by Gary Sapp
creation. Well, maybe creation is too strong a term but I think my medication techniques aids in bringing his dominant personality back to the surface.”
“Hugh,” Roxanne asked in confusion. “You’re the first person from Pandora, A House in Chains or the FBI or the media who I have heard refer to Keaton with that alias.”
Angel nodded.
“Hugh Keaton is his true self.” Angel said to her patiently. “Louis is little more than a persona that he picked up along the way. Louis was someone who was very special to him. I’ve never been able to extract the entirety of this tale from him in the time I’ve spent with him. I do know that Hugh reverts back into this recessive personality during various times of stress, and stimulation. To be honest, Roxanne, I’m unsure what it all means on the grand stage. I do know that I have to reach the Hugh persona if those children have any chance at survival. I’ve screwed up so much. But I know that he is trying to communicate with me. There were crime scenes that Christopher and I were investigating when Atlanta’s children first went missing.” Angel swallowed deeply. “He may have killed Denise Prince’s daughter Erica as well. I’m not sure.”
Roxanne had never considered that scenario but she was not privileged to Keaton’s file and background the way Angel had.
“Did you tell Chris any of this?”
Angel shook her head.
“I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure that he did.”
All of the memories Roxanne had of finding Erica dead in that dumpster back at Carver came rolling back into Roxanne’s head. If this Keaton was as potentially vicious in this Hugh persona as Angel believed then he could be good for the deed.
Roxanne made her best effort at standing up once again. The pain in her ankle was terrible but she stood up none the less.
Angel asked her, “What are you doing?”
“We’ve wasted enough time, Doctor. I’ve wasted enough of your time. You told me when I first saw you tonight that you were trying to reach a family important to one of the missing boys and I caused you to miss that appointment. Now, you need to find this Keaton fellow and help save those remaining children and I’m holding you up from that as well. I’ve wasted enough of your time. We need to get along with the business of finding those boys.”
“And we’ll waste even more time with me dragging you along on a busted ankle, Roxanne.”
“Surely you are not suggesting that you should leave me behind?”
Angel pulled out Roxanne’s gun. At some point in the conversation and the closeness, the doctor had lifted the weapon off of her without her even missing it.
“I’m so sorry for this, Roxanne,” Angel said. She never pointed the gun directly at her, but she made sure that Roxanne could see that she possessed it. “I am suggesting just that. I need to make things right. Like I said before, I’m sure emergency responders are already headed here, but I promise that I’ll send any help I come across to you and the rest of the victims here at this station. I know that ankle hurts like hell but otherwise you’re alright. And you’re not under any immediate threat of any kind here.”
Roxanne wanted to be angry with Angel, especially when the woman began to back away from her. It marked the second time tonight that the barrel of her own gun was put in her face by a civilian. That was unacceptable in her eyes. She was supposed to be better trained than that. It was more than apparent that her fear and anger were overriding emotions that clouded the rest of her judgements.
“The only promise that I want you to make me is that you will tell Chris what you believe, Angel.”
“How can I? How can I tell my best friend that my training may have set Louis Keaton off on his latest kidnapping and molesting venture? ”
“You have to, Angel. Don’t let him find out any other way. If Keaton or anyone else associated with Serena Tennyson and Pandora killed his stepdaughter Eric Lovings, Chris should hear it from you first.”
“I know,” Angel said with a blank look on her pale face. “Like I said, I’ve screwed this up so badly already.”
“Don’t let him find out any other way, Angel.” Roxanne said as she sat herself on the ground, offered her cell phone to Angel and resigned to the fact that she might be there for hours to come. And since she had her own secrets to keep as well—the fact that Angel’s husband Seth was with her only hours ago—the sooner Angel left her, the better. “Don’t,”
Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree nodded silently and disappeared into Atlanta’s night.
An hour later Roxanne lay down in the dirt; she had no cell phone, no gun, and no chance of defending herself if and when he found her.
Roxanne broke down in tears once again.
She called Chris Prince out loud by name but he failed to answer her back. Was he even alive? He wished he was with her right now.
Every shadow frightened her.
Every movement startled her.
And Ricardo Silas was coming soon to watch her suffer before her end.
He might as well come right now
Chris
“Somebody shoot this bastard,”
Special Agent Christopher Prince heard what the Deacon said, but continued his march towards Deacon and the Choir Boys’ leader the Bishop. He had finished his countdown with a shot that everyone involved in this standoff knew was an intentional miss wide enough to miss the Bishop’s skull, but close enough to get his full attention. Chris could feel the tension from Martin’s clan behind him. He had deduced that the others weren’t just following him they were family. Martin’s family had to be unsure of what they were seeing. Why should they believe in him especially after walking on him and Blue had guns locked on each other at the beginning of this?
Tabitha, he remembered his partner lying on the ground nearby after his gun discharged as the earthquake struck the city unexpectedly. It was an accident, he kept telling himself. It was a damned preventable accident.
But he had one problem to deal with at a time.
Since the Choir Boys had showed up on the scene something in him had changed. Or perhaps they fully manifested themselves. Perhaps it had started when the FBI had relieved him of duty after Lucy Burgess had brought the spotlight on a very dark period of his life? Perhaps it began when Serena Tennyson exposed him to the truth…all of the truths about his father Isaac Prince. Or perhaps it was commenced when he held his dying brother Xavier in his arms? Anyway, he couldn’t identify what it was. A transformation was taking place. Chris couldn’t stop it. He wouldn’t stop it.
A dying man had nothing to lose.
“Ain’t this something, just look at us, Bishop?” Chris said, continuing his methodical approach with his gun drawn on the two men. “I want you to understand how pathetic we are.”
“What are you talking about, man?” The Deacon said for the Bishop. How the man translated for his muted leader was beyond Chris understanding—or caring at this point. “I know that you need to back the hell up.”
Chris looked back at Martin’s clan for a second.
“No wonder white folk fear our kind, our very presence. Look at you, Bishop. Look at how you are dressed. Look at the gold teeth and the tats and the baggy pants. You are a disgrace to the mother that births you.”
“They don’t dictate what I wear,” Deacon said for the Bishop. “You are fucking crazy, man. Why doesn’t someone put this bastard out of all our miseries right now? Somebody shoot him.”
Chris finally stopped in his tracks.
“You’re right, Bishop.” He said in a voice that was eerily calm and civilized. “They don’t dictate what we wear, how we talk, what we do with our lives. Yet, too often our people grasp ideals and ideas that the rest of society questions as a way of embracing our so called blackness. A man once said that we see the right in the wrong and the wrong in the right. I believe that to be true. Look at you, Bishop. The baggy pants and the tattoos originated from prison garb. Is that what we want our young people to aspire to look like—escaped prisoners?”
&nbs
p; Bishop actually tried to mumble something through the injury that had incapacitated his means.
Deacon seemed to struggle with this translation. He searched his leader’s face long and hard before speaking again.
“I…I guess it’s our heritage.” Deacon finally said. “I don’t know. I do know that I didn’t come here for a public service announcement or history lesson from you. I want Grace Edwards. I want payment for the lives that white man and his redneck brood took from me. You got real spirit there, boy, real spirit. I’m going to let you walk away from this if you’re smart enough to hand them over to me and just walk away.”
“No, it’s far from being that simple, my brother.” Chris said. “Grace Edwards is a little busy right now. She’s not going anywhere with you. And in the 30 minutes that I’ve known Mr. Martin, I can tell you that he’s not giving any of his people to you either.”
“Give me—“
“No,” Chris answered in a tone that would brook no further argument. “You have only one choice here, my brother; you are going turn and walk away from her or you—and your Deacon is going to die here, tonight, right where you are standing right now.”
“Man, I was right, you are crazy.”
“I am far from it, Bishop. I am sick in every way a man can be sick. I’m sick to death of young brothers like yourself embracing everything that you perceive that white people hate. I am sick of more black men your age serving prison sentences than being enrolled in college.
