by Candice Fox
It was kind of like that, seeing you at Cairns Books on McLeod Street. It was the first time I had been in your proximity, and my throat closed at the sight of you. I was almost sick on the bus there. It wasn’t just you that shocked me, but the freaks swirling around you, those happy demons putting water out for you and clicking your pen for you and standing by you like guards while the readers lined along the walls. All the fake laughter and the painful smiles. Seeing you there among the pretenders made me burn, Jake. They don’t love you like I do – and the fact that they’d even pretend they do makes me so enraged. So bitter. They don’t know what it’s like to have been writing to you this long and receiving nothing in return. They don’t know that kind of rejection.
You probably think I’m a freak. A lot of people do. A bit of fan fiction and some cheesy letters and an accidental overlooking – you’re so fucking busy, after all – and now you’ve got me all wound up like an angry bitch in heat. Calm down, mate. Get in line. There’s plenty to go around. Everybody will get their slice of Jake eventually.
They don’t get it, do they? They don’t get how this feels.
Our relationship isn’t writer and reader. It never was. It’s always been messenger and receiver. I’ve got yours, Jake. But all these pretenders, they’re getting in the way of you receiving mine.
I’ve included some more writing. I know you’re reading it. I don’t know why you don’t reply. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you’re frightened to see so much of yourself in me. Don’t be afraid, beautiful god. I won’t forsake you.
I found Amanda in my kitchen, making herself coffee. She’d said nothing about coming over, she’d just appeared, like something I’d imagined.
In the early morning hours, I’d spooked the vigilantes as they pulled up outside my house, running out there in my boxer shorts with a broom. I don’t know what they’d been planning, but there had been three of them on their way out of the car, and all three had jumped back in at the sight of me. I hadn’t noted any details about them, or the vehicle. I’d had a restless night thinking about Dynah Freeman’s words.
That Lauren isn’t anything like the Lauren who died.
‘You have geese,’ Amanda said as I padded into the kitchen in my cotton robe.
‘I do.’
‘I would never have picked you as a bird man.’
‘Neither would I,’ I said, looking out the windows at them huddled on the porch. ‘They were kind of an accident. Like your cats.’
‘Between us, we could start a farm.’
‘Geese, cats, man-eating gators. A little food chain all of our own.’
She cringed at the taste of my coffee. Looked tired. Though it had been a day since I’d seen her at her most vulnerable, she still didn’t seem right. She had the worn and slightly frazzled face of a woman who’d had her foundations shaken, who’d momentarily lost her grip on the handlebars and swerved towards the side of the road. When she noticed me watching her too closely she perked up and started jabbering on about Brisbane Women’s Correctional as she always did, with the nostalgic warmth of someone talking about high school summer holidays.
It was strange that Amanda had had prison friends. That she even called them ‘friends’, and remembered them with affection. Because whatever Hollywood-inspired expectations I’d had about making friends in prison, I knew almost straight away that it was impossible. Prison is full of criminals, who can and will sell out anyone around for even the smallest comfort. It’s better to have the thicker mattress than a friend. It’s better to have extended TV time than a friend. It’s better to move down to a less secure section than to have a friend. In all situations, making sacrifices so you can make a friend isn’t worth it. You do get close to people so that as a group you can take or protect these small advantages and comforts from other groups of people, but the people in your group aren’t your ‘friends’. Inside the group, it’s only a matter of time before those advantages have to be divided, and then it’s every man for himself.
The other difficulty that comes with making friends in prison is the overwhelming number of jailhouse snitches. Another prisoner gets you talking for a couple of hours, and slowly, carefully, they extract as many accurate details from your life as they can. Where you lived. What car you drove. Your wife’s name. After a couple of days of this, they start to pick at you for details about your supposed crime. What you’d done that morning. What you were wearing when it happened. They pair that with what they read in the paper and go straight to the police with a story about your quiet confession to them in the corner of the chow hall. They’ve got just enough real-world details about you to make it sound credible. They cut a deal for a reduced sentence, or a transfer, or an extra goddamn blanket, in return for testifying against you.
Prisons are jungles. Madhouses. And here was Amanda telling me about long, emotional chats with her dorm-mates at night in Brisbane Women’s Correctional. Little girls at a slumber party playing truth or dare, blankets spread out on the concrete floor.
When the goslings saw me through the open door to the porch they came rushing to me in a straight line and gathered around my feet.
‘They’re imprinted,’ Amanda said, looking up.
‘Yeah.’
We both watched them.
‘Amanda, can we talk about –’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I should have guessed,’ I sighed.
‘We can talk about that,’ she said, pointing to a folder on the tabletop. ‘That’s the police report on the assault at the bookshop on McLeod Street in Cairns where Jake was doing a reading. They’ve also emailed me the CCTV.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ I said.
We loaded up four video files from Amanda’s email. The footage was soundless. On the porch, the geese gathered around our feet as we watched the first video – a roof-mounted shot that followed Jake from a taxi into the front doors of the bookstore. There was a queue of about fifty people outside the building, books tucked under arms and heads down in embarrassment and glee as the big man got out of the white cab.
‘He really is like some kind of rock star,’ I said.
‘He sure is. Look at this chick. She’s just about peeing her pants.’
Amanda tapped the screen, where a young girl was gushing over Jake as he tried to enter the building. She grabbed at his hand as he went by, and another man gave her a quiet talking to once Jake was inside.
‘That’s Cary, the agent,’ Amanda said.
We played the video back a second time, but didn’t note anything interesting. We shifted to the second video, which was a rolling composite of four cameras within the store. The cameras would record for ten seconds before flipping to the next camera in the sequence.
Jake walked into the store and was set up at the table by a huddle of bookstore staff, who poured him water, arranged books at his side and generally twittered and flapped all about him like excited birds. The big man seemed to take the attention in his stride. Through the windows, the crowd stood watching, waiting to be let inside.
‘Imagine having that kind of power,’ I said. ‘Everybody rushing around after you. Following you everywhere. Looking up to you.’
‘The geese rush around after you,’ she said.
‘They look up at me, too, I guess.’ I stared down at the goslings, most of whom had fallen asleep on my toes. ‘It’s a long way up.’
‘Who’s this guy?’ Amanda asked, pointing at the screen again. The crowd had been let in. She’d singled out a man in a baseball cap at the edge of the crowd, not in the queue but loitering between the bookshelves near the gathering. He was dressed in a black jacket with the collar turned up, and seemed like a short, lean man, but aside from that I could not tell a thing about him from the footage. He played with some of the books in the aisle and glanced now and then at Jake.
I turned to the police report.
14:19:47 Young male suspect identified after incident by bookstore staff appears between bookshelves near
book signing table. Witnesses 2 and 3 suggest suspect was talking/mumbling to himself. Specific words not heard. Witness 2 suggests tone was aggressive.
‘I like to mumble aggressively to myself in bookstores,’ Amanda said. ‘What the hell’s wrong with that?’
‘Stalkers should be seen and not heard,’ I said.
‘You think he’s a stalker?’
‘I don’t know.’ I sighed, watching the man pacing the aisle, disappearing and reappearing on the screen. ‘He’s certainly agitated.’
14:24:13 Suspect is recorded damaging bookstore property.
I watched as the man in the aisle stuck his fingers in between a pair of books and swept sideways, knocking a dozen or so books off the shelf in one dramatic sweep. He did the same to the left, leaving a handful of books on the very centre of the shelves, standing alone.
‘He’s making a mess.’
‘What’s the betting those are Jake’s books,’ Amanda said. ‘He’s swept the books around Jake’s series onto the floor, leaving only the Chronicles on the shelf.’
The man in the video crouched and seemed to grip at his head for a moment. None of the store staff had noticed the books falling, the man gripping at himself. A couple of fans in the queue were watching, but they didn’t seem to want to sacrifice their places in the line to meet their favourite author to report some crazy guy in the aisles.
As we opened the third video, we spotted the man walking quickly out of the store.
14:32:02 Suspect leaves bookstore.
‘And this is the assault,’ Amanda said, opening the fourth video. The man in the cap exited the store and turned left, away from the queue of Jake Scully fans, seemingly wanting to leave the scene altogether. I watched as his feet came to a halt at the very edge of the image, before another pair of feet. Someone got in his way. The two pairs of feet stayed steady for a moment, before the man’s left leg shifted back into a fighting stance. There was a struggle, and the two reappeared on the screen, a woman fallen, the man on top of her. Amanda shifted in her seat as we watched the man raise his elbow high before his fist swung down into the woman’s face, once, twice, before he got up and ran off screen.
The queue of fans broke apart, surrounding the woman. The screen was flooded with people.
14:32:59 Suspect assaults Patricia Dorrell with fist.
‘Have we got notes on Patricia’s statement?’ I shuffled through the papers. Amanda plucked out a blue witness statement in messy, patrol-cop handwriting.
‘I stopped the man as he was walking by and asked him what the event at the bookstore was,’ I read aloud. ‘He said it was a signing with Jake Scully. I asked him who Jake Scully was, and he grabbed me by the arms and threw me onto the ground. I was punched twice and knocked unconscious.’
‘Hmm,’ Amanda said. ‘Superfan can’t handle people not knowing who his hero is.’
‘This doesn’t feel right,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Well what kind of superfan is he if he can’t even approach the author himself?’ I said. ‘He skirted around the back of the bookshelves to get out of the store. At no time did he come any closer than, what, five metres from Jake? Jake never even noticed him.’
‘So?’
‘So shouldn’t he be like, Oh! Jake! I love you!’
I waved at an imaginary Jake. Amanda had a little smirk at my fan impression. I felt my face grow red.
‘Shut up. You know what I mean.’
‘Maybe that’s the point,’ she said. ‘Maybe Jake not noticing him is the whole point. I mean he’s an angry guy, isn’t he? We can see that. Maybe he’s angry at Jake. Angry enough to kill him. Was Jake in the practice of writing back to fans who wrote him?’
‘I’ve looked through the fan letters Stella found in his office. From what I can see, he wrote back to fans in the beginning of his career,’ I said. ‘Some fans he even maintained a friendly correspondence with. But that was back when he was newly published, when being a celebrity of sorts had novelty. Around the time book two hit the US, he had to stop with the fan letters. There were so many.’
‘The fan letters in the box, are they all there is?’ Amanda asked.
‘No, no, those are just the hard copies. Cary linked me into Jake’s email account. There are hundreds in there. I’ve had a quick glance at them but I’ll obviously have to look more closely.’
Woman, who had settled near us at the steps to the backyard, rose and limped a couple of steps on her braced leg. She opened her great wings and dropped her head, and again came that strange half-barking, half-growling I’d heard once before.
‘What’s up with Mother Goose?’
‘She did this the other day,’ I said. I got up and looked around the roof beams. ‘There was a snake. She knew about it long before I did.’
Amanda leapt out of her seat as three loud bangs sounded from the front of the house. I’d thought the vigilantes would leave me alone during the day, but as I stood listening, I wondered if I was wrong. There were footsteps on my hardwood floor, and then a voice sounded from inside.
‘Hellooo,’ he called. ‘Anybody home?’
Amanda seemed to recognise the voice. She ducked down quickly and started gathering up the little geese. I watched in confusion as she shepherded them back towards their house at the corner of the porch and shoved them all inside, pulling the towel down as a door. She even pushed Woman back into that corner. The big bird gave her no resistance.
Constable Lou Damford stepped from the hall into my kitchen. I felt a ripple of electricity through my chest, rage and humiliation.
‘What the fuck?’ I said. ‘I didn’t invite you in.’
‘We called out,’ Hench said, appearing beside his partner. ‘We called and called and made ourselves plain at the front door. No one answered. We made the executive decision to force entry, in case anyone inside was in danger.’
‘You did not call,’ I said. ‘We’d have heard you from back here.’
I walked into the kitchen and looked down the hall. The front door was off its hinges, lying flat on the floor.
‘Steve’s been hoarse.’ Damford smiled, his acne scars stretching. ‘Possible he wasn’t loud enough.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘We’ve had reports from neighbours that your letterbox was blown apart by explosives. Ownership of explosives in the domestic environment, including fireworks and bomb-making paraphernalia, is a crime, mate.’ He tucked his thumbs into his belt. ‘We’ve been approved for a search of these premises.’
The smaller one, Hench, took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and flung it into the sink. I looked back at Amanda. She was standing almost as a guard of my geese, one foot positioned in front of the door to their little house, her other foot pinning Woman into the corner of the porch. She wasn’t looking at us. Her eyes were fixed on the floor.
‘Why would I blow up my own letterbox?’ I sighed, knowing it was useless but unable to stop myself. ‘Why would someone … Urgh. Just forget it.’
‘We won’t be long,’ Damford said, wandering past me to the sink. ‘I’m sure we won’t find anything. I’ll just have a quick check under here.’
He took the dish rack by its side and tipped the dishes, glasses and cutlery standing in it onto the floor. The shattering noises set Woman squawking again.
‘I’ll look in here,’ Hench said cheerfully, opening the fridge. He started scooping jars off of the top shelf and onto the tiles so that they smashed in sprays of vibrant colour across my kitchen floor. He picked up the milk bottle, unscrewed it, and poured the contents into the mess.
‘You guys knock yourself out,’ I said, wandering back to the porch. ‘I’ll be out back.’
I went to my seat on the porch while the Crimson Lake police trashed my house, telling myself it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to me that month. As I sat waiting for them to finish, it was Amanda’s behaviour that got my attention. She slowly sank into a crouch beside
Woman, and in time put an arm around the great bird, even stroking the huge white feathers of her good wing with the tips of her fingers. Woman didn’t snap at her, but remained alert, giving an anguished squeak every now and then at the sounds that came from inside. Amanda’s gaze was on the horizon. Her eyes were sad.
I was going to get something on these pricks. Amanda skulked away quietly in the middle of the officers’ onslaught on my place. When Damford and Hench were finished, and I heard them walk out the front door, I dragged my laptop over and started looking around the internet for signs of them.
There wasn’t much, which wasn’t surprising. They weren’t the most photogenic characters in the entire world. I found an article from the Holloways Beach rugby team that mentioned a good try just on half-time by Hench. The mud-spattered officer looked even more threatening drenched in sweat, high-fiving another player. It was the high-five guys give after a particularly sick joke, or a pub fight. The kind gang rapists use to tag each other in. Unwholesome desires in the eyes. Malice.
The article said Hench was forty-three. There was another article buried deep about a group of cadets joining up in Cairns, pictures of them getting on the bus down to Goulburn Academy. No pictures, but their names. Hench, seventeen. Damford, nineteen.
Two constables. Both in their early forties. In over twenty years of service, they’d never moved up a single rank. There were two possible reasons for this. One, they were incredibly badly behaved, and hadn’t been taken up for the multiple promotional opportunities that must, by sheer service time alone, have come their way. If they were that bad on the job, they must have been connected – had family in the force that kept them from being discharged altogether. Was I to believe that both of them had protection from upstairs?
The only other explanation was that I’d been right in my early musings – these guys wanted to stay in patrol. They wanted to throw their weight around. Drive fast cars and kick down doors without wide-eyed, shivering probationary constables following them. While they occupied the space for patrol officers assigned to Crimson Lake, no new recruits could be posted there. It was their turf.
