4-1-1: Where Are Our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 1 of 9

by Gary Sapp

are her injuries? Where is she now?”

  “Mayor Johnson is not suffering from any type of traditional trauma or medical condition.” Lavelle said quickly before a thousand theories and conversations could begin again.

  Lucy brushed her breast against Thomas as she stood. “Senator please enlightens us. Please tell us what has specifically has happened to Mayor Johnson?”

  Lavelle looked as if he wanted to be anywhere in the world but up on that podium. “Her doctors have every reason to believe that the mayor has been poisoned.”

  Once again, Senator Terrence Lavelle was not allowed to continue his monologue thanks to several dozen conversations breaking out simultaneously. Thomas could feel the anxiety building in the room. You could cut the tension with a knife. Lavelle tried, futilely this time, to talk over the mass. Grace Edwards smartly handed him a gavel and he banged it until silence once again ruled the chamber.

  Thomas noted the facial expressions of many involved. Edwards looked as if she’d lost a sister. Washington couldn’t hide a smirk. Councilman Davis’ eyes looked…high underneath her new wig—

  Lucy had shrouded their lower half’s with her coat after she’d finished her question and sat back down in her chair. She squeezed his manhood again and again until it ached…until it felt just right. He stuck his own hand underneath the coat, found her hand and gave her a squeeze of his own. “Why don’t we just hold hands?”

  Lavelle was saying, “Mayor Johnson’s primary doctor has provided us with two of his colleagues who will be able to answer your general questions while he attends to his patient.”

  The doctors, who Thomas had noted in the lab coats earlier, worked their way past the score of a House in Chains members. The taller of the two took the microphone and raised it four inches. Well, at least Lucy is behaving for the moment. In fact, Thomas noted that she let go of his hand, had produced a notepad and was using the Sharpie to take of notes as the doctor began to speak.

  “Senator Lavelle is speaking the truth. Mayor Johnson has been poisoned. We’ve run dozens of tests over the past 10 hours they all come back positive for foreign antibodies running rampant in the Mayor’s bloodstream.”

  “Is Mayor Johnson at risk of dying from this poison?” Richard Daily, a crime reporter from the local Fox affiliate asked.

  The doctor glanced at his colleague, flashed the senator a hard gaze, and then said, “Yes. I would say that is highly probable, at least from what we know right now. I’ll take another question or two.”

  Thomas decided by the time the doctor had finished, that he could have concluded his portion of the press conference after he answered the first question because he said little else of substance after that. He refused to answer what kind of poison the Mayor had contracted. He neglected to answer when or more importantly, how this poison, whatever it was, was introduced into her system. And finally, to the chagrin of many in the room, the doctor declined to assure anyone if this poison was contagious or not.

  Lucy Burgess and Thomas Pepper were gathering their belongings together by the East wall a short time later. The chamber was still a mountain of activity although some of the energy had leaked out with the combination of the sobering news and only a third of the habitants from the press conference still mulling about. Lucy took advantage of sparse crowd and brushed a breast against Thomas’ arm.

  “I’ll be waiting on you with bells on, darling.” She handed Thomas a standard hotel issued key card. “Yes, bells, and nothing else I might add,”

  Thomas dropped the card into his pants pocket without looking at it. “Is sex all you think about, Lucy? A half hour ago, you pointed out to me that my city…my country is headed for a crisis on a social front for which it may not recover. People are dead and dying as we speak.”

  “Not us, darling,” Lucy said and gave the whole of him a look over. Her breathing intensified. “I plan to live forever, and so do you. You and I are one and the same and more alike than you would care to admit. We are two birds of the same feather. Only I have a cunt and you have a cock.”

  “Maybe—“

  “Thomas Pepper,” Senator Lavelle had approached the two of them undetected with two of the Peacekeepers shadowing behind him. Thomas wondered how much of his conversation with Lucy had the other man heard.

  “Good morning, Senator.” Thomas smoothed out his jacket and then offered Lavelle his hand.”

  “Mayor Johnson has asked to speak with you personally,” Senator Lavelle said after the two men shook hands. “That is,” He gave Lucy a purposeful but short gander. “I hope you can spare time out of your schedule.”

  “Of course, Senator,” Thomas Pepper buttoned his jacket up. “I’m ready when you are, sir.”

  Lucy threw her jacket over her left arm and proceeded to follow the two larger men. A Peacekeeper with deadpan eyes silently stepped into her path.

  Senator Lavelle flashed a taut smile. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Burgess. It is still Mrs. Burgess isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “This is a private meeting. You may stay here in the conference room as long as you like. In fact, there are refreshments down the hall if you find yourself thirsty.”

  “I told you that I’m always busy.” Thomas said to her and raised the key card up out of his pocket to give her the chance to take it back from his possession.

  Lucy snatched it from his grip, opened his pocket once more, and dropped the key card back from where it came. “This is not about work and you damn well know it, darling,” Lucy called out to him as Thomas turned his back on her and met the other men’s strides as they walked towards Mayor Johnson’s private quarters somewhere in this maze of a mansion. “You aren’t interested in me anymore because you are attracted to wedding rings, and not to the women who wear them.” She made her words bite even as he must have disappeared from her view. “It’s wrong. You are immoral. I’m immoral. It’s what turned you on about me.”

  When the four of them reached Mayor Johnson’s private residence ten minutes later Thomas wished he had stayed behind with Lucy.

  The room stank of death.

  The staff had tried valiantly to cover the smell with disinfectants, air fresheners and scented candles but nothing had worked. Whatever this poison was, whatever infections the Mayor was suffering through, almost had seemed to take a life of its own.

  The only thing Thomas could compare the stench to be how his father’s room had smelled during his final days of life when Thomas was a freshman in college. So when Lavelle had excused the Peacekeepers and Thomas saw Mayor Ernestine Johnson lying in a transportable hospital bed in the corner of this room, he morphed into that younger man, if only for a few seconds, the past he’d thought he’d left behind so many years ago. Thomas wanted to believe that the tears stinging the corners of his eyes, and the reason he openly covered his mouth with his shirt, were because of the pungent smells attacking him at his core, and not some makeshift memory of his dead father.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Thomas.” Mayor Johnson said. She used her index finger to beckon him nearer. “Come closer, Thomas. I don’t want to have to talk over all the beeps and whistles of all this medical equipment.”

  Thomas attempted to lift his size 12’s, but his feet were lodged to the floor as if they were in quicksand. And for the first time he recalled how people in the room downstairs reacted when the doctor who spoke at the press conference declined to assure anyone if this poison was contagious or not.

  Mayor Ernestine Johnson:

  She had been a chestnut colored black woman who spoke with a deep, mannish voice, but had been blessed with the curves of a woman half her age. He could see her shape clearly, even silhouetted underneath the bed sheets.

  And yet the poison had stolen most of her good looks from her now. She wore purple boils and blisters on her face and neck, and blemishes of bruised blood and scars existed in the areas that the boils and blisters did not.

  “Close enough,” She called out to him. Cons
ciously, he never remembered getting his feet moving and walking towards the bed. Senator Lavelle had disappeared without a trace, surely attempting to escape this smell. The two Peacekeepers had joined two others by an open window and were following events transpiring by the Mayor’s bed with a vested interest. Thomas noted something else for the first time: The Peacekeeper’s were armed.

  “Doctor Cavetti, my personal physician, tells me this unpleasant odor is the result of a chemical reaction between my pain medication and the poison. I apologize.” She said.

  “Save your apologies, Mayor. None of this can be blamed on you.” Thomas curiosity won over his disgust. With concentration, he inhaled and exhaled deeply, and smoothed out his edges of his coat out of habit. This woman may not have much longer to live. Pull yourself together, son. It was his father’s voice, calm and strong and alive. “How may I be of service?”

  Just then, Mayor Johnson suffered through a coughing spell that doubled her over. The one lab coat in the room, the man Thomas assumed to be Doctor Cavetti, sprinted over to the mayor’s bedside with her husband a footstep behind him. The mayor’s coughing episode passed as quickly as it came, and everything considered, she looked no worse for it.

  Doctor Gregory Cavetti:

  Mayor Ernestine Johnson announced to Thomas that her doctor had been enjoying a semi- retirement and was only seeing a few choice