Sanctuary

It’s my job to correct those deviants, once and for all. Murderers, for example.”

The warden studied him with knowing eyes.

“You know about murder, don’t you?” He tapped his pen on the surface of the desk. “Why did you kill them, Danny?”

“Kill who?”

“Please, I know you killed more than the two men you confessed to as a part of your plea bargain. The question is, why? There’s no clear motivation cited.”

“I was foolish enough to think I could change the world.”

“By what? Setting a few of the wayward straight?”

“As I said—”

“Then we’re the same, aren’t we? You see people in need and you rush to their defense. I see society in need and I rush to its defense. In a way I admire you for attempting to do outside the law what society has failed to do within that law. Isn’t that why you killed?”

“A few years ago, I would have agreed.”

“But not now?”

“No.”

The man watched him for a long moment, then stood and approached the family portraits on the wall, hands behind his back.

“Maybe it would help if you understood my own motivation.” He nodded at the picture of himself with his wife, his daughter, and his son. The daughter was perhaps fifteen, a younger reflection of her mother apart from her hair, which was straighter than the wife’s fluffy curls. Both had bright blue eyes, the same sharp nose, rosy cheeks, and small mouths. Both were beautiful and wore red dresses.

The son looked more like his mother than the warden as well. He wore a crew cut and was perhaps two years younger than his sister.

Pape pointed to his daughter. “This is Emily. She was fourteen when this picture was taken. Nate, my son, was eleven. Everyone says they both look like my wife, Betty. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Very similar, yes.”

The warden glowed with pride. Nothing about his pleasure seemed remotely disingenuous. Reconciling Marshall Pape the warden with Marshall Pape the loving father might prove difficult for many, but Danny had seen a thousand hardened soldiers in Bosnia who fought out of love of their families, he being chief among them.

Marshall Pape was first of all a human being, in the same way that the inmates under his thumb were. Really, none of them was a monster. They were all just trying to make sense of their world in this subculture called prison.

“They’re now six years older,” Pape said. “Emily’s studying medicine at UCLA, Nate’s the starting quarterback on his high school football team, quite a player at only seventeen.” He faced Danny, still smiling. “Perhaps one day you’ll father a child, Danny. I can assure you, there’s nothing more rewarding than watching a child grow through the years. Nothing.”

There was a heaviness in the warden’s voice that forecasted the frown that slowly overtook his face. He looked at the photograph again.

“But who am I kidding? Those are only my dreams. Unfortunately, I’ll never see Nate or Emily grow up. In truth, this is the last picture taken of them before they were killed. Ten days after we sat for this photograph, actually.”

Danny recoiled at the revelation.

Marshall Pape faced him. “They were both at a convenience store in Santa Monica when a paroled felon named Jake Williams came in with only drugs and money on his mind. The store owner had a gun, and in the ensuing face-off, Nate was killed by the felon. Emily was accidently hit in the head by a bullet from the storekeeper’s handgun. They both died at the scene.”

The warden had suddenly and dramatically become a victim along with his children. Danny could not ignore his empathy for the man.

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how you must have felt.”

“The store owner received a two-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. The felon was killed. My wife suffered a mental breakdown and left me a year later. She still blames my son’s and daughter’s deaths on me. Do you know why?”

“Because you are a warden, responsible for keeping people like Jake behind bars.”

Pape forced a smile. “Very good. It’s a stretch, don’t you think? But she had a point, Danny.” He held up two fingers. “Jake Williams had two previous convictions for robbery. He did his time in one of those monster factories only to be paroled, unchanged at his core. So you see, the system failed my son, and weak gun laws failed my daughter.” His eyes were glassy, misted with tears. “Now both are dead.”

“I am so sorry, sir. I’m truly terribly sorry.”

“I lost my children, I lost my wife. I also lost my sister, Celine, who was murdered before all of this,” Pape continued. “I knew then that God was sending me a message, and I took an oath. Never again would I oversee deviants without helping them accept their failure in the very core of their being. Never again would a single soul under my supervision rejoin society without first being completely changed from the inside out. Three years later, I became the first warden of Basal.”

This was Marshall Pape’s religion, to help deviants become new men, transformed by the renewing of their minds, a noble pursuit to say the least. He was just going about it wrong.

“I can understand your ambition,” Danny said.

“Yes, I suppose you could. Is that why you killed? To help men see the light?”

“Yes.” And then he said something he was sure the warden couldn’t know. “My mother and my two sisters were raped and killed in Bosnia.”

The warden’s eyes held on him, wide. “Then you do understand.”

“God’s love and grace are the path to healing. Not condemnation or punishment.”

“Then your world is full of naive idealism,” Pape said. “Grace is only a word that masks a new kind of law. Like I told you before, true grace doesn’t even exist. He who offers it still demands adherence to some kind of behavior. A new law. There is no free ride. And breaking the law always comes at a cost. There must remain the very real threat of punishment and torture. I’m surprised you don’t seem to understand that, being a priest.”

Danny remained silent. The warden’s argument, however uniquely put, represented the conundrum that faced all religions and institutions that sought to modify behavior for greater good. From Pape’s perspective, Basal made perfect sense.

“In the end the quality of life is always about some kind of law. You would think I’d be agreeable to a man gunning down the murderer of my son and daughter before he had the chance to kill them, wouldn’t you?” the warden said.

They were on dangerous ground; Pape was describing Danny.

“But you would be wrong,” Pape continued. “That would be illegal. The law is in place as it stands for good reason, tested by centuries of trial and error. I lost my family because both a well-meaning man and a felon deviated from the law. The law, my friend. No one must break the law. Ever. Everything I do at Basal is geared toward this one end. You may not like my ways, but I do it for the millions of Nates and Emilys who only want to go to the convenience store for an ice-cream sandwich. I am their protector.”

He returned to his chair, eased himself down, and sighed. “But you, Danny, you would break the law to save an innocent boy like my son, wouldn’t you?”

Danny hesitated, careful not to take the warden’s bait.

“No? You wouldn’t kill a man to save an innocent boy? How about someone like Peter?”

“No.”

“So you would not cut off a man’s penis to stop him from abusing an innocent boy, is that it? Danny?”

The air went still. There was no mistaking Pape’s reference to the pedophile that Danny had first killed— Roman Thompson, son of Judge Franklin Thompson. How could the warden know? Who else had known? Renee. And a handful of victims he’d shared the detail with as a means of motivation.

Renee would never share the knowledge, that much he knew. Which left those victims he’d shared the episode with, all of whom he was sure were dead.