wings, but I think the situation warrants it. Maybe this will help you sleep.”

Danny looked at the capsules. “I’m fine, really…”

“I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

Alarm bells were ringing in Danny’s head, warning him that taking the medication, whatever it might be, would end badly. But he also was sure that not taking them would be considered insubordination.

So he stepped forward and took the pills from Pape’s hand.

The warden gave a little flip of his wrist toward Godfrey. “Give him some water, Simon.”

Godfrey picked up a water bottle and handed it to Danny, who hesitated only a moment, then threw the pills into his mouth and swallowed them down with the water.

“Good. That’s good. Sweet dreams, Danny. You’re going to need them.”

He left Danny standing, clueless to his intentions. But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? The warden had already made his intentions perfectly clear. He was well-meaning, but he was also hopelessly deceived.

He was going to help Danny see the light.

He was going to crush him.