The Sanctuary

5

SEEING THE MANGLED, bloodied finger in a shoe box, I reacted as any normal person sent a piece of her husband’s body might. I rushed to the sink and threw up.

My illness came at the thought of that finger belonging to Danny, but whether it actually was Danny’s finger, I couldn’t know. It was way too mangled to tell. Either way, my world was caving in on itself. Danny’s life was in danger. So was mine.

I stood over the sink, shaking, mind racing. I couldn’t go to the police, that much I knew. Whoever was behind this knew too much about our past. Questions would be asked. People would talk. Both Danny and I would go down.

I didn’t have time to figure out who Bruce Randell was by researching the particulars of his incarceration and looking for details about his case. That was a long shot at best. I had to get to Danny, and there was only one way I knew to get to him. I had to go to Basal.

Impulsively, without even taking the time to look again, I wiped the vomit off my lips, grabbed the shoe box, and dumped the contents, tissue and all, into the garbage disposal. I flipped the switch. Three seconds of chunking and scraping later, the thing was gone, and only then did I wonder if I’d sent valuable evidence into the sewer system.

Danny had once cut things off of people. Maybe someone was returning the favor.

I had to get to Danny. He had to be alive. I knew that from my call to Basal earlier. If he was alive, I would find a way to get to him.

Basal was located in the high country, north of Rancho Cucamonga, far beyond my regular stomping grounds, which pretty much consisted of my condo, north Long Beach, and Ironwood State Prison. I wasn’t one for exploring just for the thrill of it. For starters, I hated the traffic in Southern California, especially the freeways, which were anything but free. They were their own kind of overcrowded prison—thousands and thousands of steel boxes crammed together on concrete with their prisoners staring ahead for hours on end. Then again, I suppose we all live in one kind of prison or another. Mine was my head.

Following the Google map I’d printed earlier in the week, I drove my white Toyota Corolla down the Riverside Freeway and caught the 15 headed north, cursing at the trucks when they barreled down my tailpipe or pushed me to the shoulder. But the hour drive with all of its hazards didn’t distract me from a larger reality pressing in on me.

I’d just ground up a finger and rinsed it down the drain. Maybe Danny’s finger.

It’s difficult to express just how much I loved him. He was my rock, my adviser, my lover in better times. I leaned on him for everything and he seemed to return the favor.

Take my job, or lack thereof. At twenty-seven years old I ought to have had a decent job, and believe me, I’d given it a shot. Not because I needed the money—Danny had given me enough to buy the two-bedroom condo in a quiet corner of an upscale complex and live without working for seven years. I needed a job because we both knew I had to find a way to enter a thriving social context if I didn’t want to go nuts.

During one of my weekly visits to Ironwood, Danny suggested I try something that didn’t require too much interaction with complaining customers, and ease into the workplace that way.

“Like what?” I asked.

He shrugged across the table and gave me one of his crazy, blue-eyed grins. “Like a night watchman. Put your skills to good use.”

I sat up. “Seriously?”

His grin faded. “No, not seriously. It was a joke.”

“But I could do that!”

“You couldn’t do that. I was just having fun.”

“No, I could. The only people I would have to worry about would be the ones looking down my barrel.”

Now his face was flat, that determined expression he uses when he wants to cut to the chase. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re tiny. The first thug that comes along weighing three hundred pounds would smash you flat.”

“You’re saying I don’t have what it takes?”

“I’m only saying that you’d be putting yourself in the way of danger. Please, Renee, do not consider this. For my sake if not for yours.”

See, I liked that Danny tried to care for me even while locked up. And while a part of me loved the idea of going up against a three-hundred-pound thug who might crush me if he tripped in my direction, the thought of using a gun again did bother me some. And I was a bit small to do any real business with a nightstick, if that was all they gave me.

“Then what else could I do at night?” I asked.

“Anything, I suppose. Drive a truck.”

“You’re serious?”

“No, not really. Just trying to—”

“That’s it! I could drive a truck. Right? One of those big 18-wheelers.”

“I think that’s pretty heavy work, don’t you?”

“Are you kidding? It’s all lifting gizmos and electric power stuff. It’s mostly listening to the radio and steering down a long road, right?”

“Hydraulic lifts.”

“What?”

“They’re called hydraulic lifts. The lifting gizmos.”

“Oh. Right.”

“So then try it,” he said.

And I had. The instructor thought I was a bit nuts at first, but he quickly learned that my mind wasn’t quite as frail as my body. I think it was during those few months trying the whole truck-driver thing that I first entertained the thought that I was too skinny. A lot of the best drivers have at least a few extra pounds of fat and muscle. Frankly, I was a bit jealous.

But here’s the thing about being a truck driver: once you get out of school and get to working for a real company (General Electric in my case, which was why I had GE appliances) you realize that you spend a lot of time with men in dirty warehouses. And too many of them don’t mind putting their filthy paws on your shoulder, your arm, your thigh, or your butt. Not a bad thing if you’re interested in them and their hands are clean, but I wasn’t and these weren’t.

I also tried selling magazine subscriptions from home, but the continual abuse was inhuman and I found myself fighting the urge to help ungrateful customers see their way to a better life despite repenting for my previous indiscretions.

All the while, my neurosis seemed to get worse, and after two years of periodic trials and failures I finally gave up. Point is, Danny supported my decision. He always did. I had been through a nightmare, he said. I just had to take some time and find myself.

Tears came to my eyes as I drove north, praying that Danny was still alive and had all of his fingers. My emotions ran a ragged edge, from rage to remorse to abject fear. I should never have listened to his nonsense about finding myself another, suitable man. The thought of living without him seemed profane now.

I still remembered every word of that conversation. It was on another one of my regular visits to Ironwood State Prison that Danny stared me in the eye and brought up the unthinkable. I knew he was working up to something critical in his mind because he gave me that long, I’m-sorry-for-what-I’m-about-to-say look and took my hand.

“Now listen to me, Renee. Please, you have to listen very carefully.”

Already, I didn’t like it. “I am listening, Danny.”

“We’ve been over this before.”

“Over what?”

“You know that I’m going to be in here fifty years.”

“Paroled in twenty-five,” I said. “Twenty-five years.”

“I don’t know that.”

“I do.” The fact that he had escaped death row, which at first I was so sure would be his fate, emboldened me. If he could cut such a deal with the DA, what else might be possible? A twenty-five-year parole, of course.

He glanced at the door. “What happens to me isn’t really in my control, Renee, you know that. It’s a war zone in here. Things happen.”

“They can’t hurt you, Danny,” I said. “Look at you!” He had been a powerful man before his incarceration but had gained thirty pounds since, all of it muscle. “You could take any of those thugs one-handed, show them who you are! Have any of them been through a real war?”

“Prison is a real war, but that’s not the point.”

“You’ve managed this far,” I said. “Right? Just defend yourself.”

“It’s not that simple. Defending yourself means defending your people, and that means resorting to violence. I can’t do that. But really, that’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Fifty years is too long.”

“No, Danny, it’s not. No, you have the will of a bull!” Guilt was swamping me. He was in prison and I was free. I clung to his hand as if it were my last lifeline. “You have to do whatever you need to stay alive.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Renee.”

“It’s me? You want me to confess?”

“No! Please, no!”

“You want me to break you out?”

“Renee. My love. You’re missing the point.”

“Then what is your point?”

Danny stared at me for a moment, then lowered his gaze. He was never one to cry easily, but when he looked back, I saw that tears had filled his eyes. He swallowed hard, took a breath, and made it clear. “The point is that you can’t wait for me, Renee.”

“Of course I can. And I will.”

He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers tenderly. “No, Renee. You can’t. You’re going to fall apart without someone to hold on to. You know how much I love you, but you have to let go of me and find someone who can—”

I slammed my palm down on the table and bolted to my feet. “I don’t want anyone else!”

“Sit down,” the guard watching us near the door barked. I gave him a harsh stare and sat.

Danny spoke in a placating tone. “Please, darling. You have to be practical. As much as we both hate it, this is unfair to you.”

“I can decide what’s unfair to me. Thousands of prison wives do it. What’s unfair is that you’re in prison and I’m not.”

He ignored my last statement entirely. It was a moot issue for him. “I’m not suggesting that you can’t decide for yourself, and I have the highest respect for those who stand by their loved ones doing time. I’m only saying that you need to be realistic.” His jaw flexed, and he continued, “And you have to start thinking of me as well.”

I gawked at him, aghast.

When he took my hand again, his was trembling. Danny’s hand never trembles. He has one of the softest hearts I know, but the rest of him is made of steel. “Listen to me, Renee. I can’t do this knowing that your life on the outside is difficult because of your loyalty to me. You may argue that you’re fine, but I know you, dear. And I know me. You have to find someone to take care of you, if not for your sake, then for mine. Someone who will hold you at night when your fears come, someone to laugh with during the day. I can’t be that man.”

“You already are that man!”

He shook his head gently. “We’re not like the rest—you have to begin accepting that. I didn’t surrender myself for you to be alone except for an hour each weekend for the rest of your life.” A tear slipped from his eye and my heart began to break for him.

We’re not like the rest. It was the truth, and I’d long known it. Having decided even before we married to take the fall for my sins, Danny never officially filed our marriage license and other necessary paperwork in Bosnia. In the eyes of the law, we never technically married. He wanted to make it easy for me that way, knowing this time would come. But he couldn’t know then that I would be forever married to him in my heart, regardless of the law.

“I’m strong, Danny,” I said. But I had started to cry with him.

We tenderly spoke for an hour that day at Ironwood, and when it was time to go I clung to him, sobbing, until the guard pulled us apart. The next time was no easier. But as time passed I began to admit my own loneliness to myself.

It took me another three months to accept his reasoning, and then only with the help of my therapist. Danny was only looking out for me, knowing that I really did need someone on the outside. He could not be persuaded otherwise. His need to belong to me was outweighed by his need for me to have constant companionship. Because I really was interested in honoring his needs above my own, I couldn’t dismiss them.

The problem was I still loved Danny and he loved me. Even after finally agreeing to entertain the idea of dating another man, I never worked up the courage or the desire to pursue any other relationship. I would love Danny till the day I died, even if he wasn’t my husband.

I left the city behind me and followed the train of trucks into the scrub-covered hills. The day was overcast or smoggy or both; a thick haze hugged the mountains. I couldn’t shake the feeling that when I emerged on the other side of the mist I would find myself lost. Thinking the radio might help, I turned it on, then off after a few minutes of talk about things that didn’t interest me.

By the time I reached Highway 138 the mist had thickened and I felt downright spooked. The traffic on the two-lane road snaking through the hills was spotty, which was a relief. But the lack of movement on either side made me feel more isolated. And it was quieter. Large limestone outcroppings rose from the ground like ghosts on guard.

A mile and a half later I reached Lone Pine Canyon Road, turned left onto the narrow two-lane road, and headed into no-man’s land. It was called the Angeles National Forest, but the forest was mostly shrubs and dirt here. The road turned, then rose and fell gently, following aboveground power lines.

The cutoff for Basal came suddenly, a few miles farther, announced by a single blue sign that read Basal Institute, with an arrow directed across Lone Pine. I swung my car onto a blacktopped driveway and it was then, driving into tall and ominous-looking trees, that I began to doubt my spontaneous decision to come and make something happen on my own.

I really had no idea what I could accomplish. For all I knew, I would never even reach the prison. There would be a gate and guardhouse long before I reached the actual entrance and, without the necessary paperwork, I would be turned away.

The driveway was long, at least half a mile, descending slowly as it snaked around the hills. The trees grew even taller. The mist was thicker. I rolled forward, alone on the road, breathing shallow.

The mist to my left suddenly thinned, offering me my first view of the valley. I blinked at the sight and veered to the left shoulder. Shoved the car into park. Threw the door open and stood with one foot in the car and the other on the graveled shoulder.

Below me in a large clearing half a mile away lay a fenced compound. In the center of that compound rose a beautiful stone building shaped like a cross. I saw it all in a glance and my pulse thickened.

The only similarity between Basal and Ironwood were the tall fences, three of them running in parallel, set back from the institution. Where Ironwood looked like four huge factory buildings, Basal looked more like an oversized mansion. Or an old sanitarium for the mentally ill. Or a massive cathedral. No guard towers that I could see.

The walls rose high and were topped by a green metal roof that sloped upward to meet a glass dome that allowed light to filter into the area below. Windows every ten or fifteen feet peered out from the cells, but they were tinted, the one-way kind used in some office buildings. There were no bars, only leafy vines that crawled up the walls at each corner.

And then I saw what could pass as guard towers, built into the corners of the building with a clear view of the exterior compound. If so, the guards were out of sight. A green lawn, maybe a hundred yards wide, separated the monolithic structure from the three fences, which alone marked the compound as something other than a uniquely designed resort.

Haze drifted by, thickening to obscure the valley for a few moments before thinning again.

There were no patrol cars driving along the perimeter road, no correctional officers pacing the lawn. A single paved road bordered by a shorter fence stretched between a sally port near the perimeter and what I took to be the front entrance. The sally port was a system consisting of two gates that could not be opened at the same time. Any vehicle coming or leaving would have to pass through the first gate, then wait for it to close behind before being admitted through the second gate—a security measure used at all prisons.

A large fenced parking lot with a pedestrian sally port encompassed thirty or forty cars on the far left side. Otherwise there was no indication that the building was even occupied. Deliveries probably came in from the back, where there would be a third sally port, but I couldn’t see over the building.

For a moment I imagined that Danny’s world had just been filled with a ray of bright hope. Surely this would be a better place than Ironwood. But then the voice from the phone drifted through my mind and the illusion faded.

Danny was somewhere within those walls, cut off from the reality known by the rest of the world. For all I knew they were conducting experiments on the inmates inside. Even if they weren’t, someone was going to kill him.

“Can I help you?”

I spun back and saw that a car with an orange light on its roof had approached without my hearing it. A man dressed in black slacks and a white collared shirt stood at the open passenger door, hand on the frame, looking at me. Inside the car, a driver watched me through the windshield, idly tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. I stared, caught completely off guard.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Ah…no. I just…” I stepped around the hood of my car. “But maybe you can help me.”

He didn’t respond. He was a kind-enough looking fellow with blond hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. The car’s door sign identified it as Grounds Control. No weapons that I could see. Not even pepper spray.

“My husband was brought here from Ironwood this morning and I’m having trouble getting a message to him. This is Basal, right?”

“Go through his attorney. Quickest way. It’ll still take at least a week.”

“A week?”

He was eyeing my body and I glanced down. Only then did it hit me that in my frantic haste to leave the condo, I had quickly pulled on a pair of jeans but forgotten to change my top. Or fix my hair. Not that my hair needed fixing—I normally wore it down, and messy hair was somewhat in style. But my yellow-checkered flannel top screamed pajamas…

“I don’t have a week.”

“I’m sorry, but this is a restricted area. You need to turn your car around and leave.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“You don’t understand. You have an inmate inside whose life’s in danger. I have to talk to the warden. Please, I’m begging you.”

“And you know his life’s in danger how?”

I hesitated. “I was told.”

The guard didn’t look impressed. “Ma’am, if even one in a hundred threats made in correctional institutions were carried out, the prisons would be graveyards. Let me put your mind to rest. Your…husband, did you say?”

“My friend.”

“Trust me, your friend’s in the safest prison in California,” he said, “in part because of Basal’s strict policies regarding isolation. He’s been selected for the program for a reason, and you’re going to have to trust in that.”

I looked back at my car, scrambling for an angle, but I couldn’t find one. Maybe I was overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time. Then again, maybe not.

I faced the man, who clearly had more patience than I did. “I got a phone call from a stranger this morning threatening to kill him.”

“Kill who, did you say?”

“I didn’t.”

The corners of the man’s mouth pulled up into a cockeyed smile. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I got a shoe box.”

“A what?”

No, I couldn’t go there.

“Someone’s threatening to kill him, so like it or not, I am worried.”

“Look, Basal has a zero-tolerance policy regarding violence. Without weapons at their disposal, inmates use words. All the time. That’s assuming the threat came from Basal, which is highly unlikely.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He just got here this morning?”

“Yes.”

The guard shook his head. “I doubt he’s met any of the prisoners yet, much less had time to make enemies. Besides, all phone calls are monitored. Is your friend a violent man?”

“No.” Not anymore, anyway. Although I had no doubt Danny could put both of these guards on their backs without breaking a sweat.

“He make a habit of screaming obscenities at people who walk by?”

“Of course not.”

The guard shrugged. “He’s perfectly safe here. Wherever that call came from, it wasn’t Basal. And whoever made it will have an even harder time getting in here than you. Follow? What prison did you say he was transferred from?”

“Ironwood.”

“There you go. Impossible to spend time at Ironwood without making enemies. Now, if you don’t mind, you really need to turn your car around and leave. And just so you know, the minute any car hits our blacktop, we know. Go home and take a deep breath. If you still think you need to get a message inside, you best work with an attorney.”

“Do you know an inmate named Bruce Randell?”

The guard’s eyes flickered and I knew I’d hit a chord.

“Not directly, no. I’m not at liberty to speak about any members. I think it’s best for you to leave.”

I knew then that I had no hope of getting in to see Danny without someone’s help. That’s when I decided to start with whoever had first put Bruce Randell behind bars. Know your enemy’s enemy, Danny had once taught me. They will likely be your ally.

“Thank you,” I said, eager to leave. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t.” He grinned. “Martin. Please don’t return until you have the right paperwork. There’s an armed gate around the corner a hundred yards up. No one gets past it unless we want them to. Follow?”

“Follow,” I said.

But the only path I was following was the one that led me to Danny, and that path now led me to Bruce Randell, Danny’s newest enemy.