Redemption Point

by Candice Fox

  “Oh, um.” Kelly clicked her tongue, thinking. “Probably not. But you could just come to the house.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I laughed.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m in enough trouble at the moment. I don’t need to be upsetting the court by violating my visitation provisions.” I paused as a flight announcement murmured overhead. “And going to the house might be hard. For me. I haven’t been back there since…”

  Since I packed my things and fled like a fugitive, my life in tatters and the people baying for my blood, I thought. Since I tried to decide if I would leave my wedding ring on the dresser or take it with me, my wife having not looked me in the eyes across the courtroom in weeks. Kelly hadn’t been there to say goodbye. She’d been staying with her mother. The house had been cold. Too quiet. All the things suddenly not even half mine, not mine at all—pictures of Lillian as a newborn only just framed and hung on the coral-pink walls.

  I imagined myself going back there now, seeing my old books taken from the shelves and boxed up, Jett’s things on the table on my side of the bed. New things Kelly had done or changed around the place. Had she replaced the old cracked stair off the back door? I winced, the desire to cry prickling painfully in my nose.

  “Maybe we could see each other,” Kelly said.

  I dropped the magazine in my lap. Remembered myself when a woman across the aisle glanced at me.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “Uh … yes?”

  “Jesus, Ted.” Kelly gave a humorless laugh. “That hurts. You make it sound like I hate your guts.”

  “I know you don’t hate me, I just…” I shrugged, as though she could see me. “Look, I’m not thinking straight. I just heard a murder confession and gave a girl her last car ride in the free world. I dropped her at the police station. It’s been a bit crazy here.”

  We hung on to the line, both us of silent. Another flight announcement came and went.

  “Can we just see each other?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said.

  INNOCENT TED, EPISODE 9A: EMERGENCY SPECIAL EDITION

  Content warning: Innocent Ted contains adult themes and violence. Some content may be distressing to listeners. It is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

 

 

  FABIANA GRISHAM: Welcome to Innocent Ted, a true crime podcast about the 2016 abduction of thirteen-year-old Claire Bingley and the wrongful arrest of Ted Conkaffey, father and drug squad detective with the New South Wales Police Force. You’re listening to episode 9A, a special edition mini-cast addressing recent developments in Ted’s case. I’m Fabiana Grisham, lead crime reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and true crime expert.

  Innocent Ted listeners will know that, three days ago, Channel Three’s Stories and Lives began previewing an upcoming episode in which Ted answers reporter Lara Eggington’s questions about the case. Although it was initially billed as a tell-all about the abduction and Ted’s wrong ful prosecution, online newsrooms soon began circulating suggestions that new allegations of sexual misconduct against Ted will be revealed in the interview.

 

  And in other news tonight, Stories and Lives reporter Lara Eggington has refused to address rumors that an upcoming episode of the current affairs program will contain new sexual assault accusations against disgraced former detective Ted Conkaffey. Eggington revealed only that the episode will be “explosive,” and that the terrible case that captured the nation’s attention last year may not be over yet.

  FABIANA GRISHAM: Here at Innocent Ted we have stood by Ted Conkaffey from the beginning and will continue to do so as these events unfold. We believe wholeheartedly that Ted was wrongfully accused of Claire Bingley’s abduction and sexual assault, and that her real attacker is still at large. We’ve done the best we can here week by week to examine the details of Ted’s case and try to find answers to those unanswered questions about Claire’s attacker, and determine how he can be brought to justice. Next week, as scheduled, we’ll be interviewing Trevor Fuller, the secret witness who was never heard during Ted’s trial. You’ll hear Mr. Fuller recount seeing Ted on that fateful day, minutes after the alleged abduction of Claire, at a nearby 7-Eleven.

  As these new accusations about Ted emerge, we’ll be on the ground reporting to you on what may be yet another devastating miscarriage of justice leveled against an innocent man.

  In an exclusive event for selected Innocent Ted subscribers only, Ted will address the new allegations and questions from the audience tomorrow. Of course, for Ted’s protection, we’ll release the location of the event to attendees only, but the event will be Sydney-based. If you’d like to be a part of that limited live audience, please go to the Innocent Ted website and click through to the applications page. On the night, we’ll be streaming on Facebook Live for those who cannot attend.

  That’s all for now. Keep tuning in, keep contributing, and stay in touch via Twitter, Facebook, and our homepage.

  Remember; if it could happen to him, it could happen to you.

  Thanks for listening, everybody.

  Dear Diary,

  Chaos. It was sheer chaos. I don’t know how my mind kept ordering my body to do things, but somehow, while black waves of hate and fury crashed and broke inside my brain, my limbs worked. I took the dog. Got in the car. Drove away from where I’d left her after it was over. Headed back onto the empty highway and turned east toward the coast. Somehow I ended up on the verge of an abandoned parking lot outside a closed-down factory, I didn’t even know where it was. Blistering sun baking the asphalt. Dead grass and old brown bottles smashed and scattered. I sat on the edge of the lot and gripped my head. Rocked. Made noises. I couldn’t bring my breathing rate down. My heart was hammering in my neck and temples, the sheer force of my blood thrumming through my veins making my skull feel like it was being squeezed. With every beat the thought came.

  I killed a girl. I killed a girl. I killed a girl.

  There was a crushing inevitability to it. A kind of relief. I’d always known that one day it was going to get out of control. Maybe not this out of control. But perhaps that had been my mistake—I should have let it out in little gasps, pressure released from a shuddering, shaking, blistering hot valve. Now a girl was dead. I sat on the ground and felt the world turning under me, tried to get a grip.

  When the grip came it was just that—a foothold after frantic hours of floundering, drowning in the dark. I had to be smart now. I looked at the car, the animal curled in the passenger seat, visible through the open driver’s-side door. Time to be measured. Careful. Whatever happened next, it needed to be on my terms. No one was going to take control from me again. I had to think.

  Get rid of the dog. Kill it.

  No, I wouldn’t kill it. I couldn’t kill again, not now, not with exhaustion rapidly taking over from the fury. If I hurt the thing and it got away from me, someone would find it, might find it even if I could bring myself to finish the deed. I’d drop it at the RSPCA. It wasn’t far. They didn’t ask questions. The sun was setting. They’d be closed now. Simple. Easy. No mess.

  I dumped the dog and drove back toward home, didn’t even look at Penny’s house, turned my head right away, shielded my eyes as I ran to the front door. Chloe was in the living room, the television on, uni papers spread all over the floor. She slammed a textbook closed at the sight of me.

  “Jesus Christ!” She tried to take my arms. The scratches. The girl had fought hard. “What happened?”

  “I got a flat tire on the ute.” I tore away from her, headed for the bathroom, tried to keep my voice level. “I stopped by the side of the road and slipped. Fell down into a ditch.”

  “Oh my god, are you—”

  “I’m fine, Chloe! Fucking hell, would you just leave me the fuck alone! Every time I come in the door you’re all over me!”
>
  I slammed the bathroom door in her face, spat more vitriol at her from the other side of it as I washed my slashed arms and neck. My thoughts were still racing. The flat tire story. That wasn’t smart. She’d expect a new one on the ute now, the unused spare. I’d have to wait until she went to bed, go out and change it, puncture the old one. The ute. I should get rid of it. I’d parked behind the bushes when I first saw the girl, but it’s possible someone saw me drive off after I’d knocked her out and loaded her into the back. Maybe someone saw me crossing the back roads. I shouldn’t get rid of it too quickly or without warning. We’d only just obtained it. Nothing suspicious now. No stupid moves. I had to be careful. They’d be looking for someone who talked about the case a lot. Someone who changed their appearance suddenly. Acted weird.

  Chloe was upset, sulking at my outburst. Good. I’d let her be mad at me for the rest of the evening, blessed silence. I’d make out like I had a concussion from rolling into the ditch. I’d crawl into bed and stay there.

  The night seemed to pass in years. Chloe came and went. Said things. I didn’t listen. Lay on my side of the bed pretending to sleep, counting off the times my mind repeated the hellish words.

  I killed a girl. I killed a girl. I killed a girl.

  I awakened from a half sleep the next day at noon, forgetting all about the tires. Nightmares. I’d had to explain the fever, the sweats, the twitching by saying I was suddenly sick. Chloe bought it. Of course she did. She returned in the afternoon, slamming the screen door like she always did, probably coming home from being up the street buying me chicken soup ingredients. Doing her best to care for me like I really was sick. I didn’t move. Listened as she switched the television on, the blanket pulled up over my head.

  … found alive this morning by a driver traveling on the Hume Highway at Menangle at around six a.m. Police say they’re searching for a man in connection with the child’s abduction and sexual assault, and are appealing to members of the public to …

  I shot upright in bed and ran to the door to the lounge room. Images of police cars, an ambulance, an empty field lined by wire. Some small blond guy and his wife now in a police conference room, both crying, shaking, giving thanks to police for searching for their little girl through the night. Relief and terror. The girl’s parents.

  She was alive.

  Amanda had been banned from participating in the official interview of Stephanie Neash at the Crimson Lake police station. That was fine. Amanda had been banned from things all her life. In Year 5 a bunch of girls had banned her from sitting on the sandstone ledge outside the library where she had liked to pore over Where’s Wally? books in the sunshine, because they’d decided they liked to use the ledge as a stage to practice their dance routines. All the cool girls seemed to be enrolled in dance classes, but Amanda knew not to bother with that sort of thing. Her sense of direction was all twisted up. Sometimes she would see the ball coming at her during a game, when she was forced to do sport, and while her brain willed her toward the ball her legs would, of their own volition, turn and move in the opposite direction. Amanda thought sometimes she belonged in an upside-down place, somewhere identical to the one she lived in now, only where left was right and right was left and people felt cheerful when their hearts were broken. Big smiles spread on bright faces in mortuaries, people laughing over graves.

  She’d stood in the foyer of the police station with Ted after he’d brought Stephanie in, Sweeney seeing the young woman to a waiting room and getting her a tea to calm her nerves. Ted had been twitching, nervous, pacing restlessly as he conveyed his tale about the confession.

  “How ’bout that,” Amanda had said brightly. “If this turns out to be the truth, we’ll be all wrapped up by tea time.”

  “Not me,” Ted had said, lowering his eyes as a patrol officer walked through the glass doors, giving him a glowering look. “I’ve got to head down to Sydney. I told those podcast people I’d come speak to them.”

  “Oh, what?” Amanda said. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  The big man sighed heavily. “I don’t know. They’re on my side, I guess? The Innocent Ted people, they’re my supporters, and I may be in desperate need of supporters if this second accusation doesn’t go away. If I have to go to trial again I’m going to need to hire Sean, and Fabiana mentioned something about being able to raise money through the podcast to help with that. I don’t want Kelly and Lillian going without because of me. And besides all that, I have to go and do the appearance, because I may need them and because I said I would. I don’t like to let people down.”

  “You’re a man of your word.”

  “I try to be.” He looked at her. “But I’m sorry. Because I also gave you my word that I’d be here for this case.”

  “You’ve got dramas.” Amanda waved dismissively. “Maybe one day I’ll have dramas and you can cover for me.”

  Amanda saw her partner off through the doors of the police station with a sinking feeling. She knew it was not only because of the dire situation he faced. A part of her was wondering if it might be the last time she saw him here in Crimson Lake. As he walked to his car, she felt something tugging her forward to the doors, a desire to watch him go for as long as possible lest he should never come back.

  But that was silly. Of course he would come back. He belonged here now.

  She stood on the other side of the two-way mirror and watched as a fragile Stephanie Neash took her seat beside the recorder, and Chief Clark and Pip Sweeney set up the tape. Chief Clark had reluctantly granted Sweeney’s request to allow Amanda to watch the interview after Sweeney cited Michael Bell’s insistence that in order for him to trust the police, he wanted his private investigator involved as much as possible. She mentioned nothing about wanting or needing Amanda’s assistance herself. Sweeney had told Amanda sharply to “behave” herself before the observation room was unlocked for her. Amanda had looked around at the empty plastic chairs in the otherwise bare room and wondered what trouble she could possibly get into here.

  After some initial chatter and the reading of the cautions, Clark gestured to Sweeney to go ahead. It was her show.

  “Ms. Neash, you’ve said already that you do not want to have a lawyer present with you at this time, and you’ve been made aware that you are well within your rights to have that happen.”

  “I don’t want a lawyer,” Stephanie said.

  “Okay.” Sweeney lifted a sheet of paper and directed Stephanie to look at it. Her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath. “Then, Ms. Neash, I direct you to a transcript of a recording made by Edward Conkaffey earlier today before he brought you to these premises. I’ll read aloud the conversation as it’s presented here for the tape.”

  “Okay,” Stephanie said. She listened as Sweeney read out the words Stephanie and Ted had spoken at Cairns Hospital, recorded on Ted’s phone.

  “Would you agree this is a full and fair representation of exactly what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you admit that you did kill Andrew and Keema at the Barking Frog Inn that night?”

  “Yes.” Stephanie nodded.

  “Can you take us through what happened?”

  Stephanie recounted the evening of the killings, arriving home from work herself, waiting for Andrew to come home in the early morning hours, being unable to sleep. It seemed that usually when he was staying over he would come into the house, shower, and slip into bed with her, sometimes not even waking her. This night was different. Fed up, Stephanie had driven to the bar and watched the lovers through the open front doors of the establishment, sitting in her car parked across the road in the dark.

  “And what happened next?”

  “It’s hard to remember it all exactly. It’s not … It’s not clear.”

  “Just try your best,” Chief Clark said.

  “I can see myself going to the front doors of the bar and kind of walking in without making any noise,” Stephanie said. She rubbed her eyes. “I think they sa
w me when I got to the counter, outside the kitchen.”

  “Did you have the gun with you at this time?” Sweeney asked.

  “I must have grabbed it when it was in the car.” Stephanie shook her head slightly, as though trying to sort through racing, colliding thoughts. “It must have been on the seat beside me.”

  “So you brought it with you from home?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You can’t remember?”

  “The past few days have been really crazy,” Stephanie said. She took a couple of tissues from the box she had been given and wiped her cheeks. “I was so angry at the time that I think my brain just didn’t record certain things. It’s like I can see myself now, standing in front of the two of them in the bar, but I can’t see anything about the gun. What I did with it after I used it. Where it came from. It’s like those parts of my memory are just gone. Blank.”

  Amanda leaned on the two-way mirror and studied Stephanie’s face closely.

  “Have you ever used a gun before?” Sweeney asked. “Do you know how to use one?”

  “I know how to use one but I’ve never used one before, no.”

  “So what happened next, after you walked into the bar and Andrew and Keema saw you standing there?”

  There was a long pause. Stephanie held the tissue up to her mouth.

  “I think I said something like…” She sniffed. “Like ‘How could you?’ or ‘Why?’ or … I’m not sure. I can see them looking at me, and I’m holding the gun out like this.”

  She held her arm out, pointed it at Sweeney’s face. The hand trembled, two fingers pointing out, the barrel wavering.

  Amanda pushed the intercom on the wall beside her, making Clark and Sweeney jump in their seats.

  “This is bullshit,” Amanda said.

  The two swung around as though they could see her through the mirror.

  “Who is that?” Stephanie asked.