several ways that quickly came to mind.
In a moment of clarity he knew that he’d vacated his resolve to eschew violence, regardless of the impulse that called for it. No matter what the situation.
He stood up straight, taken by the deep conflict in front of him. And then another question struck him. Why had the warden left him in a cell with his legs free and a table to break? Why had he told Danny about Renee? The man was as shrewd as any Danny had known.
He glanced down at the leather belt still buckled around his right forearm. It had broken an inch from the buckle, but the rough edge of the tear didn’t run the full width of the leather. It had been cut with a knife two thirds of the way through.
The same with the strap on his left arm. The warden had assumed he’d try to free himself once he’d learned that Renee was in the prison. Why? Because he wanted Danny to break out of the deep meditation cell.
Why? Because he intended to lead Danny into a trap.
But that same trap could have been just as easily set by leading Danny with misinformation. Knowing about Danny’s unshakable love for Renee, the warden might have only
Renee might very well be safe at home, oblivious to the warden’s twisted games. Danny allowed the thought to wash him with hope.
But the moment of reprieve was short-lived because it struck him just as quickly that he could be wrong. The warden might actually have Renee up in the prison as he’d claimed. And with that mushrooming thought, his instinct to save her at any cost reasserted itself like a hurricane slamming into an island.
He stared at the door. The lock was on the outside. There was no getting past it. If the warden intended to draw him into a trap, he would have left the door unlocked.
Danny moved forward on numb legs, eyes on the handle. If the door was open he would go, even knowing that he was being led. He could not remain here while she might be suffering.
He stepped up to the door, put his hand on the latch, and twisted. The latch moved freely and the door pulled open.
His pulse surged. It could only mean that the warden did have Renee. He’d made a way for Danny to find her, knowing that he did not have the strength to allow her to suffer. Knowing that Danny would follow his heart and try to save her.
The light behind him cast a glow down a corridor that ended in twenty feet before turning to the right. From there he knew he would climb one set of stairs to the segregation wing. And another to the administrative wing.
Why had the warden gone to this trouble? Why hadn’t he just come for Danny and led him to Renee?
But then Danny knew. Pape wanted him to come of his own will, even knowing it was a trap. He wanted to lead him as he’d led Renee. The act of going to save someone invested a person in the rescue and intensified the pain of any failure.
The crushing of hope, however thin that hope, was more miserable than having no hope at all.
Even knowing that his disposition now was to overthrow his vows, knowing he was throwing himself on the mercy of his own emotions, Danny retreated, picked up two large splinters of wood, each roughly a hand’s span, and slipped them under the waistband of his shorts. One of the table legs had split off at an angle so that it formed a sharp wedge at one end. He grabbed it and strode for the door.
So, then, it came down to this. There was no more room for ideology or thinking. It was Renee up there now, not him. He would crush them all to save his bride.
And if they hurt Renee, he would hurt them.
Danny stepped out of the cell and headed down the corridor.
38
I KEPT TELLING myself the same thing as two guards handcuffed Keith and me and led us through the prison: this was all a misunderstanding. It was a mistake. This was the United States of America. This was California. There were laws, as the warden himself so aptly pointed out, and those laws prohibited the abuse of its citizens, both in and out of prison. As soon as the warden understood that we really hadn’t hurt anyone, his thinking would change. As soon as he reflected on how absurd his intentions were, he would come to his mind and return us to a conference room, where we could sit down like civilized people and discuss each of our mistakes—no foul, no harm.
But I knew that I was wrong. This really was my Jonestown, and there really was a new Jim Jones in town, living out his own twisted vision of good and evil right under America’s nose.
The world had been shocked by the deaths of the nine hundred people who’d died at Jonestown, because no one believed the rumors of abuse leading up to the massacre. It wasn’t possible. It was too much. It was preposterous. Maybe it could happen in the dark ages or in Nazi Germany, but not today. Not in California. Not in the United States of America.
But there I was, like a lamb being led to my own slaughter, and the worst thing about it all was that Keith was right. No one even knew that we were at Basal, not as Renee Gilmore and Keith Hammond. The pieces had fallen almost perfectly into a puzzle of Marshall Pape’s design. But I’d given up trying to figure out exactly how and just faced the fact that they had.
The prison was a ghost town. They’d cleared it before we were led through the domed hub. The inmates were probably locked down in their own cells, a common enough occurrence in most prisons. It was usually a form of restriction following an incident that required investigation, or a preventive measure against exacerbation of the incident.
Today, Keith and I were that incident. Danny was that incident. The warden had cleared the prison so that he could deal with us as he wished.
The captain jabbed his chin at the far side of the room. “This way.”
Keith hesitated. “Where is everyone?”
The captain gave him a little shove without bothering to answer.
Keith’s tie was gone and his white shirt, sleeves rolled up, was smudged along the arms and back where he’d leaned against the wall. He still wore his leather shoes and dark blue slacks.
There were no other guards on duty that I could see. The doors out to the main yard were closed, as were the doors to the housing wings.
We were herded toward the section of Basal that held the infirmary and the cafeteria, but we passed them both and turned into a small hall. It ended at a door under a sign that said Recreation Room.
The captain reached for the door and offered me a twisted grin. “Welcome to the hard yard.” He pulled the door open and stepped aside with the handle still in his hand.
From my vantage, I could see only a gray concrete room—no people. But my mind’s eye saw images of black-and-white pictures from old documentaries. Gas chambers from Auschwitz. Slaughterhouses and abandoned basements.
I glanced up at Keith, who was staring in, face masked in stone. His words from the holding cell returned to me.
I’d been consumed with Danny and myself, but looking at his stark hazel eyes, I saw a man who’d been pulled into a nightmare because I convinced him to help a damaged woman save the man she loved. Keith was connected through Randell, yes, but as it turned out, Randell had much less to do with the threat against Danny than either of us had thought. Like me, Keith had done what he thought was right. Conscience had only brought him here, to a place called the hard yard, inside of the prison called Basal, which meant core. Hard core.
