The Sanctuary

by Ted Dekker

  I paced back to my bedroom swimming in thoughts. Holing up in my apartment was one plan, but it didn’t deal with the obvious: if Danny and I were being threatened by someone on the outside and they had waited this long, avoiding them for a few months would only delay the inevitable.

  A second option would be to go ahead and hire an attorney, then get a message to Danny asking for a list of all of his victims and anyone associated with them who might be in a position to come after us. Armed with that list, I could go on the offensive with Danny’s help once he earned his visitor privileges. I could track down each one covertly, working with Danny to identify and neutralize our enemy. Danny’s old terms.

  My pacing took me back out to the living room. The problem with working with Danny to identify and neutralize our potential enemies was in the identifying part, because he wouldn’t want a list out there with all of his victims on it. And in the neutralizing part, because Danny no longer believed in neutralizing. Of course, if he knew my own safety was at risk, he might have a change of heart.

  There was always the possibility that the threat was coming solely from inside the prison, after all. Bruce Randell might be the only threat, and Danny might still be unaware. But I doubted it. Randell had to be working with someone on the outside, as Keith had suggested, and that someone was likely one of Danny’s enemies.

  I glanced at the front door, just a nervous habit of a glance, and I started to turn when the white envelope on the floor caught my attention. My first thought was that mail had been delivered through the slot in the door earlier than it normally came, around four. My second was that someone could fill the entire apartment with a deadly gas through the same slot. It was a hole in my dam.

  My heart skipped a beat. I pinched the white envelope by its corner using my left hand and lifted it. It was sealed. No name or address.

  Maybe Jane had come by and, not wanting to bother me, dropped off the twenty dollars she’d borrowed from me two weeks earlier. No, she would have at least put my name on it. Or called. Someone else had delivered the envelope in the last few minutes, and only one name popped into my head.

  Bruce Randell. Someone working for Bruce Randell.

  The gun was in my right hand. Whoever had delivered the envelope might still be making a getaway, hurriedly walking away as I stood frozen.

  I dropped the envelope on the counter, disengaged the nine-millimeter’s safety, snapped open both dead bolts on the door, and pulled it wide, gun raised to the outside world. Pointed straight ahead at the cars driving by on Bixby Road.

  My pulse was thumping and my palms were already sweaty on the warm steel. I stuck my gun out, then my head. They couldn’t have gone far.

  But the yard was empty. So was the sidewalk. A woman was walking casually for her car in the parking lot, and, as she turned her head my way, I lowered the gun to my side. She would undoubtedly misunderstand my intentions. Or, worse, understand them just fine and call the police.

  The woman turned away and I glanced to my right and left, searching for a sign of whoever had delivered the mail. They were gone. And I was neither in the right clothes nor the right frame of mind to go running around the complex with a nine-millimeter in my hands.

  I ducked back into the apartment and locked the door.

  The envelope was clean. Careful not to disturb any fingerprints on the surface, I slit it open using a butter knife and shook the contents out. A sheet of lined paper from a yellow pad fell onto the counter. On it were words written in red ink. Not just written—scrawled, as if they’d been written left-handed by someone who was right-handed.

  I knew, without reading a single word, that the same man who’d breathed heavy in my ear had now followed up his call with a letter.

  I slowly opened the folded sheet and read the red words.

  Renee Gilmore,

  I am watching. Always watching.

  I saw you drive up to the prison. I saw you go to that scumbag last night, dressed in your tight skanky jeans. Both you and Hammond will go to hell. The priest did what he thought was right in the sight of man, but he made one mistake. He didn’t kill them all. If you go to the cops the priest will die. If you go to an attorney the priest will die. If you go to the warden both you and the priest will die. I will be watching.

  I laid the page down on the counter, fingers trembling, and I took the rest of the note in quickly, as if by reading the words I could make them go away.

  The writing filled the page, laying out careful instructions for me, and with each line my anxiety rose. The reality of the threat grew exponentially with each paragraph. The note ended plainly.

  I’m as serious as the devil in hell.

  I stood there in my flannel shorts and black tank top, unable to get enough breath. My fingers gripped both sides of the letter and the gun sat on the counter to my right, and all I could think was, He’s serious. He’s as serious as the devil in hell.

  And then I was running for my office, searching for the number I’d written on the bottom of one of the pages I’d printed out, the one with information about Keith Hammond. I didn’t have his cell phone, but I’d found his home phone through a reverse directory, which cost me $4.99, charged to my Wells Fargo debit card.

  I found it, dropped onto the edge of my chair, and punched the number into the phone by my Mac.

  Pick up, please pick—

  “Keith.”

  “I just got a letter from him. He knows about you.”

  “Renee?”

  “Yes, Renee. Could you come over?”

  “Who sent you a letter?”

  “Didn’t you hear a thing I said last night? Someone’s stalking me and he knows I was at your house last night.”

  “Slow down. What kind of letter?”

  “The kind someone would write when he knows way too much and is threatening to kill you.”

  “What do you mean kill me?”

  “He said that if I don’t do what he says he’s going to kill us. All of us.”

  That brought a short pause. “Can you read it to me?”

  “You need to read it yourself.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “No, someone pushed the letter through the mail slot in my door. The point is, if whoever is playing this can reach me this easily, he will reach you. I’m dead serious. This isn’t funny anymore. You’re involved, whether you like it or not.”

  One more hesitation. When he spoke again I could hear the nervousness in his voice, and it brought me more comfort than I like to admit.

  “What’s your address?”

  10

  “I AM WATCHING. Always watching,” Keith muttered, reading aloud.

  He stood with one hand on the counter, running the other through his short blond hair, studying the scrawled red words on yellow-pad paper. He’d read it twice, hardly giving my apartment a second glance.

  I, on the other hand, had read the letter at least a dozen times as I paced, waiting for him to arrive, and then again with him. My nerves were too raw to pay any attention to common courtesy, which would have suggested I change into jeans before he got there. And that I put away my kit or close the door to my bedroom. Maybe offer him a drink.

  But the contents of the letter had wiped all social grace from my mind. It was the writer’s claim that there was only one way to save the sinner’s soul that had me worked up. The demands were all there, in red, unmistakable.

  If you want to save the priest you will do exactly as I say without question. Fail once and the priest’s sins will be exposed to the Los Angeles Times. Fail twice and he will die. And if you doubt my ability to snuff out the priest’s life, you are a fool. Test me and know that I am he.

  You will put one million dollars on my plate. You will confess to the murder of the person you kill. You will spend the rest of your life in that sanctuary of penance, paying for your sins. Do this and the priest will be set free. Maybe he can save you.

  Time to live, Renee: Go to the Rough Riders bar i
n Long Beach at 10:00 tonight. Alone. I’ll know. Find my next message at the public phone in the corner. Do what it says.

  I’m as serious as the devil in hell.

  Of that, there was no longer any doubt.

  “The question is, how?” Keith said. “Randell’s on the inside and unless he has frequent phone access or has a cell phone stashed in there, it would be very hard for him to get timely updates from anyone on the outside.”

  “So it’s more than him, obviously.”

  “Someone with a grudge against the priest. One of his previous victims.”

  “His name is Danny,” I said.

  Keith was taking it all in stride. He did, after all, have sheriff’s blood in him.

  He nodded. “They’re using your attachment to him as leverage.”

  “Leverage for what?”

  “Evidently a million dollars.”

  “How can we be sure this is actually Randell? Maybe it’s just someone on the outside.”

  Keith took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. The sleeves on his blue T-shirt were short and exposed the lower half of a tattoo on his left shoulder—a sheriff’s badge with something about honor and death. His eyes flitted over to my gun, which still lay on the counter. He’d hardly given the Browning a second glance when I’d first let him in, which made sense. He’d expect someone like me to be packing after receiving the threats I had.

  “The money points to Randell,” he said. “When you know the whole story.”

  “What story?”

  “But it’s about more than just money. They want you to know they know about Danny’s past, which validates their threat. The real question is, who got away from the priest and is back to make him pay?”

  “What story?” I asked again.

  Keith scanned the letter once more. I knew he was holding something back and I needed to know what it was. I also needed him to work with me. Having him beside me provided far more comfort than I was used to, and I can’t say it bothered me.

  “Okay, look,” I said, covering the letter with one hand so that he would look up at me. “Let’s get one thing straight. It’s not just a coincidence that you’re here. If the woman hadn’t given me Bruce Randell’s name, I wouldn’t have tracked you down and you’d be back home right now, watching football and drinking beer. But she did, and I came to you and whoever is stalking me now knows about you. They may know you’re in here right now. You’re involved, like it or not. So we’re in this together. Right?”

  “So it seems.”

  “You’re either going to help me or you aren’t. Which is it?”

  He studied me with his hazel eyes, then nodded. “We’re in this together.”

  I removed my hand from the letter and stepped back. “Good, because I need you.”

  He glanced over my shoulder and I followed his stare into my bedroom. There were my criminal tools, spread out like a smorgasbord.

  “Looks like you can handle yourself just fine,” he said.

  “Yeah. Well, every woman living alone needs to protect herself.” Which explained pretty much all of the tools on the bed except the strangling wire.

  “True. Okay, let’s start over.” Keith walked into the living room where he paced, letter dangling from his right hand.

  “For starters, there’s no way I’m going down to this bar of his,” I said. “Who does he think I am?”

  “A person he has in a corner.”

  “Then he doesn’t know me.”

  “Let’s hope not. From the top. My best guess: The priest…​Danny…is transferred to Basal, and in a matter of hours you get a call from someone on the outside who knows Randell. One of them had to know Danny was going to be transferred.”

  “How? That’s protected information.”

  He waved my assertion off with a simple flip of his wrist. “Forget that. Obviously we’re dealing with people who have access. Money buys you anything, honey. As anticipated, the phone call had you scrambling.”

  “They wanted to scare me.”

  “Just enough so that you would dig, knowing that you would quickly learn just how impossible it is to reach Danny. Isolation is critical to them. Danny belongs to them now, not to you. They hold that card. And we have to assume they wanted me involved.”

  “Why would they want you involved?” I answered my own question. “Because he knew you would confirm the threat. Everything that’s happened so far—the call, the woman, the shoe box, the letter—it’s all to make sure I take them seriously.” I let it set for a breath. “Tell me about the money.”

  “I’m getting to it. The letter mentions Danny’s failure to kill all of his victims. Any ideas?”

  “He was convicted on two counts of murder. Jonathan Bourque and Darby Gordon. Both scumbags in their own rights. But he was a priest who didn’t mind using a gun. I’m sure that he scared the heck out of more than a few in his time. Injustice drives him around the bend.”

  “You don’t know any of them?”

  “No. He was very private.” Mostly true. I knew about the pedophile he’d killed and a few others, but they were all dead.

  “Well, now one of them is back and with a vengeance.”

  “And what about the money?”

  “Are you always so persistent?”

  “Only when my life’s on the chopping block.”

  “Okay, the money. We were able to close down on Randell because of information leaked to us by an anonymous source who claimed to be Randell’s partner. I always knew the informant was high up, but I didn’t understand his motivation to betray Randell until later. This guy—who’s still unknown, by the way—kept a large sum of money that should have gone to Randell. I would guess that Randell thinks he can now get to the money using you.”

  “Why me? Why not just have one of his contacts on the outside go get it?”

  “I’m getting to that. He can’t trust them. His operation turned on him and fed him to the wolves. But this man who hates Danny—Randell can trust a man like that. You give him a means to the money in exchange for Danny. In the end they both get what they want.”

  “Randell gets his money back—”

  “And his pride.”

  “And his pride. And this brute on the outside makes Danny and me pay.”

  “That’s right. I would guess that whoever Randell’s working with doesn’t just want you dead. He wants you to suffer. Thus the game.”

  “Which isn’t going to happen. We’re going to stop them first.”

  “Maybe. But it’ll be risky. We can’t go to the authorities without running the risk Randell will know we’ve done it. There’s also the fact that the wheels of justice turn very slowly, as they say. There’s a gulf between the law we know and the prison system. Two different worlds. If Randell wants Danny dead, the warden will have a tough time stopping someone from putting a shank between his ribs.”

  I glared at him.

  He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but we have to be realistic.”

  “Danny’s tougher than that. Last night you said wardens are good at suppressing violence.”

  “They are. But if someone like Randell has nothing to lose—he doesn’t care if time is added to his sentence—there’s not much the warden can do for long. And that’s assuming the warden isn’t in on it. Point is, going to the law or the warden will probably make things only worse for Danny. And certainly for you.”

  None of this was particularly new, just a little clearer. I had always feared for Danny’s life on the inside. His strategy for staying alive in the prison system was to stay out of trouble, period. Show strength but never use it. He’d managed three years at Ironwood without making enemies. That had all changed the moment he stepped into Basal.

  “Okay, so where does that leave me?” I asked, picking up the gun. I needed a reminder that I wasn’t powerless in the face of these thugs. “Don’t tell me you expect me to play this game of his.”

  “I don’t know. We have to think about that.”


  “Then think about this. I say we cut this game off at the head.” I said it waving the gun at the ceiling in frustration. “We don’t know who’s messing with us on the outside, but we know about Randell. So we take out one side of the partnership. Without Randell, the guy on the outside can’t threaten Danny or manipulate me by doing it.”

  Keith’s brow arched over his right eye. “Break in?” He seemed to consider it for a moment. “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t have access, for one. Even if we did, it’s a crime.”

  I stepped up, snatched the letter from his hands and held it up. “What do you think he’s demanding from me? Community service?”

  “No. But he’s not demanding we walk into a prison and take the life of a prisoner.”

  “Right. Instead he’ll demand I kill some innocent bystander on Long Beach Boulevard.”

  “We don’t know that yet. But breaking into Basal to kill Randell is out of the question.”

  “Then use one of your contacts to do it.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have those kinds of contacts.”

  We stared at each other, silent for few seconds.

  “You’re actually suggesting I do what he wants?” I finally said. “Go to this bar tonight?”

  “Not necessarily. I’m just talking this out.” He gently plucked the letter out of my hand and lowered it to his side. “I’m only suggesting we consider all of your options.”

  “Our options,” I said.

  “Okay, our options.”

  “And if the warden’s crooked?”

  “Then it’s game over. The warden is judge and jury on the inside.” He paced, one hand in his hair. “Look, I don’t trust legal channels any more than you do, but given our alternatives, maybe it is your best option. I might be able to reach out to some people and find a way to the warden. Maybe—”