Marshall Pape slid one hand into his pocket as he always did, and stepped into the middle of the room. There wasn’t a hint of kindness on his face.
“You disappoint me, Danny. You saw what they did to that poor boy. Slane was the kind of person other prisons keep paroling back into society to prey on the weak. The kind who took my family. I’m trying to fix that, and I’d hoped to get a little help from a priest. I was wrong.”
But Danny’s mind was more on the straps holding his legs. Why? A tinge of fear leaked through his bones.
The warden nodded at the doctor, who bent for his black bag.
“Did your father ever send you into quiet time when you were a child, Danny?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“Think of the hole as a kind of quiet time. But if you keep breaking the rules, things get worse. The next time, your father might take away privileges. Then swat your hand. Then maybe give you a good whipping.”
No, but Danny said nothing.
“You may think of this as your good whipping. I hope it’s your last.”
He stepped aside as the doctor placed his black bag on the table. From it he withdrew a white cloth, which he placed next to Danny, then latex gloves, and something that looked like a silver electric toothbrush without the brush. A small jar of disinfectant and several cotton swabs were next.
The warden continued in a calm voice. “Don’t worry, he’s very clean. It’s important that you don’t develop an infection.”
The doctor removed a small white case, which he opened. From it, he selected a very thin six-inch needle that went into the end of the device. Or was it a small drill bit, like those used by dentists?
Sweat began to seep out of Danny’s pores.
The doctor connected a small air tube to the silver wand and set it down on the white cloth. Taking the disinfectant, he wiped a four-inch section of Danny’s shin.
No one spoke now. Bostich stood with his arms crossed, wearing a smirk. The warden watched, hand in pocket, frowning. The doctor calmly went about his business.
“The advantage of this particular form of punishment is that it will leave only a very small mark,” Pape said. “The needle will reach into your bone and grind at certain nerves. There will be no permanent damage, but you can expect the pain to be quite intense. It doesn’t compare to eternal fire, but you’ll get the general idea.”
The doctor felt along Danny’s shin bone with his thumb until he found what he was looking for. Keeping the thumb in place, he reached into the black bag and turned on a power source. A small air pump.
He lifted the drill and Danny closed his eyes. The device whined once, then twice as the doctor tested it.
“We’ve only taken one other member this far,” Pape continued. “Slane was terribly stubborn when he came to us, and now he’s dead. Such a shame, but some people just can’t be rehabilitated in their time. As for Peter’s suffering, it was short. Yours will last two days. We’ll talk then.”
He stepped away. The door squealed open, then closed behind him.
Bostich pressed a thick strip of rubber against Danny’s mouth. “Bite on this. You don’t want to chew off your tongue.”
He accepted the piece, bit into it, and marshaled all of his focus to one end: shutting down his mind. The brain controlled pain. The nerve endings might be stimulated, but unless their message was properly interpreted by the mind, the pain would be lost. There was no way to avoid the warden’s punishment, but he could endure it by minimizing that pain.
This Danny knew, but he had never felt a thin, whining drill grind into his bones before. The device screeched to life.
“Try not to move,” the doctor said. “We have a long way to go and I don’t want to tear up your bone marrow.”
It was with that word
The tip of the drill touched his skin and a sharp sting shot up his leg. But not so much that he flinched. Then it struck his chin and the sensation swelled, a biting, excruciating pain that brought with it spreading heat as his flesh rebelled.
This too, Danny could manage for some time. He bit down on the rubber with more force and pushed his thoughts into submission, searching for the solace that he’d learned to find beyond them.
But then the drill broke past the surface of the bone and struck a tangle of nerves that shattered any notion he could endure such torment. The pain was not localized; it slammed into his whole body at once, like a thundering wave crashing onto the shore.
Nothing could have prepared him for such intense agony. His body began to tremble from head to foot. His head snapped back, and he clamped down on the rubber, desperate for relief.
“Hold still,” the doctor said. “It gets worse with time. Just try to relax.”
Danny’s jaw snapped wide and he began to scream.
32
I WAS A bundle of raw nerves. Keith drove the rented black Ford sedan down Highway 138 toward Lone Pine Canyon Road toward Basal. He had pulled the entire plan together in fewer than forty hours and, despite the fact that it fell into place so seamlessly, I was certain we’d forgotten something.
We had identification. Getting in would all come down to our Office of the Inspector General ID badges.
Never mind that. Even if we hadn’t forgotten anything and getting into the prison proved to be as simple as we thought it could be, we were entering the lions’ den. The warden was in there. Randell was in there.
We were dressed like congressmen visiting our constituents, Keith in a dark blue suit and me in blue slacks and a white blouse.
I’d watched a documentary once about the cult leader Jim Jones, who set up a compound for his followers in Guyana called Jonestown. A congressman who had gone in to investigate rumors of abuse lost his life along with more than nine hundred temple followers.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that Basal was our Jonestown and I was that congressman.
We’d left Judge Thompson in his estate, assured of his silence and compliance. Knowing that he was complicit at some level, we told him what we wanted him to hear: someone wanted him dead, and unless he got our hands on one million dollars within forty-eight hours, we would have to at least fake his death. We would be back. There would be no contact until then, because we believed that someone was watching.
As to why Sicko wanted the judge dead, the reasoning had become obvious to us: Thompson was a loose end who knew too much to be left alive. If we killed him, we would be implicated in his murder and go to prison, which was one of Sicko’s stated objectives from the beginning. It was the perfect setup.
As to why Sicko had led me to the dancing bear, then to the warehouse with the maimed boy before leading us to the judge, the answer seemed obvious in retrospect: he was manipulating me, pushing me further and further, hoping I would snap and kill a man with my own hands.
But now we’d turned the tables on him. He didn’t know it yet, but he was now playing
“You’re sure these IDs will work?” I asked.
Keith didn’t bother answering. He drove the sedan in silence, as he had for most of the drive north. Neither of us had slept more than a few hours since Sunday night.
He’d dyed his hair black and wore a mustache and goatee. He looked nothing like the Keith I knew. I’d found a short blonde wig and wore rectangular, wireframe glasses. True, I was still my skinny self, but Keith seemed certain that the warden wouldn’t detect us. Although he had probably seen pictures of us, he hadn’t met either of us in person, a key factor in recognition. Our alterations were simple but they would be effective, and I had to trust him on that.
“How long?” I asked.
