Sanctuary (8 page)

“That’s not why I’m in prison. At the time I lived in Bosnia with my mother and my two sisters. Men came into our house and raped my mother and both of my sisters. That’s why I killed them.”

Pete’s eyes darted toward Danny. After a moment, he spoke. “Rape is evil,” he said.

“Yes. It is. Do you know why?”

“It’s a very bad thing.”

“Yes, but do understand why it’s a very bad thing?”

“It’s evil.”

Danny now understood what the warden meant when he’d used the word
dense
. Pete was slow. He likely suffered from some mild form of cognitive disability. How he’d found his way to prison was a curiosity. Although California law allowed for a felony conviction in cases of statutory rape in which the victim was under the age of eighteen and three or more years younger than the victimizer, typically only nonconsensual statutory cases resulted in felony convictions.

Most cases of statutory rape involved consensual sex between a boyfriend and girlfriend who’d fallen in love and engaged in sex at the wrong age and on the wrong side of the marriage laws. Pete was twenty, meaning he’d been found guilty of having sex with a girl no older than seventeen, presumably nonconsensual sex. Otherwise he would have received a misdemeanor conviction. Either way, surely the court would have taken his cognitive impairment into consideration.

“How long have you been in Basal, Pete?”

“Four months,” Godfrey said when Peter didn’t answer.

“He was the last before me to be admitted?”

“Yes.”

This, along with the fact that the warden had specifically set Pete aside for Danny to help didn’t sit right. Perhaps he was reading too much into a coincidence. Either way, Danny now felt compelled to learn the full details of Pete’s crime and conviction.

“Did you rape a girl, Pete?”

No answer.

“It’s okay, you can tell me the truth. I used to be a priest, and although I’m no longer a priest, I’ve always tried my best to help people who’ve made mistakes. Believe me, I’m no stranger to mistakes myself. Maybe I can help you.”

Pete looked up at him again, this time searching his eyes for trust. The boy’s defensive mechanisms had started to break like the first crack in the shell of a hard-boiled egg. Danny had seen the look a thousand times.

Pete looked over at Godfrey, who nodded. “Go on, tell him. He’s a good man, a deviant like the rest of us, but he knows that deviant behavior doesn’t mean wrong behavior. Just like I told you.”

If Pete could understand that much, his cognitive impairment couldn’t be too great. Danny helped him along.

“Did you have a girlfriend?”

A mist swam in the boy’s eyes and Danny knew he’d gotten through.

“What was her name?”

“Missy,” Pete said softly, and the mist settled into thin pools at the bottom of his eyes.

“Did you hurt Missy?”

“I will never hurt Missy.” He said it with enough conviction to secure Danny’s confidence that the boy believed it.

“How old was she?”

“Fifteen. I met her at the park.” His eyes brightened. “She likes me. We spend time together. I would never hurt Missy.”

“Missy has a soft spot for people in need,” Godfrey said. “I don’t think she was slow, but don’t know for sure.”

Danny returned to Pete. “You were twenty and she was fifteen?”

“Missy is seventeen. She’s going to be a nurse.”

“So you were twenty and Missy was seventeen when they arrested you. Was she your girlfriend?”

A tear slipped from Pete’s right eye and he lowered his head again. It occurred to Danny that his breaking down in the cafeteria might not go well with the facilitator at the door or the other members.

“It’s okay, Pete,” Godfrey said. “Maybe it would be better if I told Danny what you told me. Can I do that?”

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

Godfrey addressed Danny, voice low. “A classic case of forbidden love. Missy comes from an upscale, conservative family—unlike Pete, whose mother is indigent and long ago divorced. No other family he speaks of. No brothers, no sisters. They met at a church event at a park when Pete was eighteen and Missy was fifteen, just two fledging birds who developed a deep bond of friendship. At first Missy’s parents had no problem with the boy their young daughter was trying to help out. Who would? Isn’t that right, Pete?”

“Missy loved me.”

“Exactly. But Missy’s parents grew worried about the relationship when their daughter preferred spending time with Pete over other boys in her peer group. High school stuff.” Godfrey dismissed the notion with a flip of his hand.

“They tried to discourage their daughter, but Missy spent most of her time with Peter. Not sure it was really a romantic relationship as such, but they became inseparable.”

“And yet he was convicted.”

“Because Missy’s parents, terrified that their only daughter was getting too friendly and wasting her life away, threw a fit. Missy reacted by running away from home to be with Pete, whose mother had just passed away, leaving him the sole beneficiary of their little crumbling house. After a week the parents decided an intervention was the only way to save their daughter. Maybe it was understandable, but they overreacted.”

“Did they have any evidence of nonconsensual—”

“They had a case worker who reported a confession by Pete that he’d pushed himself on Missy. Absurd, but there you have it. As a priest, you’re probably aware that in California, confidentiality is waived in cases of rape.”

“And you think the parents paid off the caseworker.”

“What better way to keep a vagrant from your daughter than have him thrown in prison?”

“Missy didn’t come forward?”

“She was removed to a camp for troubled teens in Arizona. A letter alleging misbehavior and shame served as her testimony. It took me an hour to learn this much, you understand, and I may be missing some of the details, but that’s basically what happened. Am I right, Pete?”

“I would never hurt Missy.”

“I know you wouldn’t. The rest is plain enough. Missy’s parents had Pete arrested, their attorney fed the DA all they needed, Pete had a public defender who caved under the case. The judge sentenced Pete to two years in state prison despite his pleas of innocence. The warden managed to rope the boy, and here we sit.”

Godfrey had been right—the boy’s story broke Danny’s heart. For the most part, law enforcement and the courts got their implementation of the laws right, despite the questionability of some of those laws. But when they got it wrong, they could get it very wrong. Unfortunately, the plight of the innocent in prison was mostly lost on an angry, cynical public.

“If everything you’re telling us is right, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Danny said.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know. Do you remember the name of the judge?”

Pete shook his head.

To Godfrey: “The court didn’t take his condition into consideration?”

“You tell me. Worst part is that the convicts consider him a pedophile. I keep telling him to keep his head down and stay to himself, but that can only help so much.”

“Someone’s bothering him?”

The boy’s eyes flickered across the room. No one in particular that Danny could see, but the bruise on his cheek held more significance now.

Even so, Danny would be hard-pressed to lend any assistance other than empathy, consolation, and advice. And really, in any other prison Pete might have already suffered far worse than he had here. Despite the warden’s oddities, Basal might just be Pete’s best chance of surviving his time, short of living in segregation.

Danny was lost in these thoughts when it occurred to him that the room had quieted. He followed several stares toward the door and saw a white commons member walking toward their table. The man was big, well over six feet, with arms the size of small trees and a neck built like a trunk. The man looked like a Viking who thought with his fists and offered rebuke with his eyes, harsh glares that would shrivel all but the strongest opponent. Behind him and to his right walked a smaller, thin man, his dark hair slicked back with grease, wearing a crooked smile. Both had tattoos that ran down their arms, but no gang markings that Danny could see.

“That’s Randell,” Godfrey muttered of the larger man, and the moment he said it, Pete’s head whipped around. The look of terror on the boy’s face could not be mistaken.

Both Godfrey’s and the warden’s advice to stay clear of Randell flashed through Danny’s mind. The warden had asked him to help Pete because he and the boy shared a common enemy. Randell.

But helping the boy would only infuriate that enemy.

The large man spoke to Danny before he stopped at the edge of their table. “Stand up, you FNG.”

Randell’s challenge drew no attention from the facilitator at the door, who watched them from his chair, tilting it back on two legs. Across from Danny, Pete was trembling. Danny remained calm. The warden had made it clear that he’d be tested.

“You deaf, punk? I said stand up and face me.”

Bruce Randell’s lips were as pale as his face, two strips of bleached leather on a pocked, lunar face. An albino bulldog. Danny remained seated, unguarded, refusing to allow his anger to rise. He should say something—silence was its own form of disrespect—but considering the man’s blatant disregard for the established protocol, what would that be?

“I hear you just fine,” Danny finally said. “My instructions from the warden are to avoid you. I think it’s best I stay seated. But I assure you, I’m listening.”

A smile crept onto the man’s face. “A fancy talker.” His eyes dropped to Pete, who was staring down at his plate, still trembling.

“So the two diddlers are already playing together,” Randell said. “What do you make of that, Slane?”

The man with slicked-back hair had his eyes on Pete. “I think they both need to know what it feels like.”

“An eye for an eye,” Randell said. His stare drilled into Danny. “I don’t like priests. If you don’t stand up I’m going to let my friend loose. And I promise you it’ll be bloody.”

A surge of adrenaline flooded Danny’s veins, but he refused to give in to the sudden impulse to set the man straight. He’d given in to such weaknesses once and paid a heavy price. More important, he’d taken a vow of nonviolence in an effort to follow a truer way.

Proper execution of the people’s law was the only way to handle injustice, and Basal had its law. He was legally and morally obligated to follow it even when that law failed. Who was he to judge?

The man called Slane bent down and whispered something into Pete’s ear, his eyes fixed on Danny. There was darkness and hatred in those eyes.

Pete spun off the bench, rounded the end of the table, and dropped down on the seat next to Danny, effectively placing his new protector between himself and Slane.

Danny stilled another urge to help Randell see the light. His impulse to defend the weak would never leave him, he knew; neither would his resolve to control that impulse.

Randell glared at him. “Welcome to Basal. You may think the warden’s your problem, but you’d be wrong. That would be me.” He leaned forward and spoke, close enough for Danny to smell his stale breath. “I’m going to make you hate yourself, Priest. And then I’m going to kill you.”

Randell brought a gnarled hand up, gripped Danny’s cheeks between his thumb and fingers, and shoved his head back. “Remember that.”

“Back off, Randell.” The facilitator had finally decided to step in.

Danny couldn’t deny the anger he felt. But he’d faced far worse and learned that his refusal to engage, although initially painful, eventually rewarded him with peace. Turning the other cheek made sense only if you did it every time.

Randell lifted his arms in feigned surrender and stepped away.

The facilitator, a thirty-something with a hook nose that looked as if it might have been broken more than once, was on his radio, calling for backup. He pointed Randell and Slane away from the table, then glared at Danny.

“Why is it that all the FNGs cause trouble?”

“Forgive me, Officer, but—”

“Shut up! Did I ask you a question?”

“Actually—”

“Shut up!”

In the space of ten seconds Danny knew he was being introduced to the way justice worked inside of Basal. Fair enough—his life wasn’t his own. Marshall Pape owned it.

“When another member asks you for a simple courtesy, you give him that courtesy, you hear? You don’t sit there like a wart. Now stand up and step away from the table.” The facilitator had produced a pair of handcuffs.

Danny did as instructed.

“Zero tolerance, get used to it. Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

The facilitator cuffed him. Two other COs had arrived and stood to one side in a show of force. They needn’t have bothered. Danny had no intention of speaking, much less resisting.

There was no outcry from the other members, despite the obvious injustice of the event. Randell stood to one side, showing no emotion. Godfrey sat still, watching Danny, but he made no move to defend him. It was prohibited and would only invite more trouble. Still, it was strange. At Ironwood, inmates would invite trouble for the sake of solidarity. A few days in the hole was a small price to pay and even more, a sign of strength.

Not in Basal.

The facilitator gave him a nudge toward the door. “Let’s go. The rest of you, back to lunch.”

Two guards led him through the hub, past the security gate that led to the administration wing, and through another reinforced steel door with the words Meditation Floor stenciled in black above it. Not a word was spoken.

The concrete steps descending into the basement were bare and well worn. Caged incandescent bulbs lit the way down one flight, then a second, before opening into a long, dimly lit hall with cells running down the right side. The sound of whimpering echoed through the corridor.

The meditation floor. Fifty cells, according to Godfrey.

“Did I tell you to stop?”

Danny walked forward, past the cells. The doors were solid steel with small slats at waist level and similar openings near the floor, used to fasten or unfasten a member’s wrist and ankle irons as well as to deliver food and water.