Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

The warden had moved them all out so they couldn’t see what happened next. Whatever that was, it could not be good, because there was no good in the warden’s sanctuary.

Images of the boy blinked through his mind. Peter and the girl who loved him, walking hand in hand through the park, smiling, delighted by birds. His bright eyes and eager voice: “Do you like chocolate, Danny?”

His fingernails dug into his palms, deeper with each breath.

“Oranges or grapefruit, Danny?” Dear Renee…“Grapefruit!” she would say before he could respond. “It’s better for you. I’ll put some sugar on it!”

He hated grapefruit but he would never tell her.

He hated prison. He hated the warden. He hated Slane. He hated himself. He hated the whole world because in the end it all came down to this.

To a deviant on his knees, bloodied and bruised because he’d been a naughty boy.

Danny spun around the rail at the stairs and took them down, one at a time, feet bare. They were waiting, he knew that. He was doing what they wanted him to do, he knew that as well. The monster would make him a monster, he knew that more than anything else.

So then, they would have their monster. None of them knew what he was capable of. None had stood by his side when he vindicated his mother’s death. None had faced him on the streets where his way of justice would drop them to their knees, begging for mercy.

The steel door that closed off the commons wing when it was locked down was open. Why wouldn’t it be? A way had to be left for the bull to be drawn to his slaughter. The rest of the prisoners had been moved to a safer place, where they could not witness what was to be done.

What the warden didn’t know was that the slaughtered could also slaughter. That there was a time for peace and there was a time for war and there was a time to rip their heads from their skinny necks.

The thoughts pummeled Danny as he entered the hub. In a single glance he saw that it was empty except for a lone CO, who stood at the door to the administration wing. The facilitator had his arms crossed, watching him without emotion.

But in that moment he saw one other thing: this third-shift guard was also a man.

Not a facilitator or an officer or a machine or a monster, but a man. Dressed in a black uniform. In that moment it was the only thing that distinguished him from those in blue and tan. They all had families. They all had their favorite TV shows. They all had their enemies and their loved ones.

This realization was the first to fracture his rage, but the effect vanished when he turned his head and saw that the door to the gymnasium was cracked open. Behind that door waited the warden. If not him, then his henchmen. If not them, then Randell and Slane.

There was now only one path ahead of Danny, and it ended with Randell. The man would never again hurt another soul. The warden wanted Danny to kill Randell or Slane or both. In retrospect, the message had been clear from the outset. And now Danny would comply. He would put both men in their own personal, eternal grave.

His feet padded on the concrete floor, the sole sound in the great room. He reached the door to the hard yard, took hold of the lever, and pulled it wide. Two more steps, through the threshold, and he stopped.

The lights were on, blazing bright. Over a hundred prisoners lined the walls, all eyes on him, watching in dead silence. An armed guard stood in each corner, rifles in hand. The center of the room was cleared of all but stained concrete.

Danny stood still, mind spinning, scanning the faces, most of whom he knew only by sight. He didn’t know them and they knew him only as the stubborn priest. Now they would learn more about him. Much more.

Some were dressed, some wore only shorts, as if they’d been awakened and herded here quickly. He saw Godfrey halfway down the right side, frail between two larger members. Danny quickly picked out Kearney, then Tracy Banner and John Wilkins. He didn’t immediately see Randell or Slane.

No other prison could possibly produce such a moment. No other warden would allow, much less facilitate, a similar confrontation. No other inmate population would stand in wait, silent. There would be calls and taunts; the room would be full of bitterness and objection.

A whistle sounded from the far corner, and Randell stepped out from behind the line of members to Danny’s left.

“You looking for me?” Randell walked toward him wearing a twisted grin. “You don’t like what you saw?”

Danny moved forward, taking even, confident strides. The simple fact of the matter was that he could destroy the larger man. The world had seen too much evil from this devil.

“You want to fight me, is that it, Priest?”

Slane stepped out from the opposite corner. “How about me, boy?” His hands were bloody.

Danny stopped halfway across the hard yard, mind flashing back to that singular moment so many years ago in Bosnia when he hid behind a stove in his house and shot three killers. His life had come full circle. The victim was Peter now, but his mind was drawing no distinctions.

“You killed the boy,” Danny said, staring at Slane’s body, his bloody hands and arms.

“Oh, I did much more than that,” the man said.

Danny dipped his head. “Then come here and do it to me,” he said.

24

WE STRAPPED THEjudge’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?”