The Chase

by Candice Fox

  ‘I’ve got a feeling none of that is going to happen,’ Celine said. ‘Call me psychic.’

  ‘You just got a feeling says I’m all right? Just like that? You ain’t looked at my rap sheet or nothing?’

  ‘Nope. But I’ve been right before.’

  Keeps looked at her, at the caged path to the gate yard, at the keys in her palm. Celine got the sense that unexplained, unconditional trust wasn’t something that he had seen often in his life. He took the keys reluctantly, with his thumb and forefinger, like someone gently picking up a stick of dynamite.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘The burger will keep, I guess.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Kradle hadn’t run in half a decade, but his body remembered. Somewhere deep inside him, that frantic, wild, powerful impulse to flee still lived, even though he hadn’t travelled a distance of more than ten yards without chains on in all that time. There was a certain joy in it, a small flicker of happiness, his hips burning and legs reaching out and gripping the earth and pushing him forwards, his lungs pumping in fresh, free air as the two men surged through the woods. But most of the experience was pure pain. The rocky earth jarred his bones. His heart struggled, hammering desperately in his chest, thrumming in his fingertips and toes. Hunger and dehydration left him wobbly, slow, his feet landing awkwardly between fallen branches or on rocks, trees appearing out of nowhere and crashing into his shoulders. Blood was pouring from the slash in his thigh. The sound of sirens pursued them for what seemed like an age, until they were both stumbling, an awkward half-jog, up an incline to a tree-lined peak.

  They stopped and looked back. Maybe three miles away they could barely make out the ridges that signified the waste piles of the landfill, the brown strip of earth they’d landed on. There were red and blue lights. Kradle thought he heard the bark of dogs on the wind.

  ‘We’ve got to get a car,’ Kradle said. ‘The dogs will get here before their handlers do, and they won’t just want to pin us down.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Homer said. ‘I’ll handle this.’

  The earth on the other side of the hill was more lush, sheltered from the Nevada sun. Kradle’s once-white prison sneakers, now caked in filth, sank in the soil and leaf litter. The sound of dogs barking came again, closer this time. A road appeared through the trees and Homer was out onto it before Kradle could stop him or ascertain some sense of his plan. He watched, appalled, as the serial killer sidestepped in front of a vehicle, which veered over the centre line to avoid him. Kradle glanced back into the trees, thought again of bolting. But then he would be leaving anyone Homer managed to stop at the mercy of the monster. Whoever he met, whatever happened to them, would be a direct result of Kradle helping Homer out of the mountains.

  Kradle approached the road, still dry-mouthed from the cold morning air and gasping, as a small yellow Kia pulled over and Homer gripped the edge of the passenger side window when it reluctantly lowered two inches.

  ‘Please help us!’ Homer cried. ‘My friend and I – we were attacked!’

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  Kradle looked into the vehicle. A woman in her forties was leaning forward over the steering wheel to get a better look at them. She was wearing a bright-pink uniform of some restaurant or bar.

  ‘We were hunting in the woods.’ Homer clutched at his shirt, pointed at the tree line, swallowed hard as he tried to regain his breath. ‘These guys came and beat us up. Oh, god. We’re so lucky they didn’t kill us. They wanted our clothes. They took our guns. They – I think they were inmates from Pronghorn!’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ The woman gripped the wheel. Kradle could see her thinking about stepping on the gas. Through the dirt, sweat and muck, she had just noticed the inmate number embroidered on Homer’s shirt. She looked at Kradle’s chest, at the blood-smeared denim and the number. Her eyes met his, as though she could hear the words he was screaming in his mind.

  Drive, woman.

  Just drive.

  ‘I’ve got to . . .’ She put the car into gear, shaking her head. ‘I can’t . . .’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Homer put his hands up. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to let us in. Just. Just get your cell phone. Just call 9-1-1. Please. Please do it now. Those guys are in there somewhere and they have our weapons and our clothes. We need the police to know we’re not inmates in case they shoot at us, and if those guys come back . . . We need to tell someone before they . . . before they . . .’

  ‘I saw some cops a few miles back.’ The woman glanced in her rear-view. ‘We could . . . Maybe, uh . . .’

  Kradle squeezed his fists, mouthed the words even though she wasn’t looking at him.

  Just. Drive.

  ‘Cops. Where? This way?’ Homer pointed. He started moving and grabbed Kradle’s arm. ‘Come on, man. We gotta get out of here before they come back. They’ll kill us.’

  Kradle started following the big man, relief burning in his face.

  His heart sank when the car reversed alongside them.

  ‘Get in,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll take you there.’

  Homer slid into the back seat. Kradle had no choice but to climb in beside him.

  Inmates swaggered. All inmates. It was a primal thing, usually unconscious – a nervous, protective energy that made them want to present a dangerously casual facade to the predators around them. But Keeps put on a swagger as Celine led him back to Trinity that was unlike anything she had ever seen. It was that self-preservation bravado mixed with a new sense of self-importance. He was like the Keep on Truckin’ guy on the best day of his life.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Trinity sighed.

  ‘This is our new inmate consultant,’ Celine said.

  ‘Ex-inmate,’ Keeps corrected. ‘And, unluckily for you ladies, my services come at a premium today. It’s a release-day charge of one hundred dollars per hour, starting twenty-four hours ago.’

  ‘What?’ Celine blurted. ‘Why twenty-four hours ago?’

  ‘That’s when I started gathering intelligence on the breakout,’ Keeps said.

  ‘Oh, please.’ Trinity started walking away.

  ‘You’re going to pay him.’ Celine caught up to her. ‘We need what he’s got.’

  ‘We’ll see about payment when we find out if what he’s got is any more than a penchant for criminal activity and a hard-on for pretty little blonde women with big sets of keys.’

  Celine dropped back and walked beside Keeps.

  ‘Your fee was the use of my place and my car, Keeps,’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am, that’s a US Marshal right there,’ Keeps said. ‘You got any idea what her budget for this thing would be? Between the marshals, the FBI, the sheriffs – the president is gonna be raining money on this party like a world-class pimp. And the more money I make here, the faster I’ll be out of your accommodation.’ He poked Celine in the shoulder.

  They arrived on the row. Celine led them to Burke David Schmitz’s cell, which had been ransacked by agents already – tagged, photographed and bagged possessions were arranged in piles on all surfaces. The two women stood in the hall while Keeps took in the space. He turned in a circle, noted the scratch marks on the wall under the light where Celine had searched unsuccessfully for concealed items. They watched as he checked all the places Celine usually checked during a shakedown. The hems of the bedding and uniforms, which were folded and stacked neatly in unsealed paper evidence bags. The bolts and fixtures of the bed, shelf, toilet. Keeps stuck his hand down the toilet and fished around in the U-bend, peered into the drain of the tiny sink fixed into the cistern.

  ‘This is hardly genius-level intel I’m seeing here.’ Trinity was leaning against the bars. ‘I’ve had my agents sweep the place like this already.’

  Keeps sat on the neatly made bed, bounced a little on the mattress. He picked up a small artwork someone had peeled from the wall – an eagle perched on a twisted branch. Celine had confiscated plenty of artworks from Schmitz in the years she had supervised the quiet
, bookish inmate. He wasn’t permitted to have images of Hitler or swastikas in his cell, which didn’t stop him from painting them now and then. She couldn’t remove his artistic privileges unless he committed an act of violence, but she always made sure to let Schmitz complete the artwork, put the fine, time-consuming finishing touches on it before she took it, scrunched it, and tossed it in the trash in front of him.

  ‘Dude got some skills.’ Keeps waved the picture at the women. ‘For a Nazi asshole.’

  ‘This is not Art Appreciation 101,’ Trinity barked. ‘It’s pretty clear Schmitz pulled off this thing. He’s orchestrated one of the most deadly mass shootings and the biggest jailbreak in American history, so it stands to reason that whatever he’s cooking up next is going to be distinctly unpleasant. Time is of the essence, inmate.’

  ‘Are you having a stressful morning?’ Keeps patted the bed beside him. ‘You want to talk about it, pretty lady?’

  Trinity licked her teeth so hard she made a loud clicking sound, then turned to Celine, the veins in her neck taut with fury.

  ‘Get him out of here.’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait.’ Keeps held a hand up. ‘I got something. I got something.’ He slapped the picture of the eagle. ‘It’s right here.’ He came to the bars and showed them the image. ‘See this black?’

  The women looked at the picture.

  ‘That’s contraband black,’ Keeps said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Celine sighed.

  ‘This black paint here.’ He tapped the paper. ‘You can’t get that colour inside Pronghorn. Not through official channels, anyway.’

  Celine looked at Trinity. The woman was typing out a message on her phone.

  ‘Two things we got a lot of over in minimum – wannabe rappers and artists. There’s a lot of bad music, bad pictures.’ He handed the paper to Celine. ‘All the painters on my block got the same complaint. The black you get with the commissary paint kit ain’t black enough. It’s a very, very dark brown. That’s a problem. You don’t like the blue they got? That’s okay. You can mix it. Change it. Make it lighter. Make it darker. Add yellow, make it greener. But you can’t make black blacker, no matter how much you try. You want real black? You’ve got to smuggle it in, and if you consider yourself a real artist you need black-black, not brown-black.’

  ‘Right,’ Celine said. She was starting to feel the first tingles of excitement in her chest. ‘So someone was bringing in contraband paint to Schmitz.’

  ‘How does this help us?’ Trinity didn’t look up from her phone. ‘Could have been his lawyer or girlfriend or whatever smuggling it in. All that tells me is that your visitors’ centre is full of holes.’

  ‘Schmitz was Grade B. Non-contact,’ Celine said. ‘He only ever interacts with outsiders from behind bulletproof glass. So it wasn’t one of his visitors.’ Her words were gaining momentum as she thought. ‘It was either another inmate, or it was an officer. And Schmitz hasn’t had contact with any other inmates in the past three weeks.’ She pointed to the cells either side of the one they stood before. ‘All the inmates take their yard time separately, so they don’t interact in the halls, and these cells neighbouring Schmitz’s have been vacant. This guy on the left, he went to the infirmary a month ago. And this cell has been empty for three weeks because the sink’s broken.’

  ‘So it was a guard,’ Trinity said. ‘A guard smuggled your Nazi inmate some paint.’

  ‘And if they were bringing him paint, what else were they bringing him?’ Celine wondered. ‘And what were they taking out?’

  Trinity looked at Keeps as though she was surveying an old car she wanted to buy cheap and run into the ground; a temporarily useful thing that she’d be embarrassed to be seen with. She started to walk off, talking over her shoulder as she went. ‘You might have been right about his usefulness,’ she said finally to Celine. ‘But don’t get lost in your celebrations. They just lost your boyfriend in Mesquite.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He dumped the plane at a waste disposal site and disappeared.’ She waved her phone. ‘And, who knew? He did have someone with him. A big guy. Looked too tall to be Schmitz.’

  ‘I’m going,’ Celine said. She grabbed Keeps’s arm. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  Homer didn’t wait to reveal himself to the woman. As soon as her foot hit the accelerator, he wound an arm around the back of her seat and hugged her throat to the headrest.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ he said.

  Her hands came off the wheel and clawed at the arm. The pressure wasn’t much, Kradle could see, not enough to completely panic her so that she ran them off the road. But enough so that it was clear. All of it. That she’d just let two escaped convicts into her car. That she was completely at their mercy. That this morning had taken a turn so bad it might end up being the very last morning of her life.

  Kradle saw the terror in her eyes in the rear-view mirror. He gripped the seat beneath him to stop himself from attacking Homer where he sat.

  ‘Keep driving,’ Homer said gently, his cheek pressed against the side of the driver’s headrest, eyes on the road. He was focused. He’d done this before. ‘Hands on the wheel. Foot on the accelerator. Gentle. Gentle. That’s it.’

  ‘Oh my god. Please, please, please.’

  ‘Take the next turn-off. And hand your phone to my friend here. Slowly.’

  The woman snatched the phone from the cluttered centre console. Kradle took it from her shaking fingers.

  ‘Find “home”, John,’ Homer instructed.

  Kradle did as he was told. The first suggested location in Google Maps was marked ‘Home’.

  ‘What’s your name, honey?’ Homer was stroking a loose curl at the nape of the driver’s neck with his free hand, twirling it around his finger.

  ‘Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.’

  ‘Name.’

  ‘It’s Shondra.’

  ‘Just drive home, Shondra. That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘Okay. Okay. Please. Oh, god, please.’

  ‘Is there going to be anyone there waiting for us?’ Homer asked.

  ‘My – my boyfriend should have – what-what-what time is it?’

  ‘We’re going to have to kill anyone we find there, so think carefully,’ Homer said.

  ‘He should be gone,’ Shondra gagged. ‘He starts at seven. Oh, shit. I’m gonna throw up.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Ease up a bit,’ Kradle said. He had to unlock his jaw with difficulty. Force himself to pull at Homer’s arm as if he were a friend, a co-conspirator, a non-threat, and not the secret, hateful, vengeful being he really was, his whole body pulsing with the desire to launch himself at the big man sitting beside him, to gouge at his eyes and mouth, bite and kick and punch and bring him to submission.

  Homer sat back, his hand extended, resting on Shondra’s shoulder. Controlling.

  Shondra retched a few times. Her hands were making sweat marks on the steering wheel. Kradle leaned forwards.

  ‘No one’s going to hurt you,’ he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Homer smile. ‘Just keep breathing. Keep it together and you’ll get through this.’

  Off the highway, into the manicured suburbs of Mesquite. Kradle didn’t recognise the place the map told him was called Bunkerville, but this might have been any of the hundreds of suburban wildernesses his wife, Christine, had been called to over the years to eradicate poltergeists, angry spirits or demons from pastel-coloured houses behind picket fences. Stone-edged garden beds nestled under shade trees, cradling succulents and little pink flowers. He had followed her, the dutiful assistant and cameraman, into family homes like this in thirty states.

  Shondra’s house was baby-blue with white shutters. Grey slate roof, mailbox with a red flag, a wooden sign on the porch that read Live, Laugh, Love. Homer got out swiftly and pulled Shondra, whimpering, from the driver’s seat, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

  Homer instructed her simply. The experienced killer pus
hed through the woman’s terror with single words, probably knowing it was all she could handle right now.

  ‘Quiet. Quiet. Keys. Door. Inside. Go.’

  Kradle followed them into a warm, cosy house. It was messy but not dirty. Empty coffee mugs on the sink. A towel hanging off a door. Open mail scattered on the dining room table.

  ‘You got tape?’ Homer asked.

  ‘What?’ Shondra choked.

  ‘Tape. Duct tape. Tape for your wrists.’

  She couldn’t answer. Kradle didn’t blame her. He peeled off and went to the garage, found a roll of duct tape sitting on a shelf. Homer forced Shondra to the ground. She went down easily, shaking, then limp. The grey trousers of her waitress uniform were wet.

  Homer left her lying, bound and gagged with tape, on the kitchen floor, and came back to where Kradle stood in the entry hall. The big man’s eyes were alive, his grin so wide Kradle could see his gums hugging his molars.

  ‘Let’s think what we need,’ Homer said. ‘Clothes. Food. A phone. I need to take a shower. We’ll take the car. Drive to your old place. Get the cash.’

  ‘I need a computer,’ Kradle said. ‘And listen, it’s not as easy as just driving home and picking up the money. The cops will be sitting on the house. Might be that I’ll have to find an old buddy of mine, send him around there instead. Maybe tonight.’

  ‘All right.’ Homer rubbed his palms together, making a dry sound. ‘You gather all that stuff. I’m taking Shondra to the bedroom.’

  Kradle’s stomach plummeted. As Homer moved, he forced himself to put a hand out, flat, against the killer’s chest.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ Kradle said. ‘How about me first, man?’

  Homer’s face twitched, awkward.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Kradle asked. ‘I mean, I know some guys aren’t funny about stuff like that. But I am. I don’t like anybody’s leftovers. No offence.’