It took him a moment, but he finally dipped his head. Yes.
“Maybe even if that son had done something wrong,” I said, thinking about that pedophile.
The man’s eyes held steady.
“Take that impulse you feel, and double it,” I said. “I don’t have a son, but I still have that crazy-mother DNA, and I have someone as precious to me as any child. I’ll do anything to save him. If that kills me or puts me in prison for the rest of my life, so be it. Nothing’s going to stop me. Which means you have a very serious problem in front of you. You have a desperate woman who will do anything, and I mean anything, to find out what you know about the man she would give her life for.”
His breathing was even. No denials, no confessions. Not yet.
“I lived in a nice house like this once,” I said, glancing over his shoulder at the curtains. “It had very thick walls. Like yours. And at least double-pane glass. I don’t think the neighbors will hear a gunshot, do you?”
“Using a gun won’t save anyone.” His voice was firm.
“It’s not just anyone, it’s my husband,” I said. “His name is Danny Hansen. You don’t fear me because you look in my eyes and you know I’m not a killer.” I lowered my eyes to the gun and turned it over in my hands. “But there’re other things I can do with this gun.”
I stared at his knees, then at his crotch. I didn’t know if Thompson was the father of the pedophile Danny had killed, but in my mind’s eye he became that man. Danny had cut off his son’s penis because he’d abused and killed a boy after being released from prison early, thanks to some fancy footwork by his father, the judge.
My eyes lingered on his zipper, then I drew them up his chest. To his face.
“I think you know why I’m here, Mr. Thompson. I don’t expect a confession. Frankly, I don’t care what you’ve done in your past. It doesn’t matter what you did to upset whoever sent us here. I really don’t care what you do tomorrow or the day after that. But tonight…tonight you’re going to tell me what you know, do you understand?”
“I’ve told you what I know. Nothing.”
“But you see, that’s a lie. Nothing you say can change the fact that you’ve been fingered by someone who has a very elaborate plan that isn’t sloppy or misinformed. There’s nothing arbitrary about us being sent here. Nothing you say can change that. I may be small, but do I really look that stupid?”
Nothing.
“This is just between you and me now. To be honest, I’m not sure my friend has what it takes to blow off your penis. But you and I know about things like that, don’t we?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know about a certain son of yours who was convicted for pedophilia?”
I dropped the bomb and watched, and the twitch in the corner of his right eye closed the loop for me.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “The good news for you is, I don’t care about that. Everybody’s paid a price. What’s done is done. Your secret’s safe with me. All I need to know now is how you’re connected to Basal.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He took two shallow breaths. “I told you, I don’t…”
I didn’t hear the rest of it, because my true nature flexed its full will and darkened my mind. I stood up, took one step forward, bent over, put the barrel against his right brown loafer, and pulled the trigger.
The shot crashed through the room and Judge Thompson jerked upright, roaring with pain and outrage.
Keith tried to open the door, found it locked, and banged on it.
“Renee! What are you doing? Open the door!”
“You shot me, you little whore!” Thompson snarled.
“It’s okay,” I snapped at Keith. “I just shot off his toe.”
“Open this door!” he shouted.
But I had no intention of opening the door.
“I’m not done,” I said. “I still have eight bullets.”
25
“THEN COME HERE and do it to me.” Danny’s challenge hung in the hard yard, blasphemous and demanding a response.
Someone cleared his throat; otherwise there was no sound in the heart of that sanctuary. Randell stood fifteen paces away, left of center; Slane, fifteen paces right of center. The room was already turning in Danny’s mind, transformed into a three-dimensional model examined by a student of the fight. The distance to the walls, the positioning of the members, the sections of the concrete floor that were smooth or rough, the lights, the switches, the clothing his opponents wore, all of it. Like a gladiator armed only with his fists. Adrenaline had sufficiently cleared his mind.
“Who do you think you are?” Randell asked. There was a note of sincerity in his voice. “You think you’re gonna change anything?”
“Yeah, you think you’re gonna change anything?”
“Shut up, Slane,” Randell snapped at his punk. The man’s face flattened.
The big man jabbed his chin at Danny. “You think a priest like you has anything on us scum?”
“I’m not the priest who abused you,” Danny said. Randell stiffened. “I’m the priest who found a boy abused by your punk. I’m the one who defends boys like you.”
Randell’s face flushed red. “Shut up.”
“They don’t know you were raped by a priest when you were a boy?”
“I said shut up!”
Randell was moving already, marching forward with his thick hands balled into fists.
“Not so fast, Bruce.” The warden’s voice rang out from behind Danny.
Randell wasn’t stopping.
“Back!” The order was that of a master commanding his dogs. This time Randell pulled up, eight paces away.
Pape’s hard-soled patent-leather shoes clacked and grated on the concrete as he strolled out into the middle of the yard, one hand in his pocket. Danny let him come into view without removing his eyes from Slane or Randell.
“You think this is an unfair fight?” the warden asked Randell. “That you two can take him down? Then you don’t know that our priest has made a life out of chewing up and spitting out people like you. When you were a little brat running around the neighborhood stealing old lady’s purses, Danny here was in the business of killing men twice his size. More men than you can count.”
He faced Danny, lips curved with a hint of a smile that reflected in his eyes. He was nothing less than delighted.
“It is unfair,” he said. “Isn’t it, Priest?”
Danny watched him. The words he’d spoken earlier were still cycling around his head like stray buzzards.
Do it to me.
“But it wasn’t just these two who hurt little Peter, Danny,” the warden said. “No, there were three more.” He scanned the members who stood along the walls. “Weren’t there? Sure there were. Mason, Ratcliff, Stone. Step out.”
Three men broke from the ring of onlookers and approached the center of the yard. Danny recognized two of them, both heavily tattooed white knuckleheads who in any other prison might be scrutinized for gang affiliation. But none of their tattoos was familiar to Danny. Prison ink.
The third was a skinny man with a bald head and a viper’s sneer. Of them all, he was likely the most dangerous.
They moved into a circle around Danny. So then, it was now five on one.
“You kin take ’em, Danny,” Kearney said from the side.
“You’d like to join them, Brandon?” the warden asked.