by Gary Sapp
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
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 th
en 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 hours 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 bo
ys 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
