“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 naïve 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.
Or were they?
“So you see how closely our worlds are entwined?” the warden said. “I know more about you than you might have guessed. I have powerful friends who can change lives with the stroke of a pen. But you’re wondering how I know about Roman Thompson, the pedophile you killed. Am I right?”
At least the pedophile’s death in no way implicated Renee. He’d killed the man years before she’d come into his life.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Danny said.
“Then let me refresh your memory.” The warden sat forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “The man you killed had a father. A judge named Franklin Thompson. Surely you know that much. What you can’t possibly know is that the Honorable Franklin Thompson knows more than you think he knows. He has no physical evidence, of course, you were too good for that, but he isn’t without his means.”
“So that’s what this is all about? Forcing a confession out of me?”
“No.” Pape leaned back in his chair, comfortably smug. “No, I doubt I could ever manage that. My objective is to help you see who you really are, so that you can truly repent and be whole. And to that end, I will now confess that there’s more to Peter’s story. How do you think a young man like Peter ended up in Basal?”
The facts lined up in Danny’s mind like crows on a high wire. A ghost had come out of his past to haunt him. The father of his first victim had found a way to send an innocent boy accused of rape to Basal, not to teach Peter a lesson but to destroy Danny.
They intended to push Danny to his end.
“So, now you think you know. An eye for an eye. How far will you go to protect Peter? Hmm? Me, I think you would kill again. That your vow of nonviolence is only an empty promise to appease your guilt. I intend to find out if you still have self-righteousness in you. And I promise to push until you do. Randell isn’t my wolf, Danny. You are.”
Danny let the judgment sink in, aware even as he sat across from the warden that he now faced a world of impossible choices. Already the heat of familiar rage was spreading up through his chest and face.
“How about Renee?” the warden said. “How far would you go to save your precious wife?”
Danny’s mind went dark, then brightened with panic. But he didn’t dare reveal his terror at those words. He couldn’t allow any focus to linger on Renee.
“She’s not my wife,” he said, bringing all of his resolve to mind.
“No. No, she isn’t. You’d better prove that you’ve changed, Danny. You’d better come clean and tell me everything and show me that you’re a fully rehabilitated man no longer willing to deviate from the law. Each of my children is unique, each with his own rehabilitation plan. But you’re special. You’re a man of the cloth; you should have known better.”
“Then deal with me on my own. Don’t subject Peter to punishment to teach me. Let me prove myself to you on my own terms.”
The warden drew his hand across his mouth to dry his lips. The man was still reeling from his own tragedy.
“Well, my friend, as it turns out, I’m one step ahead of you. I always will be, remember that. In this case, I’ve already had Peter transferred to the privileged wing as a sign of good faith. The boy’s suffered enough for the time being. As the good book says, ‘There’s a time for peace and there’s a time for war.’ But know that I’m watching you. If you slip—if you allow your ugly, violent nature to emerge without my express direction or permission—then it’s war. Fair enough?”