Sanctuary (24 page)

I FACED THE
judge and all I could think was that I had to save Danny. Danny had saved me and now I had to save him. The judge was complicit in a plan to destroy him, and I alone knew the full truth.

As I saw it, there was only one way to save him.

I hurried to the door, turned the handle, and jerked it open. Keith spun from where he was pacing in the shadows. I gave the door a shove and let it slam behind me.

“We have to break into Basal.”

He stared at me. “What happened?”

“I’m done with this game. I’m going in there and I’m going to kill Randell.”

“You think that’ll stop Sicko? What happened in there?”

“He’s going to kill Danny, that’s what happened.”

“The judge told you that?”

“The warden’s in on it. They’re in that institution, free to do whatever they want, and right now what they want is to break Danny. I’m going after him.”

“Hold on, slow down.” Keith walked to the office door, cracked it wide enough to glance inside and, satisfied that the judge was as he was supposed to be, notwithstanding bloody feet, he shut it and faced me.

“From the top. Before any more crazy talk about breaking into Basal, I need to know what just happened in there. What did he say?”

“I shot off two of his toes.”

“I saw.”

“He told me that he came to some kind of agreement with the warden to send a boy to Basal so the warden could break Danny. But it’s all gone wrong and now Randell’s going to kill Danny.”

Keith dropped his eyes to the floor. “He knows we didn’t follow his instructions. The boy at the warehouse—we didn’t cut off his finger. He’s following through.”

“Either way, we have to get in,” I said. “And the judge can’t know. All it would take is one call from the judge to warn the warden.” I couldn’t say anything about the judge’s son—Danny’s first victim. “We have to go, Keith. It’s our only play.”

“Slow down…”

“They brought Danny to Basal to break him, but I know Danny. He doesn’t break easily. They’ll kill him instead.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “You’re forgetting about Sicko. Unless you think the judge is Sicko…”

No, that didn’t make sense, did it? “Sicko wants the judge dead,” I said.

“So who’s pulling the strings? The warden?”

“Maybe.”

He paced, running his hands through his hair. “Why would the warden have a grudge against Danny? I can understand trying to break him on the inside, but why go through all this trouble with us?”

“Because he knows how much Danny loves me. And if Danny knows what’s happening to me he’d…”
Lose it,
I thought, but a knot in my throat cut off my voice.

“I don’t know. The warden wouldn’t risk all this craziness to break a man.” He glanced back at the door. “That leaves the judge. But that doesn’t makes sense either. Why would he want us to kill him? And why would he make us jump through all of these hoops?”

In a perfect world, we’d have the answers we needed before we did anything crazy, like break into Basal. But we didn’t have time to unravel the mess. I had to get to Danny. That was all I cared about now.

“It doesn’t matter. We have to get in there before it’s too late.”

“It always matters.”

“We get inside the prison and stop Randell—that’s what matters. The answers are there. All of them, there, not here.”

He didn’t object as quickly this time.

“Assuming we could get in and stop Randell, the warden would just find another way to break Danny,” he said.

“Then we stop the warden. We blow the whole thing sky-high!”

“How?”

“I don’t know how,” I snapped. I took a deep breath and tried to gather myself. “You tell me how. Prisons are built to keep people in, not keep them out. Don’t tell me there’s no way. We either get in there and stop this or, like you told the judge, we’re all finished. All of us.”

He lifted a hand to quiet me. “Okay, calm down.” He absently scratched at his neck. “But Sicko’s still pulling strings. He can’t find out we’ve abandoned the judge. Which means…” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

He flipped me a glance. “His instructions gave us forty-eight hours to get the money. We’d have to do it within the next two days.”

I’d won him over, which could be either good or bad, but in that moment all I could think about was Danny, and Danny was in trouble
now
, not in two days.

“We can’t wait that long.”

“You can’t just drive up there and walk in. We’d have to get the right identification, make the arrangements, and plan it down to the minute. And then there’s the getting-out part.”

“So you know how we can get in?”

He averted his eyes. “Maybe. I’ve been thinking…I made a few calls.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“You would have insisted. We didn’t know enough to go off half-cocked. We still don’t.”

“I do.” I walked over to my kit open on the floor and shoved the gun into the bag. “Everything leads back to Basal. Everything.” I snapped the kit shut and snatched it off the floor. “We’re wasting our time here.”

“What about the judge?”

“We tell him he has two days to gather one million dollars. We’ll be back in forty-eight hours.”

“And what if he goes to the police? Or warns the warden?”

“He won’t,” I said. “I know too much about him now. If he can’t keep quiet, what I know about him goes to the press.”

HE DIDN’T KNOW
how long he’d been out, only that he wasn’t dead. And that he’d been brought back to consciousness by water thrown on his face.

“Wake up, you idiot. Payback time.” The captain’s voice.

Danny opened his eyes. The concrete ceiling of the terrible room where he’d spent two days slowly came into focus. He was in deep meditation. The place of torment.

But he was alive, which could only mean that the warden had stopped Randell from killing him as he lay unconscious in the hard yard. This was what Danny had hoped for. Death wasn’t Pape’s objective. His world revolved around compliance and punishment.

But what of Randell?

Danny turned his throbbing head and saw that he wasn’t on the ground. Or on the wall. He lay on his back, arms and legs strapped to the wooden table, dressed only in loose shorts.

Bostich stood over him wearing a slash for a grin. Sweat beaded his forehead and darkened the armpits of his uniform.

“Wakie, wakie.”

A doctor from the infirmary stood in the corner, dressed in a white smock. There was a black medical bag at his feet. The man was tall and gaunt, with high cheekbones and a balding blond head. He watched Danny, emotionless, hands clasped in front of his waist.

The door opened, and the warden stepped into the room like a sloth, slow and deliberate. He closed the door behind him and straightened his black suit jacket.

Danny saw then that they’d strapped down his shins and thighs as well as his ankles. The low-wattage incandescent bulb on the ceiling flickered once, then remained lit, casting its glow about the room.

Marshall Pape slid one hand into his pocket as he always did, and stepped into the middle of the room. There wasn’t a hint of kindness on his face.

“You disappoint me, Danny. You saw what they did to that poor boy. Slane was the kind of person other prisons keep paroling back into society to prey on the weak. The kind who took my family. I’m trying to fix that, and I’d hoped to get a little help from a priest. I was wrong.”

But Danny’s mind was more on the straps holding his legs. Why? A tinge of fear leaked through his bones.

The warden nodded at the doctor, who bent for his black bag.

“Did your father ever send you into quiet time when you were a child, Danny?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“Think of the hole as a kind of quiet time. But if you keep breaking the rules, things get worse. The next time, your father might take away privileges. Then swat your hand. Then maybe give you a good whipping.”

No, but Danny said nothing.

“You may think of this as your good whipping. I hope it’s your last.”

He stepped aside as the doctor placed his black bag on the table. From it he withdrew a white cloth, which he placed next to Danny, then latex gloves, and something that looked like a silver electric toothbrush without the brush. A small jar of disinfectant and several cotton swabs were next.

The warden continued in a calm voice. “Don’t worry, he’s very clean. It’s important that you don’t develop an infection.”

The doctor removed a small white case, which he opened. From it, he selected a very thin six-inch needle that went into the end of the device. Or was it a small drill bit, like those used by dentists?

Sweat began to seep out of Danny’s pores.

The doctor connected a small air tube to the silver wand and set it down on the white cloth. Taking the disinfectant, he wiped a four-inch section of Danny’s shin.

No one spoke now. Bostich stood with his arms crossed, wearing a smirk. The warden watched, hand in pocket, frowning. The doctor calmly went about his business.

“The advantage of this particular form of punishment is that it will leave only a very small mark,” Pape said. “The needle will reach into your bone and grind at certain nerves. There will be no permanent damage, but you can expect the pain to be quite intense. It doesn’t compare to eternal fire, but you’ll get the general idea.”

The doctor felt along Danny’s shin bone with his thumb until he found what he was looking for. Keeping the thumb in place, he reached into the black bag and turned on a power source. A small air pump.

He lifted the drill and Danny closed his eyes. The device whined once, then twice as the doctor tested it.

“We’ve only taken one other member this far,” Pape continued. “Slane was terribly stubborn when he came to us, and now he’s dead. Such a shame, but some people just can’t be rehabilitated in their time. As for Peter’s suffering, it was short. Yours will last two days. We’ll talk then.”

He stepped away. The door squealed open, then closed behind him.

Bostich pressed a thick strip of rubber against Danny’s mouth. “Bite on this. You don’t want to chew off your tongue.”

He accepted the piece, bit into it, and marshaled all of his focus to one end: shutting down his mind. The brain controlled pain. The nerve endings might be stimulated, but unless their message was properly interpreted by the mind, the pain would be lost. There was no way to avoid the warden’s punishment, but he could endure it by minimizing that pain.

This Danny knew, but he had never felt a thin, whining drill grind into his bones before. The device screeched to life.

“Try not to move,” the doctor said. “We have a long way to go and I don’t want to tear up your bone marrow.”

It was with that word
marrow
that Danny’s resolve began to fade.

The tip of the drill touched his skin and a sharp sting shot up his leg. But not so much that he flinched. Then it struck his chin and the sensation swelled, a biting, excruciating pain that brought with it spreading heat as his flesh rebelled.

This too, Danny could manage for some time. He bit down on the rubber with more force and pushed his thoughts into submission, searching for the solace that he’d learned to find beyond them.

But then the drill broke past the surface of the bone and struck a tangle of nerves that shattered any notion he could endure such torment. The pain was not localized; it slammed into his whole body at once, like a thundering wave crashing onto the shore.

Nothing could have prepared him for such intense agony. His body began to tremble from head to foot. His head snapped back, and he clamped down on the rubber, desperate for relief.

“Hold still,” the doctor said. “It gets worse with time. Just try to relax.”

Danny’s jaw snapped wide and he began to scream.

WEDNESDAY

I WAS A
bundle of raw nerves. Keith drove the rented black Ford sedan down Highway 138 toward Lone Pine Canyon Road toward Basal. He had pulled the entire plan together in fewer than forty hours and, despite the fact that it fell into place so seamlessly, I was certain we’d forgotten something.

We had identification. Getting in would all come down to our Office of the Inspector General ID badges.

Never mind that. Even if we hadn’t forgotten anything and getting into the prison proved to be as simple as we thought it could be, we were entering the lions’ den. The warden was in there. Randell was in there.

We were dressed like congressmen visiting our constituents, Keith in a dark blue suit and me in blue slacks and a white blouse.

I’d watched a documentary once about the cult leader Jim Jones, who set up a compound for his followers in Guyana called Jonestown. A congressman who had gone in to investigate rumors of abuse lost his life along with more than nine hundred temple followers.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Basal was our Jonestown and I was that congressman.

We’d left Judge Thompson in his estate, assured of his silence and compliance. Knowing that he was complicit at some level, we told him what we wanted him to hear: someone wanted him dead, and unless he got our hands on one million dollars within forty-eight hours, we would have to at least fake his death. We would be back. There would be no contact until then, because we believed that someone was watching.

As to why Sicko wanted the judge dead, the reasoning had become obvious to us: Thompson was a loose end who knew too much to be left alive. If we killed him, we would be implicated in his murder and go to prison, which was one of Sicko’s stated objectives from the beginning. It was the perfect setup.

As to why Sicko had led me to the dancing bear, then to the warehouse with the maimed boy before leading us to the judge, the answer seemed obvious in retrospect: he was manipulating me, pushing me further and further, hoping I would snap and kill a man with my own hands.

But now we’d turned the tables on him. He didn’t know it yet, but he was now playing
our
game, and in that game I needed the judge alive. In fact, he was invaluable. Assuming both Danny and I survived the next twenty-four hours.

“You’re sure these IDs will work?” I asked.

Keith didn’t bother answering. He drove the sedan in silence, as he had for most of the drive north. Neither of us had slept more than a few hours since Sunday night.

He’d dyed his hair black and wore a mustache and goatee. He looked nothing like the Keith I knew. I’d found a short blonde wig and wore rectangular, wireframe glasses. True, I was still my skinny self, but Keith seemed certain that the warden wouldn’t detect us. Although he had probably seen pictures of us, he hadn’t met either of us in person, a key factor in recognition. Our alterations were simple but they would be effective, and I had to trust him on that.

“How long?” I asked.

“Five minutes.”

Honestly, most of my nervousness revolved around the thought of seeing Danny again. Would I? What condition was he in? Was he even alive? I stared at the road ahead and tried to imagine seeing him again. Would he recognize me with a wig on? What would I say?

I’d written a letter that laid it all out—everything that had happened, everything we planned. Although the judge didn’t know it yet, with his help I was going to get Danny transferred out of Basal. But first we had to keep him alive. We had to stop Randell. We had to deal with the warden. That couldn’t be done from the outside because there was too much risk of the warden being tipped off, which would send him sky-high. He’d blow up the whole prison with Danny in it. He’d become the new Jim Jones, and Basal would become his Jonestown.

The letter was folded neatly in my underwear—nothing was as important as getting it to Danny.

Keith gave me a quick glance, then returned his gaze to the road.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

He waited a while before answering. “I was thinking that I’ve been over this a hundred times, and I’m still having a hard time believing the system would leave such a gap in their security. They must have retina scans, fingerprints—
something
to identify OIG deputies besides a simple ID.”

I gave him our pat answer. “Who wants to break into prison, right?”

“Yeah, but you’d think they’d have more protocols in place. What if someone wanted to break in to kill a high-value target? I know we’re not talking witnesses here, we’re talking convicted inmates. One gets knocked off and no one really cares much. Still…”

“But you trust your source,” I said, knowing the answer.

He nodded absently. “Sources. Three of them.”

Our break-in would be made possible because of the separation of power between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the governor’s Office of the Inspector General, the investigative watchdog that had reporting authority over the way the CDCR ran the prisons. In essence, the OIG could investigate any complaints of abuse in the department of corrections. Misappropriation of funds, theft—any form of misconduct in the prison system was the OIG’s to flush out.

OIG deputies routinely showed up unannounced to audit, inspect, or investigate complaints. According to California law, any prison official’s refusal to cooperate constituted a misdemeanor. The OIG was seen by some as the governor’s Gestapo arm, the adversary, the ones who made the difficult task of controlling prison populations even harder.

But that adversarial relationship gave OIG deputies healthy respect, and we intended on tapping it. We needed only an hour inside, plenty of time to do what we needed to do and get out before any collateral damage was discovered.

There were problems, challenges that would have been impossibilities without Keith’s connections, like getting fake ID badges made quickly. And any investigation into a prison like Basal would immediately put the warden on high alert. He would watch us like a hawk.

After numerous phone calls and hours of digging, the plan that Keith landed on seemed flawless.

We would show up unannounced as two deputies dispatched from the main office in Sacramento. The warden would be familiar with regional deputies. Our papers identified us as deputies Myles Somerset and Julia Wishart. We were investigating a current well-known problem in the system: spiked milk supplied by the Prison Industry Authority. We would take random blood and urine samples from inmates, and milk samples from the kitchen. It would take only an hour and we’d be out of their hair.

The warden wouldn’t call the Sacramento office to verify our task, because doing so would cast suspicion on his motives for inserting himself into the investigation. You don’t call headquarters and demand to know why the Gestapo are checking out your prison unless you’re covering something up. He might be able to make inquiries through back channels, but it would take time. Hopefully enough for us to get in and out.

Once we were processed and inside, we had the authority to ask the staff to help us or stay clear. We would find Randell and Danny, do what we needed to do, and leave.

Simple.

But we both knew nothing was ever that simple.

Keith took the turn onto the winding canyon road, and the silence seemed to deepen, despite the fact that neither of us was talking. The radio was off, the windows were up, the air was turned down. My gut felt inside out.

“Remember,” he said softly. “It’s all in the way we play it. It’s in the eyes and the voice. Who are you?”

“Julia Wishart. OIG. You don’t need to worry, I can handle myself.”

“I know you can. So does the judge now.”

“Maybe I should shoot off Randell’s toes.”

“Maybe not.” We both grinned, but our attempt at humor fell flat.

“We stick to our agreement,” Keith said. “We go in, confront Randell, tell him if he touches Danny he’ll spend the rest of his life in a far worse place, learn what we can about Sicko from him, warn Danny, then get out. If everything falls apart, we call the authorities using the number on speed dial. I’d rather be at the mercy of law enforcement than of the warden. If neither of us can make a call and we can’t get out…” He blew out some air. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come down to that.”

“You’re sure they won’t search us?”

“They could by law but they won’t. I’ve checked. Once they process us we can come and go as we please. Just remember that and wear it on your face, not just on your badge.”

“Like I said, I can handle myself.”

I wasn’t exactly new to this. I knew I could flip a switch if I had to. You do what you have to do when the world is at stake, and Danny was my world.

We passed the bluff where I’d stood and looked down at Basal just over a week earlier. Keith guided the car around a curve, and the prison’s first checkpoint came into view. A brick guardhouse with a gate. Two officers stood inside behind the large glass window.

“Here we go,” Keith said. “Let me do the talking.”

He slowed the car and came to a stop next to the reinforced glass. I immediately recognized one of the men in the guardhouse. It was the blond man I’d talked to on my first visit.

My first thought was that it was over. He’d recognize me. He knew I wasn’t with the OIG.

But I wasn’t the same woman he’d met, was I? I was Julia Wishart, OIG.

Keith beamed at the man. “Afternoon, gentlemen.” He casually stuck out his ID. “Myles Somerset, OIG. We need access to the facility for an inspection, if that’s not a problem.”

The man stared at Keith, then at his ID, then looked at me. For a moment I wasn’t sure how to take his stare. He’d been confident, casual, completely in command when I’d met him before. Now he seemed off guard, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he sensed something wrong or because a visit from the inspector general naturally set most prison staff on edge.

“OIG,” he said. “What’s the nature of your visit?”

“Well now, that would take all the fun out of it, wouldn’t it?”

The officer stared at him. We all knew that OIG had no obligation to explain itself. Keith let the question stand for a second, then grinned.

“We’re doing routine inspections tied to an investigation of the Prison Industry Authority. You can understand my reluctance to give any opportunity to suppress evidence. It’s a supply-side issue. We’ll be in and out in an hour.”

The guard’s eyes met mine again. “Identification?”

I reached across Keith and handed him my ID. “Afternoon, Officer. Deputy Julia Wishart.” I could think of nothing else to say, so I just said, “Shouldn’t take long.”

The man took my badge and dipped his head. “Just one second.”

He retreated into the booth, spoke to the other staff member, then lifted a phone off the wall and made a call.

“He’s checking,” I whispered.

Keith didn’t respond. He didn’t even look at me, which was message enough.
Shut up.

The guard spoke into the phone, tapped quickly at a keyboard, then hung up the receiver. Our names would come up on a list of registered OIG deputies because our counterparts actually existed, far away in Sacramento, probably pushing paper. Keith had done his homework. An elderly man with round spectacles somewhere in Culver City knew he’d forged two OIG IDs for the fair price of five thousand dollars, but any admission on his part would land him in prison. We were covered.

Again, I only half-believed it.

The guard leaned back out of the booth and handed Keith the IDs. “Long way from Sacramento.”

“Tell me about it,” Keith said. “They’re running this one out of the main office.”

He nodded. “Head on down to the first sally port. They’re expecting you. A staff member will accompany you from there.”

“Thank you, sir.” Keith gave him half a salute, put the car back in gear, and headed past the lifted gate.

We drove for a hundred yards before either of us spoke. “Never underestimate the value of a good forgery,” Keith said.

“Just like that.”

“Not quite.”

But it was just like that.

I knew it was too easy. I should have known then that something was terribly wrong. I kept telling myself that it would work, that everything was going to be all right, that the demons screaming inside of me were just a part of my neurosis. I kept thinking that although getting in was the easiest part, God was on our side, because we’d come to set the world straight and sometimes the good side does win.

But then suddenly it wasn’t just like that, because we came around a corner and the massive structure called Basal loomed before us.

I sat next to Keith, numbed by our audacity in the face of that fortress. It had all seemed so doable on paper, but driving up to the prison I was suddenly certain that I wouldn’t come out alive. If I did, it would be in Danny’s shackles because he would no longer need them. He’d be dead.

Then again, maybe it really was just like that, because we were breaking in, not breaking out, and getting into prison was very easy in the United States of America. You can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave.

The first gate at the perimeter fence rolled open as we approached. I sat still and tried to keep my mind on Danny as we rolled into the sally port.

“This is it,” I heard Keith say.

“Just like that,” I returned.

“Not quite,” he repeated.

But it was. A deputy welcomed us, asked us to leave the rental car where it was, and then led us, briefcases in hand, along the fences to steps leading up to the arching front entrance. The massive bolts on the iron doors were drawn back. Some would say that Basal looked stately compared to other prisons, but all I saw was a glorified dungeon. I tried to imagine Danny locked away inside such a beautiful building, but I couldn’t and my mind returned to flip-flopping between
just like that
and
impossible
.

Something was wrong.

No, nothing’s wrong, Renee.
My palms were sweating, but everything was going exactly as we’d planned it.

We were breaking into Basal to save Danny.