Chapter Eleven
Someone other than Muhammad Clark participated in a number of the killings that have come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. Anyone on this panel who draws any other conclusion is displaying not only short sidedness they are being irresponsible and reckless.
-An Independent Tribunal report to the Atlanta Police Department Task Force in 1993.
Chris
Handcock State Prison; Sparta, Georgia, 15th Day
He had received two phone calls not one minute apart just prior to knocking on Angel’s motel room door.
The first came from his ex-wife Denise. He said into his phone’s speaker that he understood her need to see him but that would be impossible today. He knocked on Angel’s door between bouts of conversation with his ex-wife. Angel unbolted the lock after his third knock and looked as if he’d awaken her from a nap. She had fallen asleep fully dressed in a white blouse and black jeans. She invited him into her room, the hotel rooms just outside of Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia. After he hung up with Denise Angel cocked a brow and asked if he planned to respond more favorably to her request when they drove back to Atlanta tomorrow morning.
He probably surprised her a little by saying that he she sounded so desperate that he’d given her directions down here the last time he talked to her. Denise telling him that she’d get a friend to drive her down if she came at all; Angel had filled her mouth with mints before admitting Christopher to mask the smell of liquor. It wasn’t working. She was out of sight of Agent Sheridan at the moment and she must have felt the need to take advantage of that fact while she still could.
In speaking of Sheridan…he had been Chris’ second call. He wanted to remind both of them that they needed to track their steps from this point out. Public sentiment was lodging against the bureau, especially from People of Color. Any misstep and this country risked looking at a full scale racial episode of the likes that it had never seen before.
Angel said after he had hung up with his boss: “Well, you shouldn’t be surprised, Christopher. Your boss is a bureaucrat. He is a bureaucrat with a nice ass, but one nonetheless.” She said. “How we go about solving these disappearances is as important as bringing the children home safely.” And he felt another question rising from her out of the room’s silence. “But there was more to your conversation than just that wasn’t it?”
Chris shifted his weight. “Some of Sheridan’s superiors want you off the case, Angel.” He said. “He’s going to bat for you and so is the deputy director. They’ve been impressed with your showings especially at those makeshift crime scenes we discovered back home.”
“You know me, Christopher,” Angel raised her legs and put them on the wall. “I live to impress.”
“This is serious, Doc.”
She sat up abruptly. “I know that it is, Christopher.” She glanced at the clock sitting on her nightstand. “We can talk on the way. We need to get going.”
Once they were signed in and admitted to Hancock Prison, a correction’s officer who was a dark cloud on a sun shiny day waved them into the social contact area. This wing had ten cafeteria tables lined up in relative close quarters in the room. It reminded him of his grade school days long ago…even before Keaton had taken him and changed his life forever.
Chris counted at least a dozen armed officers ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. A Black officer, whose eyes watered as if he needed to carry a tissue box everywhere he went, mentioned to Chris that they’d added extra security measures after what happened over at Calhoun State Prison last month. He also told Chris that the chief hesitated to hand him a clearance after he learned that he and Xavier were siblings. It had finally took a stern phone call from Sheridan warning that any interruption of a federal investigation could result in an review of this facility from state auditors whose phone number Sheridan had on speed dial.
Muhammad Clark was brought out in wrist and ankle irons a short time later; Chris heard Angel mumble something along the lines of bureau membership having its privileges.
Muhammad Clark:
He was a fair skinned Black man with a fat head, big eyes and a bushel of uncombed gray hair on his head that was going white. He had dozens upon dozens of moles on his face, two dozen rotten teeth in his mouth and one whitish goatee wrapped around his lips.
“Special Agent Christopher Prince…Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree, now what do I owe the pleasure of your visit this time?” He took a long time to sit down in his irons. “Or should I guess? Well, I’ll save you both a little time and tell you that I am clueless to the present or future plans of Pandora or their pet Louis Keaton.”
Angel cocked a brow. “And I’m sure that you will continue to deny ever being in collaboration with either one of those parties of course.”
Clark poked his lips out from his goatee and shook his fat head, both in an exaggerated manner. “Look, pretty lady, when a man lives long enough to be as old as I am, you learn that consistency of your tongue is sometimes all you have left.”
Chris planted his elbows…his flag on the cafeteria table. He was up against a strong wind with so many tempests working against him. “Let’s get something straight here from the start, Mr. Clark…we haven’t traveled this far to play fucking games with you.”
Angel said, “We are interested in any insights you are willing to offer us about Keaton’s mindset or his whereabouts.”
Clark swallowed half a bottle of the bottled water that had been provided for him and wiped what had spilled with his long blue sleeves. “I’ve been thinking about just that sort of thing since these fine folks told me you two were coming.” He said. “I also thought about what I could gain by aiding you in your precious investigation.”
Chris stood up. “Let’s go, Doctor. We’re finished here.”
As he spun to go Angel clasped on to his wrist…and stroked it with part affection, part urgency. When he began to descend back into his seat Angel said to Clark: “We’re not in the position to guarantee you anything, Mr. Clark.” She said.
“What do either of you chipmunks have the power to request on my behalf in return for my help?”
Angel looked at Chris for guidance. “I’m sure we could find something…right, Christopher?”
Chris didn’t look at his friend. He said to Clark: “What could we possibly offer you, Clark?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Your family stopped calling you on any regular basis ten years ago. You can’t go out into the yard, especially now, without fear of being attacked by other members of the prison population. Men can tolerate being locked up with other murderers, drug dealers and thieves, but nobody wants to pal around with a child molester.”
Angel hesitated, but eventually nodded at Chris reasoning. “Agent Prince is right, Muhammad.” She said. “Your isolation is the only thing that has kept you alive in here this long.”
Muhammad Clark leaned over the cafeteria table far enough to draw one of the guards attention. “And you would love to see that happen wouldn’t you, Agent Prince.” Clark wisely sat back and relaxed as much as his restraints would allow him. “I’ve bet you’ve had wet dreams of waking up one sun shiny morning, picking up the Constitution or the Times and reading the headline in big bold print saying that I’d been butchered in here.”
“Yea,” Chris surprised himself by saying. “I sure as hell would. You and every other man like you in this country.”
Angel soothed his wrist again. Such a proclamation from someone who valued life as much as Christopher Prince sounded alien, even coming from his own mouth.
“That would be…” Angel searched the ceiling for the word she was looking for. “That would be unfortunate, Muhammad, especially considering your innocence.”
“What?” Chris and Clark asked at the same time.
Angel repeated herself since they hadn’t heard her clearly the first time around. “Muhammad, you have always declared and maintained your innocence for most of the murders that you were convicted of.”
“She’s good,” Clark pointed a crooked finger in Angel’s general direction. “You boys at the bureau should consider employing her services full time.”
Angel said: “Shut up, Muhammad.” She gave Chris a quick glance as if she were asking for his approval to press forward with whatever she was doing. He had no idea. “I’ve always theorized that you were responsible for a handful of murders but no more than that. Yet, your profile, your patterns of behavior weren’t consistent enough to have been responsible for the dozens of other abductions and killings that you were indicted for.”
Clark showed the first signs of discomfort with the conversation. He folded his arms and exhaled out of this nose. “And yet, I was convicted for all of those kidnappings they charged me with anyway.”
“Is this supposed to make a hell of a lot of difference to the families of those young men you raped and killed?” Chris asked.
Clark replied by pointing his thumb at his own chest. “It makes a difference to me.”
Chris and Muhammad Clark engaged in an intense stare down that was finally broken when both men heard Angel sifting through a handful of photos she’d sat on the cafeteria table.
“Do you recognize either of these locations?” She asked. “And don’t blurt out an answer, Muhammad. Think about it a second.”
Clark took the doctor’s advice. He actually studied the photos for a number of minutes, his bushy gray brows curled in concentration while he searched his memory for answers. “No,” He finally said. “After I killed the boys I’m responsible for I did what the papers said that I did. I tossed their remains in the Chattahoochee River where I thought they would go undiscovered. I didn’t leave anything behind on land. And I can’t recall being at either of these locations.”
Chris laughed out loud. “And just like that we’re supposed to believe you?”
“You damned well better if you and your people have any shot whatsoever of finding those four boys that have gone missing in the past few days now.” Clark leaned over the table again, his chains betraying his movements and garnering the unwanted attention of three corrections officers this time. “I’ve never lied about this. I’ve never have lied about the hand full of…young men that I abused and killed. Why should I start now? You said it yourself earlier, Agent Prince, what do I possibly have to gain at this point?”
“Nothing,” Chris heard Angel saying to him more than to the man who had uttered the words. “You have nothing at all to gain from lying.”
Chris shot her a warning glance: “Doctor…”
“Christopher, for 30 years people in both our professions have either been asking the wrong questions about the Atlanta Child Murders or ignoring the right answers.”
“So what is this right answer you are looking for?”
Angel almost seemed to ignore Chris altogether and she focused all of her attention to the other man sitting at this table with her. “Some of us have questioned whether you were working under the guidance of Pandora as we’ve learned Keaton was. Were you working for them…or a man who called himself the Caretaker? Or did these people draw their inspiration from you?”
“I was sick.” Clark said as a response. “I am still sick, Doctor. I have never denied that either. To answer your question, pretty lady, I don’t know whether they were inspired by what I did or not. I just know that it pissed me off real good though. Things were going just fine and dandy for me until Chris here and those younger boys went missing. Nobody had given a damn about those retarded older teenagers I was picking off the streets of Atlanta.”
Chris watched the older man gather himself.
“I just know that I’ve never met this Caretaker or anyone else associated with those racist bastards in Pandora. I also never met nor was it my intention to compete with Louis Keaton for victims.” Muhammad Clark stood to his full impressive height. “But most importantly, in light of all the evidence that had presented itself over the years, I want a new trial. I refuse to die in this place with the world thinking I killed all 19 children for which I was wrongly and conveniently convicted.”
Chris sprung from his seat as well. “Someone had to pay the price, Clark.” Chris spat. “You just admitted that you are far from innocent here.”
“I didn’t molest those little boys; 12 year olds didn’t harden the rocks for me.” He snatched Chris arm with unbelievable strength and speed and pulled him close enough for the special agent to count the convict’s teeth tooth by rotten tooth. “But it’s not a day that goes by that I don’t envy Louis Keaton. Number one, he is still on the street to this day getting his groove on.” The corrections officers rush to untangle Chris from the other man’s grip. “Secondly, and most importantly, I wish I had Keaton’s taste in boys…because I would have loved to spend some quality time with you, Christopher Prince.”
Chris escaped the other man’s grip. Half dozen officers have sprinted in their direction, but they won’t arrive in time to save Muhammad Clark for what would come next.
Chris hopped across the table and dove on top of the chained prisoner driving him to the concrete floor. He then pounded Clark in his face with all of the strength that he could muster and drives his face first onto that same floor. Chris had his hands on Clark’s throat for a count of ten or 12 before the guards tackled him, knocking him off. Even so, Chris managed one kick at Clark and when it connected it drew blood from the other’s mouth which had split open.
He could hear Angel…barely hear her over the ruckus of humanity…pleading with the guards to release their hold on him, while several more guards jump on Clark adding new bruises to the ones that Chris had already administered. More legions of guards enter the space and have their weapons drawn, careful not to aim them at other visiting civilians.
In ten more minutes it was all over.
As four men drag Muhammad Clark back to the cage from which he came, Chris could hear him shouting: “This doesn’t change how I feel you bastards. I only killed three or four of those boys. I had nothing to do with the rest. I had nothing to do with those other murders I say.”
And then he heard the old man laughing…at him a long time after he could no longer see him.
“Oh yes, I envy Keaton though…oh how I know I would have enjoyed quite a time with yooooooooooooo…Chris.”
Roxanne
State Road 15, Four Miles past White Plains, Georgia, 15th Day
Someone was following them on this stretch of highway.
Roxanne Sanchez licked at the lip gloss on her lips, unlatched the safety off of her Nine, adjusted both of her rear view mirrors, and punched her heel onto the gas pedal. She felt the coldest shiver of fear wash over her shoulder blades but dismissed the emotion just as quickly. Fear is irrelevant, Senorita, Victor had whispered in her ear once between kisses. It is how you function despite that fear that matters when it is time to conquer the night. Tonight she decided somewhere outside White Plains, Georgia, was no different than any other night of her life thus far. Either she would succeed or she would not.
Either she would die tonight or she would not.
Roxanne had seen the big black Cadillac swoop out and latch on to their rear like a hungry predator tailing its prey about 45 miles and 30 minutes ago.
State Road 15 was a lonely road, with a minimum amount of traffic, especially this late in the evening. Whoever was driving that car…rather it was a Pandora Operative, a FBI Agent, or even her old lover Victor Castillo, wasn’t interested in disguising his intentions. The moonlight, the headlights from the few other vehicles they were passing and the Macon skyline in the distance provided all of the light she was getting. This was an ideal place for an ambush.
She hadn’t told her passenger…Joseph Champion much. He was still marinating in his good feelings that he had gotten out of Carver and the city of Atlanta for a while. He’d been an emotional wreck, sliding from one passionate extreme to another, babbling on and on about his dead wife one minute while biting his nails…to counting how m
any mistakes he’d made during another.
One mistake he hadn’t made was when he showed her a picture of Angel’s husband, Seth Dupree, a doctor in his own right. He was a renowned surgeon. He was in Atlanta working alongside the medical staff of Atlanta General with their Emergency Triage Unit. I need to test a theory. She threw her Honda onto a side road for two reasons: Roxanne would pull to the side of the road and let Champion have yet another smoke. He had to have a cigarette about every 20 minutes anyway. Men and their vices, she thought. But more importantly, she wanted to see once and for all, if the bid black Caddy would follow where she led. She knew the area. That was a bonus. She pulled into a neighborhood gas station, made a quick circle back and put on the breaks.
After Champion filled his lungs and got back into the car he asked: “Did you hear me, Roxanne?” Champion turned down the radio. Their taste in music differed as well, which was no surprise to her. “Where are we? You said we were getting out of the city for a few hours to let the tension die down. It looks more to me that you know exactly where we’re going. Where are you taking me?”
She suppressed a grin. Champion was no fool after all. She might as well let the cat out of the bag and throw it out of the window and see if it landed on its feet. She was tiring of this man’s company, his vices and his old cologne that he wore anyhow.
“I spoke to Christopher Prince before sundown. He has business down state not too far from here.” She stole a glance out of the side view mirror and saw the Cadillac still there, though it was maintaining a two car length distance for now. It gave her a moment to measure Champion’s response to her next bit of news. “Dr. Hicks-Dupree is with him. You two have some unfinished business I believe.”
Champion’s bushy brows rose and he wiped his goatee with the back of his hand. He squirmed in his seat as if he’d picked up some red ants when he had got out the last time he smoked. “What’s the matter, Roxanne? I don’t get why you are doing this? I took you to Erica Loving’s body like I said that I would.” He looked out the passenger side window in concentration, a wrinkle forming in his forehead as he worked out what he would say…or do next. “You don’t believe that someone in the Choir Boys killed her do you?”
The Cadillac fell back to three car lengths behind now…teasing her. She didn’t have long now before the attack came. “Maybe one of them did kill her, Champion. The murder was an act of rage, an act of contempt.” She said and gripped the steering wheel tightly with her left hand placing her free hand on her Nine with the other. She faced danger both in and outside of this Honda. She prepared to defend herself against which ever snake struck first. “What I am saying is that the timing of everything that went down was far too convenient for my taste. I told you this back at Carver. I’m telling you this again tonight.”
Champion was distracted by the Honda gaining speed. He bit his fingernails. “And you don’t believe in conveniences?”
“No, I don’t.”
“And I guess you don’t believe what I told you about what happened to me or my wife either?”
“I believe what happened to your wife clouds your perception of things, Champion. I don’t know Serena Tennyson. I don’t want to know her, but I know the type. People in her position like to use human emotions to manipulate the people that work with them into serving whatever desires they want from them.”
“No, Shit, Roxanne,” Champion slapped himself on the forehead to complete his exaggerated exchange with her. “It’s no way that I would have thought of that alone without—hey, we’ve driven pass this point before.”
“We’re being followed. We’ve been followed for about the past hour.” She punched the gas and the Honda’s engine moaned in complaint. Something inside Champion made him check to see that his seatbelt was secured. He glanced over his left shoulder to verify to himself what Roxanne had disclosed with him.
“You believe that the black Cadillac is following us, Roxanne…you sure about this? That’s almost too much of a cliché for me to die of.”
Roxanne ignored his jape and concentrated on her steering. “Back at Carver, you were telling me about the last night you spent with Dr. Hicks-Dupree.” For all of her concentration, Roxanne nearly took the curve too fast, a car traveling in the opposite direction laid on his horn in a long honk of complaint. “What does she know about what is going on in Atlanta right now that you aren’t telling me?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Champion clutched the dash for support.” Why are you asking me this now?”
Roxanne told him her theories about the three parties that were potentially behind the wheel of the car making up ground behind them. “I’ve had too many close calls with eternity lately, Champion. If I’m going to die on this lonely road tonight, I expect to hear the truth from you why. I want it all and I want it right now.”
“Angel and I spent the night…talking when we weren’t having sex and drinking. I hinted to her that I wanted to turn myself into the authorities. But we had another visitor in the middle of the night, a man named Eugene Cover had come from my old stomping grounds in Houston looking for me.”
“Cover,” Roxanne fired the accelerator up as she sped the Honda around two slow moving cars and slipped back into the correct lane as if she’d never abandoned it in the first place. “You didn’t say anything about someone else being in that room with you two.”
“Cover worked at a biogenetics lab. He knew some things. He was trying to tell me some of them about what really happened to President Sweet…how it was connected to Mayor Ernestine Johnson. I wasn’t trying to hear any of it. I had already had my own dirt from my dealings with Pandora. I wasn’t going to die for his sins as well.” Champion looked back to see if they had made in progress in losing their tail. “Cover’s dead now. I’m sure Serena got wind that three mortal enemies of her organization were together. I got out of Dodge. Angel got recruited by the FBI. And I’m sure Danielle Rohm got to Cover.”
“Rohm,”
“Yea, I knew her to be a little woman who dresses all in black and carries big, powerful guns wherever she goes. She’s a contract killer. She’s Serena’s right hand man—woman, I mean. I’m sure she was heavily responsible for helping shoot up the courthouse area when Serena was sprung during Operation Deliverance.” Champion shook the cobwebs out of his head. “But I’m getting way ahead of myself. Eugene Cover’s remains were found near the hotel where Angel and I shacked up for the night. Rohm’s a damned professional alright. I’m sure she made it look like the standard murder-robbery to the boys in the bureau who were casing all the nearby streets thinking that they were going to nab me.”
Despite all of her efforts the Cadillac had closed the distance. She had to get out of this main stretch of highway. Champion asked her what in the hell was she thinking. He told her that leaving the main highway was suicidal. I guess that’s what I get for thinking aloud. Opinions were like reproductive organs: Everyone had one.
“Alright, Champion, enough about that morning that the FBI recruited Angel. Tell me more about the conversation that you two were having before this Cover fellow showed up.”
“I know that it’s not what you think it was, Roxanne.” He said. “It wasn’t this thought out, structured, Power Point presentation you are picturing it as. We talked about everything. I talked about my dear wife. She talked about her husband…her drinking issues. My turning myself over to the authorities was just one of my considerations.” He put his head in his hands. “We talked about running away together…we even talked about…suicide.”
She said, “Why didn’t you?” Champion cursed her and exhaled a deep breath of exasperation. “I meant why didn’t you go to the authorities?”
Champion spun around and looked out of the back window shield instead. He told her that maybe they’d lost other car at last. He didn’t see anything. Roxanne was doubtful. She eased up off of the gas enough—
As now the Cadillac was driving straight towards them.
“Did you
see how Serena escaped a few days ago?” Champion said to her and crossed himself. “Pandora’s sphere of influence spreads like an eagle’s wings.” He seemed to come to decision about something. “No…I think that going to the authorities with what I know and with what I suspect would have been truly suicidal.”
The Cadillac flicked its lights on and then off again and was closing on her Honda again after she barely avoided a head on collision with it a second earlier. Roxanne threw the transmission into reverse, altered her course and tossed it back into drive and sped to her left with all due speed. “No more long stories, Champion, what did you suspect?” She said to her passenger who had gone pallid. “Damn you, Champion, I said talk.”
“411 wasn’t a deep dark secret within the core members of the organization. It had been in the planning stages for years.”
“Did you say years?”
“Yea, the 911 attacks and the war on Al-Qaeda actually delayed Pandora’s plans and caused them to reevaluate their positon. Remember Pandora is made up of mostly US citizens who have or still work for our government in some shape manner or form. The Caretaker had been believed to say that the manpower and resources would not be reassigned from fighting the war on terror and defending the homeland for Pandora’s private issues with a House in Chains. But as that external threat faded, Pandora became more focused on what led to where we are today.”
“And what about Angel’s role in all of this,” The lights of the Cadillac had disappeared again. The world is too quiet, Victor. Victor told her the best time for hearing for strangers screaming in the distance is when your world was at its most still. “Where does Angel fit in this equation?” Roxanne aimed to get the Honda back on the main highway for now. She doused her own lights…learning from her opponent’s example of stealth. She had to admit that part of her was enjoying the cat and mouse game with whoever was behind that other wheel. You are professionals. She thought. I am a professional. She knew. And I like cheese.
And she was more than willing to match her skills with theirs.
“Why are you consumed with Angel?” He asked her. “What has she done to you?”
Roxanne Sanchez wrapped her trigger finger around her Nine for the first time this evening. She didn’t point it at Champion, but she did put it far enough away from her body so he would see it.
“I’m asking the questions here, Champion.”
“Angel knew about Keaton.” He lowered his head, following the gun’s trail wherever it went. “She knew that man’s in’s and out’s. He’s a strange bird but if anyone in that organization could control Keaton, Angel was the one. She’s an expert in her field of psychology and better in most in the remaining fields dealing with the human mind.”
Roxanne had a thought. “Maybe Keaton killed Erica?”
“Maybe,”
The black Cadillac had reappeared…just to her left. She had seen the silhouette of the car even before he turned his lights back on.
And then Roxanne made up her mind one last time this evening to wrap up this performance since the hour was growing late.
“Roxanne,” Champion slid down in his seat. “What in the name of God are you getting ready to do?”
Roxanne floored the accelerator and left Champion to figure out the rest for himself. She did remind herself that she was in all of this for the truth. She had lived for it. She was willing to die for it as well.
“I’m going to live,” She announced to Victor Castillo or whoever was driving the Cadillac in question, but felt Joseph Champion nodding from next to her in the passenger seat of the 15 year old Honda. “I’m going to live just long enough to kill Angel Hicks-Dupree.”
The other car didn’t call her bluff…as she half expected. She swerved at the last half second to avoid a head on collision that would have ended the life of everyone involved. Damn…she didn’t clear it enough not to clip the other car. Both passengers in the Honda felt the impact. She closed her eyes for a second…to allow the contact to take her car where it may. When she opened her dark eyes she saw the other car flipping once and again until it finally rested on its top, the tires were spinning aimlessly. Champion looked no worse than he usually did so she left him buckled in the passenger seat gasping for breath.
She had her Nine out and drawn. She approached the Cadillac giving the car and the perimeter around the vehicle a wide berth. She licked the rest of the lip gloss from her lips. She tossed her hair out of her face so it would not cloud her vision of targets. She could smell a gas leak, but from the looks of it, it did not appear to be all that bad. She shouldn’t worry about danger from an immediate explosion, at least not right away.
She checked behind her to make sure that no one had miraculously escaped the other car and gotten behind her without her seeing them. She stooped down, maintaining her balance with the strength in her calves.
She saw that no one was home.
Roxanne stood up and made a quick 360 to make a final check of her surroundings. She felt her tension levels decrease from a bloody red to a cautious yellow. She wondered if she would ever enjoy the calmness of a level green again.
In her mind she eliminated the FBI from her equation of potential drivers of this car. There was a less than a pint of blood on the dash and perhaps an ounce or two more on the driver’s seat. There was a little less on the passenger side. So there were two of you inside this car. The driver side had taken the brunt of the initial roll over and it also served as the final resting spot for it was well. But the FBI would have been quick to read off list of charges against her and all that.
Whoever it was didn’t want to be identified. A part of her—the cheese lover who had enjoyed the thrill of the chase wanted press her advantage knowing that the passengers were at least partly injured. Maybe she could be the hunter…the pussycat for a time.
The reasonable voice won the day a few minutes later. Victor reminded her that she’d triumphed in this battle, but a war…and a potential ambush lie in those woods if she dared chase down whoever was in this car. There could have been more people in the backseat. She had no idea how many…or what kind of weaponry they were armed with either.
Roxanne Sanchez suddenly felt cold and very much alone.
And she was just that…very alone.
When she returned to her Honda, she saw that Joseph Champion had vanished from the scene as well.
She didn’t disbelieve the stories he had told her…but she knew men like him. She knew, that even under the bouts of stress that Carver and the car chase tonight had presented, he was still leaving the meat of his story sealed and untold.
The Honda’s frame was bent beyond probable repair but she started up just fine on the second try. Roxanne broke out in a…smile…for what felt like the first time in years. She let the windows down on both sides, the night air fresh out here far from the brushfires and tensions of Atlanta.
She put the car’s transmission into drive and stepped on the gas at a slightly elevated pace. She was going on to see Christopher Prince who was perhaps another 45 minutes from where she was right now.
Roxanne had lost Joseph Champion.
She still didn’t know what parties drove the black Cadillac who tried to kill her.
She should have felt like one for the loss column…didn’t really feel that way.
The dark eyed woman had survived another day maybe where she not ought to have.
And yet her mood had darkened just as quickly when she glanced at the empty passenger seat as an old revelation shuttled its way from her brain to her heart.
The more and more she considered it…the more likely that Erica Lovings killer was seated all of this time right next to her.
And Roxanne Sanchez had managed to let him escape her.
Angel
County Road Motel; State Road 15, Five Miles North of Sparta, Georgia, 16th Day
Is it possible that Louis could have killed Erica, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree thought as she gave Christopher’s adjoining hotel room a
polite knock. She heard him yell for her to hold on; he was grabbing a tee-shirt.
Angel’s recollection of her last night with Joseph Champion had come in fits and spells, but was still mostly memory. She’d drunk entirely too much even for her in the few hours the two of them were together. Only since she and Christopher had returned from their ominous visit with Muhammad Clark had she even remembered a couple of the statements Joseph had said. Serena’s playing for keeps, Angel. She’s taking the gloves off. He told her that is what had heard before he had enough and got out. I believe that she’s even going to unleash your boy, Keaton into the field soon.
And so Angel had to reevaluate whether Serena had Louis indeed stage the two ‘scenes’ knowing that the FBI would seek her services in the 411 and all other investigations since. From the reports that were flowing down the bureau channels through Christopher to her…Roxanne Sanchez had found Erica Lovings in the same positioning as the dolls were at the created murder scenes. Christopher’s stepdaughter had been strangled. She had also been shot once in the back of the head. Her hands and feet had also been bound.
So either Louis or someone else close to all of this staged all three scenes, the two manicured ones and the actual one.
And where does the name Roxanne Sanchez ring a bell…Christopher opened the door at last and showed her in. He was wearing a black tee shirt he had just mentioned through the door and black rayon pajama pants that played well off of his opaque skin coloring. He’d gained a little weight across his middle over the years, but he was still more than appealing in her…and Angel was sure, many women’s eyes. She could still remember their little romp in the hay that happened two years before she and Seth had married as if it were yesterday. Both Christopher and Seth were equipped and capable enough, but lacked the exotic positioning and experimentation that she so often desired from men. Damn you Doc, she said to herself using his tone, I came to your place upset and vulnerable after Hoshi’s accident and you used it to fulfil your lifelong curiosity about bedding me. And she knew that if he truly spoke the statement aloud he would not be lying. She should have saved her curiosity and her seduction for another night…
She wore a housecoat only over her bra and panties and sat on his bed next to him. She did not come to seduce him tonight. But he’d seen her…all of her before, he more than any other man on the planet, knew what kind of creature that sat inches across the bed from him. After they were done with their business, she would retire into her bottles, her nudity and the thrills…of her own fingers if that’s what she damned well needed tonight.
“So how are you, Mister Jailbird?”
He tried and failed to suppress a grin. “Don’t start with me, Doc.”
Angel turned on her serious gage. “I’m serious, Christopher.” She sat on her good leg. “I thought that you could use some company. I’m here if you need me…you know, if you want to talk.”
“Sure.” Christopher pushed himself off of his bed and walked into the kitchenette. “As long as you don’t mention anything that has transpired in my life over, let’s say, the past thirty years or so.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, Christopher.” She said. “Today could have ended up a lot worse. And we did learn a lot.”
And it could have indeed. The warden was on vacation but his number two gave Christopher hell about his run in with Muhammad Clark. Angel figured the man had nothing in the manner of true charges to level at her friend. Clark did physically attack a FBI Agent and Christopher had reserved the right to defend himself. Angel knew that this sit in warden just wanted to vent and get back at Christopher or any Prince after what occurred at Calhoun during Xavier’s final few hours in captivity there.
“You want something to drink?” Christopher showed her one of his cans of ginger ale. “Or is this not strong enough for you?”
Angel cocked a brow and it was her turn to try and fail to hide a smile. “Now don’t you start with me.” She asked for bottled water instead. It would hold her into she disappeared to the room on the far side of the wall behind her. “I haven’t had anything to drink since we left Atlanta. I don’t drink while I’m on duty, Christopher. I especially wouldn’t with you knowing how much scrutiny your people are under right now.”
He tossed her the bottled water and lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Doc. I shouldn’t have. Even kidding between old friends should only go so far.”
“Don’t apologize.” She took a swig. Water never quenched her real thirst…nothing did. She decided right then and there to cut through the remaining bullshit and cut straight to her point she theorized about Keaton and Erica and see what her old friend thought about it.
“I thought about the same thing, Doc.” He said after she had finished speaking. “I’m with you…and more importantly, and so is the brass back in Atlanta. Someone else put those scenes together. Someone other than Keaton; and that same person probably killed Erica. Serena wants to get into my head, Doc. I hate the idea that Erica probably paid the price for that with her life.”
“Yea,” Angel said. “In speaking of which, have you spoken to Denise anymore? I didn’t hear her drive up or depart.”
“She called me back after you and I spoke about it. Something came up. I’m not sure she’s coming down here at all. This is a tricky little area of the state to get to without getting lost. Denise doesn’t have a strong sense of direction. If she couldn’t find someone to drive her down here I wouldn’t recommend her trying to find where are alone.”
Christopher drank his ginger ale and planted himself back on the bed next to her. He sat the can by three other empties on his nightstand. “Anyway, I told her I would drop by her apartment tomorrow when we get back.”
Angel asked him for a second time if he were okay. He shrugged it off, apologized to her for not being more professional today and looked out the window at the full moon.
She sat in behind him and massaged his neck. He was even tenser than she had expected. The stress and strain of everything transpiring around him was taking a toll. “Christopher, you were molested. Louis Keaton molested you. Muhammad Clark was kidnapping and molesting children at the same time. Now, Keaton is likely out doing it again. When you connect all of this, in addition to the war of words between your brother’s organization and Pandora…it must be like storm clouds that have opened up on top of you all at once. It’s like a tempest rising.”
“You just don’t know how wrong you are, Doc…”
Angel squeezed the muscles of his biceps, triceps and worked her way along down his lower back. He seemed responsive to her touch. She reminded herself that she did not come to his room to seduce him, but if he allowed her to…
“I wish I were wrong, Christopher.” She said. “Remember you and I share that particular bond.”
And Angel’s subconscious dug up the two terrible episodes of her life with one swing of a majestic shovel. In one pile of dirt there was Tyson Vincent who had found her father’s residence after an extensive search for the man that had made his criminal existence miserable. She had been only a bonus find when he showed up at her father’s home. Vincent was content to just sit in her father’s house, drink all of his beer and wait for him to come home so he could blow his head off with his loaded shotgun while his little girl could only watch. But after a few days in her captivity Angel used a weapon in her and her father’s defense that most 12 year olds didn’t even know they possessed: She used her maturing body to lure Vincent into a since of drunken comfort, touched him, put her lips on him…and stabbed him through his heart time and again with a butcher knife he never saw coming into he was very dead and she was covered in his blood.
The second ‘episode’ truly had been a sexual assault; though no one knew that if there had been such a way to label her as a coconspirator in it, then she would have had to live with that title the remainder of her days. She wanted this young man Bradley Marlow. She really wanted him the night they spent together in his dorm room, but after two hou
rs she had grown tired of his fumbling with her blouse, his awkward kisses and his manhood not responding in full. It was only after she cursed him and told him about his putrid efforts did the date really get interesting. He tore her blouse and bra from her body and somehow managed to pull her tight jeans off of her in one swift motion. She fought back…but a well planted back hand had ended her defensive efforts quickly. When he removed his pants his manhood extended a full salute to her.
The sad truth…the absolute saddest truth is that she still had wanted him. Yet, the back hand and subsequent bruise that she would wear on her upper cheek for the next few weeks, was far too high a price to pay for a mere sexual escapade that she could have gotten from a number of eager Bradley Morrows. So she fought him some more…and he stuck her time and again…until she found her hand grasping at the lamp on the nightstand—
“You’re wrong, Doc. You and I don’t share this bond at all.” Christopher was saying, bringing her back to the here and now. She had been cleared of any wrong doing in the death of Bradley Morrow. It still didn’t wash the blood that was splattered all of her clothes or wash the memory of how that scene could have and should have played out.
In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade. Christopher lifted himself off of the bed and walked back to the refrigerator. When her eyes found his again, he looked like a different man.” You see, Angel, I was never molested by Keaton at all. He never touched me.”
“What?”
He cracked open another ginger ale and downed most of it in a single gulp. Angel jumped at the sound of the soda can opening. On a more miniature scale it made the same terrible cracking sound that the young Morrow boy’s head made when she had bashed his skull with that lamp so long ago.
“I wasn’t molested.” She patted the warm spot he had vacated beckoning him to return to it. He reluctantly sat next to her. She wrapped her arm around him from behind and held him close. “The truth of what truly happened just sort of disappeared into what everyone else around me thought and believed. I think after a few years I actually began to believe it myself.”
Your tale sounds terribly similar to mine, Christopher. Angel had treated patients who had used imaginary abuses for whatever monetary gains that came of them. She had begun to call them Beautiful Liars. Stop it, she told herself. Christopher isn’t my patient. He’s not a liar. He’s my friend. He’s the only friend I have in this world, listen to him. “I don’t understand. Talk to me, Christopher.”
He looked to ceiling for guidance. “Where do I start, Angel? How do I begin to tell you this story?”
She kissed him on his cheek. It marked him…and they both laughed at that. “I know that the ‘beginning’ is almost clichéd it’s so overused in my profession, but it is and has always been a good start. Why don’t you start there?”
“I guess that truly is where it begins.” Christopher nodded. “And the start is probably the most painful part of this tale for me.” He exhaled and the pain of what was to come played at the corners of his mouth as his lips trembled. “I can still smell the peanuts roasting. I can still smell the old stench of draft beer. My dad had taken be to my first baseball game.”
Angel smiled. She had heard most of this tale before. She had also known men who loved their fathers though she had wondered if she ever truly loved hers. Christopher had adored and honored his father for his entire life even though the man had abandoned his dying mother for Xavier’s mom. It still made her curious why he and not Xavier had followed his footsteps as A House in Chains Number One. “It was a ball game that the Braves actually won if I remember.”
“Yea, that was a rarity in those days. It turned out to be a nearly perfect night in a young man’s life.” Christopher’s look turned dark and edgy again. And Angel wasn’t considering the context of his skin color as she thought it. “And yet he ruined it for me. And Louis Keaton has kept on ruining every night in my life since.”
“Louis Keaton,” Angel’s mouth went dry, but not for the remainder of her bottled water. “He was lurking in the background, in the shadows inside the stadium. He timed his move on you. No one saw him when he…took you.”
Christopher nodded. “I convinced my dad to let me go to the john alone. Keaton had a short, blunt knife at my throat before I could snatch my next breath. He made me put on this tee shirt that said camp just like the one he wore. When we walked back towards and pass the food court I saw dozens of young boys and adults wearing the same shirts. We just blended in. Eventually he pushed our way through the sparse crowd without anyone noticing anything was wrong.
Keep him focused and move the story forward without making him feel that you are rushing through parts that you already know. “You told me that once you became a captive that he would threaten your family as well.”
“I have to give it to him. It was a simple but effective strategy. 12 year old boys can’t understand everything, but I understood that much very quickly. But it was what happened next that’s more important to this conversation we are having.”
“I know that you told me that you and the other half dozen boys were being held in a house not too far from where you and your family were living at the time.”
“We were. And every day and every night I had to listen while he would take one of the boys and…do what he would do to them.”
“Go on, Christopher,” Angel squeezed him around his waist. Her housecoat had fallen open and her bra pushed against his back. It was of no consequence. She would do nothing that would endanger any chance of Christopher not revealing this horrible truth to her. She did not know if the opportunity…if his courage would ever rise to the surface for them to travel down this road again. “Don’t stop now, Christopher. I’m here.”
“Keaton proclaimed me his general. My duties included watching over the other children, especially when he would leave us for an hour here, a few hours there. I was responsible for keeping them in line. I was told to keep them quiet.” Her childhood friend blinked back tears for the first time. Angel’s followed soon after. “I can still hear them call out for their mothers. They were so scared. But there were times when they would douse that fear long enough to plan an escape, or they would plot to attack Keaton. But he had made a deal with me. He offered me something I dared not refuse. As long as I kept the other boys in line…he promised never to touch me. I would have to remain his captive. But he would never do to me what he was doing to them.”
Angel spun herself around until the two friends faced one another. She could smell the ginger ale on his breath. It was not unpleasant. She stroked his shaven head with her hands. He was also exposed to her nearly naked body but she didn’t care and he didn’t seem to mind the free second look he was getting.
“Christ,” Was all that she could think to say. “You do understand that the physiological trauma that you experienced…that you are still experiencing is far worse that the physical invasion that your body could have ever withstood.”
“Yea, I guess so. That’s what the shrinks that I saw in the months after told me.” Christopher searched the ceiling for answers again, but found none. “God, I can still hear them screaming, Doc. Every time he took one them I could hear it. As crazy as it sounds, Angel, I sometimes wished it was me. Those other boys hated me. They hated my guts. I was the teacher’s pet. I was molester’s puppet. I was the only one of them not being abused and they hated me for it.”
Angel knew that her friend was close to cracking. She had the terrible truth. She had all of it. But he needed to finish this once and for all. “And he promised to never molest you and to never harm those other children unless you tried to escape.”
Christopher’s laugh held no humor; in fact it may have been the bitterest sound that she’d ever heard. “Keaton soon trusted me enough to have me run the errands for him. Can you believe that, Doc?” Chris said as the tears flowed freely. “I actually passed my own home
almost every single day when I went out to buy food and drinks for the other boys. Keaton knew I wouldn’t dare run away. He’d told me about the Caretaker. He warned me what would happen to those other boys if I did not return to him as he asked.”
“I’m so sorry, Christopher.”
“I tried to choose times when I knew that knew one would be home as I passed.”
“The temptation must have been overwhelming.”
“It was,” Christopher nodded. “I was told time and again that the Caretaker and his agents in Pandora were watching my every step. He told me he would have both parties…those helpless boys killed as well as my father, step mother and Xavier as well. Worse of all he promised me that I would be recaptured and that I would no longer be spared…his pleasures if anything went wrong.”
Angel allowed the conversation a breath…she let their tears dry themselves before she pushed on to the climax of this terrible episode of her friend’s life. “So that is why you reacted so…violently…when Xavier found you.”
“I tried to run as fast as I could when he spotted me. Goddamn him, he had cut school that day. He wasn’t supposed to be at home. He was. He recognized me, called my name, and ran me down. He had to tackle and pin me down to keep me from escaping.”
“You poor soul,”
Christopher hopped up and a vein in his temple flared. “To hell with me, Doc,” He yelled. “This Caretaker fella must have been enraged. I had single handily endangered his entire operation. I knew Louis Keaton. I knew where he was. I could identify the man abducting Atlanta’s children…or at least one of the men that were. So instead of risking Keaton’s discovery and the exposure of Pandora to the world, the Caretaker killed them all. I killed them all. The APD found all six boys in six different areas with their throats slit and their bodies burned.”
The childhood friends held each other and cried for a long time afterwards.
Angel asked him in the minutes following that, “Who else knows about this? Who else knows what you have told me tonight?”
Chris expressed to her what she may have guessed on her own: The doctors who were appointed to his case must have examined him and realized the lack of physical abuse to his private area. He told a shrink or two that treated him afterwards. Yet, these men were under the scrutiny of doctor-patient privilege. They would never divulge to anyone other than his father and step mother what really happened…and what didn’t happen to him.”
“What about your brother?” Angel and Christopher’s younger half-brother Xavier had never been terribly close. She always felt that he tolerated her existence because of what her friendship meant to his older sibling.
“We had a heart to heart after what Carter and his goons did to him up at Princeton. And I told Hoshi on the night that I asked for her hand in marriage.”
“You never told Denise did you?”
“No,” Christopher said without malice. “Xavier and now you are the only living people who know the entire truth. Back to Denise though, we were married for 12 years and yet I never felt close enough to her in all of that time to mention this part of my past. I guess, in part, the truth about what happened to me is part of the reason why what Erica did to cut so deeply.”
“Erica,” Angel felt another heartfelt story coming. As badly as she wanted to get out of the rest of these clothes and get into her booze, if her friend needed her a while longer—
And then there was a knock on Christopher’s door.
The two of them glared at one another.
No one knew that they were here except…
There was another knock, this time the thumping was more urgent than the first round. Angel tightened her housecoat without looking at it as Christopher stepped towards the door with his pistol in his hand.
Denise Prince said: “Hi, Chris. Look, I changed my mind. I needed to…we need to talk. Will you let me in?”
“Denise…hey,” He holstered his gun and unlocked the door. “You can come in but I do have company.”
When the door opened Denise did not break the threshold. Instead she said: “Oh, my God. I should have known you would be here with her.”
Angel ignored what she said and offered the other woman her hand in greeting. “Hi, Denise…it has been a long time.”
Denise didn’t feel like shaking hands tonight so Angel guessed that a little small talk was probably out as well.
Chris’ cheeks flushed as much as his skin color allowed. You would have thought that he had been caught in an affair. “Denise, this isn’t what it looks like. We were down here interviewing an important—“
Denise stepped past her ex-husband and gave her full measure of furor to Angel. “If I truly had been honest with myself I shouldn’t really be surprised to see you here.”
Angel felt herself frown. “Wait a minute, Denise.” She said cautiously. “Just like Christopher said: We were just talking—“
“Yea, I see how much talking you two were doing.” Denise swiped at Christopher’s face where Angel’s lipstick had made its mark. The other woman then took three giant footsteps, planted her hands on her hips and got into Angel’s face. “Just look at you…you’re dressed only in a bathrobe and only God knows what else in the middle of the night in my husband’s hotel room.”
“I’m your ex-husband,” Christopher reminding her. “Denise, we’re divorced. We have been for a long time now. Let’s all calm down—“
“Damn you and your calm, Sir,” Denise shouted at him. “I know that Erica hurt you baby. I know that I’ve hurt you as well in the past. My little girl is dead now. How much longer are you going to hold a grudge against us, your family?”
“I’m not, Denise,” But Christopher made the mistake of looking away when he said it. “I swear it’s not the truth.”
“Well then, Sir, I guess you’ll have the chance to finally prove it.” Denise smiled for the first time since Christopher had opened the door for her and she directed it at Angel. “I can’t think of a better time…or better person for you to make this proclamation in front of, Chris. Your lifelong friend can bear witness to our announcement.”
“What are you talking about, Denise?” Agent Christopher Prince wanted to know.
Angel did know. But it didn’t make hearing the insanity travel from Denise’s lips to both of their sets of ears any easier whatsoever.
“My little girl is dead. I need you back in my life more than ever before. Almost a decade and a half ago you asked for my hand in marriage, baby.” Denise got on one knee. It was the sweetest thing…it was the most pathetic display Angel had ever watched another woman do. “I’m asking for you to marry me again. I’m asking you to take me back at your wife.”
Angel looked to her friend—to witness as Denise had said—what would come next.
Christopher said quietly: “Denise…you know I can’t do that.”
Denise screamed at him in an extraterrestrial voice of grief and insanity that Angel had only mouthed from a handful of patients in her long career. She had to summon security to keep them at bay until they could be subdued and eventually taken away in restraints. There was no security and no restraints to aid them here in this off the map hotel room. Angel had decided not to wait around to see how this one turned out. “I should leave you two alone.” Angel limped past the couple.
“No, Angel,” Denise spat her name out. She brushed past Angel on her way out the door from which she came. Once she was out in the courtyard she spun around long enough to say: “You should stay. Whatever happens next is on your head, Doctor. As for you, Sir, there are only two women in this world that you have ever loved, and you’ve proven to me for the very last fucking time that I am not sure as hell one of them.”
Seth
20 Feet from Christopher Prince’s motel room, 16th Day
MOMENTS BEFORE:
“Erica lied.”
Dr. Seth Dupree frowned at the woman sitting on the passenger side of his rental car. “Excuse me?”
Denise
fumbled with her purse and used the time to gather her thoughts. She actually took a moment to smile at him, but it was a humorless one that Seth thought was more than a little sad. There was a full moon out tonight here in the middle of nowhere in central Georgia. Seth checked the electronic map on his phone one last time to see if they had landed in the right parking lot of the right hotel where Denise’s ex-husband, Special Agent Chris Prince was staying. In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade.
“When Erica was 15 years old she accused Chris of molesting her. My little girl fabricated the entire thing.”
“What do you mean?” Seth asked “Why would she do such a thing?”
Denise’s nostrils flared as she exhaled audibly. “I’ll answer your first question first, Seth. Chris was serving warrants for the bureau when he fell ill and went home early one Wednesday afternoon. Chris never missed work. There were many days I tried to talk him out of leaving the house when he was sick as a dog. So when he called me and told me he was headed home I knew that he was feeling rotten.”
“Erica didn’t count on him returning there did she?” Seth could figure early on where this story was leading. “What did your ex-husband find her doing when he got home?”
“He heard someone screaming from one of the bedrooms upstairs soon after he walked in. He told me later that he pulled out his gun and sprinted upstairs. He could only guess at that point what was going on? Had someone broken in? Was someone possibly hurting or even raping Erica? The cries were definitely coming from her room, so he broke the door down and entered.”
“Denise, are you sure you want to tell me this—
“He found Erica home alright. She had some naked younger girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, strapped with rope to the four bed post by her wrist and ankles. My husband told me that my little girl was shoving a broom stick handle up the younger girl’s vagina…and she didn’t stop, even after Chris had broken her door down.”
“Did you know that Erica was bisexual?”
“You are asking the right person the wrong question, Seth. The real question is how long I knew Erica was a bull dyke. She’d always showed an attraction to other girls for as long as I could remember.”
Seth squeezed Denise’s hand. “I know that you just said that this younger girl was screaming. But was it in, I don’t know, pleasure or pain? How did Erica defend what she was doing? Did it start as a consensual thing—“
“Chris told me that he believed it might have begun that way and I can’t disagree with his assessment. The other girl begged Chris to untie her. When he did, he turned his back on her for just a second, and she hit him across his head, snatched her clothes off of a neighboring chair and ran away. None of us ever saw her again.”
Seth frowned again. “So this girl never filed a complaint? And I don’t really understand how this tie in with these allegations you speak of that Erica filed against Agent Prince?”
“Erica threatened to file her own attempted molestation charge against Chris if he dared tell anyone about what he saw going on in her bedroom. She knew about his abduction by Louis Keaton. She knew he had been molested himself. She understood how Science claims these things worked in cycles.”
“And what happened then, Denise?”
“Like I said before, Chris and Erica were never close. Erica’s teenaged years only made the animosity between them grow. She had been caught shoplifting a handful of times, cutting class, involved in fights…if it were a sin then Erica was likely to involve herself in it. Six months after this particular incident though Chris had enough of her antics. He exploded after Erica put another young girl in the hospital during an altercation outside a movie theatre. He read her the riot act right then and there after the police arrived to arrest her.”
“And what did she do, Denise?”
“She went off. She summoned up her best crocodile tears. She screamed to anyone who would listen that Chris was sexually abusing her and had been doing so for years. How could anyone not see that his abuse was the real reason behind her poor behavior? She was a victim of this abuse. She needed help.”
“And your daughter knew that Chris past abduction and abuse by Louis Keaton would work against him in any court of law or public opinion.”
Denise nodded. “Chris was fortunate that the allegations didn’t become more widespread than they actually were. The FBI, especially Agent Sheridan, kept as much internal as they could manage. They were receiving daily reports from the APD. Even the local media never got wind of it.” She said. “To be perfectly honest, I thought the situation would turn out far worse for him than it actually had.”
“How do you mean?”
Tears ran down Denise’s cheeks. Seth took his handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wiped them away…although more followed in their wake. He had agreed to drive her down here against his better judgment. Yet, a part of him hoped that Angel would be with Prince when they found them. He had an urging to see his wife so badly again. Perhaps they could still work things out. Hold on, Seth, The Gray Man told himself, here comes the worse part of this story yet.
“I lost all objectivity. I screamed rape even when Erica would stop long enough to catch her breath. I knew about Erica’s sexual preferences. I was aware of her tendencies towards anger and aggression. Most of all, I believed Chris when he told me what he had walked in on at our home.” Denise turned to look at Seth at last. “I guess mother and daughter were more alike than I ever wanted to admit. I had committed myself to destroying the man I loved…a good man…to protect my lying daughter.”
Seth swallowed hard. “Chris…all of you somehow finally got past all of this. You were married for at least a year longer. And the FBI reinstated Chris back to full duty. And like you said, the media never learned of anything that was going on?”
“The FBI suspended Chris with pay for thirty days while they conducted their own internal investigation. They guarded the reasoning for his suspension so that none of the other agents in his field office would find out. There were rumors, of course, but nothing that anyone could substantiate. Eventually, as you said, he was reinstated after they deducted that he was innocent of all the charges that he had been wrongfully brought against him. My God, Seth…if the accusations had spread on his job or out in the general public…especially now, with this entire thing between Xavier’s A House in Chains and Pandora, I could only guess the damage that would be done to his reputation and career.”
Your daughter’s death hopefully sealed that door forever, Denise. Seth hated himself for thinking that way. “Nevertheless, what happened ruined any chance for reconciliation between your daughter and her stepfather.” Seth said as a matter of fact. “I’m sure it severed most of the bonds between the two of you as well?”
Denise answered his last question only with more tears. A part of him wanted to comfort this woman. Yet, a more rational portion remembered what he had witnessed of Denise’s transformations from rational to irrational from her in her apartment. Denise could be vicious. She could be vindictive. If Chris Prince had to deal with two women like this in one household for years he had been a lucky man to have survived it at all.
“I was so spiteful.” Denise shook her head almost violently back and forth. “I was a fool who clung on to her daughter’s lies and ignored the facts. And now with Erica gone…I’ve lost them both.”
Seth lifted her chin up. “You can still make this right with Chris. Have you ever formally apologized, Denise?” She shook her head once this time. “You might be amazed how saying the right thing can cure a lot of ills, even if it is well after the fact. I think that he would appreciate hearing that from you. It’s never too late to make amends.” He hit the button that unlocked the doors and flashed a much needed smile of understanding if not forgiveness her way. “Go…he’s twenty feet away…go on, Denise, make this right as best as you can at this point.”
“You’re
right,” After she opened the passenger door, she scooted her body back far enough to clutch his cheek and kiss him on the lips. “Thank you for being here for me, Seth. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I am glad that we didn’t…you know…before. You’ve been such a good friend when I so desperately needed one.”
Seth smiled at her. “Go,” He said again. “It’s never too late. Take your leap of faith.”
She started out…and then stopped again. “It’s not my business, Doctor, but I can’t shake the feeling that Angel has been as foolish as I have.” Denise lowered her voice. “You should give her one more chance as well. You’re a good man and I can tell that your marriage means everything to you. If she really loves you…give her one last chance to prove it to you.” She stopped long enough to stare out into the full moonlight with a hardened gaze that he could only guess what it meant. “I know that this is my last chance to prove mine.”
“Go,”
Seth’s head collapsed on the headrest, fatigue overcoming him. So much had happened in such a short period of time. All of those endless hours they had worked at the triage center…and now this long drive down here into the middle of nowhere.
He hoped Denise had taken his words to heart because he had taken hers. Seth knows that his wife likely was shacked up in one of these hotel rooms, asleep (hopefully alone) with a nearly empty liquor bottle on the dresser nearby. Tomorrow, the Gray Man told himself, tomorrow I will call you again, Angel. Or better yet he will attempt to see her. Whatever happens from there he feels that he accomplished what he came to Atlanta for in the first place.
But this night belonged to Chris and Denise Prince—
Denise had returned.
Too soon;
Too damned soon;
“Go,” She said. And when he failed to immediately turn the key in the ignition, “No questions…just go.”
Denise had been crying again since she left the car. What was more frightening is that she was wearing that same hard look that he couldn’t name before. What was even more worrisome is that the look has become more pronounced and has now covered her entire face. Seth tried to touch her cheek again but she backed away from his touch. A fresh round of tears ran down her face instead. He obeyed her request and mutely spun the rental around out of the parking lot not looking at the hotel room where Denise had come back from.
He does notice a Latino woman with dark eyes sitting in a wreck of a car that never took her eyes off of him as he drove away.
Two hours later Denise slammed her bathroom door in Seth’s face. He called her name once…twice…and yet even after the fifth time she refused to answer him. He walked back to her front door and carefully closes it after she nearly tore it from its frame. When he finally arrived back at the locked bathroom door he can still hear her sobbing from the other side.
“It’s over, Denise said. “It’s over. It’s all really over. I have nothing left.”
“Denise, sometimes we have to let go of our fear…all of it. We have to stick it in our rearview mirror and treat it like any other shadow that cast itself in our path at midnight.” Seth sat on the floor and caressed the door as if it were a lover’s face. He could hear Denise wailing now, letting all of her emotion pour out of her. “The dawn is approaching, Denise. Soon, so very soon, all that you will see is that shadow of doubt fading. All of your fear will have dissipated.” Denise’s crying slowed some, but he could still hear her heavy breathing. The emotion had come to her in a tsunami wave…but the tide was lowering. These are all good signs. “Just remember when the dawn breaks you have to be prepared…to take your leap of faith. The fears of the night never go away, not completely. But each day you have to wash all the horrors of our mind away. You must have faith.” Seth said. “I have had my dark nights as well, Denise. Let me tell you a story.”
And he voiced to her of his four friends from school and how he had helped cause the death of Antoinette Burner who drowned when she went overboard off of the boat.
And then he told her that the survivors of that storm had not fared well since that fateful night either.
Clinton Sessions, the young man who first spotted Antoinette after she went overboard died when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 911. And Seth often wondered did his dear friend see that plane just before it finished its climatic approach.
Sam Casey did not die so heroically. His partying and drinking ways only increased after Antoinette’s death. He was one of around 50 people dancing on a deck who died at an apartment complex outside of Chicago…when the deck collapsed with the partyers falling to their fate below.
Pam Toliver, the woman who saw Antoinette fall overboard, the woman who Seth Dupree called but did not speak to the other day may have suffered worse than any of the others. At least they died in one tragic moment. I’ll bet a piece of you dies every day, my dearest Pam.
Seth knew from his wife’s work that many uniformed people call the victims of domestic abuse impotent and weak. Many of those same people would say that all these so called victims have to do is get up and leave their abuser. And that the bumps on Pam’s chin and the purple bruises underneath her eyes… and the cuts on her breast and the burns that reach from the inside her thighs to her womanhood are her own fault. They would say that no man…not a husband, boyfriend, father, uncle, distant cousin, best friend could continually inflict these types of wounds on a woman who fought back.
But Pam did fight back once didn’t she?
And the Gray Man knew that the fight caused her then 16 year old son to rupture her spleen when he nearly killed her.
“Are you ready, Denise,” He asked her at last from the floor outside her bathroom door. “Are you ready to take your final leap of faith?”
Denise said this instead: “Seth tell me if you have you ever heard what the worst part of going to Hell is?”
Her question stunned him. He’d never given the manner much thought. “If the scriptures could be believed what could possibly be worse than the eternal burning, Denise?”
“I once read somewhere that while we suffer that eternal burning of our souls that our minds are still active, Seth,” Denise said with a quivering voice. “And that our minds still desire all of the sin that caused us to go to Hell in the first place. So I now know that I’m going to spend an eternity angry…hateful…but mostly I’m going to spend that eternity desiring Chris Prince.”
After another round of tears she said in a far steadier voice: “I’m coming out, Seth. I’m ready to take my leap.”
Seth heard the lock unlatch.
The door opened.
And a nude Denise Prince ran past him leaving an unsuspecting Seth Dupree grasping at the air around her ankles as she angled to jump out of the living room window.
He got to his feet…and gave chase…the entire scene playing out so very fast…yet, so very deliberately…almost motionless.
When the glass shattered when her body thumped it…he knew that he was already too late, but he completed his dash to the window sill anyway.
Denise had taken her leap of faith…
…and landed nearly head first into the pavement ten stories below. Her nude body lay broken and bloody on the sidewalk as bystanders began to scream in acknowledgement of what he had already had knowledge of.
Dr. Seth Dupree collapsed himself. He found himself seated on the carpet just underneath the window sill this time. He cried out loud. He cried where only he could hear it. He cried.
For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath…waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.
And although he could only watch as poor Denise had chosen to take her ominous leap of faith to her death.
He hoped to still breathe again.
He hoped