The Sanctuary

by Ted Dekker

  “And risk Danny’s life? Or mine? You already made that case!” I had the distinct impression he was having second thoughts. “I can’t do that. You have your reasons for quitting the law, I have mine. They know too much about Danny’s past. And mine.”

  “And what’s in your past?”

  There it was.

  “Let’s just say I stood by Danny.”

  He nodded slowly. “Fine. Short of any legal route, the only play we have is to gain both you and Danny some time. And the only way to do that is to go through some of the motions.”

  Short of trying to kill that snake Randell, which I think I preferred, Keith was right. I took a step to the couch, sat down, and dropped the gun on the cushion beside me. “Do you mind sitting? You’re making me anxious.”

  “Sure.” He sat down in the chair opposite me, letter in hand. “We have to figure out who this guy on the outside is. He’s probably the one pulling the strings. We need time.”

  “So we play his game.” I said it plainly but my stomach was turning.

  He looked at me with tender eyes for a few moments. It was in that look that I first saw his compassion for me. I hardly knew Keith, but he’d come from a hard world—his résumé made that clear enough. Up until this point he’d been all business.

  “Read it again,” I said.

  He lowered his eyes and read, “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.”

  “He wants me to trade places with Danny,” I said. “But there’s no way anyone could set Danny free.”

  “Unless…” I could see the wheels spinning behind his eyes as he stared at the drawn curtains. “I know you say you don’t know, but is it possible Danny could have gone after someone in power back then? A judge, for example?”

  It hit me. Danny’s first victim, the pedophile, was the adult son of a judge. Which judge, I had no idea. But a judge.

  “It’s possible. But I wouldn’t have a clue who.”

  Keith watched me. “The right judge could suspend Danny’s sentence. If a judge is involved and we can turn that judge…But it’s more likely whoever wrote this note’s leading you on.”

  It was my first real thread of hope, and I grabbed it like a falling monkey snatching a vine. From that moment I knew, without the slightest reservation, that I would play this sicko’s game.

  I snatched the gun, pushed myself up, and paced. “Okay. So I play along. I go to this Rough Riders bar at ten tonight. What then?”

  “Then we don’t know what. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Even if we take the claim at face value and assume the writer of this letter can free Danny, which is highly unlikely, it would require that you do everything he demands. That’s not going to happen.”

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Like you said, the only way to buy us time and flush this sicko out is to play his game.”

  “Flushing him out won’t be easy…”

  “So what are you suggesting? That we play or that we don’t?”

  “I’m suggesting we play. But don’t get your hopes up. This could all go very wrong.”

  “It’s already very wrong. I have nowhere to go from here but up.”

  He nodded. “Sicko, huh?”

  “Sicko.”

  Keith tapped his thighs and stood, as if that was that. “Okay. We play Sicko’s game.”

  “So you’ll work with me?”

  He offered a grim smile that he probably intended to appear forced, but I saw more than simple willingness in his expression.

  “I don’t see that I have a choice,” he said.

  I stepped up and stuck out my hand. “Thank you.”

  He took my hand, and I saw that softness in his eyes again. It was remarkable how eerily similar this all was to meeting Danny. Coming out of a place of such loneliness and desperation, I could have hugged him.

  And then I did. A short, spontaneous hug. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I pulled away. “Now what?”

  “Now you show me your toys.” He jerked his head over his left shoulder. “In the bedroom.”

  “My toys?”

  His cheeks reddened and he gave me a crooked little smile. “Your weapons.”

  Oh.

  “You think I’ll need them?”

  “Honey, you’re going to need everything you have.”

  11

  THE FAINT SOUND of Peter’s crying in the next cell finally stilled, and the night passed without further incident. But Danny lay awake for several hours, rehearsing his own misstep, gathering resolve to recover himself, layering his mind with reason once again.

  His mind soon filled with an image of Renee, and with it a terrible longing to hold her again. To be held by her. To hear her whisper in his ear. It’ll be okay, Danny, you’re a good man. It’s not your fault I turned out the way I am. You saved me, Danny, and I love you.

  But he’d also shown her a brutal way, and for that he wept also.

  The sound of a loud buzzer brought the prison to life at 6:00 a.m. sharp. The night’s events felt a world removed.

  Slane had vanished from Peter’s cell by the time Danny stepped over to check on the boy, who was still under his sheet, sleeping. He slipped in and shook the boy by his shoulder.

  “Wake up.”

  Peter gasped and jerked back, terrified. Then he saw that it was Danny and twisted his head around to find Slane. Seeing that they were alone, he began to settle.

  “Are you okay?”

  A tear slipped down the boy’s cheek. Danny checked the sheets for any sign of blood and was grateful to find none. It was entirely possible that Slane had only intended to terrify the boy. Infuriate Danny.

  He’d succeeded on both counts. But that was now past.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Peter curled into a ball. “No.” He began to cry.

  “All right, but you need to be checked anyway.”

  Godfrey stepped through the door. “Is he okay?”

  “He appears to be. I think Slane only meant to scare him.”

  Godfrey muttered something about a system gone off the deep end.

  “You need to get up, Peter. You need to be strong and show them that they can never destroy your heart.”

  Godfrey said something else under his breath. Peter refused to speak. It occurred to Danny that the boy might need some privacy to deal with his shame.

  He squeezed Peter’s hand and faced Godfrey. “It’s okay, I have this.”

  Godfrey eyed him, then the boy, then nodded and left, mumbling, “An eye for an eye will kill us all.”

  “Why don’t you get up and see if you’re okay, Peter. I’ll be right next door, okay? Slane’s gone now. It’s safe, I promise.”

  “I don’t want to go back down,” Peter whimpered.

  “Down where? To breakfast?”

  He shook his head.

  “To the segregation ward? Meditation?”

  His answer came in a cracked whisper. “To the other place.”

  “What place?”

  But the boy only huddled up in his sheets and Danny didn’t want to disturb him further.

  “You’re not going to be punished, Peter.” He patted the boy’s hand. “I’m going to talk to the warden and I’ll make sure that you aren’t punished. Don’t worry, you’re safe now. Okay?”

  Peter finally nodded.

  He left the boy alone, knowing that his words were hollow, a false promise of hope when there was no hope in this bloody sanctuary for a boy like Peter. Danny would make his case—he’d rehearsed it when reason had returned to him—but in the end they were all victims of the warden’s whims. And the warden seemed to think his version of hell was the way to fix the world.

  By 7:03, according to the large white clock on the wall,
the second wave of diners had filled the cafeteria including Godfrey, Danny, and Peter, who had emerged from his cage to follow Danny like a shadow, hovering close, bumping into his heels twice on the way to the dining hall.

  With the exception of Godfrey, Peter, Randell, and Slane, Danny hadn’t spoken a word to any of the other members yet, in part because of the gag order the warden had placed on them all, and in part because he’d spent most of his time in disciplinary segregation. But apparently the order had been lifted. The prisoner with the barbed-wire tattoo around his neck, Kearney, had spoken to him on the tier last night.

  Danny sat in the cafeteria and scanned the members dressed in blue and tan. Who were they? What had brought them here? What were their stories?

  Answer: they were humans, and deviance had brought them to Basal, and each of their stories was as fascinating or heartbreaking as anyone else’s.

  As in any society, the humanity of those incarcerated rose above the culture of incarceration. What made one truly human, perhaps more than genetic code, was the human experience. As much as dignity, respect, and honor, a person’s story gave him a human identity.

  Other than Godfrey and Peter, Danny knew little about other members’ unique identities. Basal members seemed more amenable to toeing the warden’s line rather than trying to draw their own.

  He sat with Godfrey and Peter at a corner table in the cafeteria slouched over a plate of powdered eggs, two pieces of soggy toast, a lump of ground meat that approximated sausage, and a glass of orange juice. As he ate, Danny finally began to put flesh to the warden’s sanctuary.

  The first to join them was the man with the barbed-wire neck tattoo, Kearney, a bright-eyed fellow in his upper twenties who seemed less interested in speaking than smiling. In fact, he said nothing at first, and Danny was content to let him eat in peace.

  Kearney was soon joined by two others who sat quietly for about a minute before breaking the silence.

  “You have a name, Priest?” the short pudgy one with gray hair and a round face said.

  “Danny.”

  “Just Danny?”

  “Just Danny.”

  The man nodded. “Okay then, Danny. Name’s John Wilkins.”

  “Tracy Banner,” the man next to him said. Banner was older as well, maybe in his early fifties, but much taller, with dark hair and a thick scar on his right cheek. Probably a lifer like his friend.

  “Yo, dat took some balls, doin’ what you done last night,” Kearney said. “You lost it, huh?” His accent wasn’t as much southern as hackneyed, part everything with some street thrown in.

  Danny took a sip from his cup.

  “You a real priest?”

  “No.”

  “You were?” the scarred Banner asked.

  “I was.”

  “I said yo last night,” Kearney said.

  “You did. Appreciate it.”

  “I went down for manslaughter. Got bump’t in the taillight at a stop by a Toyoter truck. Buddy ’n’ I went on a joy ride ’n’ chased it down. Never had even no ticket up till then.”

  “Nineteen,” Godfrey said.

  Kearney glanced at him. “Nine years ’go. Truck went clean off the road and hit a tree. Passenger was preg and lost ’er baby. Made me sick. Never did no drugs, no tickets, no nothin’ and then—bam—I’m in the big house. My bad. None else.”

  But manslaughter wouldn’t bring a life sentence, and Kearney wasn’t a fish. “Why are you still here?”

  “Got shanked by a southerner in Lancaster back when it was the way, you hear me? Said no baby-killer deserved to breathe. Next time I was goin’ down, so when he come at me ’gin I lost it. Got twenty for killin’ him.”

  “Tough.” He wasn’t a lifer, but Danny understood why he’d made it into Basal. Kearney wasn’t a killer at heart.

  He took a bite of eggs and nodded at the oldest of the three, Wilkins. “I’m guessing you’re a lifer?”

  “Like most in here. Murder. A lifetime ago when I was young and stupid.”

  “Same,” Tracy said. “Shot a man I caught with my wife.”

  They ate in silence for a minute. Danny’s mind turned to his request to meet with the warden. He still had no idea if, how, or when it would happen. Even less if he could do Peter any good.

  “Godfrey says you help’t someone see the light,” Kearney said. “That your ticket?”

  “One way to look at it. The foolish idealism of an imperfect man.”

  “Word to the wise, Priest,” the round-faced Wilkins said quietly. “You might think you can shed a little of your light in here, but don’t kid yourself. God knows half of us would like nothing better, but the only light in here is the warden’s light, you hear?”

  Danny gave him a nod.

  “You seem like a standup guy,” said Banner. “Most of us are old cons who know how to do smooth time. Basal’s not the place to do hard time, trust me. He’ll put your balls in a vise and make you wish you were dead. I don’t care what kind of wiseacre stories other cons’ll tell you about this prison or that segregation unit. Nothing comes close to Pape’s hell. Drink the Kool-Aid, keep your mouth shut, and smile along with the rest of us, you hear?”

  “Believe me, I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “What he’s saying,” Wilkins said, “is that neither’s anyone else, knuckleheads included. You haven’t seen what the warden’s capable of, and you don’t want to. Upset him and everyone pays. Consider the knuckleheads on his payroll ’n’ part of the program. Enforcers. Helps him keep his hands clean, but they only do what he allows them to do, if you catch my drift.”

  “Like I said, no trouble.”

  “Not to say what you did last night wasn’t a trip,” Kearney cut in. “A priest, huh?”

  Danny shrugged. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You think we didn’t want to flush that sick jocker’s head down the sewer where it belongs?” Wilkins said. He cast a sideways look at Peter, who sat hunched over, keeping his eyes elsewhere.

  He lowered his voice. “Makes me want to puke, but you gotta remember where we are. This is hell. We don’t need anyone turning up the flames. Godfrey should have told you that.”

  “I did,” Godfrey said. And then after a pause, “But everyone has their limits.”

  “And everyone can just stretch their limits.”

  “Easy,” Kearney said. “Some lowlife tried to hurt his daughter.”

  Godfrey’s eyes shifted and held on Danny for a moment. “And that lowlife no longer walks the earth,” he finally said.

  “Neither do you,” Wilkins said. “You walk in Basal.”

  The room suddenly grew quiet. Next to Danny, Peter stiffened. One look at the boy’s pale face betrayed his terror. The surest cause would be Slane or Randell.

  But when Danny followed Peter’s stare to the cafeteria’s entrance he saw that he was wrong. It was neither Slane nor Randell. It was the warden. Marshall Pape was gracing them with his presence.

  The immaculately dressed custodian walked into the silent cafeteria, slowly scanning the long tables. His black suit was pressed and his white shirt was starched. He looked in no way evil or monstrous, only immaculate and sure of his place. A good marshal come to keep the peace in a town of misfits. There was no gun faster than his, no word so firm, no foot so sure.

  His patent-leather shoes clacked on the concrete as he walked into the room. The captain, the first-watch lieutenant, and three correctional officers spread out along the walls adjacent their superior.

  Pape nodded. “Gentlemen.” When his bright blue eyes reached Danny, he stopped and held his gaze. Somewhere, someone cleared his throat. For a long moment it was the only sound.

  Danny understood immediately.

  “I hear that there was an incident in the west wing last evening,” the man said. “A request was made for a conference with me.” He smiled and spread his hands. “Well, I’m a simple enough man. Here I am. So tell me, what would the priest like for me to clarify
? Surely, if such an educated man of the cloth is confused, the entire flock must be courting similar confusion. Why not shed the light on the whole bunch at once?”

  Danny kept his eyes on Pape, aware that the man had placed him in an impossible situation. What was said for all to hear wouldn’t bring any good unless it was accepted by both sides. The members were Danny’s potential enemies as much as the warden was. Perhaps more so.

  The warden lowered his hands. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we play fair? Ask me any question you like. Voice any concern or doubt you have. I give you my full blessing. If I am unable to satisfactorily answer your concern, then I will acknowledge my oversight and grant either you or anyone of your choosing quarters in the privileged wing.”

  Danny could hear Peter’s heavy breathing beside him.

  “But if your concern proves to be misguided, then I will send Peter deep. After all, I believe it was the boy who started the ruckus last night. Fair enough?”

  Deep? Someplace other than meditation. Peter’s comment earlier, that he didn’t want to go down there, returned to Danny.

  He had no ambition to confront the warden in public. But he also knew that it would prove valuable for Peter to see someone standing up for him, regardless of the consequences.

  “What do you say, Danny?” Pape asked, wearing a good-natured smile. “Be a good sport. Stand up and be heard. Please, I insist.”

  Danny pushed himself back from the table, calmly stood, and faced the man. Only now, standing, did he see Randell at a table across the room with Slane and several other knuckleheads. Smirking.

  “Speak up, Danny. Tell me what’s so confusing to you.”

  He turned his eyes back to the warden and spoke with stoic resolve and calculation.

  “It’s my understanding of deviant behavior that’s unclear,” Danny said.

  “Oh? How so?”

  He couldn’t implicate Slane directly without snitching and thereby violating the strict convict code. Rat on one, you’ll rat on us all, it was said.