by Ted Dekker
17
DANNY WAS ESCORTED from the warden’s office clean, dressed in the blue slacks and tan shirt of the general population, bearing no mark or sign that he’d just spent two days in hell. The hub was half full of convicts playing checkers, watching television, wasting time an hour before lockdown.
Hustles were going down, bets were being made, arguments unfolding, scores settled, gossip passed, all with the warden’s approval. And only with it. Evidently, if a member proved his loyalty, he was allowed certain lenience. It would take some time to understand what limits could be pushed without reprisal. Danny had no intention of exploring those boundaries.
Mitchell led him past the cafeteria, past a door that led to the infirmary, to a short hall that opened to a gymnasium.
“Stay out of trouble,” the CO said, giving Danny a gentle shove through the double doors. He turned on his heels and left him standing alone.
The room was roughly half the size of a typical gym, all concrete. Gray walls, cement floor, open to the night sky above except for a wire mesh. Bright lights hung from metal beams overhead.
Some members were engaged in a game of pickup basketball around a netless hoop that jutted from the far wall. Pull-up bars were fastened to the adjacent walls, most in use by other members going through typical prison yard exercise routines.
The hard yard. No lines on the floor to mark courts, no nets for tennis or volleyball, no bins full of balls or stacks of weights. Just one hoop, the pull-up bars, and eighteen or twenty inmates. Among them: Randell, Slane, and two other knuckleheads he’d seen with them in the dining hall.
He was briefly tempted to turn around and walk out, but the warden had specifically sent him to the hard yard, clearly for a reason.
“You okay?”
Danny turned and saw that Godfrey and Peter had entered behind him, the old man wearing concern, Peter oblivious to anything but his own delight.
“The warden put me in the privileged wing.” Peter beamed. “You like my jeans?”
Indeed, he was dressed in a pair of jeans at least three sizes too large. He’d neatly tucked a bright red T-shirt, also oversized, into the waistband.
“You’re looking pretty snappy there, Peter. Where’d you get them?”
“From the warden. He gave me my own room in the privileged wing. It’s a big room and it has a pillow.”
“It does, does it? Well, I’m sure you deserve at least three pillows.”
The boy laughed, snorting once in his exuberance. “I can eat anytime I want, and they have chocolate milk. The warden is being nice to me.”
“Good.”
“He said that if I’m good, he won’t hurt you, Danny.”
Danny exchanged a quick glance with Godfrey, who forced a grin. The older man rubbed Peter’s shoulder. “The Pete’s living large, my friend. He’s finally made it. Isn’t that right, Peter?”
“Yup. And I’m going to be good. I promise.”
“Did the doctor check you?” Danny asked.
“He said I wasn’t raped. I was just scared, that’s all. Did…did the warden hurt you?”
“Not too much, no.”
“We’ll be good, and everything will be good. I promise, Danny. You can come live with me if you want.”
The exchange could hardly have been more surreal, standing in the hard yard, talking about being good so the warden wouldn’t hurt them. Such was Peter’s simple understanding of Basal. It broke Danny’s heart.
“I would like that.”
The boy’s eyes looked past Danny and went wide. Danny turned around to see Randell, Slane, and the two other cronies headed their way.
“We’d better go,” Godfrey said.
Slane’s hair was slicked back, his lips twisted.
“I need to stay. Peter…” When Danny turned back, the boy was gone.
Godfrey stepped up next to him. “You don’t need to do this, Priest.”
“Stop calling me that. And you’re wrong. I do.”
“I’ve seen him put a man in the hospital with one hit. You should leave.”
Randell was halfway to them, basketball under one arm, face drawn and red, whether from the heat or from anger, Danny didn’t know. Likely both.
“No one’s fighting. The warden set this up.”
“Like I said, you should leave,” Godfrey said.
There were three ways to handle Randell. The first and most obvious was to leave, as Godfrey suggested, but doing so would only postpone the inevitable confrontation, one which Danny was sure the warden intended.
The second was to stand up to the man. Even in Danny’s condition he was confident he could hurt Randell enough to plant permanent doubts in his thick head. But that choice would place Peter in terrible danger. It would also land Danny back in deep meditation.
The third option was the only course that made any sense to him.
“Go get the others,” he said to Godfrey.
“Say what?”
“The other members. As many as you can, get them in here. Be quiet about it.”
Godfrey hesitated only a moment, then spun and hurried out.
Danny walked forward, arms limp at his sides. He wouldn’t hurt Randell, but he could make the man second-guess himself. There were no guards that he could see. The other members had turned their collective focus on Randell marching across the concrete floor.
Such an obvious schoolyard confrontation would never have gone down at a prison like Ironwood, where inmates and gangbangers tended to be more calculating, waiting for the right moment to slip a shank out of their sock and shove it into a victim’s side before the guards could stop them.
But this was Basal, where each member was hardly more than a piece on the warden’s chessboard. Randell was approaching Danny only as intended by Marshall Pape, who was undoubtedly watching via one of the security cameras at this very moment.
Danny stopped when they were ten feet apart. “Good evening, Bruce.”
The man shoved the basketball at him and Danny caught it easily, then dropped it behind him.
“I realize we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Shut up, you FNG.”
Danny was tempted to smile but didn’t, out of respect. Instead he attempted respectful reason.
“You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, my friend. Why don’t you just talk to me the way you would in any other prison? I’ve been called many things, never an FNG. But you can’t use common language in here because the warden finds it offensive. And we don’t want to upset the warden, do we? We’re not free men, you and I. We follow someone else’s rules to avoid terrible punishment.”
The patter of feet announced the arrival of other members through the door behind Danny.
“And so we should. As I recall, one of those rules is that we respect each other. To that end, I’ve given my word to the warden not to disrespect you in any way. All I want is to do my time in peace.”
Randell stood like a thick tree. His didn’t glare or crouch with fists clenched, he only watched Danny, expressionless. Suddenly composed. And in that unexpected calm, Danny saw Randell for what he really was, stripped of a role given to him by the warden.
A more dangerous man than he’d estimated.
Twenty or thirty members had made their way into the hard yard and fanned out now, all watching, wary and focused. There was no taunting, no agreement or disagreement. Vocal support or outrage would undoubtedly be noted and punished. They all seemed to know that what happened here was meant to happen. It was all part of the warden’s program.
Danny spread his hands. “Really, Bruce, you and I are on the same side. I respect you, you respect me, we both respect the warden, no one gets hurt, we all go home early. Those are the rules.”
“You’re missing something,” Randell said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re a priest.”
With that the man calmly walked up to Danny, balled his hand into a fist, and slugged him in the gut w
ith enough force to shove him off his heels and back a foot.
The blow didn’t take his wind—he’d anticipated it—but his time on the wall had weakened him, and pain flared through his abdominal muscles.
“I’m not going to fight you, Bruce,” Danny said. “I only mean to show and earn respect. You should know that I’m not a priest.”
Randell blinked, perhaps caught off guard by Danny’s unflinching resolve. He stepped up and struck Danny on his chin, a bone-crunching blow that snapped Danny’s head around and dropped him to one knee.
Danny’s world spun, darkened for a moment, then slowly came back into view. The concrete was there, only two feet from his head, and he wanted to lie down. But that would only compromise his standing before them all.
The confrontation would have to end as he’d expected it must.
Danny slowly pushed himself to his feet. Blood trailed down his chin and dripped on smooth concrete.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said. His jaw ached and he wondered if it was broken. “I’m not your enemy. We’re all in this together.”
Randell’s calm broke then. His face darkened and his lips pulled back in a snarl. He came at Danny like a prizefighter, thundering his rage. And Danny let him come, knowing he would have to bear only a little more pain before it was over.
The man’s next blow glanced off his ear, inflicting a sharp pain like a knife to the side of his head. But it didn’t knock him down, so Randell threw his left fist in a wicked uppercut that landed squarely on the bottom of Danny’s chin.
He staggered back and felt his legs start to go.
“This is insane,” someone muttered.
It was the last thing Danny heard before Randell knocked him down with an elbow to the right side of his face. A boot smashed into his ribs. Another struck his neck.
Danny lay still, bleeding on the floor, only dimly aware of his surroundings now. If Randell killed him, then he would die and the warden would have no further reason to punish Peter, he managed to think.
And maybe then Renee would be safe.
“Break it up!” Mitchell, the skinny guard who’d wanted to Taser him in the basement, was yelling above the ringing in his head. “Get out, all of you!”
Hot breath whispered into his good ear. “The next time I’m going to break every bone in your face, Priest.”
18
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 cra
zy-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.
