Keith dropped to one knee beside what I now saw was a teenage boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen.
I felt sick. “Is he alive?”
Keith pressed his hand on the boy’s neck to check for a pulse, but it was as far he got. The boy’s head jerked up, eyes wide.
“No!”
“No, no, no, it’s okay…” Keith removed the light from the boy’s eyes. “We’re here to help you. It’s okay.” To me. “Get his hands free!”
“No!” The boy’s frantic cry echoed in the vacant warehouse. “No, you can’t!” His frantic eyes darted from Keith to me and then to his right hand. “He cut off my finger.”
I saw the bloodied hand. Three fingers. The index digit was missing, cut off at the base. An image of the shoe box filled my mind and I swallowed against the nausea rising from my gut.
The boy stared up at me with the wildest, bluest eyes I had ever seen. Tears trailed through dust on his face.
“He…he cut off my finger.”
I lowered myself to both knees next to him and rested my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. We’re here to help you. What’s your name?”
But the boy was too overwhelmed to answer. It occurred to me that nearly a week had passed since I received the shoe box. If the finger sent to me belonged to this boy…
“He was moved here,” Keith said. “There’s no blood on the floor. The wound was cauterized. Did they hurt you anywhere else?”
The boy began to cry. He shook his head.
“Do you have a name?” I asked again. I had to know. I had to know because in my mind’s eye, this was Danny. And he was me. At the very least, the boy was here because of me.
“Jeremy,” the boy said.
My hand on his shoulder was shaking.
“Why can’t we take the restraints off, Jeremy?” Keith asked.
“He…he said the letter first. You…” The boy was so distraught that his words came out jumbled. “It’s under here; you have to read it first.”
Keith glanced at me, then pulled the blanket off the boy. His jeans were stained where he’d wet himself. In his lap lay yellow paper folded down to a two-inch square.
There was no food or water around that I could see. Keith picked up the note, shoved the flashlight under his chin, and quickly unfolded the paper.
I took a calming breath and gently rubbed the boy’s shoulder. “Okay, listen to me, Jeremy. I need you to tell me how long you’ve been here.”
“I don’t know.” And then, “A long time.” His face was wet with tears, flowing freely now.
“When did they take you? Do you remember what day it was?”
He stared up at me again, eyes pleading. “Sunday.”
“From where?”
“Pasadena,” he said.
“You live in Pasadena?”
But he only lowered his head and began to cry silently. Something in my mind began to break. Not because Pasadena meant anything to me, but because Jeremy was an innocent boy who lived in Pasadena and was abducted on Sunday so that Sicko could use his finger to make sure I got the message. Jeremy would suffer the rest of his life on my account.
I felt faint. He needed water, and I had water in the car, but for a few moments I couldn’t move. And then I was up and running for the door. Slipping on the gravel outside, dust flying. Lunging into the car for the water.
When I burst back into the warehouse, Keith was standing with both arms at his sides like a zombie, staring down at Jeremy, Sicko’s note in one hand, flashlight in the other, pointed at the ground. The sound of the car’s engine faded behind me, replaced by the pounding of my feet on the concrete.
“What is it?”
Keith didn’t respond.
“Why can’t we get him out of those things?” I demanded. “The poor kid’s been in here for a week!”
“You should read this,” Keith said. His voice didn’t sound right.
The boy’s chin was on his chest again, passed out again. Poor boy…I dropped to my knee and tilted his chin up. “Wake up, Jeremy.” His eyes slowly opened as I pressed the water bottle to his mouth. He drank thirstily, gulping like a bird. Water spilled down his chin, soaking his shirt. When he finally shifted his mouth from the bottle, he was already fading.
I set the bottle down. “We’ll get you out of here, I promise. You’re going home, Jeremy, okay? You’ll be home soon, I promise.”
Keith took my elbow and led me to the side. “Just read it.”
So I did, taking the flashlight from Keith to illuminate the note myself.
Good girl.
If you would have been one minute late, the boy would already be dead.
At midnight Monday night you will go to an address I will give you. You will force a full confession from the owner of the house and learn where he put the money. If he refuses, you will kill him and wait for my next instructions. If he confesses, you will have forty-eight hours to retrieve the money. Once you have the money, you will return and kill the man and wait for my instructions.
Either way, you will kill the man. If he’s alive in four days, both Danny and that scumbag you’re with are dead. He crossed the wrong man.
Be a good girl and do what you’re told.
P.S. Cut off another one of the boy’s fingers. Remind him that if he tells anyone about what happened to him, we will kill his mother.
My hands began to tremble.
17
DANNY WAS ESCORTED from the warden’s office clean, dressed in the blue slacks and tan shirt of the general population, bearing no mark or sign that he’d just spent two days in hell. The hub was half full of convicts playing checkers, watching television, wasting time an hour before lockdown.
Hustles were going down, bets were being made, arguments unfolding, scores settled, gossip passed, all with the warden’s approval. And only with it. Evidently, if a member proved his loyalty, he was allowed certain lenience. It would take some time to understand what limits could be pushed without reprisal. Danny had no intention of exploring those boundaries.
Mitchell led him past the cafeteria, past a door that led to the infirmary, to a short hall that opened to a gymnasium.
“Stay out of trouble,” the CO said, giving Danny a gentle shove through the double doors. He turned on his heels and left him standing alone.
The room was roughly half the size of a typical gym, all concrete. Gray walls, cement floor, open to the night sky above except for a wire mesh. Bright lights hung from metal beams overhead.
Some members were engaged in a game of pickup basketball around a netless hoop that jutted from the far wall. Pull-up bars were fastened to the adjacent walls, most in use by other members going through typical prison yard exercise routines.
The hard yard. No lines on the floor to mark courts, no nets for tennis or volleyball, no bins full of balls or stacks of weights. Just one hoop, the pull-up bars, and eighteen or twenty inmates. Among them: Randell, Slane, and two other knuckleheads he’d seen with them in the dining hall.
He was briefly tempted to turn around and walk out, but the warden had specifically sent him to the hard yard, clearly for a reason.
“You okay?”
Danny turned and saw that Godfrey and Peter had entered behind him, the old man wearing concern, Peter oblivious to anything but his own delight.
“The warden put me in the privileged wing.” Peter beamed. “You like my jeans?”
Indeed, he was dressed in a pair of jeans at least three sizes too large. He’d neatly tucked a bright red T-shirt, also oversized, into the waistband.
“You’re looking pretty snappy there, Peter. Where’d you get them?”
“From the warden. He gave me my own room in the privileged wing. It’s a big room and it has a pillow.”