The Sanctuary

by Ted Dekker

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I know. Do you remember the name of the judge?”

  Pete shook his head.

  To Godfrey: “The court didn’t take his condition into consideration?”

  “You tell me. Worst part is that the convicts consider him a pedophile. I keep telling him to keep his head down and stay to himself, but that can only help so much.”

  “Someone’s bothering him?”

  The boy’s eyes flickered across the room. No one in particular that Danny could see, but the bruise on his cheek held more significance now.

  Even so, Danny would be hard-pressed to lend any assistance other than empathy, consolation, and advice. And really, in any other prison Pete might have already suffered far worse than he had here. Despite the warden’s oddities, Basal might just be Pete’s best chance of surviving his time, short of living in segregation.

  Danny was lost in these thoughts when it occurred to him that the room had quieted. He followed several stares toward the door and saw a white commons member walking toward their table. The man was big, well over six feet, with arms the size of small trees and a neck built like a trunk. The man looked like a Viking who thought with his fists and offered rebuke with his eyes, harsh glares that would shrivel all but the strongest opponent. Behind him and to his right walked a smaller, thin man, his dark hair slicked back with grease, wearing a crooked smile. Both had tattoos that ran down their arms, but no gang markings that Danny could see.

  “That’s Randell,” Godfrey muttered of the larger man, and the moment he said it, Pete’s head whipped around. The look of terror on the boy’s face could not be mistaken.

  Both Godfrey’s and the warden’s advice to stay clear of Randell flashed through Danny’s mind. The warden had asked him to help Pete because he and the boy shared a common enemy. Randell.

  But helping the boy would only infuriate that enemy.

  The large man spoke to Danny before he stopped at the edge of their table. “Stand up, you FNG.”

  Randell’s challenge drew no attention from the facilitator at the door, who watched them from his chair, tilting it back on two legs. Across from Danny, Pete was trembling. Danny remained calm. The warden had made it clear that he’d be tested.

  “You deaf, punk? I said stand up and face me.”

  Bruce Randell’s lips were as pale as his face, two strips of bleached leather on a pocked, lunar face. An albino bulldog. Danny remained seated, unguarded, refusing to allow his anger to rise. He should say something—silence was its own form of disrespect—but considering the man’s blatant disregard for the established protocol, what would that be?

  “I hear you just fine,” Danny finally said. “My instructions from the warden are to avoid you. I think it’s best I stay seated. But I assure you, I’m listening.”

  A smile crept onto the man’s face. “A fancy talker.” His eyes dropped to Pete, who was staring down at his plate, still trembling.

  “So the two diddlers are already playing together,” Randell said. “What do you make of that, Slane?”

  The man with slicked-back hair had his eyes on Pete. “I think they both need to know what it feels like.”

  “An eye for an eye,” Randell said. His stare drilled into Danny. “I don’t like priests. If you don’t stand up I’m going to let my friend loose. And I promise you it’ll be bloody.”

  A surge of adrenaline flooded Danny’s veins, but he refused to give in to the sudden impulse to set the man straight. He’d given in to such weaknesses once and paid a heavy price. More important, he’d taken a vow of nonviolence in an effort to follow a truer way.

  Proper execution of the people’s law was the only way to handle injustice, and Basal had its law. He was legally and morally obligated to follow it even when that law failed. Who was he to judge?

  The man called Slane bent down and whispered something into Pete’s ear, his eyes fixed on Danny. There was darkness and hatred in those eyes.

  Pete spun off the bench, rounded the end of the table, and dropped down on the seat next to Danny, effectively placing his new protector between himself and Slane.

  Danny stilled another urge to help Randell see the light. His impulse to defend the weak would never leave him, he knew; neither would his resolve to control that impulse.

  Randell glared at him. “Welcome to Basal. You may think the warden’s your problem, but you’d be wrong. That would be me.” He leaned forward and spoke, close enough for Danny to smell his stale breath. “I’m going to make you hate yourself, Priest. And then I’m going to kill you.”

  Randell brought a gnarled hand up, gripped Danny’s cheeks between his thumb and fingers, and shoved his head back. “Remember that.”

  “Back off, Randell.” The facilitator had finally decided to step in.

  Danny couldn’t deny the anger he felt. But he’d faced far worse and learned that his refusal to engage, although initially painful, eventually rewarded him with peace. Turning the other cheek made sense only if you did it every time.

  Randell lifted his arms in feigned surrender and stepped away.

  The facilitator, a thirty-something with a hook nose that looked as if it might have been broken more than once, was on his radio, calling for backup. He pointed Randell and Slane away from the table, then glared at Danny.

  “Why is it that all the FNGs cause trouble?”

  “Forgive me, Officer, but—”

  “Shut up! Did I ask you a question?”

  “Actually—”

  “Shut up!”

  In the space of ten seconds Danny knew he was being introduced to the way justice worked inside of Basal. Fair enough—his life wasn’t his own. Marshall Pape owned it.

  “When another member asks you for a simple courtesy, you give him that courtesy, you hear? You don’t sit there like a wart. Now stand up and step away from the table.” The facilitator had produced a pair of handcuffs.

  Danny did as instructed.

  “Zero tolerance, get used to it. Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

  The facilitator cuffed him. Two other COs had arrived and stood to one side in a show of force. They needn’t have bothered. Danny had no intention of speaking, much less resisting.

  There was no outcry from the other members, despite the obvious injustice of the event. Randell stood to one side, showing no emotion. Godfrey sat still, watching Danny, but he made no move to defend him. It was prohibited and would only invite more trouble. Still, it was strange. At Ironwood, inmates would invite trouble for the sake of solidarity. A few days in the hole was a small price to pay and even more, a sign of strength.

  Not in Basal.

  The facilitator gave him a nudge toward the door. “Let’s go. The rest of you, back to lunch.”

  Two guards led him through the hub, past the security gate that led to the administration wing, and through another reinforced steel door with the words Meditation Floor stenciled in black above it. Not a word was spoken.

  The concrete steps descending into the basement were bare and well worn. Caged incandescent bulbs lit the way down one flight, then a second, before opening into a long, dimly lit hall with cells running down the right side. The sound of whimpering echoed through the corridor.

  The meditation floor. Fifty cells, according to Godfrey.

  “Did I tell you to stop?”

  Danny walked forward, past the cells. The doors were solid steel with small slats at waist level and similar openings near the floor, used to fasten or unfasten a member’s wrist and ankle irons as well as to deliver food and water.

  The smell of urine and feces hung in the air. No light reached past the cracks in the steel doors. Other than the padding of their feet down the hall, the only sound came from the whimpering in one of the cells. It made Danny wonder how many inmates were being held in segregation.

  When they drew abreast the cell of the whimpering man, the facilitator banged his stick against the steel door. �
�That’s another week, Perkins. Shut your foul mouth!”

  The whimpering shriveled to a whisper. No due warning, no filing, no due process or hearing. A clear violation of the California penal protocol.

  They passed eight additional cells before the guard stopped him. “Hold up.”

  The facilitator unlocked the cell door and swung the door wide. Inside was a concrete room four feet wide and maybe eight feet deep. A raised slab of cement, three feet wide, formed a bed of sorts next to a sealed steel panel on the floor. A metal sink and toilet combo hugged the corner. That was it. No bedding. Nothing else.

  “Take off your shoes, your socks, your pants, and your underwear.”

  Still cuffed, Danny did as ordered.

  “Inside.”

  He stepped into the concrete box, immediately aware of the temperature drop. Behind him, the cell door clanked shut. A bolt was thrown and the upper slat door squealed open.

  “Back up to the slat.”

  The facilitator uncuffed him through the opening and withdrew the restraint, leaving Danny free to move his arms.

  “Take off your shirt and pass it out.”

  He unbuttoned the shirt, shrugged out of it, and passed it out.

  “You can consider due process served. The warden will make his recommendation. If you’re lucky you’ll be out in a few days.”

  The slat cover slammed shut, leaving Danny naked in the dark. The accommodations were poor. It was cold. There wasn’t a single soft surface in the small room. He stepped to the sink and turned the faucet. No water. It was likely on a timer or controlled manually from the outside, as was the water for the toilet.

  It was rumored that some of the cells in the death-row segregation ward at San Quentin were set up similarly, although the inmates were allowed to wear their shorts. Cups had been banned because any vessel could be used to collect urine and feces to throw at an officer who opened the slat. Clothing and sheets could be used to commit suicide by way of strangulation. Mattresses could be torn apart or used to block entry into the cell.

  But this wasn’t San Quentin. Danny wondered if anyone outside these walls knew the true nature of administrative segregation in the bowels of Basal.

  The door at the end of the hall slammed shut, leaving the entire floor in an eerie calm.

  Danny found the edge of the raised slab and eased down onto the bed. He lay back on the cold concrete, stared up into the darkness for a full minute, then shut his eyes and sought God, who is love.

  Slowly, he let his mind still, seeking out the light between his thoughts and emotions. There, in simply being still, he found solace.

  7

  WEDNESDAY

  KEITH HAMMOND, THE sheriff’s deputy who’d taken down Bruce Randell, wasn’t eager to be found. I might have just given up and gone to the authorities to find him if not for my own aversion to the law. Danny had done a good job steering me clear, and when my dedication finally paid off two days later, I was relieved to learn that Keith was no longer professionally tied to the law.

  He lived in a condo on Acacia Avenue in Huntington Beach, a twenty-five-minute drive from my home in Long Beach without traffic. The neighborhood, only ten blocks from the ocean, was populated by free-spirited types who would rather head to the beach than to work. The condo was nice enough—white with green bushes along the base of the building and a bright green canopy leading up from the sidewalk. Several large palm trees in the back rose over the roof. But it wasn’t the neighborhood I cared about, it was the man who lived inside 1245 Acacia Street #3. I was now pinning my hopes on him. All of them.

  I sat in my Corolla down and across the street, gently picking at my lower lip as I obsessed over how best to meet him. When to make my move. What to say. How to determine if I could trust him. Whether he would be willing to help. If he still had the mustache from his days in the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department, as pictured.

  He didn’t have a Facebook profile, which was fine, because neither did I. He hadn’t made any news for a few years. Good enough—I hadn’t either, at least not for three years, and then only as an unidentified subject in a rather nasty slaying.

  What he did have was a two-year history working as an attorney, and five years in the sheriff’s department before that. Best as I could fit the rather disconnected pieces together, Keith had joined the sheriff’s department right out of law school, served for five years, entered private practice, and then dropped off the scene altogether a year or two ago.

  The Los Angeles Times had at least a dozen stories that included the name Keith Hammond in their archives, five of them about the bust and the high-profile trial of a meth cook and distributor, one Bruce Randell.

  Bruce: the viper doing time in Basal who hated priests and was now going to kill Danny. Over my dead body. Likely both.

  Keith spoke of his reason for leaving the sheriff’s department in an article about Martinez Boutros, the only client from his two years of law practice that I was able to identify. Boutros was a twenty-six-year-old Mexican immigrant who’d been charged with murder in a drug case. He was wrongfully accused, Hammond claimed, and then he was acquitted. And the Times came looking to find out why Keith had switched sides from drug buster to busting out druggies.

  In a short statement Keith claimed he’d left the sheriff’s department to find true justice. When pressed about how the department lacked true justice, he sidestepped the question.

  Conclusion: Keith left because of corruption in the system. Maybe not, but honestly, that’s what I hoped for. Then he took up practicing the law to defend the innocent. And then…well, then he’d quit on the system altogether.

  That’s what I pieced together. That and the fact that he’d gone through a bitter divorce eight years earlier, about the time he quit the sheriff. He’d been twenty-seven years old at the time and was now thirty-five, same age as Danny.

  I had my attorney, albeit one who no longer practiced law. I had my defender of the weak, righter of wrongs, and, most important, I had someone with a common enemy: Bruce Randell.

  But that was only in my mind. In reality, I didn’t have him at all. He lived in the condo across the street, and for all I knew he’d moved there to get away from people like me.

  The sun was long gone, and I was about to give up in frustration when a black Ford Ranger approached the condo, turned up the driveway, and pulled into the garage on the first floor. I could hardly mistake the face of the man through the windshield. The man who would help me save Danny had come home.

  How he could help, I didn’t know. But that wasn’t all I didn’t know. Short of storming Basal with an Uzi—and believe me, I’d thought about it—I didn’t know how to get to Danny. I didn’t know who I could trust, who I could get to listen, who I could hire. I needed someone to help me think. To be with me, because alone I was lost.

  The instant the garage door closed, I opened my car door, stepped out into the gray dusk, and headed across the street. I climbed the three steps to the condo’s landing, pushed the doorbell, and stepped back. Hoping to make a good impression, I’d washed my hair twice, blown it half-dry and combed it out so that it laid naturally. The Miss Me jeans I wore were boot cut, better than the skinny jeans I used to wear. My top was a brown BKE with dolman sleeves. I knew these things because I bought all of my clothes from either the Buckle at the Irvine Spectrum Center or from the online store, and I stick to what makes me comfortable without looking shabby. Jane had introduced me to the Buckle two years earlier, and I hadn’t found the need to switch.

  I rarely wore a bra around the apartment, but out was a different matter. I’d chosen one of two padded bras that I owned. There’s no way to make B breasts look like double-D breasts, and even if there was, I wasn’t interested. Still, I was on a mission and I figured a little help wouldn’t hurt.

  The door opened and Keith Hammond stood in the condo’s entry light. His short hair was blond and tossed but still somehow neat, his face was clean shaven but he still looke
d rough, his jeans were marked but not torn, his shirt was a blue button-front with short sleeves, but it wasn’t buttoned. How he’d gotten so casual so quickly was a bit of a mystery, but my first impression of him was hopeful.

  He looked like the kind of man who wasn’t confined by the system.

  “Sorry, honey, whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying,” he said.

  “You’re Keith Hammond?” I replied.

  “That would be me.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Umm, why?”

  See, that’s what I would have said. He wasn’t only outside the system, he was cautious. That was good.

  “Because I have some information you might find interesting, that’s why. And I’m not selling it.”

  “And who are you?”

  “My name is Renee Gilmore.”

  “Information, huh? And what makes you think I need any information, Renee Gilmore?”

  “Because you and I have the same enemy.”

  His brow arched. “Is that so? And who might that be?”

  “Bruce Randell,” I said.

  Up to that point Keith had worn the face of a man who is mildly amused. But when I gave him the name, the light went out of his eyes.

  “I wouldn’t say that Mr. Randell is my enemy,” he said. “Our paths crossed once, but that was a long time ago.”

  “Do you know where he is today?”

  “Chino, last I heard.”

  “He’s in Basal.”

  “Basal?”

  “Basal Institute of Corrections.”

  “The experimental prison.”

  “The inmates call it Basal.”

  “And why should that concern me?”

  “Because Danny’s there too.”

  “And who’s Danny?”

  “My husband,” I said. “Well, not technically. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “You do realize I don’t practice law anymore.”

  “I’m not looking for a lawyer.”

  “How did you hear about me?”

  “I tracked you down. Can I come in?”