The Chase

by Candice Fox

  Christine laughed.

  ‘You’ve missed all that,’ Kradle said, his face stiff.

  Christine’s smile disappeared slowly.

  ‘You missed him learning to walk.’ Kradle lifted his cup to drink his coffee, realised his hand was shaking. He put it back down. ‘You missed all the hard stuff. I was terrified when he was little. There was nobody to help me. I didn’t know anything about babies. One time he just stopped eating for a week and a half. All I could get into him was cheese. Just cheese. That’s it.’

  ‘John—’ Christine began.

  ‘No, let me talk,’ he said. ‘When he was nine he read a magazine about UFOs and lost his goddamn mind about it. He was up screaming in the middle of the night that they were going to come abduct us and experiment on us. When he was twelve, he fell in love with his math teacher. I’m talking real love. I found a note in his room proposing marriage to her.’

  Christine sipped her chai.

  ‘Right now he’s all torn up about this terrorism stuff.’ Kradle waved at the next table, where a newspaper lay face up by an empty plate. A picture of Abdul Hamsi, the failed Flamingo Casino bomber, dominated the cover. ‘I can’t stop him watching the news.’

  ‘What did you do about the woman?’ Christine asked.

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘The teacher.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kradle put his arms on the table, looked at the holes in the wall above the register where his shelves had once been. ‘Uh. Well, I sat him down and told him he had the wrong idea. That he was just a boy and she was a grown adult and they weren’t going to run off together and get married.’

  Christine listened.

  ‘And I started bringing women around the house,’ Kradle said. The flicker of emotion in Christine’s eyes gave him a mean little thrill. ‘I figured he didn’t have enough women in his life if he was getting the idea that his math teacher was in love with him because she’d had a few friendly conversations with him in the schoolyard. So, after that, when I had a girl on the go I would bring her to the house, let her meet him, hang around him a bit. Show him that, just because a lady’s talking to you, doesn’t mean she’s in love with you.’

  ‘Did you have many “girls on the go”?’ Christine asked. ‘After I left?’

  ‘Are you really asking me what my dating life was like after you disappeared on me and our newborn child?’

  ‘I guess.’ Christine stared into her cup.

  ‘It was clear to me after about – oh, I don’t know – three years, that you weren’t coming back. I got lonely.’

  ‘I get that,’ she said.

  ‘You didn’t even leave me a note,’ Kradle continued. ‘The police thought I must have abused you. People around here thought I abused you. I don’t . . . Urgh. I don’t even know what to say to you.’

  ‘Well, you’re saying plenty.’

  ‘I thought about having you declared dead.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I could get a divorce.’ He shrugged. ‘So I could sell the house. So I could have a memorial. Some fucking closure.’

  ‘I’d have liked to have seen that. My own memorial.’

  ‘Oh, I bet you would.’

  ‘I wasn’t dead,’ Christine said. Her smile twisted something in his chest, made him snap.

  ‘You don’t seem to understand the fact that I didn’t know that!’ he growled. The waitress looked over from behind the counter, worried. ‘Do you know what it’s like to wonder if your wife is dead?’

  ‘No, John, I don’t. Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Where the fuck did you go?’

  ‘I told you, Tibet.’

  ‘No. I mean, that day.’

  She told him about the frantic moments after he’d left the room with their child, pretending to sleep while he closed the door and then slipping out of the bed and grabbing her wallet from the hospital bag. He sat and watched her face, listening to the story as it rambled on. The group of hippies she found herself with in Vegas, their rusty campervan where she slept during the journey to Los Angeles. Slumming with street people in Santa Monica. Hitchhiking to Oregon. Picking strawberries and living in a barn, deciding to travel with a group of young poets to Vietnam, then China.

  ‘Was it me?’ Kradle asked when she ran out of words.

  ‘No,’ Christine said. ‘It was the baby.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘His spirit,’ Christine said. ‘I felt it, when he was inside me. He might be all right now, but back then he was a dark spirit destined for pain and sadness.’

  ‘You can say something normal about it, you know,’ Kradle said. ‘You don’t have to couch it in all that weird stuff. You can say “I was depressed” or “I was scared”. Maybe you never wanted a baby. Or maybe you thought you did and then changed your mind. Maybe you were ashamed of that, or terrified of telling me. Maybe me being so excited about the baby intimidated you or—’

  ‘It was none of those things,’ Christine said.

  ‘Well, what was it then?’

  ‘It was his spirit.’

  Kradle put his hands on the table, stared at them, and felt a wave of relief roll over him. A part of him had known, in all the years that Christine had been missing, that she had left simply because she was broken. That even if an explanation ever came, it wouldn’t be rational or healing to him. Whether Audrey had been right, and it was a flair for the dramatic and a need for attention that had driven her away, or whether it was because of any of the reasons he had just given her, Kradle knew then that the only person in the relationship who could sew up what had been ripped apart was him. She wasn’t going to say sorry. She wasn’t going to make it all better. He had to do that for himself. He also knew that, faced with the challenge of it, he could do it. If he could raise a boy like Mason, he could eventually be all right with what Christine had done to him.

  But he had to say it. For Mason.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that kid,’ Kradle said, stabbing the table with one finger to the beat of his words. ‘He’s a glorious child. Was then. Is now.’

  Christine sat in silence, her tattooed hands cupped around her chai, and Kradle thought how old she looked. How beaten down by the foreign winds that had carried her around the earth from place to place, anywhere but where he was.

  ‘The Frances Faulkner Show is coming to town,’ Christine said suddenly.

  ‘Don’t tell me you came back here just for that.’

  ‘No.’ Christine looked wounded. ‘It was time. It was just time to come home. But I also noticed, after I got back, that she’s going to be here in a month’s time.’

  Kradle nodded, knowing the discussion of her actions was over for now, but not really wanting to talk about anything else.

  ‘So?’ Christine asked.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Kradle’s mouth ached with a tight smile. ‘No, Christine, I don’t want to go to The Frances Faulkner Show with you. That’s your thing.’

  ‘I was thinking if you said no, I’d ask Audrey,’ Christine said.

  ‘Have you spoken to Audrey at all in the past fifteen years?’ Kradle asked.

  ‘No,’ Christine said.

  ‘So, you’re just . . . You’re just going to call her and say, “Hello, I’m back. Do you want to go to a taping of The Frances Faulkner Show with me?”’ Kradle’s smile loosened.

  ‘Well, yes, something like that.’ Christine sipped her chai.

  Kradle waited for more. There was none. He felt a laugh burst out of him.

  ‘Can I listen in?’ he asked.

  CHAPTER 34

  The dog woke him, snuffling in his ear, a cold, wet nose that jolted him out of a thin slumber. Kradle’s mind reeled through snapshots of the past twenty-four hours – the Frapport house, the car, the kid with the gun in the technology store, the mad sprint into the street and away from the scene. He’d found a bike leaning against a fence and taken it, pedall
ed until the scenery around him changed, becoming warehouses and garages, chain-link fences and unsealed streets. The dog, which had trotted faithfully by his side when he started riding, began to hang back before long, its pink tongue foamy and wagging between loose jaws. Kradle had stopped in the shadows behind a quiet warehouse, sunk down into the dirt and taken out the phone and list of numbers, ready to dial.

  Then he’d fallen asleep. At some point he must have slipped down onto his side, worrying the beast, who nudged at his neck and chin now, trying to rouse him.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he told the dog, looping an arm around its neck. ‘I’m okay. I’m just tired.’

  His charge revived, the dog wandered off to find water or food, Kradle supposed. He knew he needed some sustenance himself, but that was a concern for another time. The numbers, and then answers, were waiting. With the sun creeping towards his sneakers, splayed on the gravel, he started to dial.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello.’ Kradle cleared his throat. ‘This is . . . My name is, uh, John. John . . . Sky.’

  ‘What?’ the voice asked.

  ‘I’m from the New York Times.’

  ‘No thanks. I read the Post.’

  The line clicked. Kradle looked at the phone in his hand, blinked, and decided he would circle back to the number he had just tried. He shook his head awake and dialled the next number on the line.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘This is James Mackley,’ Kradle said. ‘I’m a journalist calling from the New York Times with some important questions for you.’

  ‘What?’ The voice was female, husky, vaguely familiar. Kradle felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  ‘I’m looking into the breakout at Pronghorn,’ Kradle said. ‘Some of the more infamous prisoners who are on the loose. We’re doing a . . . a profile. I understand you were questioned about John Kradle. About those murders.’

  ‘Oh, jeez, I sure was.’ The woman laughed. ‘And I had plenty to say, all right.’

  ‘Can I just confirm who I’m talking to?’

  ‘My name’s Jasmine O’Talley.’

  Kradle thought. Remembered. Swallowed wrong and coughed.

  ‘How’d you get my number?’ Jasmine asked.

  ‘We have our sources,’ Kradle wheezed. ‘You . . . uh. The detective on the Kradle case called you, didn’t he? Back in 2015? You spoke for . . . seventeen and a half minutes?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how you know all that stuff, but yeah.’ Jasmine sniffed. ‘I can’t remember how long we talked. But he called me. Asked me if John Kradle was a nice guy or not.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ Kradle’s face burned.

  ‘I said he was a real piece of shit,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Oh. Wow.’

  ‘I said he probably murdered his wife, for sure,’ Jasmine sneered. ‘He was a cold, callous jerk and likely a psycho-maniac. And the guy snored like a train. Not that it’s relevant, I guess.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Like sleeping beside a goddamn chainsaw factory.’

  ‘Jasmine, I think that’s all I have for you,’ Kradle said. ‘Thank you for answering my questions.’

  ‘I hope the police catch his ass and put him back in jail where he belongs,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Is . . .’ Kradle licked his teeth. Decided he couldn’t help himself. ‘Is it possible your low opinion of the man may be just because he never called you back?’ Kradle said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You went on three dates. He took you to that nice steakhouse. And then he never called you again. You ran into him at the grocery store that time and it was weird.’

  ‘How do you . . .’ The line was silent for a moment. ‘John?’

  Kradle hung up quickly. The dog was back, sitting upright at his side, staring at him with its big brown eyes, judging.

  ‘Sometimes you just . . .’ he began. ‘Never mind. You’re a dog.’

  Kradle dialled. He spoke to two neighbours, a gun store owner, the owner of a hardware store he had frequented at the time of the murders. He looked at the list of numbers and saw that most of the calls were outgoing. Then he noticed an incoming call that was very short, fifteen seconds. A short call back, forty-five seconds. Another short call incoming. The caller and Frapport were playing phone tag. When they finally connected, they spoke for only three minutes. Kradle called the number.

  ‘In Focus Studios.’

  Kradle opened his mouth to speak, then paused, thinking.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, hello,’ Kradle said. ‘Sorry, who is this?’

  ‘This is In Focus Studios.’

  ‘What’s In Focus Studios?’ Kradle asked.

  ‘We’re a production company. How may I direct your call?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kradle answered. He struggled to his feet, feeling weirdly lightheaded. It was exhaustion, hunger, low blood sugar, burnout. But also something else. A sense that he had just taken some kind of important step towards his goal, without any basis for knowing why or how. ‘I’m, um. I’m calling from the New York Times.’

  ‘Oh . . . kaaay?’ the woman said. She sounded young, bored. Kradle could hear something tapping rapidly, a pen on a table, maybe. ‘So what can I do for you today, sir?’

  ‘Let me level with you here,’ Kradle said. ‘I’ve got a list of numbers that I’m dialling. They’re connected to a murder I’m writing a story about.’

  ‘A murder?’ the girl snorted. ‘Whoa. Well, this just got a bit more interesting. And creepy.’

  ‘Yeah, it is creepy,’ Kradle said. ‘It’s a creepy story. Guy murdered his whole family. I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘John . . .’ He shook his head helplessly and looked around. ‘Uh. Dog.’

  ‘John Dog?’

  ‘With two Gs.’

  ‘Mr Dogg, I don’t know if—’

  ‘Look, I’m a researcher, and I’ve got this number. Someone at your studio called a detective connected to a murder case back in 2015, and I’m trying to find out who that person was.’

  ‘Well, what department did they call from?’ the girl asked. ‘What extension?’

  ‘I don’t know. This number.’

  ‘This is the front desk.’

  ‘So who worked on the front desk in 2015?’ Kradle asked.

  ‘Dude, I don’t know.’

  ‘Could you find out?’

  ‘Maybe.’ A frustrated sigh. The novelty of the call was wearing off and becoming hard work. Kradle felt his throat tightening with desperation. ‘Urgh, I’d have to look it up. And I don’t know if I can tell you that. It’s, like, private, probably. Confidential information.’

  ‘What does your studio do?’ Kradle asked.

  ‘TV shows,’ the girl said. ‘We’re the home of NDN News – The voice of Nevada!’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Ready, Set, Clean,’ the girl said. ‘Paulie the Pawn King, Trailer Park Wars, The Frances Faulkner Show, The—’

  ‘The Frances Faulkner Show?’ Kradle said.

  ‘Yeah. Look, can you hang on?’

  Kradle’s mind was racing. It made sense that Detective Frapport would think to speak to the producers of The Frances Faulkner Show. Christine had attended a taping two months before she was murdered. What didn’t make sense was Frapport actually doing it. Almost all the calls Kradle had made so far were to people Detective Frapport had selected because they knew Kradle. They were his neighbours, local businesspeople who he bought from, clients he had serviced. Frapport was tunnel-visioned, bent on proving Kradle was the killer, without seeking to examine any other suspects. The Frances Faulkner producers didn’t know Kradle, and had never met him. Christine had attended the show by herself after he and Audrey refused to go with her.

  And the show had called Frapport. Kradle looked at the list of numbers, checked and rechecke
d. Yes, the first contact made between Frapport’s number and the studio was incoming, not outgoing. After they’d chased each other back and forth, the detective and whoever called from In Focus Studios had spoken for only three minutes. Whatever the issue had been, it seemed Frapport had shut it down fairly quickly. Kradle ran his finger up and down the list of numbers, trying to find any calls to or from an extension at In Focus Studios other than the number he was now on hold with.

  A voice came back on the line. It was not the bored girl from the front desk but a high, male voice that was thick with disapproval. Kradle thought he noted a Southern accent, something familiar, from his corner of the world. Maybe Carolina.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kradle said.

  ‘In Focus Studios has no comment to make on anything related to the Pronghorn breakout,’ the voice said. ‘And we’ll ask you please not to call here again.’

  ‘Can I maybe—’ Kradle started, but the line went dead. His stomach growled, half with hunger, half with a physical acknowledgement that he was getting traction, the instinct that he was on the right path.

  He sat again against the wall, put a hand on his heart and found it hammering. He went to the internet app on the phone and opened it up, tapped through to YouTube and started searching. There were weekly episodes of The Frances Faulkner Show dating back to 1996. He scrolled them, trying to think which week Christine must have attended the show.

  He closed his eyes. It had been a month after she returned. He saw the little motel room she was staying in down by the river, her backpack slumped in the corner by the bathroom, festooned with badges, patches, ribbons and other keepsakes from her travels. He remembered going there to pick her up, to take her to a park to meet Mason for the first time. How awkward it all was – the smell of her body in the motel room, his bizarre nervousness that something intimate might happen between them, then the big green park sprawling around them, Mason sitting upright at the picnic table with his hands between his knees, the way he’d sat in countless doctors’ offices as a little boy waiting for check-ups and vaccinations. It had been three weeks after that that Kradle stopped going with them to their meetings, stopped trying to explain to Mason why his mother was back, why she’d ever gone away. Maybe a week after that, Kradle had let her come around the house for the first time. Maybe another week before Audrey had come to the house to meet her, and Kradle had gone to work, leaving the three of them alone.