by Candice Fox
‘The next ti— Keeps, most inmates don’t make plans for the next time they’ll be in prison while they’re packing their things to leave.’
‘I’m not most inmates,’ he said. ‘I’m what you call a “forward-thinking man”.’
‘Yeah, well, you provide some evidence of your usefulness to me, and I’ll provide some evidence of my usefulness to you,’ Celine said.
‘Okay, okay, okay, okay.’ Keeps nodded enthusiastically. ‘I can do that. All right, uh . . .’
They walked out into the yard while Keeps thought, chewing on his lip and staring at the ground as it passed beneath his feet.
‘Oh, okay.’ He straightened. ‘Your guys on the row. They got the same kind of lighting system we got over there in minimum?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In the cells,’ he said. ‘Like, on the wall. There’s a long, thin, gold light behind, like, cloudy kind of perspex?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You might want to look into that.’
‘We do a check of the lights every time we shake down the cells.’ Celine rolled her eyes. ‘That’s not the kind of intel I’m after.’
‘Maybe you ought to look around the lights.’ Keeps lifted his cuffed hands and tapped his nose. ‘You feel me?’
‘You’ll have to be more specific.’
‘Oh, damn, woman.’ He gave a huge sigh. ‘I’ll snitch, but I’m not gonna paint you a picture and put it in a pretty frame and hang it on the wall for you.’
Celine gave a little laugh.
‘Those lights,’ Keeps continued, ‘they’re an upgrade. Used to be, back in the day, guys had those fluorescent tubes in their cells, up in the ceiling.’
‘I remember those.’
‘Yeah. But they weren’t halogen, so they cost more to run. And also they did a bunch of studies about those fluorescent lights, how they’re bad for you. They hum and blink and mess with your brain. The scientists, they found out that if guys have gold light instead of white light they’ll read more at night. More reading means smarter, less depressed, less angry guys. When they put the halogen strips in, they say violence went down, like, twenty-five per cent or some shit.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Celine asked.
‘I read in my bunk at night. The Times.’
‘Okay, Professor.’
‘So everybody’s got a gold strip light above their bunk, right? But every time you add something into the prison, you weaken it. It’s like if you . . . you bake a cake, and then you want to go and add something to the middle. Too bad. You got to cut the cake up. You got to bake stuff in for it to be right.’
‘You really like talking, huh.’
‘You told me to be more specific!’
‘Find a middle ground,’ Celine said.
‘Okay, okay. So when the contractors installed those lights, they were supposed to bury the wire in the concrete six inches back. That’s the standard. But that’s a lot of drilling, you know? Every cell in minimum, medium, maximum. That’s hundreds of lights. Easier to just dig out a shallow channel, stick the wire in and smooth it over. So, take a look, and call me up if you find anything good.’
‘Okay,’ Celine said. ‘I’ll call you up.’
Celine walked Keeps back to minimum and locked him in a holding cell, then returned to the row. She went to John Kradle’s cell and climbed onto his bunk again, standing and running her hands over the light set into the concrete wall.
Celine hadn’t heard the light thing before, but she didn’t dismiss it. Inmates had plenty of means of hiding things in their cells. They would fashion strings from strands of cotton taken from the bedding, attach them to watertight balloons made from commissary packaging and float contraband items behind the U-bend in the toilet, retrieving the balloons on the string when they were needed. They would secrete pieces of razor blades into the hems of their clothes or in the folds of their armpits and crotches, force tiny taped packages of drugs between the pages of their books, into cracks in the floor, into their anal cavities. Celine ran a hand over the wall beneath the light fixture, where she assumed the electrical wire was embedded. It was smooth, unbroken, uniform concrete.
She took a key from her belt and gouged the hard teeth across the surface of the wall. A tiny fleck of white appeared. Celine started digging around the fleck with the key. More white, fibrous material sprouted. She pulled the material away and broke it up in her fingers. Papier-mâché, probably constructed from wet toilet paper. It had been painted over with a murky grey dye, created, Celine guessed, from mop water or newspaper ink. Celine gouged out a section of the wall beneath the light until she could see the dull white plastic sheath in which the electrical cord that led to the light nestled in the concrete.
Lifting the cord carefully with her fingernail, she exposed a tiny slip of paper. She pulled it out, unfolded it and looked at the writing.
Wagon Circle 18 m NE (7 h)
Willie McCool 16 m S (6 h)
Brandon Butte 17 m ENE (8 h)
Again, Celine thought she knew what she was looking at. She only needed to confirm it. She made to jump down from the bunk but noticed another piece of paper poking out further down the electricity wire beneath the light. Celine dug it out, leaving shreds of papier-mâché concrete to tumble onto her feet and John Kradle’s bed.
This little secret package was wrapped tightly in tape. She had to walk back to the control room, rummage through the drawer full of confiscated items and find a sliver of razor blade to open it with. With painstaking care she unrolled an oval of newspaper as big as a thumbprint. It was a picture. The images were of two faces.
A woman and a teenage boy.
CHAPTER 7
It was the first sunset Kradle had seen in ten years, and it was a thick, dusty tomato-red. He was too tired to make much of it, though. He watched for a while, thinking about the sunsets over New Iberia, which were purple. In a decade he hadn’t been active outside his cell for more than an hour a day, and he figured he’d walked for seven straight hours through the desert and up Sheep Peak to where he sat now. He lay down in the dark of the shallow cave and listened to Homer easing his big body to the ground a few feet away. Keeping his back to the man was a struggle. With every sound Kradle felt as though the killer was coming for him. When Homer spoke it sent bolts of pain up through the bottom of his feet, into his bones.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Homer asked.
‘Louisiana,’ Kradle said. He was so exhausted that uttering more than a word at a time seemed like a full-body effort he couldn’t yet muster. He needed to conserve his energy, stay awake longer than Homer, slip away when the other man fell asleep.
‘Hot there.’
‘Uh.’
‘Hot in here, too.’
‘Yep,’ Kradle sighed, and blew sand from the rocky surface by his cheek. ‘It’ll cool down.’
‘If it gets real cold we’ll have to share body heat.’
‘We’re not doing that.’
‘You from the South? I thought I recognised the accent.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You going back there?’
‘Yeah,’ Kradle said. Just saying it out loud seemed to give strength to the dreams crowding at the corners of his vision. The gentle rocking of his houseboat as tiny waves reached it across the huge, watery planes, made by distant airboats going by; gator hunters. Kradle sometimes fancied he could hear the rhythmic knocking of a reptilian spine against the hull of his vessel as the creatures rose and kissed it while gliding underneath. He heard the hammering of the rain on the windows. The wind in the swamp trees. Froggers calling out to each other in the dark.
‘I’m going to Mexico,’ Homer said from a million miles away.
‘Hmm?’
‘Police force down there is not like it is up here.’
Kradle tried to answer but there was a wire around his throat. A belt. A band. A thick, and thickening, blockage. No air in, no air out. He bucked hard, his han
ds flying up, grabbing at the band. It wasn’t a band but Homer’s hands, both of them, the thumbs locked over his windpipe, fingers gripping around the back of his neck, squeezing. Kradle’s eyes were already bulging from the pressure on his jugular. He flailed wildly. Homer lowered his body and sat on Kradle’s hips. Kradle’s heels gouged the rocky floor of the cave.
‘I’m sorry,’ Homer said gently. ‘I have to do this.’
The shrimp skidded into the room like a Maltese terrier running for the open door of an old woman’s house, eyes big and full of dreams of murder. Trinity barely glanced at her. She was conducting, as she had been when she first encountered the woman, standing at the front of a room full of people, her arms held high, directing with skill and majesty. There were journalists from ten major stations, and their camera operators, filing into the small room off the chow hall. Trinity guessed it was a group meeting place for inmates. Lots of posters about alcoholism on the walls. Encouraging sentiments about taking it one day at a time, as if the morons who ended up here had enough working grey matter to delay gratification for an entire 24-hour period. Addicts thought, and thereby predicted consequences, in fifteen-minute increments. Trinity knew this because she’d seen it – because she had three sisters who were all ice addicts and a brother dead in the ground, put there by Daniels, first name Jack.
‘I know where he is,’ Celine said. ‘And I know where he’s going.’
‘Who?’ Trinity flapped her hand at a man who was trying to squeeze an additional mic into the huddle on the podium in front of her. ‘Back off, bozo. Can’t you see this space is full?’
‘John Kradle,’ Celine said.
‘The wife-killer? Oh, please.’
‘This is a note I discovered in his cell.’ Celine unfolded a tiny strip of paper. ‘These are airfields. Walking distances and times. He’s going to jump a plane back home to Mesquite. That’s smart. If he flies, he’ll bypass all the roadblocks. And look. Look.’ She smoothed a fragment of what appeared to be grey newspaper on the papers lying on the podium.
‘This is his wife and his son,’ Celine continued. ‘He hasn’t let go. He’s going back there to—’
‘You’re standing on my foot,’ Trinity said. She leaned in and spoke with her teeth locked. ‘And you’re yapping in my ear while I’m trying to brief the nation on a crisis you took part in creating.’
‘But—’
Trinity brushed the fragment of whatever it was off the papers before her, snatched a sheet from the stack and gave it to Celine. ‘You get up here when I call you, you read these lines, and then you sit back down and shut your trap.’
‘Listen, I want a team of—’ Celine began.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Trinity smiled. All eyes and cameras in the room swung to her. Bright white lights warm on her features. She lifted her sharp chin, set her shoulders back. ‘We’re going to begin. My name is Trinity Parker. I’m the United States Marshals Service major case director for the State of Nevada. I’ll be outlining for you the current circumstances surrounding the breakout at Pronghorn Correctional Facility this morning.’
Trinity stood with her hands flat on the podium, placed either side of her paperwork. Calmly and eloquently, she briefed the nation, probably the world, on the case. She made eye contact with every camera at least once. Took them through the response she had coordinated. The roadblocks, grid searches, flyovers, increased highway patrols and doubled police manpower taking shape in Vegas.
‘Volunteers are manning phones for tips and sightings,’ she said. ‘And I’m pleased to report that we have already recovered more than three dozen inmates, many of them medium and maximum security individuals hunted down by marshals and sheriffs. Inmates are streaming back into the facility by the minute. This situation is under control and will soon be completely neutralised.’
She nodded to some nameless prison staffer standing in the corner by the projector, and a slide replaced the US Marshals’ crest on the wall behind her. As she glanced around, she saw Celine Osbourne returning to the room from the chow hall.
‘We have categorised our top-priority fugitives by their crimes.’ Trinity gestured to the four faces displayed on the slide above her. ‘These men, our Ace Card inmates, are all from death row. So, for that reason, I’m going to hand you over to Captain Celine Osbourne, supervisor of the condemned row section of this facility. Captain Osbourne?’
Trinity gestured, levelled her eyes at the woman. Celine walked up and took the podium. There was an audible ripple through the room, gasps and murmurs about her battered face.
‘My name is Captain Celine Osbourne, and I am the supervisor of the condemned prisoners’ row,’ Celine read from the pages she had been provided. ‘I am working with the US Marshals’ department to recover inmates released from the facility this morning, having already single-handedly subdued and re-contained a violent and highly dangerous inmate after he esca— Well, that’s not exactly true . . .’
Celine looked up. Trinity, who had taken her place by the door, tried to communicate through her eyes all of her raw, hellcat-furious determination not to take even a teaspoon of shit from this woman in front of the world’s media. It seemed to work. Celine went back to the paper. She read ahead for a moment.
Then shoved the paper aside.
‘Let’s get this done quickly,’ she said.
Trinity ground her teeth.
‘This guy.’ Celine pointed at the wall above her, at the face of an elderly man with high, rigid cheekbones. ‘That’s Walter John Marco. He’s that kid-killer sicko from down Hackberry way. You remember that guy. Or maybe your parents remember. Anyway, the guy’s eighty-one years old now. If anybody from the Marshals’ office had asked me, I wouldn’t have put him as Ace of Hearts. The guy can’t open a can of tuna by himself and without his heart medication he’ll keel over in, oh’—she glanced at her watch—‘about eight hours’ time.’
There was a little titter of laughter throughout the room, cautious glances thrown Trinity’s way. She gave a tight smile.
‘These next two guys actually are pretty dangerous,’ Celine said, pointing. ‘Burke David Schmitz. The Mardi Gras Shooter. Opened up an AR-15 on crowds on the intersection of Loyola Avenue and Poydras Street in New Orleans in 2006, fled here to Nevada. Then you’ve got Abdul Ansar Hamsi. Failed Flamingo Hotel bomber. Plotted to blow up the casino back in 2015 when it was packed full for a World Poker Tour event. Would have killed hundreds if he’d wired the timing system on the bombs right. But terrorists aren’t known for their intelligence.’
Celine was working the room. The journalists were writing notes furiously, smiling all the way. Trinity couldn’t believe it. She had initially been so stunned by the performance she didn’t even consider putting an end to it. But she could see the shrimp was just getting started. Trinity started pushing through the crowd by the door, back towards the podium.
‘Homer Carrington is the North Nevada Strangler.’ Celine pointed. ‘Now he is highly dangerous. Clever, deceptive. Comes off very friendly. He’s been convicted of killing ten people, but I’d say he’s got more under his belt that we don’t know about.’ Celine glanced Trinity’s way. ‘Homer is tricky. He made up a bunch of ruses to get his victims. Faked car trouble on the highway. Knocked on doors at night and asked to use the phone to report an accident. Pretended to have found an injured kitten in a back alley.’
A cameraman stepped in front of Trinity, blocking her path. She poked him in a love handle.
‘Move it. Coming through.’
‘Those are your Aces.’ Celine took a big piece of paper from her bra. She unfolded it in front of the crowd. ‘Now let me introduce the Joker card.’
Blackness. Black creeping in from the edges of his vision, slowly consuming the red, the sweeping grip of unconsciousness taking hold over the pain. Homer’s eyes were bearing down on Kradle, at once completely focused on him and distant, dreaming, surveying landscapes of pleasure as the pain shot through his victim’s face. Just whe
n John Kradle thought he was going to die, going to surrender to the blackness, Homer eased the pressure off his windpipe.
‘Take a sip,’ the big man whispered. ‘That’s it.’
Kradle gasped a half-lungful of air, and then the band was tightened around his throat and he was kicking and clawing and struggling again, the pain somehow tenfold now that he had more air in his lungs.
‘I’ve got to do this.’ Homer was speaking to him and yet at the same time not, mumbling to himself. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s just something that I do sometimes. I can’t help it.’
Kradle tried to focus through the screaming panic in his mind. He knew another sip of air must be coming. Homer had prolonged the strangulation three times already. Kradle couldn’t hold out forever. Homer bowed his head, eased the pressure off gently. Kradle forced himself to resist the urge to draw breath, to push breath out instead, against the will of every inch of his being.
‘Listen—’ Kradle squeaked.
Homer squeezed. Kradle struggled. He could feel the bigger man’s cock through his jeans, pressed against his thigh. It was hard. Kradle wrung helplessly at his killer’s hands.
The next sip came. Kradle sucked in the air and blew it straight back out with a word.
‘Money!’ Kradle yelped.
Homer’s head twitched. For a full second, a period of time that echoed for a thousand years in Kradle’s soul, Homer kept the pressure on. Then curiosity got the better of him, as Kradle hoped it would. The hands around his throat loosened completely.
Kradle rolled over, curled into a ball, coughed and coughed until he retched and emptied his stomach. He clawed at the ground, gasping short, desperate breaths, his entire body shaking, head pulsing as blood rushed back into his brain.
‘What money?’ Homer said.
‘I have money,’ Kradle managed, between long gasps for air. ‘Millions. I. Have. Millions.’
Homer was on his knees only a foot or two away. Kradle wasn’t safe yet. He was making his case. The big man would listen, and if he didn’t convince him now that he was someone Homer should keep alive, Kradle knew the bone-chilling grasp of the other man’s hands would come again before he could gather the strength to fight him off. He grabbed two handfuls of sand from the floor of the cave, but knew that even if Homer attacked him again and he managed to blind his attacker, he’d never outrun the guy. Not like this. Kradle had thirty seconds to come up with something. Something life-saving.