Sanctuary (22 page)

WE STRAPPED THE
judge’s arms and legs to a wood chair in his office with the duct tape from my kit. Keith pulled the shades and turned on the lamp that sat on a large cherrywood desk. Hunter green wallpaper with black pinstripes covered the wall and ran behind paintings and bookcases. The office, which apparently doubled as a law library, was trimmed with a rich mahogany wainscot and crown molding.

Sicko’s plans for us were clear. We were supposed to find out where the judge had his money and then kill him. Period. For twenty minutes, Keith paced in front of him, demanding answers to questions about drug money and Randell, with all the success of a man trying to wrestle answers from a brick wall.

In regard to minor details, Keith had more success. We learned his name: Judge Franklin Thompson. We learned that he presided over the Second District Court of Appeals; that before being elected to the court, he’d practiced law for fifteen years in the Bay Area; that he was divorced and had one son living in Boston; that he’d graduated from Yale Law School; that he’d smoked pot in college; that he had a boat in Marina del Rey, and that he was a narcissistic man who feasted on his own importance.

We also learned that he was loaded with money.

But I no longer cared about the money. I wasn’t even sure Sicko’s game had anything to do with money. What I did know was that the judge was my only outside link to Danny. I stood by the desk with my arms crossed and let the two of them hammer through their one-way interrogation, biting my tongue, eager to get on to Danny.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Even if I did know about Bruce Randell’s conviction or incarceration, I’m bound by confidentiality,” the judge was saying. Thompson’s blotchy red face was sweaty, and his graying hair had fallen down over his forehead. “You must believe me, I don’t know. I did not preside over the case and I have no clue about any drug money. Or any other money connected to this man. This is absurd.”

Keith squatted down in front of the man and rested the barrel of his gun on the judge’s lap. “And how many times do I have to tell you that we don’t have a choice here? Someone thinks you have their money. You either tell us where it is, or all three of us are dead. All of us. I
know
it’s absurd. I also know that I don’t want to die. So either you tell us where the money is, or it’s over. It that really too difficult to understand?”

“I don’t
have
your one million dollars!” the man snarled.

Keith’s hand flashed out and slapped the judge’s cheek. “Wake up! Where’s the money? Why do they want you dead?”

The room fell silent. Blood edged the corner of Thompson’s mouth.

“I don’t think you understand,” the man said bitterly. “I am in no way connected to any drug money, so I have no idea why the people behind this would want me dead. Even if I agreed to give you a million dollars I couldn’t get to it until the banks opened and it would take some time. You can’t just muscle your way into a judge’s home and demand a million dollars.”

“This isn’t our plan. It’s someone else’s, and they aren’t giving us options.”

“Who?” Thompson demanded.

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know!”

“Think!” Keith snapped. “Forget the money for a minute and think about who would tell us to come to this house and put a gun to your head. You have that security system in place for a reason. Who would want you dead, for any reason?”

Thompson blinked. “I have more enemies than I can count.”

“But there has to be someone…A case that stands out. A sentence that kept you awake at night. Anything above and beyond.”

The man hesitated, then shook his head slowly. “We do our best.”

“Well tonight your best is going to get you killed.”

“And you’d spend the rest of your life in prison. As you said, I have security. It includes surveillance. Both of you are already on tape, off site. If anything happens to me, the law’s going to see that footage.”

That caught us both off guard. Keith glared at Thompson. “The law’s the least of our concerns. None of us will survive long enough.”

I lowered my arms. “Keith, can I talk to you a minute?”

He faced me, flushed with frustration, then gave a shallow nod. We stepped outside the office and around the corner. The house was still dark except for the light from the office, and more spilling down the stairs from a wall lamp.

“He’s lying,” Keith said.

“Probably, but if he’s got the money we’ll have to tear the house apart to find it or wait until the banks open tomorrow, like he said. I don’t think this has anything to do with Randell’s drug money. I don’t like it.”

“None of this makes sense.” Keith waved his gun absently. “None of it! Why would he send us here to kill a judge?”

“That doesn’t matter now.”

“He’s got us on tape.”

“We’re being played, Keith. You said it yourself, this is about Danny. A judge who has it out for Danny.”

He looked up at me. “You think
this
guy’s Sicko?”

I glanced at the door and kept my voice low. “No. But I mentioned Danny’s name before you came in, and he recognized it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I know a man’s face. I want to find out what he knows about Basal and Danny.”

“We’re screwed now, I hope you realize that. He’s got us on
tape
.”

“We’ve been screwed for a week,” I said. “Forget about the money. We have to find out what he knows about Danny.” I stared into his eyes, determined. “I don’t care what it takes.”

“We need leverage, something to hold over his head.”

“All right, we need leverage, but this is about Danny. And I want to do it my way now.”

“Fine. Your way.”

“I want to talk to him alone.”

He wasn’t expecting that. “Alone? Why?”

“Because I think I can talk to him as a woman.”

“I don’t see what—”

“Sometimes a woman can do things to a man that a man can’t. Just give me ten minutes with him. Alone. With the door closed.”

He stared at me, unsure.

I reached my hand out. “Give me the gun.”

“You can’t use the gun.”

“I need leverage. What do you think I’m going to use, my body? Give me the gun.”

“You can’t kill the man.”

“I’m not going to kill him! We have nothing to lose. Gun.”

He hesitated, then handed it over. “I don’t like this.”

“You don’t have to. Just watch the front door.”

I entered the office and closed the door behind me. Locked it. I’d made a vow to never divulge any of Danny’s crimes, which meant Keith couldn’t know what I knew about Danny’s first victim.

The judge couldn’t either. Unless he already knew.

Thompson had managed to move his chair a few inches closer to the side of the desk. I had no idea what he hoped to accomplish. His hands were taped to the chair’s rear legs. It wasn’t like he was going to reach some hidden weapon.

I yanked a tapestry off the wall and wrestled it under the front legs of his chair to keep the carpet clean. Then I grabbed a second wooden chair from its grouping around a small chess table in the corner, plopped it down in front of the judge, and sat facing him with my hands around the gun on my lap. For a few seconds I just stared at him, torn between grabbing his hair and knocking it against the desk until he told me what he knew, or taking a more crafty approach as I knew Danny would.

“Now you listen to me, judge. I’m not a violent person, you have to know that. I’m not like the murderers and rapists you send away for life. What I am is a woman. I need you to understand what that means. Do you know how it feels to be a woman?”

He looked at me with blank eyes.

“No, you don’t. Then let me help you out. Most women give birth to babies. It’s in their blood to protect those children at any cost. They can’t help it. It’s in their DNA. You can’t convince them otherwise, because it’s actually a part of themselves they’re protecting. They’ll give up their lives to save their children if they have to. Even you…If you had a son, you’d do anything to save him. Wouldn’t you?”

It took him a moment, but he finally dipped his head.
Yes
.

“Maybe even if that son had done something wrong,” I said, thinking about that pedophile.

The man’s eyes held steady.

“Take that impulse you feel, and double it,” I said. “I don’t have a son, but I still have that crazy-mother DNA, and I have someone as precious to me as any child. I’ll do anything to save him. If that kills me or puts me in prison for the rest of my life, so be it. Nothing’s going to stop me. Which means you have a very serious problem in front of you. You have a desperate woman who will do anything, and I mean
anything
, to find out what you know about the man she would give her life for.”

His breathing was even. No denials, no confessions. Not yet.

“I lived in a nice house like this once,” I said, glancing over his shoulder at the curtains. “It had very thick walls. Like yours. And at least double-pane glass. I don’t think the neighbors will hear a gunshot, do you?”

“Using a gun won’t save anyone.” His voice was firm.

“It’s not just anyone, it’s my husband,” I said. “His name is Danny Hansen. You don’t fear me because you look in my eyes and you know I’m not a killer.” I lowered my eyes to the gun and turned it over in my hands. “But there’re other things I can do with this gun.”

I stared at his knees, then at his crotch. I didn’t know if Thompson was the father of the pedophile Danny had killed, but in my mind’s eye he became that man. Danny had cut off his son’s penis because he’d abused and killed a boy after being released from prison early, thanks to some fancy footwork by his father, the judge.

My eyes lingered on his zipper, then I drew them up his chest. To his face.

“I think you know why I’m here, Mr. Thompson. I don’t expect a confession. Frankly, I don’t care what you’ve done in your past. It doesn’t matter what you did to upset whoever sent us here. I really don’t care what you do tomorrow or the day after that. But tonight…tonight you’re going to tell me what you know, do you understand?”

“I’ve told you what I know. Nothing.”

“But you see, that’s a lie. Nothing you say can change the fact that you’ve been fingered by someone who has a very elaborate plan that isn’t sloppy or misinformed. There’s nothing arbitrary about us being sent here. Nothing you say can change that. I may be small, but do I really look that stupid?”

Nothing.

“This is just between you and me now. To be honest, I’m not sure my friend has what it takes to blow off your penis. But you and I know about things like that, don’t we?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know about a certain son of yours who was convicted for pedophilia?”

I dropped the bomb and watched, and the twitch in the corner of his right eye closed the loop for me.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “The good news for you is, I don’t care about that. Everybody’s paid a price. What’s done is done. Your secret’s safe with me. All I need to know now is how you’re connected to Basal.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He took two shallow breaths. “I told you, I don’t…”

I didn’t hear the rest of it, because my true nature flexed its full will and darkened my mind. I stood up, took one step forward, bent over, put the barrel against his right brown loafer, and pulled the trigger.

The shot crashed through the room and Judge Thompson jerked upright, roaring with pain and outrage.

Keith tried to open the door, found it locked, and banged on it.

“Renee! What are you doing? Open the door!”

“You shot me, you little whore!” Thompson snarled.

“It’s okay,” I snapped at Keith. “I just shot off his toe.”

“Open this door!” he shouted.

But I had no intention of opening the door.

“I’m not done,” I said. “I still have eight bullets.”

“THEN COME HERE
and do it to me.” Danny’s challenge hung in the hard yard, blasphemous and demanding a response.

Someone cleared his throat; otherwise there was no sound in the heart of that sanctuary. Randell stood fifteen paces away, left of center; Slane, fifteen paces right of center. The room was already turning in Danny’s mind, transformed into a three-dimensional model examined by a student of the fight. The distance to the walls, the positioning of the members, the sections of the concrete floor that were smooth or rough, the lights, the switches, the clothing his opponents wore, all of it. Like a gladiator armed only with his fists. Adrenaline had sufficiently cleared his mind.

“Who do you think you are?” Randell asked. There was a note of sincerity in his voice. “You think you’re gonna change anything?”

“Yeah, you think you’re gonna change anything?”

“Shut up, Slane,” Randell snapped at his punk. The man’s face flattened.

The big man jabbed his chin at Danny. “You think a priest like you has anything on us scum?”

“I’m not the priest who abused you,” Danny said. Randell stiffened. “I’m the priest who found a boy abused by your punk. I’m the one who defends boys like you.”

Randell’s face flushed red. “Shut up.”

“They don’t know you were raped by a priest when you were a boy?”

“I said shut up!”

Randell was moving already, marching forward with his thick hands balled into fists.

“Not so fast, Bruce.” The warden’s voice rang out from behind Danny.

Randell wasn’t stopping.

“Back!” The order was that of a master commanding his dogs. This time Randell pulled up, eight paces away.

Pape’s hard-soled patent-leather shoes clacked and grated on the concrete as he strolled out into the middle of the yard, one hand in his pocket. Danny let him come into view without removing his eyes from Slane or Randell.

“You think this is an unfair fight?” the warden asked Randell. “That you two can take him down? Then you don’t know that our priest has made a life out of chewing up and spitting out people like you. When you were a little brat running around the neighborhood stealing old lady’s purses, Danny here was in the business of killing men twice his size. More men than you can count.”

He faced Danny, lips curved with a hint of a smile that reflected in his eyes. He was nothing less than delighted.

“It is unfair,” he said. “Isn’t it, Priest?”

Danny watched him. The words he’d spoken earlier were still cycling around his head like stray buzzards.

Do it to me.

“But it wasn’t just these two who hurt little Peter, Danny,” the warden said. “No, there were three more.” He scanned the members who stood along the walls. “Weren’t there? Sure there were. Mason, Ratcliff, Stone. Step out.”

Three men broke from the ring of onlookers and approached the center of the yard. Danny recognized two of them, both heavily tattooed white knuckleheads who in any other prison might be scrutinized for gang affiliation. But none of their tattoos was familiar to Danny. Prison ink.

The third was a skinny man with a bald head and a viper’s sneer. Of them all, he was likely the most dangerous.

They moved into a circle around Danny. So then, it was now five on one.

“You kin take ’em, Danny,” Kearney said from the side.

“You’d like to join them, Brandon?” the warden asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then shut up. I will allow the priest to defend his honor and fight those who have so recklessly and gratuitously hurt Peter. The boy was abused, and however much that might disturb me, he was guilty of the same, so justice is served. As the book says, an eye for an eye. But death is a different matter. Just because God slays the wicked doesn’t mean you may. Our aim is to rehabilitate, not kill, and one of these five men killed Peter. So now it only follows that the priest kills one of them.”

He was speaking to the whole room, but his eyes stayed on Danny. No one seemed to be aware that Pape was contradicting himself, speaking of rehabilitation and retribution in the same sentence.

“If he can.”

Danny stood at the epicenter of the grand stage, surrounded by opponents he could not fear, did not fear. Not because they couldn’t kill him—a single mistake and they would, and might even if he made no errors. He could not and did not fear them because he’d been trained not to. Respect, yes. Fear, no.

But Danny feared himself.

If he extracted justice now he would be lost, pulled back into an ideology that had once ruined him.

Do it to me,
he’d said to Slane. But if Danny struck back…To what end? More dead bodies for his graveyard?

An image of Peter bowed in prayer pleaded with him. Danny’s eyes rested on Slane, the one who’d surely enjoyed Peter’s abuse the most. And there he saw a man. A hellion, a beast, but one with pretty blue eyes.

“What do you say, Danny?” the warden said. “Will you rise up to your calling?”

And there was Randell as well, belligerent, once abused by a priest. Now he would be killed by one?

Danny felt the muscles in his shoulders begin to ease. He let his fingers relax. There was Brandon Kearney, face stark with hope, eager to see Danny extract revenge. There stood tall Tracy Banner, with a scar on his cheek, watching with some wonder. Down the row, John Wilkins’s lost expression begged for answers.

Here stood the whole world. They all wanted to see justice. They all wanted him to spill blood. How much was enough?

“In my sanctuary, I am God, boy,” the warden bit off. Danny looked at him and saw that his face had gone flat. He knew.

“Vengeance is mine. When I say march, you march. When I say kill, you will kill. Or, my friend…I swear I will send you to that hole down there that they call hell. And this time your wailing will be heard for miles.”

“No.”

Pape’s eyes briefly narrowed. “No?”

“I was wrong. You’re right, I could hurt these men.” He glanced at Randell, who looked confused. “I could snap Randell’s neck before he landed one blow.” Slane. “I could break Slane over my knees like he deserves. That might be fair. But fairness has failed the world.”

The hard yard sat in perfect quiet.

“Why did you come?” The warden’s voice was tight.

“I came to kill Randell.”

“Then you will kill him.”

“I was wrong.”

“And so you’ll let them kill you?”

Danny took a deep breath, knowing already what he would do, what he must do. This wasn’t just about him, it was about Renee. He could not die.

“No.”

Marshall Pape looked at Randell, then the other four. “Kill him!” he said.