“Missy loved me.”
“Exactly. But Missy’s parents grew worried about the relationship when their daughter preferred spending time with Pete over other boys in her peer group. High school stuff.” Godfrey dismissed the notion with a flip of his hand.
“They tried to discourage their daughter, but Missy spent most of her time with Peter. Not sure it was really a romantic relationship as such, but they became inseparable.”
“And yet he was convicted.”
“Because Missy’s parents, terrified that their only daughter was getting too friendly and wasting her life away, threw a fit. Missy reacted by running away from home to be with Pete, whose mother had just passed away, leaving him the sole beneficiary of their little crumbling house. After a week the parents decided an intervention was the only way to save their daughter. Maybe it was understandable, but they overreacted.”
“Did they have any evidence of nonconsensual—”
“They had a case worker who reported a confession by Pete that he’d pushed himself on Missy. Absurd, but there you have it. As a priest, you’re probably aware that in California, confidentiality is waived in cases of rape.”
“And you think the parents paid off the caseworker.”
“What better way to keep a vagrant from your daughter than have him thrown in prison?”
“Missy didn’t come forward?”
“She was removed to a camp for troubled teens in Arizona. A letter alleging misbehavior and shame served as her testimony. It took me an hour to learn this much, you understand, and I may be missing some of the details, but that’s basically what happened. Am I right, Pete?”
“I would never hurt Missy.”
“I know you wouldn’t. The rest is plain enough. Missy’s parents had Pete arrested, their attorney fed the DA all they needed, Pete had a public defender who caved under the case. The judge sentenced Pete to two years in state prison despite his pleas of innocence. The warden managed to rope the boy, and here we sit.”
Godfrey had been right—the boy’s story broke Danny’s heart. For the most part, law enforcement and the courts got their implementation of the laws right, despite the questionability of some of those laws. But when they got it wrong, they could get it very wrong. Unfortunately, the plight of the innocent in prison was mostly lost on an angry, cynical public.
“If everything you’re telling us is right, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Danny said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know. Do you remember the name of the judge?”
Pete shook his head.
To Godfrey: “The court didn’t take his condition into consideration?”
“You tell me. Worst part is that the convicts consider him a pedophile. I keep telling him to keep his head down and stay to himself, but that can only help so much.”
“Someone’s bothering him?”
The boy’s eyes flickered across the room. No one in particular that Danny could see, but the bruise on his cheek held more significance now.
Even so, Danny would be hard-pressed to lend any assistance other than empathy, consolation, and advice. And really, in any other prison Pete might have already suffered far worse than he had here. Despite the warden’s oddities, Basal might just be Pete’s best chance of surviving his time, short of living in segregation.
Danny was lost in these thoughts when it occurred to him that the room had quieted. He followed several stares toward the door and saw a white commons member walking toward their table. The man was big, well over six feet, with arms the size of small trees and a neck built like a trunk. The man looked like a Viking who thought with his fists and offered rebuke with his eyes, harsh glares that would shrivel all but the strongest opponent. Behind him and to his right walked a smaller, thin man, his dark hair slicked back with grease, wearing a crooked smile. Both had tattoos that ran down their arms, but no gang markings that Danny could see.
“That’s Randell,” Godfrey muttered of the larger man, and the moment he said it, Pete’s head whipped around. The look of terror on the boy’s face could not be mistaken.
Both Godfrey’s and the warden’s advice to stay clear of Randell flashed through Danny’s mind. The warden had asked him to help Pete because he and the boy shared a common enemy. Randell.
But helping the boy would only infuriate that enemy.
The large man spoke to Danny before he stopped at the edge of their table. “Stand up, you FNG.”
Randell’s challenge drew no attention from the facilitator at the door, who watched them from his chair, tilting it back on two legs. Across from Danny, Pete was trembling. Danny remained calm. The warden had made it clear that he’d be tested.
“You deaf, punk? I said stand up and face me.”
Bruce Randell’s lips were as pale as his face, two strips of bleached leather on a pocked, lunar face. An albino bulldog. Danny remained seated, unguarded, refusing to allow his anger to rise. He should say something—silence was its own form of disrespect—but considering the man’s blatant disregard for the established protocol, what would that be?
“I hear you just fine,” Danny finally said. “My instructions from the warden are to avoid you. I think it’s best I stay seated. But I assure you, I’m listening.”
A smile crept onto the man’s face. “A fancy talker.” His eyes dropped to Pete, who was staring down at his plate, still trembling.
“So the two diddlers are already playing together,” Randell said. “What do you make of that, Slane?”
The man with slicked-back hair had his eyes on Pete. “I think they both need to know what it feels like.”
“An eye for an eye,” Randell said. His stare drilled into Danny. “I don’t like priests. If you don’t stand up I’m going to let my friend loose. And I promise you it’ll be bloody.”
A surge of adrenaline flooded Danny’s veins, but he refused to give in to the sudden impulse to set the man straight. He’d given in to such weaknesses once and paid a heavy price. More important, he’d taken a vow of nonviolence in an effort to follow a truer way.
Proper execution of the people’s law was the only way to handle injustice, and Basal had its law. He was legally and morally obligated to follow it even when that law failed. Who was he to judge?
The man called Slane bent down and whispered something into Pete’s ear, his eyes fixed on Danny. There was darkness and hatred in those eyes.
Pete spun off the bench, rounded the end of the table, and dropped down on the seat next to Danny, effectively placing his new protector between himself and Slane.
Danny stilled another urge to help Randell see the light. His impulse to defend the weak would never leave him, he knew; neither would his resolve to control that impulse.
Randell glared at him. “Welcome to Basal. You may think the warden’s your problem, but you’d be wrong. That would be me.” He leaned forward and spoke, close enough for Danny to smell his stale breath. “I’m going to make you hate yourself, Priest. And then I’m going to kill you.”
Randell brought a gnarled hand up, gripped Danny’s cheeks between his thumb and fingers, and shoved his head back. “Remember that.”
“Back off, Randell.” The facilitator had finally decided to step in.
Danny couldn’t deny the anger he felt. But he’d faced far worse and learned that his refusal to engage, although initially painful, eventually rewarded him with peace. Turning the other cheek made sense only if you did it every time.
Randell lifted his arms in feigned surrender and stepped away.
The facilitator, a thirty-something with a hook nose that looked as if it might have been broken more than once, was on his radio, calling for backup. He pointed Randell and Slane away from the table, then glared at Danny.