Dead Connection

by Charlie Price

  Gates felt a powerful hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a massive young man with a buzz cut pressing on him.

  Gates said, “Ease up. I’m a law officer.”

  The young man, number 77, according to the jersey he was wearing, said, “Show me.”

  Gates held out his identification and the ballplayer released him. “Shouldn’t upset people like that,” he said, and walked away.

  Gates took out his cell phone, called the Butte County Sheriff’s Department, identified himself, and asked them to pick up Gary Craddock, Chico State undergrad, for questioning. He said it was in regard to an ongoing murder/kidnapping investigation and requested that they not, under any circumstances, question Craddock themselves or release him until Gates himself arrived that evening to talk with the boy face-to-face.

  * * *

  Murray had spent the morning on the couch in the Janocheks’ small living room. Janochek had made pancakes with frozen strawberries for breakfast and then left for work. Pearl sat near Murray during the morning, reading and making a visible effort to look patient. Around noon, she went to the kitchen and came back with a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk.

  “After you eat, let’s go,” she said, bouncing with the energy of anticipation.

  Murray forced down a couple of bites and stood up slowly. Pearl had gone to the front porch and came back carrying one of her dad’s old ski poles.

  “The cane makes you look sick. This makes you look like an injured ski bum. Much cooler.”

  Murray accepted the pole. Pearl held the door for him and followed as he hobbled down the incline to Craddock’s grave.

  The sky was overcast, but there was no wind and the air was fresh, not cold. Murray felt a little nauseated. He wished he had gone to Dearly or Blessed first and told them he was okay, and reestablished some comfort. So much had happened. It was hard to know what was the same and what wasn’t.

  He was winded when he reached the end of the lane. He stopped at the headstone and turned to find Pearl right beside him.

  “Go ahead and sit down and I’ll hold you,” she said.

  He eased down and sat cross-legged in front of the dark stone. He took a deep breath to ready himself for touching it again. He felt her arm circle his back. And a thought rose to the surface. Where is the crying I usually hear?

  He reached out and put his hands on the marker. Nothing. He took his hands away and put them back again. Still nothing! He was blank.

  “What’s the matter?” Pearl could sense his puzzlement.

  “Uh, I may have to do this more by myself.”

  “What did I do?” Pearl asked, concerned.

  “It’s not you,” Murray said, unsure how to explain. “It’s me. I … uh, I guess it’s like grounding works with electricity. Like a short circuit. Or maybe being shot and all, I have to concentrate extra hard or something. Um, just move over a couple of feet and I’ll try it again, and if I yell or anything, get me. Okay?” He had turned to look at her.

  He could see her feelings were hurt. Her eyes searched his face for a moment and then she levered herself farther away. “Here?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’d be great.” They looked at each other. “Uh, ready?” he asked. Trying to make her feel included.

  She nodded, and he turned back to the tombstone and put his hands on it. The dim electric hum filled his mind and he made contact.

  * * *

  When Gates entered the sheriff’s department in Chico, he was told that there was an urgent message waiting from a man named Janochek in Riverton. A female deputy showed him to an empty office with a phone. Janochek picked up immediately.

  “Deputy?”

  “It’s Gates.”

  “Pearl made Kiefer go down to the tombstone again. This afternoon.”

  Gates remained quiet.

  “Are you interested, or am I wasting both of our time?” Janochek asked.

  Gates could feel his stomach pitch. “What is it?”

  Janochek was silent for a moment, as if deciding. “Nikki says her cousin Gary did it. Thought you might want to know.” He hung up.

  * * *

  When Gates entered the interrogation room, a muscular young man in a button-down oxford shirt and khakis was sitting at the table, hands clasped, head down, as if waiting for a scolding. Neither spoke, but the boy turned and watched Gates closely as he shut the door and came to sit down on the other side of the battered gray table.

  Gary Craddock looked like a football player, a linebacker or fullback. His forehead and chin were prominent, but his cheeks were full and rosy. His neck was short and thick. Gates made an effort to relax the scowl from his own features. As he did, he noticed the young man’s chin quiver.

  Gates said, “Nikki Parker,” and the young man’s face crumpled and a sound escaped. Gates waited while Craddock got ahold of himself.

  Craddock began shaking his head back and forth. Every time he gathered breath to speak, a sob broke. Finally he managed to get past the catch in his breath. He put both hands on the table, bracing himself, and looked up at Gates.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  At least that’s what Gates thought he said, but the sobbing started again and couldn’t be contained. Gates did not remember if he had ever seen a big guy like that so openly broken.

  After a couple of minutes, the Craddock boy pulled himself together and asked for a lawyer. Gates told him that, as of right now, he simply wanted to ask some questions. Gates said that, of course, the boy had the right to have a lawyer present, but if he exercised that option, Gates would have to read him his rights and formally charge him with murder. More, that he, Craddock, would be looking at jail here in Butte County, probably without bail until the court sorted it out, and then he would be extradited to Sierra County, where he would remain in custody pending an arraignment hearing. He told Craddock that he might be able to avoid all that jail time if he would choose to talk informally this evening and answer a few questions.

  Avoiding eye contact, the boy again asked for a lawyer.

  Craddock began his brief stay in the Butte County Jail, awaiting extradition. That same evening, Gates impounded the white ex–highway patrol vehicle and obtained a warrant authorizing its search.

  THE STALEMATE

  Murray was staying back at home most nights. His mother had once again cleaned up from the speed. Now she was drinking wine and dating a gaunt older man who had a plan to make “a bunch of money” selling pet health insurance.

  Murray was back to making his regular cemetery rounds, without the help of the ski pole. Some nights he stayed in the guest room of the Janochek home.

  * * *

  Gates took Robert and Bruce to the downtown ice cream parlor for sundaes with extra hot fudge and big scoops of nuts and cherries. As they ate, Bruce was lobbying Robert to see another movie, called Road Trip. “You ought to see the babes,” he was telling Robert.

  The three of them decided that the following week, if it wasn’t raining too hard, they would buy a chocolate cream pie at the specialty grocery store and take it to Whiskeytown Lake for a picnic.

  “And donuts, too?” Robert wanted to know.

  “Yes,” Gates agreed. “Lots.”

  Gates had had Polaroid pictures taken of the back of Billup’s head, the back of Gary Craddock’s head, and the back of his own. He brought them out of his jacket pocket and showed them to Robert when they were finished with the ice cream.

  “Do you recognize any of these as the guy you saw arguing with the girl in the car that day?” he asked.

  Robert looked them over. “Those haircuts are stupid,” he said.

  Gates abandoned the idea that Mr. Robert Barry Compton could ever identify the killer out of a lineup.

  * * *

  The lab’s examination of Billup’s patrol car had come up inconclusive. No loose hair was found, and the few fibers that matched white material from the cheerleading outfit could possibly have been deposited in the car by oth
er circumstances.

  The examination of Craddock’s car yielded fibers that matched the high school cheerleading uniform, plus hair on the seat back and in the passenger floor area that matched hair collected from the brush in Nikki Parker’s bedroom. Gary Craddock was arraigned and the bail set at $500,000. His bail was made and he was released.

  He had pleaded innocent, saying that he was distraught on the day of his father’s funeral and had been driving around the Riverton area trying to deal with his grief all afternoon and into the evening of the seventeenth. He expressed regret at Nikki Parker’s disappearance and said he had given her a ride the afternoon before the funeral, which is probably how the fibers and hair got in his car. That story could not be confirmed.

  Gates, this time in concert with Drummond, asked for an exhumation order on the chance that there was anything to Kiefer’s hunch about the Craddock burial plot, but the Craddock family’s lawyer was fighting it for lack of reasonable grounds.

  * * *

  The stalemate continued. And continued … until Pearl took matters into her own hands. Murray and Pearl had argued. He hadn’t been able to talk her out of it. What a way to celebrate New Year’s!

  “You’re just going to let her stay there?” Pearl challenged. “If it was me, would I just be lying down there crying and rotting ’cause you’re too scared to rescue me?”

  She looked mad enough to hit him. Murray had no reply. Maybe he would dig for her, if it were Pearl. But maybe not.

  “Nobody else is doing it!” Pearl’s eyes were blazing. “Nobody’ll listen!”

  Friend to the Deceased.

  Pearl stomped out of the workshop, slamming the door so hard the lights flickered.

  Murray knew. She’s going to get a shovel. “I’ll help,” he said, but there was no one to hear him. He followed her out.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charlie Price says, “I was walking in an old cemetery by a river in Northern California and found myself reading the inscriptions on graves. Many children had perished around the turn of the last century in a flu epidemic. The parents had hired stone masons to carve more elaborate inscriptions than I expected to see. I kept imagining the people in the inscriptions.

  “Two years later, I wrote a story about a boy who was alienated from school and home, and found a cemetery to be a comforting sanctuary. The more time he spent, the closer he felt to the dead. I combined that story with an event from my community that had troubled me for several years. Murray, Pearl, Janochek, Mr. Robert Barry Compton, Deputy Gates, and Officer Billup began to speak to me.

  “I was raised in Colorado and Montana, and I lived in Italy, New York City, Oakland, and Mexico before settling in Northern California. After I graduated from Stanford in the early 1960’s, I had a dual career in education and mental health. Working in a variety of schools and hospitals, I grew to deeply admire the courage of those who lived and worked with mental illness on a daily basis. I admired the young people I came to know—their triumphs, as well as the valiant way they dealt with hardships and failures.

  “I am married to a lovely woman who has surpassed my dreams for the past thirty years. Moreover, I hereby attest and confirm that my daughter, Jessica Rose, is always right. Unfortunately, as she will be the first to tell you, I am not of sound mind.”

  Charlie Price, in addition to writing and working with therapeutic groups, is a trainer, an executive coach, and a consultant who conducts business workshops and troubleshoots for private and public agencies. He is an avid reader, a decent singer and guitar player, a pretty fair free-throw shooter, and a hopelessly addicted fly fisherman.

  Copyright © 2006 by Charlie Price

  A Deborah Brodie Book

  Published by Roaring Brook Press

  Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings

  Limited Partnership

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  All rights reserved

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  First edition May 2006

  eISBN 9781466892729

  First eBook edition: February 2015