by Ted Dekker
He studied me for a moment, then stepped aside. “Be my guest. But I can assure you there’s nothing I can do for you. Unless you’re looking for a drink and dinner. That I think I could manage.”
I ignored the compliment and looked around his condo. Stairs to my right descended to what I assumed was the garage and maybe a room or two. The brown carpet was lint free. Beyond the living room, a tiled breakfast bar divided the rest of the living space from a spotless kitchen, although I couldn’t see the sink from where I stood—sinks always speak the truth. By all appearances Keith looked to be a clean man who was comfortable enough in his own shell to leave his shirt unbuttoned when answering the door.
But I wasn’t here to judge his cleanliness. I wanted his help.
He stepped past me, doing up one button in a respectable show of modesty. “Look, Renee…I know you think there’s a connection between us, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” He put a hand on the stair rail and crossed one leg over the other. “You’ve obviously done your research and know that I helped put Bruce Randell behind bars, but like I said, that was a long time ago. I really don’t care what he’s doing, as long as he stays where he was put.”
“He’s trying to kill Danny,” I said.
“Your not-really-husband husband.”
“That’s right. And I can’t get into Basal to warn him.”
“What makes you think I can? Assuming I wanted to. Prisons are run by wardens who all share at least one goal: preventing violence. You should be talking to the warden, not to a washed-up cop-turned-attorney who walked away from it all. I dabble in stocks for a living now, did you know that too?”
“That’s why I need your help.”
“Why? Because I trade stocks?”
“Because you’re washed up. Like me.”
He glanced at my name-brand jeans. “You don’t look washed up to me.”
“That’s because you don’t know me,” I said, and then I pushed the point, thinking I had to use what I could for Danny’s sake. “Would you like to?”
The light sparked in his eyes, or maybe it was only my imagination. “Boy, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Thank you, but no, I’m not really looking for a romantic relationship with a woman right now.”
“Did I say romantic? I just assumed by your history that you are a kind person interested in doing the right thing. Like helping a woman who has nowhere left to turn.”
“Then you don’t understand my history. I had my chance to help people and I turned my back on it. All of it. I wish I could help you, but I’m not the person you’re looking for.”
It wasn’t going well, but, considering my options, I wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily. He was like me, you see. He just wanted to be left alone to live his life in peace.
I stepped past him, walked into his living room, and sat down on a stuffed tan chair, keeping my eyes on the window. I didn’t intend to appear distraught, I just wasn’t interested in his dismissal.
He hesitated, then followed me and eased into the couch opposite me without a word. We sat like that for a few moments, silent, an odd stalemate of sorts. And he didn’t seem inclined to break it.
So I did.
“I received a call on Monday from a stranger who told me he was going to kill Danny. He was just transferred to Basal and there’s no way for me to make contact. That same afternoon a woman named Constance came to my apartment and told me that an inmate named Bruce Randell was a threat to Danny.”
“None of this really matters to me—”
“I got a finger in a shoe box,” I said.
“A finger?”
“Or something that looked like a finger. It was a warning.”
“From who?”
“Who do you think? Randell.”
He eyed me. I’d finally gotten his attention.
“Either way, none of this is really my concern,” he said.
“How can you say that?” I snapped. “You haven’t even heard what I have to say. You may be all cozy, sitting here trading stocks and drinking beer with your poker pals, but there’re people out there in the system who’ll die if you don’t help them. Me included.”
“You’re assuming I can help. And for the record, there’s no way to fix the system. It’s broken. Trying to fix it will only break you.”
“I’m already broken!”
He peered at me, unmoved, either a broken man himself or someone who didn’t care about anyone but himself. I had to hope it was the first.
“Do you still have your law license?” I asked.
“I haven’t practiced in over a year.”
“But you have it, right?”
“Yes.”
“Will you at least hear me out? It’s not every day a helpless woman comes knocking on your door asking you for help. Don’t be so cold.”
Keith leaned back and looked out the window. “That’s fair.” Eyes back on me. “So tell me.”
His insincere attitude toward my distress was infuriating. I almost stood up right then and left. But I didn’t have anywhere to go or anyone else to turn to. So I told him what I thought he needed to know. Nothing Danny would have disapproved of, mind you. Nothing about my past, only about Danny’s conviction and the events that had led up to my receiving the shoe box.
He listened to all of it, asking only a few questions, like an attorney making inquiries of a client he was considering taking on.
“And so you came here and waited for me,” he said after I’d finished.
“Yes.”
Keith nodded thoughtfully. “And that’s all?”
“Pretty much. Yes.”
“I’m really not coldhearted, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were. I only asked you not to be.”
“Any other time in my life and I might be all over this. But for reasons I’m not at liberty to share right now, none of which have anything to do with your predicament, I just can’t represent or assist you. Still, maybe I can give you some advice.”
It was a letdown, but not enough to dash my hopes. For the first time he was showing real interest in my predicament, as he called it.
“What kind of advice?” I asked.
“Your coming here, for starters. I don’t mean to alarm you, but the woman was right. People like Bruce routinely reach beyond the walls of their cells and destroy people on the outside. I’d advise against walking up to complete strangers and telling them the kind of things you’ve told me.”
“You’re underestimating me,” I said. “The only reason I came to you was because I had nowhere else to turn.”
“Just because someone’s a warden or a cop doesn’t mean they’re not working with people like Randell. Trust me, I’ve seen it from the inside.”
“Which is precisely why I’m here. You’re not on the inside anymore.”
“Just be careful. Also, I wouldn’t assume that Randell was the person who called you.”
“The timing doesn’t line up, right?” I said. “I know, but it’s still technically possible. Who else would call me?”
“Someone on the outside. It could even be unrelated to Randell’s beef with Danny. You said Danny confessed to killing two people. For all you know there were more. And he probably had run-ins with others he didn’t kill. Could be one of them. Was there any press on his arrest?”
“No.” His reference to Danny’s past sent a chill through my arms. Not only because he’d guessed the truth so quickly, but because his conclusion was one that had haunted me for the past two days. A ghost from our past had found us and wanted us dead.
“You can’t assume there were others,” I said.
“No, but it’s a possibility, and it makes more sense than Randell calling you. Actually, I think you could be as much the target as Danny.”
None of this was news to me, but again, hearing Keith say it made the threat sound more real. Why else would the caller have contacted me?
Keith’s reading of the situation d
idn’t fill me with fear as much as it focused my anger. I had been backed into a corner before, and Danny taught me to come out swinging. Or maybe I’d taught that to myself. Either way, whoever was coming after us wasn’t just going to pick us off like little varmints. They were playing the same kind of game Danny himself might have played before he’d taken the high road.
“And your point is?” I asked.
“Be careful.”
“I’m the most careful person in the world.”
“Good. You said Danny could take care of himself. So let him. Nothing from the outside’s going to help him. You could try an attorney, but even if one can get a message inside, warning Danny won’t help him as much as you might think. Prisons are a world unto themselves, understood only by those who live in them. Warning someone to watch his back in a prison is like telling a driver out here to watch out for other cars on the road. Unless he’s an idiot, Danny knows of the threat already.”
“You sure?”
He leaned back and shrugged. “Either way, there’s nothing you can do about it. If Randell really wants him dead, one of them will end up dead. That’s the kind of man he is.”
My gut felt like a sauna for bed bugs. Billions of them.
“So what do you suggest I do? Lock my doors and bar my windows and hope for the best?”
“No. I suggest you start trying to figure out who in either your past or Danny’s past might have a reason to come after you. You can’t stop Randell. He’s in a closed system. Forget him. Find out if someone else made that phone call. Find out who sent that shoe box.”
“Then help me do that,” I said, knowing that there was far more to the past than I could ever tell Keith.
It didn’t matter. He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could but I just can’t.”
“You still have connections in the legal system, right? You know cops. You know the criminal world…”
“I also have a history that takes me out. I wish I could be more help.”
He was looking at me kindly enough, and if I wasn’t mistaken, his eyes betrayed interest in me as a woman, but he wasn’t going to bend. He’d made his point as plainly as he could. I’d probably said way too much.
“You can, you just don’t want to,” I said, standing up. “Where’s your cell phone?”
“My phone?”
“I’m going to give you my number. If you decide to help me out you’ll know where to find me. Or you could just call and breathe heavy.”
He studied me for a moment and smiled, then dug his phone out of his back pocket. “Give me your phone number.”
I did and he keyed it in. But I knew it was wasted time.
“Got it?”
“Got it,” he said.
“Can I have yours?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Of course not.”
But I hardly cared anymore. Someone was coming after me and there wasn’t a soul in the world who could stop them, including Keith Hammond. I was on my own.
It was time to go home and dig out the nine-millimeter.
8
THERE ARE TIMES in life when everything a person thinks he knows is challenged. Undercurrents suck him under and threaten to pull him into a bottomless sea. Tsunamis rise up after an unannounced earthquake and sweep away every trace of reason in a matter of seconds. That’s why the wise man builds his house upon a rock.
But what happens if he unwittingly picks the wrong rock with the best of intentions, only to discover that the foundation under that house can crumble?
In Danny’s case, the storm that threatened to test his rock did not roar in like a tsunami in a matter of seconds. It rose slowly over the course of the three days he spent in meditation, and even then it managed only to erode a small part of his foundation.
Personal suffering he could manage, only because he’d faced so much of it through the war. But the suffering of others…that was another matter.
He didn’t know the names or the crimes of those who suffered in segregation with him, only the odor of their excrement. Inmates came and went during his stay, and the routine became plain.
A code of complete silence was strictly enforced on the meditation floor. Any deviance was handled swiftly. A single loaf of heavily enriched and dreadfully tasting bread was delivered once every day. The water to the faucet ran for five minutes three times a day, signaled only by the hissing in the pipes. The toilet flushed only once a day.
Once every two days, each cell was properly hosed down with the occupant inside. The water and refuse drained through a trap door in the floor, opened during the cleansing. For the day following the bath, the entire wing stank of chlorine and whatever other chemicals they’d put in the water—Pape’s answer to sanitation concerns, which doubled as a mild form of torture, leaving them shivering in the damp cold. There were undoubtedly showers in the wing to meet all requirements set by the Corrections Standards Authority, but Danny guessed they weren’t used except during inspection.
What had the others done to deserve such inhuman treatment? They’d deviated from the rules established by the world in which they lived.
Who made up those rules? A few of them had been established by the warden, the rest of them by the department of corrections. By extension they were all the rules of society.
Why follow the rules? Because the consequence of not following them was painful. They should have all known better. It served them right, people would say. If a law says you stop at a stop sign, and you don’t stop, you are guilty and should pay a price. You run a stop sign, you pay a certain penalty, even if it’s on a deserted road at four in the morning and there isn’t another car within ten miles. Why? It’s the law.
If the law says you cannot look at a guard a certain way and you look at a guard that certain way, you will pay a penalty. Why? Because it’s the law. Looking at a guard wrongly at Basal might be compared to looking at a woman wrongly in some cultures.
Deviant behavior. Do the crime, do the time. Made sense.
After four days of shivering in Basal’s dark hole, however, it made less sense. Not because of Danny’s own suffering, but because of the suffering around him. Still, to maintain order, every society had to establish rules and follow them.
Even then, it wasn’t the plight of those around him that eroded Danny’s rock. It was the face of the young man named Peter Manning.
More specifically, the abuse the boy might suffer at the hands of Randell and his viper, Slane.
Even more specifically, Danny’s own reaction to that abuse. It was clear that any attempt on his part to intervene would constitute a deviation from the established law in this society called Basal. He would be taking the law into his own hands, so to speak, something he’d done before. But by doing so, he’d finally found it lacking. Man did not have the right to subvert society’s laws to enforce his own, even if doing so brought about good.
But therein lay the conundrum eroding his rock. Was it morally right to stand by while another suffered? What of the poor, the diseased, the hungry, the abused, the disadvantaged? Didn’t he have a moral obligation to come to their rescue?
If so, wasn’t he justified in wanting to prevent Randell from harming Peter? If he was required to break the law to save the boy, he would endure Pape’s punishment. At least the boy would be spared his suffering.
And yet this reasoning only delivered him back to the philosophy he’d embraced as a vigilante, saving the abused who were overlooked by the law.
Danny lay on the concrete slab, and he thought of the boy, and he thought about Renee, and he wept because he knew that if it were Renee up there instead of Peter, his wrath would know no bounds. And yet Peter was deserving of as much love as Renee. So, for that matter, was Randell.
But love wasn’t administered by a gun. He knew that. In his very bones he knew that. Randell was a monster because he’d been loved by hard steel instead of a warm heart his entire life, and such love was not love at all.
The facilitators came for him on the evening of the fifth day, the captain, Bostich, and a CO Danny hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting. They asked him to stand outside his cell and dress before cuffing him, which was itself a humiliating show of superiority. But Danny did as they asked, and they led him from the hall of silent, tormented deviants.
“I’ll take it from here,” Bostich said, locking the steel door that led down to the meditation floor.
The other guard nodded and stepped away.
“This way.”
Bostich led Danny to a sparsely furnished office in the administration wing and closed the door behind them. He motioned toward a gray metal chair next to the desk.
“Sit.”
Still cuffed, Danny sat.
Bostich leaned back on the desk, crossed his arms, and returned Danny’s stare. The dark-eyed man with bleached hair looked like he’d come out of the womb angry and hadn’t yet found a way to punish the world for accepting his birth. Danny felt compelled to glance away. A clock on the wall indicated that it was 8:37 p.m. They’d timed his release to coincide with lockdown. Why? Danny didn’t yet know, but he was sure that every detail in Basal was carefully orchestrated for maximum effect.
“Look at me,” Bostich said, then continued when Danny faced him. “I’m going to give you the same speech I give every member after their first stint in meditation. If you think that was hard, think again. If you think that was unfair, you should have thought about that before you did whatever you did to get here. The only one who decides what’s fair is God, and in Basal, the warden is God. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Yes.”
“And if you think opening your mouth about your sacred experience down there’ll bring attorneys running to set things straight, well then you just don’t understand the nature of your predicament, do you? You talk to any member about your time below and you go back down. You talk to anyone on the outside about it, ever, and anything can happen to you. The only thing protecting you in here is the warden. Am I clear?”
Danny had no reasonable choice but to answer in the affirmative.
“Good. I won’t lie. The warden thinks you’re good for this place, that you can somehow be a model citizen headed for early release. Me, I hate you. I don’t trust you. I see you and I see a knucklehead, and the only knuckleheads in my prison are the ones I know I can trust. One more stunt like you pulled back in the cafeteria and you’ll wish you were never born.”
